Treatment Of Nonhuman Animals Research Articles

Sexual Selection and the Brotherhood of Humans: Does the argument of The Descent of Man confirm The sacred cause thesis?

Desmond and Moore point out that the key to understanding Darwin’s The Descent of Man is his abolitionist motivation and his advocacy that races constitute subspecies. Roberta Millstein raises some doubts about the importance of this motivation. She points out that the inclusion of the extensive section devoted to non-human animals is not justified by Darwin’s treatment of humans per se, because his explanation of the origin of races is peculiar. In this sense, she argues that Darwin’s specific explanation of the origin of races does not confirm the central importance that Desmond and Moore give to Darwin’s abolitionism. In this paper I have two different aims. On the one hand, to show that the human case actually is based on the treatment of nonhuman animals, and consequently, Darwin’s argument is not as poor as Millstein believes. My second goal, taking Millstein’s challenge seriously, is to show that Darwin’s explanation of the origin of races does confirm the Desmond and Moore thesis in a deeper sense than the one they propose themselves. For the anti-slavery motivation could not only explain the fact that Darwin sees all humans as forming the same species, but the specific explanation he gives for the origin of races.

Ethical Treatment of Invasive and Native Fauna in Australia: Perspectives through the One Welfare Lens.

Simple SummaryA public forum can reveal a wide range of perspectives on the ethical treatment of animals. This article describes how a panel of experts navigated through a discussion on the many and varied challenges of attempting to manage invasive and native fauna in Australia. The panel acknowledged the variety of these fauna, their effects on others and the consequences of control measures for three parties: animals, humans and the environment. The One Welfare concept has been developed to guide humans in the ethical treatment of non-human animals, each other and the environment. The forum accepted the need to consider this triple line, and exemplifies the merits of a One Welfare approach to discussions such as this. We used a series of questions about past, present and anticipated practices in wildlife control as the core of the panel discussion. We revealed five different but intersecting perspectives: conservation action, wildlife research, invasive animal ecology, mainstream animal protection and compassionate conservation. This article shows how understanding of lines of contention on various core topics can provide a framework for further discourse that may bear fruit in the form of One Welfare solutions.The One Welfare concept is proposed to guide humans in the ethical treatment of non-human animals, each other and the environment. One Welfare was conceptualized for veterinarians but could be a foundational concept through which to promote the ethical treatment of animals that are outside of direct human care and responsibility. However, wild-living animals raise additional ethical conundrums because of their multifarious values and roles, and relationships that humans have with them. At an open facilitated forum, the 2018 Robert Dixon Memorial Animal Welfare Symposium, a panel of five experts from different fields shared their perspectives on “loving and hating animals in the wild” and responded to unscripted questions from the audience. The Symposium’s objectives were to elucidate views on the ethical treatment of the native and invasive animals of Australia and to identify some of the resultant dilemmas facing conservationists, educators, veterinarians and society. Here, we document the presented views and case studies and synthesize common themes in a One Welfare framework. Additionally, we identified points of contention that can guide further discourse. With this guide in place, the identification and discussion of those disparate views was a first step toward practical resolutions on how to manage wild-living Australian fauna ethically. We concluded that there was great utility in the One Welfare approach for any discourse about wild animal welfare. It requires attention to each element of the triple bottom line and ensures that advocacy for one party does not vanquish the voices from other sectors. We argue that, by facilitating a focus on the ecology in the context of wild animal issues, One Welfare is more useful in this context than the veterinary context for which it was originally developed.

Greedy Bat Eaters versus Cruel Pig Killers: The Lose-Lose Battle of Divisive Discourse

Unsurprisingly, the circumstances and challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have generated strong reactions. Among the more notable, Canadian musician and animal activist Bryan Adams made headlines when he went on a tirade on social media denouncing ‘fucking bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards’ and advocating for veganism. This article uses this incident as a prism through which to examine the values and assumptions informing some of the central debates within the mainstream animal advocacy movement today. Certainly, there is an urgent need for a critical re-evaluation of the policies and practices that have created the conditions in which viral pathogens can spread, especially those relating to our treatment of nonhuman animals (and our relationship with nature more broadly). However, the roots of the problem are fundamentally structural, and not attributable to any one country or culture. The thoughtless use of terms that contribute to a politically charged and rancorous public debate readily descends into a lose-lose battle, which may hinder efforts to address complex and collective concerns in a mutually cooperative manner. If COVID-19 is to represent a turning point towards building a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient world for humans and nonhuman animals alike, the kind of fractioning that is currently being exacerbated by the use of divisive discourse must be eschewed in favour of a greater recognition of our fundamental interconnectedness, including through a more pluralistic understanding of law.

ABATE HALAL E KOSHER E BEM-ESTAR ANIMAL

Objetiva-se discutir o bem-estar animal diante do abate religioso. Hodiernamente, o Direito Animal faz-se crescente e pois, ordena um repensar científico, ético e legal no tratamento dos animais não humanos. E, ainda que exista uma norma cultural de animais usados para alimentação, termos como dignidade, senciência e bem-estar animal afloram principalmente no momento do abate. Neste universo, o recorte do abate religioso para produção de carne Halal e Kosher surge com especial interesse. Assim, a partir de profícua literatura, alcança-se tema controverso que envolve não apenas questões científicas e éticas, mas principalmente dogmas religiosos. Optou-se todavia, por priorizar o Direito Animal. Não se adentrou em altercações sobre abolicionismo e veganismo. Diante do estado atual das coisas que legaliza a produção de proteína animal, infere-se a incompatibilidade ética, científica e legal da garantia do bem-estar animal em face do apregoado abate humanitário. E, mais especificamente a jugulação cruenta executa a nos abates Halal e Kosher, em que pese práticas milenares, recrudesce intercorrências que desequilibram o bem-estar animal.

Betraying Animals

This paper presents a new way of thinking about the relationship between humans and the nonhuman animals in their care. Most ethical analysis of the treatment of nonhuman animals has focussed on questions of moral status, justice, and the wrongness of harming them. This paper does something different, it examines the role played by trust in interspecies relationships. In both agriculture and laboratory settings, humans deliberately foster trusting relationships with nonhuman animals. An intrinsic feature of the trusting relationship in these settings is that it is created in order to be exploited and betrayed. However, little consideration has been given to asking what a deliberate betrayal of another species says about the character of those who carry out the betrayals. This paper argues that regardless of the moral status of nonhuman animals, a willingness to foster trust in order to exploit the vulnerability of a nonhuman suggests a serious character flaw. Our failure thus far to apprehend systematic forms of betrayal indicates a moral blind-spot when it comes to other species.

Problem Animals

Nonhuman animals play various roles in environmental ethics, often as charismatic symbols of wilderness or active participants in the natural dramas we seek to preserve. Sometimes, however, nonhuman animals do not fit into—and may even threaten—the “nature” that we value. There are two especially problematic animals: white-tailed deer and feral cats. Together, these creatures shine light on a number of important issues in environmental ethics, including the tensions between animal welfare and environmentalism, the ways human interests and categories pervade even ecocentric perspectives, and the complex place of science in environmental ethics and advocacy. Thinking through the issues raised by debates about deer and cats can contribute to a more adequate treatment of nonhuman animals in environmental thought and advocacy.

Understanding animal (ab)use: Green criminological contributions, missed opportunities and a way forward

While the last two decades have witnessed considerable growth in green criminology, the positioning of nonhuman animals within the field remains unclear and contested. This article provides an analysis of green criminological work—published since the 1998 special issue of Theoretical Criminology—that addresses harms and crime perpetrated against nonhuman animals. We assess trends in the quantity of the work over time and how the treatment of nonhuman animals has unfolded through an analysis of green criminology articles, chapters in edited volumes and monographs. We find that while the amount of consideration given to nonhuman animals by green criminologists has increased dramatically over the years, much of this work has focused on crimes and harms against wild animals (e.g. “wildlife poaching”, “trafficking”), comparatively less attention has been paid to so-called “domesticated animals” or to larger questions of species justice. Based on these findings, we consider how concepts in critical animal studies, ecofeminism and feminist intersectional theories may be utilized in green criminological debates regarding animal (ab)use. With the goal of stimulating further work in this vein, we outline three areas where green criminology has much to offer: (1) researching and exposing meat production and consumption as a form of animal abuse and as a major contributor to global climate change; (2) bridging the divide between environmentalism, animal advocacy and their associated areas of academic study; and (3) refining and reflecting on methodological choices, all with the aim of developing a nonspeciesist green criminology.

Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation

Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation

Editorial Vol.8(1)

Editorial Vol.8(1)

Frontiers of Analogous Justice

In this paper I argue for a Thomistic alternative to Martha Nussbaum’s justice for animals as outlined in Frontiers of Justice (2007). I argue that an account of analogous justice between humans and animals can generate real and robust obligations towards animals. I first show how Aquinas’s treatment of nonhuman animals in the questions on law evince a wider, shared community between humans and animals by which we see animals and humans as equally under divine providence. I then argue that while Aquinas’s definition of justice excludes animals in its proper sense, his treatment of animals (or irrational creatures) in questions such as those on theft and charity prove that there is room to understand at least an analogous or metaphorical sense by which we can see them as recipients of justice. Finally, I examine Nussbaum’s own account and illustrate key similarities between her view and that of Aquinas.

From Factory Floor to Killing Floor: Marx, Critical Theory and the Status of the Animal

Considerations of the status of animals in contemporary society should start from the recognition that the most thorough domestication undertaken by man has been that of the human species itself. Man has been progressively alienated, indeed, through the human conquest of nature, including that of non-human animals. Human domination of nature is the product of the sweat and blood of both the oppressed classes of histoiy and the labor of countless non-human animals. Contemporary utilization of nature continues through the subjection of the marginalized, human and non-human alike. The works of numerous Marxian scholars make this pattern of class struggle in history terribly clear. Although, indeed, the exploitative utilization of non-human animals is often overlooked, it is intertwined with the oppression of human beings in dialectically significant ways. This relationship opens critical insights and emancipatory possibilities in the present.In this paper, I use the works of Marx, Engels and the Frankfurt School to make a twofold argument. Firstly, I assert that the non-human animal is the nodal point in advanced capitalism where the elsewhereobscured oppressive nature of the whole can still be observed and contested. In the use, abuse and consumption of non-human animals in the advanced industrial system, and in the culture that reflects this mode of production, the impact of capital upon the living being in its integrity, health, rights, freedom, and worth are nakedly observable. Although, admittedly, the situation of non-human animals cannot be flatly equated to that of humans, the similar and linked positions of the two in a system that voraciously consumes the life force of all living beings justifies a critical comparison. The suffering non-human animal ensnared in advanced industrial capitalism is thus an essential mirror that must be held up, however uncomfortably, before the reified modem subject. Secondly, I contest that to break the cycle of alienation and oppression in which the subject is enmeshed, the transformation of the subject's intemality is necessary. In other words, one contests capital and builds subjectivity effectively only through actively living disruptively. The treatment of non-human animals, in short, must be considered a part of the web of domination, and rejected as firmly as other, more immediate forms of injustice. The refusal to use non-human animals as a means to the ends of capital is thus an important aspect of praxis and should be linked to the refusal to consume the labor of exploited human workers.MARXIAN THEORY, ALIENATION AND THE ANIMALAlienation, once viewed as a driver of class-consciousness, is now a problem well recognized by Marxian scholars. In this section, I will argue that although alienation, due in large part to the rise in standards of living and the development of socializing agents like advertising, now promotes blindness to structural injustice. The status of the non-human animal, however, still reflects the true relationship between capital and the living beings that serve as its raw material back to the critical observer.Marx and Engels framed alienation as a potent tool in the mobilization of proletarians. In a sense, indeed, classical Marxism turns on the capacity of the working class to become a revolutionary agent through the perfection of its alienation. Marx argued that the worker's existence is reduced to the same conditions as any other commodity under capital (Marx 1988). The individual's lived experience thus stands in palpable dialectical tension with the possibility of human emancipation in modernity. Because, in other words, bourgeois society is, too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them, capitalism can only create misery out of conditions ripe for the liberation of all from necessity (Marx and Engels 1988, 216). Rendered completely alien to himself in conditions that in every way counter his genuine interests, the subject recognizes that his plight stems from capitalism. …

New Perspectives on Animal Ethics

Abstract In this article, I review a recent book edited by Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker that presents novel frameworks and refreshing perspectives on the issue of the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals.

Christian Ethics and Contemporary Treatment of Nonhuman Animals

Christian Ethics and Contemporary Treatment of Nonhuman Animals

Neuroethics, Painience, and Neurocentric Criteria for the Moral Treatment of Animals

Neuroscience affords knowledge that can be leveraged in the ontological valuation of individuals, groups, and species. Sociocultural sentiments, norms, and mores may impede embracing such knowledge to revise moral attitudes, ethics, and policies. We argue that the practices of neuroethics will be valuable in that they ground ethico-legal discourse in (1) naturalistic philosophy; (2) the current epistemological capital of neuroscience; (3) the issues, problems, and solutions arising in and from neuroscientific research and its applications; and 4) the use of neurocentric criteria-such as painience-to define and resolve ethical decisions regarding attitudes toward and treatment of nonhuman animals.

The Asymmetrical Contributions of Pleasure and Pain to Animal Welfare

Recent results from the neurosciences demonstrate that pleasure and pain are not two symmetrical poles of a single scale of experience but in fact two different types of experiences altogether, with dramatically different contributions to well-being. These differences between pleasure and pain and the general finding that "the bad is stronger than the good" have important implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals. In particular, whereas animal experimentation that causes suffering might be justified if it leads to the prevention of more suffering, it can never by justified merely by leading to increased levels of happiness.

Nonhuman Animal Rights, Alternative Food Systems, and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Alternative food systems (namely the humane product movement) have arisen to address societal concerns with the treatment of Nonhuman Animals in food production. This paper presents an abolitionist Nonhuman Animal rights approach (Francione, 1996) and critiques these alternative systems as problematic in regards to goals of considering the rights or welfare of Nonhuman Animals. It is proposed that the trend in social movement professionalization within the structure of a non-profit industrial complex will ultimately favor compromises like “humane” products over more radical abolitionist solutions to the detriment of Nonhuman Animals. This paper also discusses potential compromises for alternative food systems that acknowledge equal consideration for Nonhuman Animals, focusing on grassroots veganism as a necessary component for consistency and effectiveness.

Domination and Consumption: An Examination of Veganism, Anarchism, and Ecofeminism

Anarchism provides a useful set of theoretical tools for understanding and resisting our culture’s treatment of non-human animals. However, some points of disagreement exist in anarchist discourse, such as the question of veganism. In this paper I will use the debate around veganism as a way of exploring the anarchist discourse on non-human animals, how that discourse can benefit more mainstream work on non-human animals, and how work coming out of mainstream environmental discourse, in particular the ecofeminist work of Val Plumwood, can likewise benefit anarchist thought. Ultimately I will show that anarchism and some of the more radical strains of environmental philosophy such as ecofeminism can greatly contribute to each other and to Critical Animal Studies.

Ihmisen ja eläimen suhteesta varhaisessa kreikkalaisessa ajattelussa

Toisenlajisia eläimiä huomioiva ja mm. kasvissyöntiä puolustava ajattelu on antiikin filosofiassa omalaatuinen jatkumo, joka ulottuu esiklassiselta kaudelta myöhäisantiikkiin. Tutkin artikkelissani tämän ajattelun suhdetta varhaisempaan kreikkalaiseen kulttuuriperinteeseen, jonka ilmauksina tarkastelen arkaaista runoutta, mytologiaa ja uskonnollisia rituaaleja. Eläinmyönteisistä filosofeista esimerkeikseni olen poiminut Empedokleen (n. 490–430 eKr.) ja Plutarkhoksen (n. 45–125 jKr.). Lähtökohtanani on ihmetys, jota Plutarkhoksen voimakkaat eläinten tappamista vastustavat tekstit herättävät antiikin perinteisesti hyvin antroposentriseksi miellettyä taustaa vasten. Plutarkhoksen osoittamia jälkiä pitkin etenen ajassa taaksepäin, esisokraatikko Empedokleeseen. Näiden kahden filosofin ajattelusta nostan esiin erityisesti oikeudenmukaisuuteen sekä ihmisten ja muiden eläinten sukulaisuuteen ja kosmiseen kohtalonyhteyteen liittyviä teemoja. Artikkelini jälkimmäisessä osassa tutkin eläinmyönteisten filosofien taustalla mahdollisesti vaikuttavaa kollektiivista perinnettä. Tarkastelen eläinhahmoja ja eläinmetaforien käyttöä varhaisessa runoudessa, esimerkkeinäni otteita Homerokselta ja kuorolyyrikko Alkmanilta (600-luku eKr.). Runokuvien rinnalla jäljitän kreikkalaisen mytologian välittämää kuvaa eläimistä, erityisesti eläinten ja jumalien suhdetta. Jäljitystä pohjustavat esimerkit Zeuksen eläimellisistä muodonmuutoksista sekä havainto kreikan ”eläintä” merkitsevän ζῷον-sanan semanttisesta avaruudesta, joka kattaa toisenlajisten eläinten lisäksi niin ihmiset kuin jumalat. Lopuksi tarkastelen kahta uskonnollista rituaalia, spartalaista nuorten neitojen kuororituaalia ja attikalaista Artemis Brauronian karhujuhlaa, joissa eläinmetaforiikka syvenee kohti metamorfoosia, samaistumista toisenlajiseen eläimeen ja muuntumista toiseksi rituaalin tilassa. Johtopäätöksenä esitän, että arkaaisen kreikkalaisen kasvatuksen perustana toimiva ja erityisesti rituaalisissa yhteyksissä hyödynnetty mimesiksen ajatus sekä edellytti että ruokki kykyä samaistua toiseen, myös toiseen eläimeen, ja että kaikuja tästä syvästä yhteyden tunteesta voidaan tavoittaa esimerkiksi Empedokleen ja Plutarkhoksen ajattelussa.

Ethical Considerations on Methods Used in Abortions

There is a fundamental inconsistency in Western society's treatment of non-human animals on the one hand, and of human foetuses on the other. While most Western countries allow the butchering of animals and their use in experimentation, this must occur under carefully controlled conditions that are intended to minimize their pain and suffering as much as possible. At the same time, most Western countries permit various abortion methods without similar concerns for the developing fetus. The only criteria for deciding which abortion method is used centre in the stage of the pregnancy, the size of the fetus, the health of the pregnant woman and the physician's preference. This is out of step with the underlying ethos of animal cruelty legislation, cannot be justified ethically and should be rectified by adjusting abortion methods to the capacity of the fetus to experience nociception and/or pain.

Wild Justice Redux: What We Know About Social Justice in Animals and Why It Matters

Social justice in animals is beginning to attract interest in a broad range of academic disciplines. Justice is an important area of study because it may help explain social dynamics among individuals living in tightly-knit groups, as well as social interactions among individuals who only occasionally meet. In this paper, we provide an overview of what is currently known about social justice in animals and offer an agenda for further research. We provide working definitions of key terms, outline some central research questions, and explore some of the challenges of studying social justice in animals, as well as the promise of the work we're proposing. Finally, we suggest why continued research into animal cognition and social behavior has significant ethical implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals.