Animal Welfare
Animal welfare is usually viewed as a spectrum that ranges from ideal through a tipping point of neutrality down to a rock bottom of extreme deprivation. An animal's individual welfare moves dynamically up and down this scale as a direct result of the stimulation, environment, treatment and internal conditions they are subjected to.
In the wild, animals can usually move away from negative environments and stimuli, seeking more hospitable and pleasurable conditions, thus also altering their internal, experiential perceptions. In captivity however, animals are bound to their location in greater or lesser degrees, often lacking the ability to take control of the situation and regain a higher level of welfare. In these cases, it is up to the human care-givers, whether keepers, owners, curators, vets, trainers, technicians or stockmen to provide the best possible conditions and to allow the animals as great a degree of freedom, choice and control as can be designed.
Damage Trifecta - stress, isolation, boredom
These often inescapable pressures, result in poor animal mental health, stereotypies (dangerous repetitive behaviours), behavioural disorders, anti-social behaviour, and as always, compromised health, welfare and lifespan.
Three C's - choice, control, challenge
These freedoms reinstate a sense of purpose, engagement and achievement in animals, which leads to improved life satisfaction, increased learning and enhanced mental and physical welfare.
In the wild, animals can usually move away from negative environments and stimuli, seeking more hospitable and pleasurable conditions, thus also altering their internal, experiential perceptions. In captivity however, animals are bound to their location in greater or lesser degrees, often lacking the ability to take control of the situation and regain a higher level of welfare. In these cases, it is up to the human care-givers, whether keepers, owners, curators, vets, trainers, technicians or stockmen to provide the best possible conditions and to allow the animals as great a degree of freedom, choice and control as can be designed.
Damage Trifecta - stress, isolation, boredom
These often inescapable pressures, result in poor animal mental health, stereotypies (dangerous repetitive behaviours), behavioural disorders, anti-social behaviour, and as always, compromised health, welfare and lifespan.
Three C's - choice, control, challenge
These freedoms reinstate a sense of purpose, engagement and achievement in animals, which leads to improved life satisfaction, increased learning and enhanced mental and physical welfare.
International Standards
Welfare Issue: Boredom in Zoos
Boredom, chronic stress and stereotypies are negative factors that can arise for animals in captivity if their social and physical environments are not
substantially enriched and therefore engaging and stimulating. All animal senses as well as their minds and bodies should be targeted for engagements using a variety of objects, toys, foods, aromas, sounds, sights, surfaces, landscapes and companionship that is optimally enjoyable for their species. |
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Welfare Issue: Oceanic Sound Pollution
Oceans are a sonic symphony. Sound is essential to the survival and prosperity of marine life. But over the last 100 years people have been pumping more and more noise into the ocean from shipping, seismic testing for oil and gas exploration, naval sonar training, construction, and other activities.
The only good thing about ocean noise is that once we stop making it, it goes away. Unlike other kinds of pollution which may take years, decades or centuries to dissipate, noise just stops. |
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Welfare Issue: Animal Experimentation
More than a hundred and fifty academics, intellectuals, and writers, including Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, have backed a new report calling for the de-normalisation of animal experimentation. Titled ‘Normalising the Unthinkable’, the report is the result of a working party of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
The report finds that ‘The deliberate and routine abuse of innocent, sentient animals involving harm, pain, suffering, stressful confinement, manipulation, trade, and death should be unthinkable. Yet animal experimentation is just that: the ‘normalisation of the unthinkable’. ‘It is estimated that 115.3 million animals are used in experiments worldwide per annum. In terms of harm, pain, suffering, and death, this constitutes one of the major moral issues of our time.’ |
To watch the video on the Oxford Animal Ethics site, click on this button
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Comprised of 20 leading ethicists and scientists, the working party concluded that animal experiments are both morally and scientifically flawed. The report of more than 50,000 words is probably the most comprehensive critique of animal experiments ever published.
‘The moral arguments in favour of animal testing really don’t hold water’ says Professor Andrew Linzey, co-editor of the report and a theologian at Oxford University. ‘We have looked at the central arguments in official reports and found them wanting. If any of them were morally valid, they would also justify experiments on human beings.’
The report concludes that the ‘normalisation’ of animal experiments:
‘The moral arguments in favour of animal testing really don’t hold water’ says Professor Andrew Linzey, co-editor of the report and a theologian at Oxford University. ‘We have looked at the central arguments in official reports and found them wanting. If any of them were morally valid, they would also justify experiments on human beings.’
The report concludes that the ‘normalisation’ of animal experiments:
- flies in the face of what is now known about the extent and range of how animals can be harmed. The issue of the complexity of animal awareness, especially animal sentience (the capacity to experience pain and pleasure), cannot be ignored. Unlike our forebears, we now know, as reasonably as we can know of humans, that animals (notably, mammals, birds, and reptiles) experience not only pain, but also shock, fear, foreboding, trauma, anxiety, stress, distress, anticipation, and terror.
- is based on the discredited idea that animals are just tools for human use, means to human ends, fungible items, and commodities who can be treated and dispensed with as humans think fit.
- is challenged by new moral thinking which holds that sentient beings are not just things, objects, machines, or tools, but have value in themselves and deserve respect.
- is augmented by a range of regulations and controls, which in reality do very little to protect animals and indeed often do the reverse.
- is justified by the oft-repeated assertion that human interest requires such experiments, whereas it has to be questioned whether humans are ever benefited by the abuse of animals.