Animal welfare


Animal welfare is the quality of life and overall well-being of animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity, disease, immunosuppression, behavior, physiology, and reproduction, although there is debate about which of these best indicate animal welfare.
Respect for animal welfare is often based on the belief that nonhuman animals are sentient and that consideration should be given to their well-being or suffering, especially when they are under the care of humans. These concerns can include how animals are slaughtered for food, how they are used in scientific research, how they are kept, and how human activities affect the welfare and survival of wild species.
There are two forms of criticism of the concept of animal welfare, coming from diametrically opposite positions. One view, held by some thinkers in history, holds that humans have no duties of any kind to animals. The other view is based on the animal rights position that animals should not be regarded as objects and any use of animals by humans is unacceptable. Accordingly, some animal rights proponents argue that the perception of better animal welfare is used as an excuse for continued exploitation of animals. Some authorities therefore treat animal welfare and animal rights as two opposing positions. Others see animal welfare gains as incremental steps towards animal rights.
The predominant view of modern neuroscientists, notwithstanding philosophical problems with the definition of consciousness even in humans, is that consciousness exists in nonhuman animals; however, some still maintain that consciousness is a philosophical question that may never be scientifically resolved. A new study has devised a unique way to dissociate conscious from nonconscious perception in animals. The researchers built experiments predicting opposite behavioral outcomes to consciously vs. non-consciously perceived stimuli. The monkeys' behaviors displayed these exact opposite signatures, just like aware and unaware humans tested in the study.

History, principles, and practice

Animal protection laws were enacted as early as the 1st millennium BCE in India. Several Indian kings built hospitals for animals, and emperor Ashoka issued orders against hunting and animal slaughter, in line with ahimsa, the doctrine of non-violence. In the 13th century CE, Genghis Khan protected wildlife in Mongolia during the breeding season.
Early legislation in the Western world on behalf of animals includes the Ireland Parliament "An Act against Plowing by the Tayle, and pulling the Wooll off living Sheep", 1635, and the Massachusetts Colony "Off the Bruite Creatures" Liberty 92 and 93 in the "Massachusetts Body of Liberties" of 1641. In the Edo period of Japan, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi instituted several laws relating to animal welfare, particularly towards dogs, earning him the nickname of "the dog Shogun".
In 1776, English clergyman Humphrey Primatt authored A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals, one of the first books published in support of animal welfare. Marc Bekoff said that "Primatt was largely responsible for bringing animal welfare to the attention of the general public."
Since 1822, when Irish MP Richard Martin brought the "Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822" through Parliament offering protection from cruelty to cattle, horses, and sheep, an animal welfare movement has been active in England. 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.
In 1837, the German minister Albert Knapp founded the first German animal welfare society.
One of the first national laws to protect animals was the UK Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 followed by the Protection of Animals Act 1911. In the US it was many years until there was a national law to protect animals—the Animal Welfare Act of 1966—although there were a number of states that passed anti-cruelty laws between 1828 and 1898. In India, animals are protected by the "Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960".
Significant progress in animal welfare did not take place until the late 20th century. In 1965, the UK government commissioned an investigation—led by professor Roger Brambell—into the welfare of intensively farmed animals, partly in response to concerns raised in Ruth Harrison's 1964 book, Animal Machines. On the basis of 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 freedom to "stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs." The guidelines have since been elaborated upon to become known as the Five Freedoms.
In the UK, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 consolidated many different forms of animal welfare legislation.
A number of animal welfare organisations are campaigning to achieve a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare at the United Nations. In principle, the Universal Declaration would 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 coordinated by World Animal Protection, with a core working group including Compassion in World Farming, the RSPCA, and the Humane Society International.
The 2019 UN Global Sustainable Development Report identified animal welfare as one of several key missing issues in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Animal welfare science

is an emerging field that seeks to answer questions raised by the keeping and use of animals, such as whether hens are frustrated when confined in cages, whether the psychological well-being of animals in laboratories can be maintained, and whether zoo animals are stressed by the transport required for international conservation. Ireland leads research into farm animal welfare with the recently published .

Animal welfare issues

A major concern for the welfare of farmed animals is factory farming in which large numbers of animals are reared in confinement at high stocking densities. Issues include the limited opportunities for natural behaviors, for example, in battery cages, veal and gestation crates, instead producing abnormal behaviors such as tail-biting, cannibalism, and feather pecking, and routine invasive procedures such as beak trimming, castration, and ear notching.More extensive methods of farming, e.g. free range, can also raise welfare concerns such as the mulesing of sheep and predation of stock by wild animals. Biosecurity is also a risk with free range farming, as it allows for more contact between livestock and wild animal populations, which may carry zoonoses.
Farmed animals are artificially selected for production parameters which sometimes impinge on the animals' welfare. For example, broiler chickens are bred to be very large to produce the greatest quantity of meat per animal. Broilers bred for fast growth have a high incidence of leg deformities because the large breast muscles cause distortions of the developing legs and pelvis, and the birds cannot support their increased body weight. As a consequence, they frequently become lame or suffer from broken legs. The increased body weight also puts a strain on their hearts and lungs, and ascites often develop. In the UK alone, up to 20 million broilers each year die from the stress of catching and transporting before reaching the slaughterhouse.This stress can be measured by the high level of heart rate and its cortisol levels, but it can also be seen in their behavior or physical changes. In situations where they are threatened, alone, or can't interact with others, these results are common. Animal welfare violations have been observed more in intensively bred chicken, pig and cattle species, respectively, and studies and laws have been enacted in this regard. However, animal welfare in semi-intensive species such as sheep and goats is nowadays being scrutinised and gaining importance.
Another concern about the welfare of farmed animals is the method of slaughter, especially ritual slaughter. While the killing of animals need not necessarily involve suffering, the general public considers that killing an animal reduces its welfare. This leads to further concerns about premature slaughtering such as chick culling by the laying hen industry, in which males are slaughtered immediately after hatching because they are superfluous; this policy occurs in other farmed animal industries such as the production of goat and cattle milk, raising the same concerns.
A 2023 report by the Animal Welfare Institute found that animal welfare claims by companies selling meat and poultry products lack adequate substantiation in roughly 85% of analyzed cases.

Cetaceans

Captive cetaceans are kept for display, research and naval operations. To enhance their welfare, humans feed them fish that are dead but are disease-free, protect them from predators and injury, monitor their health, and provide activities for behavioral enrichment. Some are kept in lagoons with natural soil and vegetated sides. Most are in concrete tanks which are easy to clean but echo their natural sounds back to them. They cannot develop their own social groups, and related cetaceans are typically separated for display and breeding. Military dolphins used in naval operations swim free during operations and training and return to pens otherwise. Captive cetaceans are trained to present themselves for blood samples, health exams, and noninvasive breath samples above their blow holes. Staff can monitor the captives afterward for signs of infection from the procedure.
Research on wild cetaceans leaves them free to roam and make sounds in their natural habitat, eat live fish, face predators and injury, and form social groups voluntarily. However, boat engines of researchers, whale watchers and others add substantial noise to their natural environment, reducing their ability to echolocate and communicate. Electric engines are far quieter, but are not widely used for either research or whale watching, even for maintaining position, which does not require much power. Vancouver Port offers discounts for ships with quiet propeller and hull designs. Other areas have reduced speeds. Boat engines also have unshielded propellers, which cause serious injuries to cetaceans who come close to the propeller. The US Coast Guard has proposed rules on propeller guards to protect human swimmers, but has not adopted any rules. The US Navy uses propeller guards to protect manatees in Georgia. Ducted propellers provide more efficient drive at speeds up to 10 knots, and protect animals beneath and beside them, but need grilles to prevent injuries to animals drawn into the duct. Attaching satellite trackers and obtaining biopsies to measure pollution loads and DNA involve either capture and release, or shooting the cetaceans from a distance with dart guns. A cetacean was killed by a fungal infection after being darted, due to either an incompletely sterilized dart or an infection from the ocean entering the wound caused by the dart. Researchers on wild cetaceans have not yet been able to use drones to capture noninvasive breath samples.
Other harms to wild cetaceans include commercial whaling, aboriginal whaling, drift netting, ship collisions, water pollution, noise from sonar and reflection seismology, predators, loss of prey, and disease. Efforts to enhance the life of wild cetaceans, besides reducing those harms, include offering human music. Canadian rules do not forbid playing quiet music, though they forbid "noise that may resemble whale songs or calls, underwater".