Animal welfare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

View of the Asokan Pillar at Vaishali. One of the edicts of Ashoka (272—231 BCE) reads: "Everywhere King Piyadasi (Asoka) erected two kinds of hospitals, hospitals for people and hospitals for animals. Where there were no healing herbs for people and animals, he ordered that they be bought and planted."^[1]

Animal welfare refers to the viewpoint that it is morally acceptable for humans to use nonhuman animals for food, in animal research, as clothing, and in entertainment, so long as unnecessary suffering is avoided.^{[citation needed]} The position is contrasted with the animal rights position, which holds that other animals should not be used by, or regarded as the property of, humans.^[2]

[edit] History of animal welfare

Systematic concern for the well-being of other animals probably arose in the Indus Valley Civilization as the religious ancestors return in animal form, and that animals must therefore be killed with the respect due to a human. This belief is exemplified in the existing religion, Jainism, and in varieties of other Indian religions. Other religions, specially those with roots in the Arabic religion, treat animals as the props of their owners, codifying rules for their care and slaughter intended to limit the distress, pain and fear animals experience under human control.

[edit] Welfare in practice

From the outset in 1822, when British MP Richard Martin shepherded a bill through Parliament offering protection from cruelty to cattle, horses and sheep (earning himself the nickname Humanity Dick), the welfare approach has had human morality, and humane behaviour, at its central concern. Martin was among the founders of the world's first animal welfare organization, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or SPCA, in 1824. In 1840, Queen Victoria gave the society her blessing, and it became the RSPCA. The society used members' donations to employ a growing network of inspectors, whose job was to identify abusers, gather evidence, and report them to the authorities.

The main concerns of the animal protection movement since the 19th century had been kosher slaughtering and research on living organisms, issues the Nazis picked up on as soon as they came to power in January 1933 as part of their sweeping attacks on Jews, with the claim that research on living organisms was part of what they called "Jewish science." (See main article Animal welfare in Nazi Germany.) They passed laws regulating slaughter in April 1933, and banned vivisection in August 1933, removing the ban three weeks later when they were persuaded it would have a negative effect on research, and introducing regulation instead. On November 24, 1933, the Tierschutzgesetz, or animal protection law, was introduced, the first of a series of similar laws, giving Germany the most extensive animal protection legislation in Europe at the time. Hermann Göring threatened to send anyone violating the vivisection regulations to concentration camps.^[3]

The legislation was retained in postwar Germany, east and west, although both the Jewish and Muslim communities there are now allowed to practise ritual slaughter, called Shechita and Dhabihah.^[4]

[edit] Welfare principles

The UK government commissioned an investigation into the welfare of intensively farmed animals from Professor Roger Brambell in 1965, partly in response to concerns raised in Ruth Harrison's 1964 book, Animal Machines. On the basis of Professor Brambell's report, the UK government set up the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee in 1967, which became the Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1979. The committee's first guidelines recommended that animals require the freedoms to 'turn around, to groom themselves, to get up, to lie down and to stretch their limbs'. These have since been elaborated to become known as the Five Freedoms of animal welfare:

[edit] The five freedoms

1. Freedom from thirst and hunger
2. Freedom from discomfort
3. Freedom from pain, injury and disease
4. Freedom to express normal behavior
5. Freedom from fear and distress ^[5]

[edit] Animal welfare compared with animal rights

Most animal welfarists argue that the animal rights view goes too far, and do not advocate the elimination of all animal use or companionship. They may believe that humans have a moral responsibility not to cause cruelty (unnecessary suffering) to other animals. Animal rights advocates, such as Gary L. Francione and Tom Regan, argue that the animal welfare position (advocating for the betterment of the condition of animals, but without abolishing animal use: see veganism) is inconsistent in logic and ethically unacceptable. However, there are some animal rights groups, such as PETA, which support animal welfare measures in the short term to alleviate animal suffering until all animal use is ended.

According to Ingrid Newkirk in an interview with Wikinews, there are two issues in animal welfare and animal rights. "If I only could have one thing, it would be to end suffering," said Newkirk. "If you could take things from animals and kill animals all day long without causing them suffering, then I would take it...Everybody should be able to agree that animals should not suffer if you kill them or steal from them by taking the fur off their backs or take their eggs, whatever. But you shouldn’t put them through torture to do that."^[6]

[edit] Criticisms of animal welfare

At one time, many people denied that animals could feel anything, and thus had no interests. Many Cartesians were of this opinion, though Cottingham (1978) has argued that Descartes himself did not hold such a view. On the other hand, sympathy for animals is not new. Victorian era dramatist W. S. Gilbert remarked, "Deer-stalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns."^[7]

[edit] Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare

A number of Animal Welfare organisations are campaigning to achieve a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW) at the United Nations. In principle, the Universal Declaration will call on the United Nations to recognise animals as sentient beings, capable of experiencing pain and suffering, and to recognise that animal welfare is an issue of importance as part of the social development of nations worldwide.

The campaign to achieve the UDAW is being co-ordinated by the World Society for the Protection of Animals, with a core working group including Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and the Humane Society International (HSI). ^[8]

[edit] See also

• Animal ethics
• Animal law
• Anti-hunting
• Cruelty to animals
• List of animal welfare groups
• List of huntings
• Ethics of eating meat
• Animal worship
• Francis of Assisi

[edit] References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Animal welfare

• Humane Education Past, Present, and Future from The State of the Animals II: 2003
• Farm Animal Welfare: Philosophical Aspects from the Encyclopedia of Animal Science