Animal Welfare

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John Webster. Animal Welfare

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Illustrations

Guide

Pages

The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

Animal Welfare. Understanding Sentient Minds and Why it Matters

About the Author

John Webster

Preface

Acknowledgements and Apologies

Part 1. The Sentient Mind: Skills and Strategies

1. Setting the Scene

Human Attitudes to Animals

Animal Behaviour Science

Rules of Engagement

2. Sentience and the Sentient Mind

Sentience, Consciousness and the Mind

The Five Skandhas of Sentience

Understanding the Sentient Mind

Pain and Suffering

Pain: How do We Know It Matters?

Fear and Dread

Coping with Challenge: Stress and Boredom

Social Life

Comfort and Joy

Hope and Despair

Sex and Love

Summary

3. Special Senses and Their Interpretation

Vision

Hearing

Smell and Taste

Cutaneous Sensation, Touch

Magnetoreception

Interpreting the Special Senses

Theory of Mind, or Metarepresentation

Summary

4 Survival Strategies

Foraging

Hunting Behaviour: The Predator and the Prey

Spatial Awareness and Navigation

Breeding Behaviour and Parental Care

5 Social Strategies

Sentient Social Life

Social Hierarchies: The Pecking Order

Communication

Cooperation and Empathy

Social Learning, Education and Culture

Territorial Behaviour and Tribalism

Part 2. Shaping Sentient Minds: Adaptation to the Environment

6 Animals of the Waters

Box 6.1 The Food Chain in the waters

Pain and Fear

Survival Skills: Hunting, Hiding and Problem Solving

Migration

Communication and Social Behaviour

7 Animals of the Air

Feeding Strategies

Migration

Sentience and Breeding Behaviour

Social Behaviour, Culture and Education

Bats

8 Animals of the Savannah and Plains

Environmental Challenges

Animals of the Open Plains

Sheep

Goats

Cattle

Wild Bovidae

Feral Horses

Elephants

Predators

9 Animals of the Forest

The Boreal Forest

Cervidae

Beavers

Bears

The Tropical Rain Forests

Snakes

Primates

10 Close Neighbours

History of Domestication

Artificial Selection and Unnatural Breeding

Domestication, Sentience and Wellbeing

Pigs

Dogs

Cats

Dairy Cows

Horses and Donkeys

Chickens

Opportunist Neighbours: Rats and Urban Foxes

Coda

Part 3. Why it matters: Nature's Social Union

11 Our Duty of Care

Sentience Revisited

Outcome‐based Ethics

Death and Killing

Farms, Farmed Animals and Food

Animals in Laboratories

Wild Animals in Captivity

Animals in Sport and Entertainment

Pets

What can We Learn from the Animals?

Further Reading

General Reading

Index

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UFAW, founded in 1926, is an internationally recognised, independent, scientific and educational animal welfare charity that promotes high standards of welfare for farm, companion, laboratory and captive wild animals, and for those animals with which we interact in the wild. It works to improve animals’ lives by:

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These two instances of mindless ill‐treatment may be attributed to ignorance. However, ill‐treatment on an industrial scale, carried out with the approval of the highest authorities, remains a problem in the so‐called developed world and to the present day. The number of chickens killed and consumed by humans every day is approximately 70 million. Furthermore, most of them are unlikely to experience much that could be quality of life before they die. In the words of Ruth Harrison, the godmother of the Animal Welfare movement: ‘If one person is unkind to one animal, it is considered as cruelty but when a lot of people are unkind to a lot of animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people’ (29). It was Ruth who pointed out the absurdity of the UK Protection of Birds Act (1964) which required any caged bird to be given enough space to flap its wings but then stated ‘provided this subsection does not apply to poultry’. This subsection meant that, at the time, the Act did not apply to about 99% of caged birds. This is perhaps the most egregious example of the fallacy of classifying animals as commodities in term of their utility to us, rather than as sentient beings whose minds have been shaped by their genetic inheritance and their individual experience of life. It was sustained public pressure generated by pioneers like Ruth Harrison that compelled the European Union to pronounce in the Treaty of Amsterdam that ‘Members shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals’ (73). This is a clumsy sentence from a clumsy clause that is also littered with caveats and exceptions for regional and religious practices. Nevertheless, it did recognise in law the principle that animals used by us for food, scientific enquiry, or health and safety legislation should not be considered simply as commodities but treated with respect and concern for their wellbeing.

This exploration of the minds of sentient animals draws heavily on scientific studies of animal psychology and behaviour. The scientific investigation of animal behaviour is concentrated on two main themes. The first is the study of how animals behave in their natural habitat. This can establish their behavioural needs and the actions they perform to meet these needs. From this, we can build up a reasonably comprehensive picture of the resources (e.g. diet, physical and social environment) they require to achieve a sense of physical and mental wellbeing. With this information to hand, we can devise management policies that seek to address these needs whenever we modify their natural habitat to suit our own needs for food, companionship, sport, safety or scientific endeavour.

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