Animal Ethics E-Book

Agustín Blasco Mateu

• Herausgeber: Ediciones Akal
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Ciencia
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 328

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

If today's human lived alongside other less endowed human species than ours (some sort of Neanderthal or Homo habilis) we would respect their differences and not consider them beings that we can use for our service. However, the fact that the closest species on the evolutionary scale to us, is the chimpanzee, puts us in a more delicate situation: to what extent do they suffer, are they masters of their fates or do they enjoy some features that we attribute only to man? Moreover, some mentally handicapped have intelligence not unlike some higher primates. Should we respect some as humans and not others? Should the line that separates us be determined by species? Why establish divisions between species and not within them? This book aims to address ethical concerns from an animal biology perspective, addressing specific real-world situations.

Leseprobe

Akal / Science

Director

Francisco Javier Espino Nuño

by Agustín Blasco

Animal Ethics: A scientific perspective

Translated into English by Neil Macowan

Cover design: Sergio Ramírez

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

© Agustín Blasco, 2013

© Ediciones Akal, S. A., 2013

Sector Foresta, 1

28760 Tres Cantos

Madrid - España

Tel.: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

www.akal.com

ISBN: 978-84-460-3776-7

Acknowledgements

My interest in our obligations towards animals was aroused when I was invited to take part in a committee of the European Food Security Agency charged with examining the welfare conditions of farmed rabbits. The committee was chaired by David Morton, then Professor of Ethics at the Birmingham [UK] Faculty of Medicine, and over interminable discussions at several meetings in different countries, he managed to convince me that the issue was less trivial than I had believed. Convinced that this was so, I took a course on the subject guided by Donald Broom, a well-known author on animal welfare, and taught by him and Morton with the collaboration of moral philosophers and biologists. I later invited David Morton to give a course at my university on the same issue and decided that the subject was sufficiently interesting to become part of our curriculum. To David and Donald, particularly the former, I owe my interest in the subject and a considerable part of my training. I am grateful to Javier Espino, my editor, for his infinite patience with my delays in submitting the manuscript, and to José Bonet for introducing me to my readings in Ethics. Fernando Madalena and Daniel Gianola proposed me the challenge of discussing the ethical treatment of animals in forums where the issue was to be discussed for the first time; the former at the inaugural session of the World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production in 2006, and the latter at the Chapman lectures of the University of Wisconsin in 2008. This book deals with many issues, so I asked Ana Pérez Tórtola, Miguel Angel Toro and Antonio Torres, specialists in different fields approached in the book, to help me revise the manuscript. I am grateful to all of them.

Introduction

What this book is about

On November 5th 2001, the El País newspaper featured the following news item:

Unknown assailants saw off the legs of 15 dogs at Tarragona animal shelter. ‘It’s beyond belief’, explained Anna Duch, chair of the shelter, ‘they came with the sole purpose of causing pain. Because if what they wanted was to kill them, they could have hit them on the head, they could have poisoned them, but this...’. A worker from the centre discovered the bodies of the 15 dogs first thing on Saturday morning, some of them still alive. ‘They didn’t complain, some of them even wagged their tail when they saw us and the vet. Many had bled to death, but those that survived had to be put down to avoid further suffering. The head of the shelter pressed charges yesterday at the Tarragona police headquarters. The events took place at night between Friday and Saturday. Unknown intruders managed to enter the shed by one of the windows, force the metallic front door and prepare for their gruesome act. One by one, they chose the dogs, taking them out and tying them with ropes to a nearby olive tree. They covered them with a blanket to avoid being bitten before cutting their front legs off at the height of the first joint with a saw or a large kitchen knife, according to initial investigations. Their aim was not to take them away: they also left them beh‘It’s beyond belief’, explained Anna Duch, chair of the shelter, ‘they came with the sole purpose of causing pain. Because if what they wanted was to kill them, they could have hit them on the head, they could have poisoned them, but this...’. A worker from the centre discovered the bodies of the 15 dogs first thing on Saturday morning, some of them still alive. ‘They didn’t complain, some of them even wagged their tail when they saw us and the vet. Many had bled to death, but those that survived had to be put down to avoid further suffering. The head of the shelter pressed charges yesterday at the Tarragona police headquarters. The events took place at night between Friday and Saturday. Unknown intruders managed to enter the shed by one of the windows, force the metallic front door and prepare for their gruesome act. One by one, they chose the dogs, taking them out and tying them with ropes to a nearby olive tree. They covered them with a blanket to avoid being bitten before cutting their front legs off at the height of the first joint with a saw or a large kitchen knife, according to initial investigations. Their aim was not to take them away: they also left them behind.

Lali CAMBRA,(EL PAÍS - Cataluña - 05-11-2001)

A normally constituted reader will have felt a certain horror at the news and will have inwardly described the act at least as vandalism. Many readers will also think that the author of such an atrocity deserves punishment, and only few will consider that the only ones harmed were the owners, in this case the Animal Shelter. Most of us will probably think that this act is reprehensible not only because it says very little of the moral standing of the individuals that committed it, but because the dogs did not deserve such suffering. We would gauge the moral fibre of the perpetrators by the fact that they felt pleasure when causing suffering, and would normally feel certain compassion towards the poor dogs. The impression is that we have certain obligations towards animals, at least of not making them suffer needlessly.

This book deals with a part of human ethics referring to our obligations towards animals. Most books published on these subjects are by professors of Ethics or Moral Philosophy. In principle, this is appropriate because we are dealing with binding imperatives for humans which are not necessarily demanded by law; but when deducing what our obligations towards animals are, a knowledge of animal biology seems necessary which is usually lacking in these treatises. If we currently coexisted with other human species less developed than ours, such as Neanderthals, homo ancestor, or some type of homo habilis - and it is by pure chance that this it is not so nowadays - I would like to think that there would be little doubt regarding their freedom or customs, even if their average intelligence was below ours, their abilities to build instruments were more elementary and their culture more rudimentary. We would respect the differences and presumably help them to progress and achieve their aims, or perhaps we would leave them in peace with their more primitive civilization, but we would not consider them as beings to be used at our service. However, the fact that the closest species on the evolutionary scale are the chimpanzees places us in a more delicate situation: To what degree do they suffer? To what extent do they control their own destiny? What features do they have that we consider only human? On the other hand, many mentally disabled people have an intelligence quotient not all that different from some apes; should we respect some as human but not others? Is the species the dividing line? Why do we establish separations between species and not within species?

This book aims to approach the ethical concerns from an examination of animal biology and also attempts to show how some current ethical problems could be tackled. Until quite recently, these issues were practically absent in society, with the exception of certain animal rights groups which, in general, focused simply on doing away with cruelty towards them, but as of the 70s, the ethical concern regarding animals has grown exponentially and the consequences are reflected in increasingly protective animal welfare legislation. Reports from the ethical committees that examine experiments with animals are already required in order to obtain authorisation to perform the experiments, and the issue of our obligations with animals is bound to become increasingly present. The specific ethical problems of our relation with animals will be multiplied in the very near future, which is why discussion of the ethical principles that may be applied is going to be increasingly widespread. Whether we like it or not, ethics towards animals will very soon form part of our daily life and the education of the generations to follow.

How a researcher in intensive farming is concerned with animal welfare

“I would wish the Reader to take notice, that whatever is here asserted of brutes, is no less applicable to vegetables and even minerals themselves… so that there are reasons to hope, that this Essay will be soon followed by treatises on the rights of vegetables and minerals.”

Thomas TAYLOR,A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, 1792.

When I finished my studies in Agriculture specialising in animal breeding at the end of the 70, concern for the well-being of animals was simply nonexistent. To us, animals were merely factories for meat, eggs or milk, and welfare was seen as nothing more than the creation of conditions to maximise production. When movements in defence of animals began to take on certain social relevance, my attitude was not very different from that of many of my colleagues: we thought they were problems of hypersensitive people, more concerned about animal welfare than human. We used to adduce that the high yield of animals was a good indication of their well-being. The fact that farm animals were unable to express their natural behaviour was summarily dispatched, maintaining that domesticated animals were completely different from those which in their day had roamed in natural surroundings, and thus were accustomed to any restriction of their living conditions we might decide to impose. Animals were “things”, and although mistreatment of animals was badly thought of, disapproval centred more on the attitude of the person, because we suspected that those who were cruel to animals could not have good feelings generally, rather than because the animal’s suffering should be avoided. The mere mention of the rights of the animals caused hilarity and sarcastic comments such as “So they’ll also have duties, will they?”; “So shall we be going to court to defend our case against a dog?”, but most of all there was a generic accusation against all those concerned about the defence of animals: “With all the hunger in the world, how do they dare worry about rights for animals”? - assuming that those concerned about animals automatically did not worry about humans ([1]).

With entry to the European Union, the Spanish legislation began to change in many areas. The Nordic countries and the UK made an effort to draw up directives to regulate the animal breeding and handling situation. As a specialist in rabbit genetics, I was summoned to a committee of the European Food Safety Agency, with the aim of determining the conditions for rabbit farm facilities and handling. The committee was chaired by the Biomedical Ethics Professor from the University of Birmingham David Morton, and the Secretary was a renowned Swiss Ethologist, Markus Stauffacher. Over two year we had many meetings in which the confrontations were frequent, until a document that we considered reasonable was finally drafted. For me, having access to the arguments of two intelligent people was important, opinions that were not those of the kind of excessively sensitive people that I had expected to find. As Professor Morton was giving a course on ethics regarding animals in September at the University of Cambridge, I decided to take the course in order to better understand the animal defenders’ arguments. The course was given by Donald Broom, a well-known animal welfare researcher, and David Morton, along with a group of lecturers of different origins: philosophers, evolutionary biologists or animal welfare researchers. The participants were also people of very diverse occupations; from a Cornell University lecturer who could not find courses of this type in the United States to a zoo director; in general, they were professionals with different types of relation with animals. The atmosphere was favourable to considering the arguments in favour of animals, with me as a notable exception, motivating the lengthiest discussions on a wide range of technical issues: Was pain equivalent to suffering? Are we to compare the pain of an insect with emotional suffering? Does the lobster really suffer when being boiled alive? Is an animal conscious; if so, how can we know? How do we find out the interests of animals? How can we avoid the risk of our interpretation being anthropomorphic?

On my return, I decided to read up on the subject, bought just over fifty books on ethics, evolution, behaviour, well-being and related subjects, and set about reading articles from specialist literature. I had previously been interested in Analytic Philosophy, had read quite a bit on logic and epistemology and even went so far as to organise a series of seminars on Philosophy of Science in the university, so was undaunted when approaching a new subject in the philosophy field. I had two surprises, one of them pleasant and the other not so. The pleasant surprise was that in comparison with Analytic Philosophy, Ethics was much easier to read and understand. The unpleasant one was that in terms of our obligations towards animals these were early days in the development of this branch of Ethics, and the scientific basis that could support the decisions was also starting to be developed, which meant that it lacked the firmness I normally have in my field of work, which is animal genetics. After a year of readings, I proposed that ethics and welfare should form part of the curriculum of our Master in Animal Production, and for some years I have been teaching the ethics part of one of the master subjects, aimed essentially at students intending to take the Doctorate in Animal Science. As may be seen, the process of changing my mind was slow, discussed and meditated, and what I intend to do in the following pages is reveal the elements of the discussion on our duties to animals with all the uncertainty that surrounds scientific research. When approaching these issues, remembering Bertrand Russell’s attitude about his philosophical problems, I prefer the solution not to contradict common sense ([2]). However common sense can often lead to us to the wrong solutions; common sense would tell us that in the 17th century it was perfectly acceptable to burn heretics, that having slaves was natural and that women were little more than domestic animals ([3]). I explain my present personal position in the final conclusions, and it is not free of uncertainty, although this is not something that worries me unduly; as technicians, we are used to taking decisions without all the elements of judgment necessary because they are not usually available. I therefore believe that problems of this type can be approached despite all the uncertainties we shall come up against, and which we shall discuss later.

It is difficult to subscribe to a school of ethics following its principles rigidly, and I agree with the ethical philosopher George Moore in that it is unlikely that a certain action is better than another in all possible cases (Moore, 1903), so when faced with specific ethical problems I have been obliged to adopt eclectic positions, without taking the arguments of one school or another all the way to their conclusion. What I have indeed realised is that the issue of our obligations towards animals is not trivial, and it is not a question to be taken lightly. In the following chapter we shall examine the nature of the problem, and later the solutions proposed.

It is difficult to subscribe to a school of ethics following its principles rigidly, and I agree with the ethical philosopher George Moore in that it is unlikely that a certain action is better than another in all possible cases (Moore, 1903), so when faced with specific ethical problems I have been obliged to adopt eclectic positions, without taking the arguments of one school or another all the way to their conclusion. What I have indeed realised is that the issue of our obligations towards animals is not trivial, and it is not a question to be taken lightly. In the following chapter we shall examine the nature of the problem, and later the solutions proposed.

[1] The defenders of animals usually claim that the people saying these things never do anything for either animals or humans, whereas those who do care about animals are usually also involved in movements for improvement of human rights or welfare (see, for example, SINGER, 1991) and put forward several individual examples of this. Whereas the second part of this affirmation is usually true - people sensitive to animal suffering are usually sensitive to human suffering - the former does not admit such a radical generalisation.

[2]Russell insisted on this point on several occasions; see, for example, Russell (1948), Human Knowledge.

[3] Shortly after the precursor of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, Thomas Taylor, a respected British philosopher known for his translations of Plato and Aristotle, in turn published a squib titled “A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes” (Taylor, 1792), in which he maintained that if women were to be given rights, we would end up also having to grant them to horses. See header quote to this section.

1. THE PROBLEM

The issue arises

Memory provides the soul with a kind of consecutiveness, which imitates reason, yet must be distinguished from it ... For instance: when a stick is shown to dogs, they remember the pain it has caused them, and howl and run away ... But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from mere animals and gives us Reason and the Sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God.

GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ, Monadology, 1714

Recently, we have begun to consider animals as something more than “things” or more than simply a piece of our property. Respect towards animal suffering is very recent, not only in Spain but worldwide. Although remote precedents of defence of animals are usually cited - in Appendix 1 we provide a brief history of these antecedents - in fact it is only as of the 70s that consideration of the suffering of animals has extended beyond the bounds of small anti-vivisectionist groups or well-meaning animal health professionals and reached the public at large. The starting point for popularisation of the defence of animals was the publication of the book “Animal Liberation” by the moral philosopher and current Ethics Professor at Princeton Peter Singer (SINGER, 1975), the true bible of animal liberation movements. This awareness in the general public came about on the basis of activism by radical sectors, organising different kinds of demonstrations and protests, even sometimes going so far as to use purely terrorist methods to attract attention; but the fact is that these actions do indeed bring the issue of animal suffering home to the increasingly urban inhabitants of developed countries.

Due partly to the activity of groups concerned about animal rights, society is currently increasingly worried about how animals that form part of an experiment are treated and how they are handled on farms. This consequently results in changes to the legal framework, and an increasingly developed and detailed legislation to regulate man’s relations with animals. The European Convention for the protection of animals kept for farming purposes was signed in March 1976, followed in 1986 by the European Convention on protection of vertebrate animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. Both agreements were followed by their corresponding directives [1] and the consequent legislation in the member countries; other directives take in specific aspects such as slaughter in abattoirs or transport. The legislation also covers the creation of ethics committees to determine if experiments with animals are suitably carried out as well as inspection of laboratories and production farms to ensure that the welfare norms established are followed. In the United Kingdom, for example, a person who has animals in their care must assure their welfare, and may be prohibited from keeping animals or even have the animals confiscated if this is not the case. According to the Animal welfare Act [2], currently applicable in England and Wales, a person found guilty can de condemned to imprisonment for a term up to 51 weeks. Even in Spain, the land of bull-fighting, the article 332 of the penal code states that:

“Those cruelly and unjustifiably mistreating domestic animals, causing their death or injuries leading to serious physical impairment, will be punished with a sentence of three months to one year imprisonment and special disqualification of one to three years for the exercise of any profession, office or trade related with animals.”

Not that many years ago, the notion that a “rational” being might be sent to prison for mistreating an “irrational” being would have been quite shocking. Today things have changed. We may agree with the changes or not, but social sensitivity on this issue is on the rise and scientists and farmers are going to be increasingly in the sights of the ethics committees and legislators. Ever since the mid-70s, the volume of literature regarding our obligations with the animals has done nothing but grow, and concern about the issue has also increased. Animal protection measures constitute points of no return; in the future, animals are not going to be any less protected than before. This is one of the good reasons that it is pertinent to examine the bases on which the exigency of our duties towards animals is sustained. Another reason - more important - is to understand what these obligations might be and what the basis for demanding them is. Finally, whether we must ask that certain duties towards animals are fulfilled or have to comply with those imposed upon us, a proper understanding of what these requirements are based on is important.

A thorny problem

Custom does not breed understanding, but takes its place, teaching people to make their way contentedly through the world without knowing what the world is, nor what they think of it, nor what they are. When their attention is attracted to some remarkable thing, say to the rainbow, this thing is not analysed nor examined from various points of view …That scepticism should intervene in philosophy at all is an accident of human history, due to much unhappy experience of perplexity and error.

JORGE AGUSTIN RUIZ DE SANTAYANA [3]Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923

The problem that appears is an entangled issue. In the first place, there are ethical considerations: it is generally admitted that one should not make animals suffer, but to what extent is doing so punishable? Can a man be sent to prison for mistreating an animal? This becomes more complicated with the definition of suffering: Do animals suffer? Do insects? Do lobsters suffer when being boiled alive? Do bulls suffer in the ring? Do trained elephants suffer in a circus? Do chimpanzees suffer when used in experiments? The difference between distinct types of pain is implicit in these questions; automatically withdrawing you arm when feeling a twinge is not the same thing as the pain felt at the death of your son. Unquestionably the answer to many of these issues must come about through science and not by mere reflection; properly oriented experiments can throw light on the metabolites produced during suffering, neurological reactions, etc. Underlying all these problems is the issue of consciousness. To what extent is an animal aware that it is suffering? How self-aware is an animal? Does an animal know that is was born and has to die? The answers to these questions are important for the consequences that are derived from them; for example, if an animal is indeed unaware of its future, it has no expectations, nor does it have any kind of life plan in the same sense as a human might, on the one hand keeping it locked up is not as serious as locking up a human and on the other hand taking its life is not such a big deal. This latter point is maintained even by a defender of animals such as Peter Singer (Singer, 2011).

The issue is even further entangled by legal considerations, or, if you prefer, of a deontological nature. The fact that humans have a series of acknowledged rights, which is not the case with animals, cannot be due to belonging to different species; until about 17,000 years ago, modern humans coexisted with the species Homo floresiensis discovered recently in Indonesia (Brown et al., 2004), up to 35,000 years ago with Neanderthals, and in general we are fortunate that no intermediate states from the common predecessors to present man were left. It is merely accidental that there are no places in the world with Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, Homo floresiensis, Homo habilis or any other species close to ours, but whose inferior cranial volume and lower intellectual capacities would not allow them to be included in categories such as that of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Nor is it immaterial that man may have appeared gradually or arisen suddenly [4], the product of an emergent property, as occurs with the life generated from inorganic matter. Emergent properties have bad press among scientists because they are usually used to conceal ignorance about the mechanisms that generate the new property, and this aura of mystery is prejudicial to them; but it does not necessarily have to be this way, and today we understand well how the emergent property of life comes about from inanimate matter. Put bluntly, whether the difference between a human and a cow or a chimpanzee is one of degree or is a radically new category is not the same thing. If we consider that the differences are only of degree, there are also degree differences within humans, and some mentally disabled people might in some cases be less intelligent than certain apes, or less endowed in some of the characteristics that make us human. Research into knowledge areas such as neurology or evolution could throw some light on the process.

If animals can have something akin to human rights, to this end we should consider them as humans with fewer intellectual aptitudes, like the mentally disabled. Not taking advantage of a mentally challenged person because I am good is not the same as because they have the right to not be taken advantage of by anybody. Not making animals suffer because I am good is not the same as doing so because they have the right not to suffer. Animals, at least the anthropomorphic simians like orang-utans, chimps and gorillas, could be considered as mentally impaired in terms of the features that make them similar to humans. Here, again, the answer will be more in scientific research that in considerations about the meaning of humanity.

These appeals to science do not mean that we are not faced with a genuinely ethical problem. The problem of rights, both of animals and humans, is not a scientific issue, and neither are the reasons about how we should behave towards them, although these reasons are based on our knowledge of the biology of animals and humans. In this book, we shall not go into the question of whether the bases of ethical decisions - for example, if avoiding suffering is the aim of ethical decisions, or on the contrary this is a fallacy - although we shall deal with the solutions provided by different ethical schools of thought in the question of our relation with animals, since they have consequences that help complicate the problem. For example, if preventing suffering is the fundamental objective of our relation with animals, we would have to feed the lions in natural parks with animals slaughtered humanely and stop them hunting zebras to avoid the zebras suffering, as proposed by the mid-19th century precursor of animal liberation, Lewis Gompertz (Gompertz, 1824) [5]. Whether this decision is practical or not, it would be consequent, as it would be if the defenders of animal - frequently vegetarian - were able to consume the meat of animals that had died a natural death.

To finish complicating the problem, it is not always easy to decide which actions are appropriate to benefit the animals that we wish to give our protection. Some decisions that favour aspects of animal welfare may damage other aspects of well-being, which why it is necessary to weigh up the consequences of the actions taken and the relations between some and others. Breeding rabbits in parks allows them to better express their natural behaviour, but notably increases mortality from contagion of diseases due to the contact among them and with the excrement of other animals. Domestic poultry are animals with an aggressively expressed hierarchy, with fights resulting in beak wounds, cannibalism and other derived problems, which have led a classic defender of animal welfare to consider that keeping animals in cages with facilities that improve them (enriched cages) is a more appropriate solution for hens’ welfare (Webster 2005). In the following chapters we shall try to gradually unravel the problem, separating its components, and finally attempt to explain some of the practical problems faced with ethics towards animals.

The issue is more varied than it seems

“No truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men … From the tone of voice the dog infers his master’s anger, and foresees his own punishment … The inference he draws from the present impression is built on experience, and on his observation of the conjunction of objects in past instances. As you vary this experience, he varies his reasoning”.

DAVID HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature (Book I, part III, section XVI), 1739

Our relations with animals are very diverse. So diverse that the practical ethical problems they give rise to are difficult to encompass in such general terms as avoiding their suffering, giving them certain rights or respecting their natural behaviour. Table 1 shows a list, not intended to be exhaustive, of human relations with animals.

Table 1.

Relations between animals and humans

1. Raising animals on farms to consume their products (eggs, milk, etc.)2. Breeding and slaughtering animals for meat consumption3. Animals in captivity away from their natural surroundings (zoos, circuses, parks, etc.)4. Sports (hunting, fishing, etc.)5. Experiments with animals6. Companion animals7. Working animals (security, transport, etc.)8. Shows with trained animals (circuses, aquariums, etc.)9. Spectacles with aggression towards animals (bullfighting, cockfights, etc.)10. Pest treatments (rats, rabbits, insects, etc.)

Each of these activities presents specific problems in terms of our relation with animals. Even the apparently more innocuous activities can give rise to ethical problems. For example, animals kept as pets are apparently well treated; however, they usually live in apartments, isolated from other animals, and are often castrated or mutilated for aesthetic reasons - docking ears in dogs, for example - not to mention the scarcely viable breeds that have been selected to exaggerate some aspect of their morphology - size, length, appearance - that pleases their owners.

On the other hand, texts dedicated to the defence of animals seldom deal with the pest problem. What to do when rats come to town? Rats are evolved mammals that share many pain-related aspects with humans, and of course with other mammals such as dogs or monkeys. Since little people would argue about the need to get rid of them - or to at least control their population - should finding a method of extermination that causes the least possible amount suffering be a concern? Even though said measures may be barely effective or much more expensive? The likely answer in these cases depends on the situation that has been reached; if the problem is a real invasion of a pest and the country does not have sufficient economic means, the solution will be more drastic although the suffering caused is greater; intermediate situations will require a more complex analysis.

Between these two extreme examples are many situations of practical ethics that have to wrestle with numerous variables. For example, hunting is a traditional sport that may even have cultural roots related to the characteristics of a country, such as fox hunting in England. The ritual slaughter of Islamic halal or Jewish kosher involves practices considered inadmissible under modern European legislation, but on the other hand the respect for religious beliefs clashes with the legislation - as in so many other cases - and the tendency is towards “cultural exception”, a door through which all the exceptions that may cause problems come in. It is by that same door by that bullfighting spectacles enter in France and Spain, and also where dog or cock fighting might enter if the tradition was firmly established in some European Union country. We shall look at some of these situations of practical ethics later. For their social incidence, the most common situations of practical ethics are those concerned with the raising, subsequent transport and slaughter of farm animals and those affecting experiments on laboratory animals, whether for medical purposes or with research aims in other areas.

Animal-related activities are also influenced by the type of animal in question. It seems obvious that the suffering of an insect and a mammal is not comparable, and that there is an evolutionary gradation that involves paying more attention to the consequences of our acts with higher mammals than with reptiles. For example, the conditions in which animals are bred in the zoos nowadays are intended to emulate the natural conditions of the animals kept there as far as possible, and this is carried out particularly carefully in the case of mammals, and within the mammals in primates.

Finally, the image that humans have of animals has a decisive influence on the treatment given to them. Pigeons, particularly aggressive animals, are considered a symbol of peace and are pampered at the expense of the cleaning and conservation of historical buildings. The human idea of freedom means that sometimes we want to keep animals in zoos or other facilities with an amount of space that the animal does not use in natural conditions. Gerald Durrell, director of the Jersey zoo and brother of the famous novelist Lawrence Durrell, has pointed out that many animals live in natural conditions in a space that does not occupy more than a few trees, and that many animals need an area in which they feel calmer and safer than with larger spaces to move in (Durrell, 1976). The clash between the human perception and the interests of the animals sometimes throws up paradoxes; an animal may be provided with barely appropriate facilities simply because our impression is that it will be happier in them, as with the hens mentioned above. There is always an evident risk of anthropomorphism, in spite of the attempts to understand “How monkeys see the world” (Cheney and Seyfart, 1990).

The complexity of situations in the relations between animals and humans is such that some moralists argue that the only possible way is not to interfere with animals at all and let them live in nature, prohibiting not only the consumption of animals but also their keeping in zoos or use as pets. Professor at the Law Faculty of Temple University, Gary Francione, maintains that it is impossible to determine the interests of animals [6] and that we should not interfere with them, so the Gordian knot of the problem must be cut and simply avoided. In fact, Francione affirms that the movements to improve animal welfare are delaying the appropriate solution, which is the one we have just proposed: limiting ourselves to keeping them in their natural state (Francione, 1993, 2008).

Denying the problem presents certain comforts from the intellectual viewpoint, but its practical application would have devastating consequences for nature. There is a certain fascination for the natural world in many defenders of animals, but as a product of evolution, nature is neither good nor bad; it is simply neutral. Evolution is, on the other hand, a blind process, without a fixed end, and there is no guarantee that evolution is not going to produce more primitive, less complex systems than the current ones, should environmental conditions require it - as in fact has already happened on numerous occasions; see, for instance, Gould (2002). Evolution does not guarantee that animals will not be subjected to suffering, and animal welfare in natural conditions is frequently very poor; parasites, diseases, the lack of food or the struggle with predators turn animal life in nature into something less romantic than it appears to be; the popular belief that that the zebra does not feel pain when being devoured by lions is not true – see quote from Richard Dawkins in the heading to section 5.1-. Moreover, natural systems evolve, leading to the extinction of certain species and predominance of others. If a natural park is to be managed seriously, it is necessary to cull some animals whose excess would be detrimental for the ecological balance that is sought and which nature per se does not guarantee, and promote the reproduction of other animals at certain times. The appeal to nature does not come about on behalf of nature but on behalf of civilization; it is for our civilization that we wish to conserve the ecosystems in a given state.

Animal welfare

We must face the fact that the services of domestic animals have become, whether rightly or wrongly, an integral portion of the system of modern society; we cannot immediately dispense with those services, any more than we can dispense with human labour itself. But we can provide, as at least a present step towards a more ideal relationship in the future, that the conditions under which all labour is performed, whether by men or by animals, shall be such as to enable the worker to take some appreciable pleasure in the work, instead of experiencing a lifelong course of injustice and ill treatment.

HENRY SALT, Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, 1894

It would be helpful to differentiate the ethical problem arising from the coexistence with non-human sentient beings - beings capable of suffering (12) - from the issue of animal welfare. Animal welfare is a science which, being based on ethology, zoology, physiology and other disciplines, attempt to find out how animals are affected by the environmental conditions provided for them, to try to get them to adapt to them in the best possible way. If we consider that animal suffering gives rise to an ethical problem, we must find out how and when animals suffer before we can approach the issue correctly. In order to find out, we must carry out certain types of experiments and link the results with our knowledge in neurophysiology, zoology, genetics, evolution, and in general with sciences whose purpose is the study of living beings. This is a scientific question, in which neither the opinions we have on the rights of the animals nor the opinions on our obligations to them have any bearing.