animal welfare essay

Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Animal Welfare — The Care About Animal Welfare

The Care About Animal Welfare

• Categories: Animal Welfare

About this sample

Words: 403 |

Published: Dec 18, 2018

Words: 403 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. (n.d.). Animal welfare.
• Animal Welfare Institute. (n.d.). Our mission. Retrieved from https://awionline.org/content/our-mission
• Compassion in World Farming. (n.d.). About us. Retrieved from https://www.ciwf.org/about-us/
• Humane Society International. (n.d.). Our mission. Retrieved from https://www.hsi.org/what-we-do/
• RSPCA Australia. (n.d.). What is animal welfare?
• World Animal Protection. (n.d.). Our vision and mission.
• Animal Welfare Act of 1966, Pub. L. No. 89-544, 80 Stat. 350 (1966).
• Grandin, T. (2017). Animals make us human: Creating the best life for animals. Mariner Books.
• Rollin, B. E. (2011). Animal rights and human morality (3rd ed.). Prometheus Books.
• Singer, P. (2009). Animal liberation (4th ed.). Harper Perennial.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Environment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 776 words

2 pages / 962 words

5 pages / 2419 words

2 pages / 942 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Animal Welfare

I visited an animal shelter for my community service. I saw and learned things there that relate to our class discussion of inequality and social norms. Specifically, I want to talk about puppies and kittens being adopted more, [...]

Man’s best friend has become scientists’ guinea pig. Over and over again, scientists have pushed the government for public funding towards animal cloning. However, animal cloning is morally wrong. Cloning animals is just as [...]

Most people experience mixed feelings of amazement and pity when seeing exotic or wild animals at the zoo. With over 200 million people visiting zoos annually, society is amazed at the existence of wild and exotic animals, but [...]

The Konark temple in the state of Odisha is one of the most recognized tourist place in India. It is famous for its Culturally enrich large Sun temple at the beautiful Shore of Bay of Bangal. The temple is now not in its [...]

Animal testing is the procedure of using non-human animals to control changes that may affect biological systems or behaviors in experiments. Because animals and humans have similar properties, the process of animal [...]

Nowadays Plastic is everywhere in today’s lifestyle. The disposal of plastic wastes is a great problem. These are non-biodegradable product due to which these materials pose environmental pollution and problems like breast [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

What Is Animal Welfare and Why Is It Important?

Though critics argue that advocating for animal welfare only cements animals’ exploitation in laboratories, on farms, and in other industrial situations, strengthening welfare standards makes these animals' lives more bearable.

T he term “animal welfare” can evoke a sense of calm or well-being for the conscious consumer, especially when it appears on a carton of eggs or a jug of milk proclaiming that animals were treated humanely during the creation of these products. But these claims often obscure the dark realities of where and how these products were made—on factory farms that systematically condemn animals to lives of extreme confinement, stress, pain, and even torture.

This article will explore what animal welfare means, why it matters, and how welfare standards are too-often violated.

What is animal welfare?

Animal welfare pertains to the living conditions of animals who are kept in captivity or are otherwise under human control. In this way, animal welfare is synonymous with human control of animals.

As a guiding philosophy for legislation and regulations, animal welfare attempts to mitigate the suffering of human-controlled animals and to ensure a minimum standard of living conditions and treatment. Welfare standards can be applied to farms, laboratories, pet stores, horse ranches, and entertainment facilities, although standards differ widely based on the species and how animals are used.

What's the difference between animal rights and animal welfare?

While both animal rights and animal welfare are oriented towards the well-being of individual animals, they differ significantly . Animal rights advocates believe that every animal deserves the right to live a life free from human control. Veganism—refraining from using or consuming animal products—is a lifestyle commonly adopted by proponents of this philosophy.

Conversely, animal welfare implicitly reinforces human use of animals, because welfare is applied to situations where animals are under the control of humans. These include facilities such as farms, where animals are being used (and/or killed) to create products or food for humans.

Notably, some argue that a person can be both an animal rights advocate and an animal welfare advocate. For example, if one's ultimate goal is to achieve animal rights, they may work in the meantime to advance animal welfare.

What is the Animal Welfare Act?

Signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) is federal legislation in the United States designed to prevent animal cruelty and abuse within laboratories, the entertainment industry (e.g., zoos, circuses), and captive breeding. The act provides the legal framework for dealing with unnecessary cruelty and is enforced by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Despite the progressive underpinnings of the AWA, it leaves much to be desired by not protecting many animals who do not fall beneath its purview. For example, rats and mice who are used extensively in laboratories and subjected to extremely painful procedures like vivisection—or the dissection of living animals—are not protected by the act.

Farmed animals of all kinds are also excluded from the AWA, despite the fact that these animals account for the greatest numbers of animals who routinely endure cruelty and abuse on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. Farmed chickens, turkeys, cows, and pigs would arguably benefit the most from the legislation, yet they remain unprotected.

The Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare

The Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, which were written by Irish medical scientist Francis Brambell in 1965 and codified by the UK's Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1979, represent the bare minimum of living standards that animals in captivity should have:

• Freedom from thirst and hunger
• Freedom from discomfort by providing adequate shelter
• Freedom from disease, pain, or injury
• Freedom from distress and fear
• Freedom to engage in natural behaviors

Unfortunately, there is room for interpretation in these guidelines that often disadvantages animals. For example, if animals are allowed to engage in some natural behaviors—such as chickens being allowed to perch and spread their wings, as opposed to being locked in battery cages where they can do neither of these things—this is seen as sufficiently maintaining their welfare. However, perching in a factory farm still means birds are confined to one indoor room for the duration of their drastically shortened lives.

On factory farms, animals are denied most if not all of the natural behaviors they would otherwise engage in. This has serious consequences for their physical and psychological health.

Animal welfare issues

Animal welfare issues can arise in any situation where animals are being used by humans, whether for food, entertainment, or experimentation. Below are a few examples of human activities that often impinge on animal welfare.

Animal testing

The US animal testing industry subjects 25 million animals to cruel tests each year. Rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, and other animals regularly undergo stressful operations and experiments. Some are restrained in devices while substances are dripped into their eyes, while others are force-fed or endure painful operations. Laboratory animals are often kept within stainless steel enclosures for much of their lives.

Lack of behavioral enrichment

Behavioral enrichment refers to the features added to animals’ living spaces meant to provide mental stimulation. Boredom is a common cause of mental distress for captive animals. In zoos, items such as tires, barrels stuffed with food, or artificial rocks or trees are meant to simulate wild environments and provide relief from restlessness. However, these additions still do not approximate a natural life, which is defined by choice, exploration, and variety. Zoos and aquariums may not seem as horrific as factory farms, but they remain problematic .

Animals on factory farms often live without any behavioral enrichment whatsoever. This extreme trauma triggers stress-induced behaviors such as chewing on the bars of their cages, attacking other animals, and even cannibalism.

Farmed animals

The most prevalent source of animal welfare violations in the US, based on the sheer number of animals affected, are farmed animals. Life within the industrial agricultural system means undergoing routine mutilations without anesthetics. Cows, pigs , and sheep have their tails removed, and portions of chickens’ beaks are often sliced off at a young age. These animals live in dark, crowded, unsanitary enclosures that are largely if not entirely indoors. Generally speaking, factory farms prioritize cost-efficiency and profits over animal welfare.

Blood sport

In blood sports—such as bullfighting or dogfighting—it is often the pain of an animal that provides the attraction for human audiences, leading to many welfare concerns. Dogfighting and cockfighting involve raising animals in tight confines, conducting invasive breeding activities, and forcing two animals to fight until they reach the point of serious injury or death. In bullfighting, bulls are stabbed repeatedly while being goaded around a ring in a stadium filled with cheering people. Blood sports offer the opposite of quick, painless deaths.

Sport hunting

Sport hunting is the killing of animals for fun, rather than food, and is usually carried out without regard for animal welfare. Species such as deer, rabbits, ducks, and bears are common targets of sport hunting in North America, where they're killed with weapons such as guns or crossbows. While hunters often try to kill animals with one shot, the animals are often grievously wounded instead. Many escape their hunter(s) only to die later from their wounds, slowly and painfully.

While game hunting usually refers to the legal hunting of animals, poaching usually means hunting outside the law. It's another form of vicious exploitation that's generally conducted without any regard for animal welfare. The lucrative trade in pangolins , for example, sees nearly 3 million of these animals caught from the wild each year and shipped over great distances, sometimes for weeks at a time. (They're then killed for their scales or meat.) Elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, and gorillas are also heavily poached. Elephants and rhinos often have their tusks and horns cut away from their faces while the animals are still alive.

It's difficult to kill a whale quickly, which is among the many reasons why the hunting of whales is rife with welfare issues. Particularly in larger whales, it can take a long time—sometimes minutes, sometimes hours—for a whale to finally succumb to a harpoon. A variety of weapons have been devised over the years to hasten the demise of whales, including explosive harpoons that detonate inside a whale’s body. But even these can take up to 25 minutes .

To make matters worse, whales are often in full view of their family members as they die.

Overpopulation in companion animals

When companion animals like dogs and cats aren’t spayed or neutered, they can inadvertently contribute to America's overpopulation problem, where there aren’t enough people willing to adopt the number of animals available. In these cases, animals are either abandoned to fend for themselves, or dropped at shelters. Life at a shelter can be stressful for animals because they're usually kept in cages where they don't have much room to move around.

While many shelters adopt policies to never kill animals (these are known as no-kill shelters), others euthanize animals who are deemed unadoptable. Euthanization at shelters typically meets the highest welfare standards, but it's still a tragic and avoidable outcome. The ASPCA estimates that 1.5 million dogs and cats are put down at US shelters every year.

Puppy mills

Puppy mills, unlike more legitimate dog breeders, present serious welfare concerns for the many animals in their care. Pregnant dogs in puppy mills can be locked within cages for the duration of their lives, made to churn out puppies until their bodies give out. Their offspring are taken from them soon after birth, only to endure their own traumatic experiences of crowding, malnutrition, and unsanitary conditions before being shipped to pet stores or other sellers and sold to an often unsuspecting public.

Puppies born in puppy mills can also have psychological and physical disorders that make them difficult to cohabitate with, and which sometimes lead to premature death.

Why is animal welfare important?

Though some critics argue that animal welfare only cements animals’ exploitation on farms, in laboratories, and in other industrial situations, welfare standards are effective in making the lives of animals more bearable. The Humane League and our supporters have succeeded in convincing some slaughterhouses to stop using killing methods that cause prolonged pain for chickens, and in persuading some factory farms to end extreme confinement of chickens. These are major milestones in the movement to end the abuse of animals raised for food.

While these changes may seem incremental in the face of a powerful industry that largely regards animals as inanimate objects rather than intelligent and sensitive beings, without welfare advocates, these animals' lives would be even more tortured and painful. A chicken who is allowed to grow at a less rapid rate, who is able to stand up without breaking any bones, who has room to spread their wings and move around, and who will be spared the horrors of live-shackle slaughter represents a very real, tangible improvement over the alternative.

It's a tragic reality that the intersection of human and animal lives so often results in pain and suffering for animals. Strengthening welfare standards not only improves the lives of animals; it can also educate the public about the harsh conditions animals face in places like factory farms and laboratories.

The conversation around animal welfare is constantly evolving, and it features many different viewpoints even from advocates with the same ultimate goals. Still, this ongoing dialogue and the actions it inspires continue to pull our society toward better conditions for animals. One day, progress in our movement ideally will result in all animals' liberation from the worst of human treatment.

More like this

How Meat Chickens Are Raised, Treated, and Killed

Broiler chickens on factory farms are treated more like inanimate objects than living beings. Their brutal conditions also pose grave risks to human health and worker safety.

6 Cruel Ways That Pigs Are Abused on Factory Farms

Pigs are subjected to horrific conditions on factory farms, but their suffering is unseen. Learn the truth about what happens behind closed doors.

• Board Members
• Mission Statements
• Position Statements
• NAIA Position Statements
• NAIA Campaigns
• Homes For Animal Heroes
• NAIA Shelter Project
• Advocacy Center's Mission
• The Advocates
• The Position Statements
• NAIA Rescue
• Discover Animals
• Consider The Source
• Events Calendar
• NAIA Videos
• Press Center
• Animal Heroes 2020 Virtual 5K
• Donate your car to NAIA
• NAIA Brochures and Handouts
• Legal and Legislative Resources
• The Case Against Animal Rights and Environmental Extremism
• Sites of Interest
• NAIA Articles
• Press Releases
• Heroes, Winners and Success Stories
• White Papers
• Guest Editorials and Commentary

Our Programs

Learn More About NAIA

Join & Participate

Donate Now!

What is animal welfare and why is it important, the difference between animal rights & animal welfare.

Some people use the terms animal welfare and animal rights interchangeably, suggesting that they represent the same concerns, principles and practices. But the differences between the two are significant and irreconcilable.

What is Animal Welfare?

In its simplest form, animal welfare refers to the relationships people have with animals and the duty they have to assure that the animals under their care are treated humanely and responsibly.

Despite its current popularity, interest in animal welfare is not a modern phenomenon. Concern for animal care and wellbeing has existed since domestication, which occurred at least 10,000 years ago in Neolithic times . Our appreciation and respect for animals led to their  domestication, animal agriculture and animal husbandry , the branch of agriculture that deals with the care and breeding of animals. Many historians consider the development of agriculture to be the most important event in all of human history.

The animal welfare ethic that developed in the Neolithic era is one that obligated people to consider their animals’ welfare in order to achieve their own purposes. It set in place a mutually beneficial arrangement between people and animals that goes like this: “If we take care of the animals, the animals will take care of us.” In this ancient but enduring pact, self-interest demanded that people take good care of their animals. Amazingly, this very fundamental animal welfare ethic survives today, especially in settings where hands-on animal care continues. Today we call this special relationship the human-animal bond .

Dr. Bernard Rollin , an animal science professor at Colorado State University, argues however, that 20th century technology broke this ancient contract when it allowed us to put animals into environments and uses that didn't impair their productivity but harmed their well-being.

That defines the challenge today, the need to provide acceptable levels of animal welfare in a nation that is no longer rural and agricultural , but which in the span of 2 paradigm-shifting centuries has become urbanized and technological . In modern American society only 2% of an ever-increasing population lives on farms and only 1% practices farming as an occupation . This contrasts sharply with the mid 1800’s when 90% of Americans were farmers . If these trends continue, farming will become more concentrated in the future, a situation that makes animal welfare an even more important subject.

Animal Welfare Principles & Policies

• The American Kennel Club’ Care and Conditions Policy
• The Novartis Animal Welfare Policy for Animals in Research
• The American Zoological Association’s Animal Husbandry and Welfare Policy
• The American Medical Veterinary Association (AVMA) Animal Welfare Principle
• The Five Freedoms is a widely cited animal welfare document both in Europe and in the United States

The Five Freedoms:

• Freedom from Hunger and Thirst - by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour.
• Freedom from Discomfort - by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
• Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease - by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
• Freedom to Express Normal Behaviour - by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind.
• Freedom from Fear and Distress - by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

There’s broad agreement among animal professionals and the general public that people should treat their animals humanely, but the devil is in the details and debate over how to accomplish that goal rages on. Despite the ability of intensive confinement systems and institutional settings to provide animals with wholesome food and fresh water, and to protect them from predators and extremes in weather, people generally distrust their ability to provide the same level of animal welfare that pastoral life offered in the past. This is the primary animal welfare focus in the US today and it’s one that animal professionals spend considerable resources working to address.

Regardless of the level of care provided and the actual level of wellbeing experienced by the animals, close-confinement housing systems and institutional settings appear unnatural to many onlookers: laboratories where animal studies are conducted; zoos, circuses and marine animal parks where exotic animals can be seen; large farms where thousands of animals may live in close confinement and commercial dog breeding kennels.  Even as these businesses explore new approaches and adopt new and improved practices, however, the optics makes it difficult for critics to believe that animal welfare is being nurtured.

Public concern over substandard care and treatment of animals in large-scale or institutional settings has led to an enormous body of federal, state and local laws governing the treatment and housing of animals in these settings, sometimes creating numerous layers of regulations and requiring multiple agencies to perform inspections of the same entity. At the federal level there are laws governing  the care of zoo, circus and marine animals ; the humane slaughter of farm animals , how laboratory animals should be treated, and how dogs raised in commercial dog breeding kennels should be housed and cared for. In addition, there are countless local ordinances regulating the keeping of animals, laws that regulate dog breeding and a host of other activities that formerly were conducted in more rural settings.

The role of animal welfare in dealing with animal abuse, cruelty and neglect

Animal abuse comes in many forms, but for purposes of simplification, can be separated into two major categories: abuse that occurs as a result of negligence (failure to act properly) or harm that results from deliberate acts.  The lines are sometimes blurred between what is intentional and what is not, and cases are decided on the basis of case-specific facts.  Every state now has felony laws against animal cruelty, but they vary tremendously from state to state in the acts they designate as felonies, and in the punishment they impose for those crimes.

In the case of neglect, abuse can be the result of ignorance, such as when a pet owner didn’t recognize that a pet needed veterinary treatment; or when it is the result of behavior that a person should have known would cause harm to animals but allowed to continue.

Abuse can also be the result of overt cruelty to animals .  Deliberate acts of cruelty include torture, beating or maiming animals as well as activities such as dog fighting, which result in severe pain, injury and death to the animals involved.  Deliberate acts of abuse warrant the most severe penalties, not only because of their shocking nature and the immediate harm they inflict, but also because there are well known connections between abuse to animals and violence against people .

Animal Welfare and Animal Rights ARE NOT THE SAME

Many animal welfare proponents call themselves animal rights advocates because that term seems to represent what they believe, but animal welfare and animal rights are based in entirely different beliefs and use different tactics to achieve their goals. Unlike animal welfare principles, which inherently support the humane and responsible use of animals, animal rights tenets oppose all use of animals no matter how humane, or how responsible. PETA’s motto articulates the animal rights position very well, and demonstrates that in this belief system, animal use and animal abuse are synonymous: “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” 

Animal rights campaigns use animal welfare issues to promote their agenda

Although packaged for maximum appeal, animal rights beliefs conflict with the views of at least 94% of Americans , the number who eat meat.  And an additional portion, omnivores and vegetarians alike, benefit from medical advances, go to circuses and zoos, keep pets, hunt or fish, ride horses or otherwise use animals.  Americans are generally unaware of the true animal rights agenda .  And that makes sense: Although animal rights leaders state their positions clearly when speaking to their followers , many of them hide their true beliefs under a mantle of animal welfare rhetoric when speaking to the public, misleading their audiences about their true agenda.  Animal rights campaigns frequently use strategic deceptions against animal owners and businesses. Many people who view themselves as animal rights advocates are simply people who love animals and want to do something to improve their lives.  They are unaware of radical path charted by the animal rights leadership.

For the animal rights movement, the ends justify the means

It is also important to recognize that the animal rights movement is the only social movement in the US with a history of working with underground criminals , which the FBI has named single issue terrorists . Notably, many in the animal rights leadership do not condemn violence when it is committed in the name of their cause, a hallmark of unethical and radical movements. Many animal rights groups do little more than exploit animal welfare problems for their own fundraising purposes. Sometimes the fundraising campaign amounts to no more than raising concerns about an industry or pastime that utilizes animals, labeling them as cruel in order to position themselves on the high moral ground and raise money. The ASPCA and HSUS recently paid $9.3 million and $15.75 million respectively to the company that owns Ringling Bros circus to settle, among other things, a Racketeering Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) lawsuit in which they were defendants because they (or their affiliates) improperly paid someone to be a witness against the company with testimony that was not found to be credible.

Another area of disagreement between animal welfare and animal rights proponents is over the legal status of animals. Animal welfare advocates call for animal protection laws. Animal rights supporters push for legal rights for animals, something that requires a change in the legal status of animals and mandates a new class of government administrators to make decisions on behalf of animals. Fundamentally, the animal rights approach to animals is less about improving their care than it is about politics. It’s about power.  Specifically it’s about who decides how animals will be treated including whether they should remain in private ownership at all, or be placed in sanctuaries created to provide animals refuge from human ownership and use. Animal rights ideology works to separate people from animals and if achieved would sever the human-animal bond.

The ethical framework that supports animal welfare principles springs from the Western ethical tradition, one that embraces tolerance for diversity and minority views and uses knowledge and education rather than coercion to advance its objectives. The willingness of the animal rights leadership to misrepresent their beliefs and motives and to work with illegal factions indicates that their views arise from different roots.

Animal Welfare - The middle ground between two extremes

Aristotle's Golden Mean

The great philosopher Aristotle espoused an ideal he termed the " golden mean " the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. His ethical framework is outlined in this chart .  Though sometimes difficult to achieve, these are the principles that mainstream animal welfare organizations like the National Animal Interest Alliance strive to achieve, making steady progress without compromising other important values like honesty, integrity, lawful conduct and love for our fellow man. Here is an explanatory poster which provides an Overview of Animal Related Philosophies & Organizations that may enable you to visualize the interplay between these concepts and competing values.

The NAIA: Promoting Animal Welfare

The National Animal Interest Alliance is a moderate, mainstream animal welfare organization. To learn more about us, please read the NAIA Values Statement here and visit us at http://www.naiaonline.org

About The Author

Related Articles

National Animal Interest Alliance PO Box 66579 Portland, Oregon 97290-6579 Phone:(503)761-8962              (503)227-8450 Email: [email protected]

About Us Board Members Mission Statement Postion Statement Privacy Policy Our Logos Sitemap -->

Issues and Programs NAIA Campaigns NAIA Shelter Project NAIA Advocacy Center NAIA Rescue Press Center -->

NAIA Library NAIA Articles White Papers Press Releases Guest Editorial and Commentary Heroes, Winners and Sucess Stories

Get Involved & Resources Events Calender Volunteer Legislative & Legal Resources Sites of Interest

Find anything you save across the site in your account

What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?

By Elizabeth Barber

A few years ago, activists walked into a factory farm in Utah and walked out with two piglets. State prosecutors argued that this was a crime. That they were correct was obvious: The pigs were the property of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the country. The defendants had videoed themselves committing the crime; the F.B.I. later found the piglets in Colorado, in an animal sanctuary.

The activists said they had completed a “rescue,” but Smithfield had good reason to claim it hadn’t treated the pigs illegally. Unlike domestic favorites like dogs, which are protected from being eaten, Utah’s pigs are legally classified as “livestock”; they’re future products, and Smithfield could treat them accordingly. Namely, it could slaughter the pigs, but it could also treat a pig’s life—and its temporary desire for food, space, and medical help—as an inconvenience, to be handled in whatever conditions were deemed sufficient.

In their video, the activists surveyed those conditions . At the facility—a concentrated animal-feeding operation, or CAFO —pregnant pigs were confined to gestation crates, metal enclosures so small that the sows could barely lie down. (Smithfield had promised to stop using these crates, but evidently had not.) Other pigs were in farrowing crates, where they had enough room to lie down but not enough to turn their bodies around. When the activists approached one sow, they found dead piglets rotting beneath her. Nearby, they found two injured piglets, whom they decided to take. One couldn’t walk because of a foot infection; the other’s face was covered in blood. According to Smithfield, which denied mistreating animals, the piglets were each worth about forty-two dollars, but both had diarrhea and other signs of illness. This meant they were unlikely to survive, and that their bodies would be discarded, just as millions of farm animals are discarded each year.

During the trial, the activists reiterated that, yes, they entered Smithfield’s property and, yes, they took the pigs. And then, last October, the jury found them not guilty. In a column for the Times , one of the activists—Wayne Hsiung, the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere—described talking to one of the jurors, who said that it was hard to convict the activists of theft, given that the sick piglets had no value for Smithfield. But another factor was the activists’ appeal to conscience. In his closing statement, Hsiung, a lawyer who represented himself, argued that an acquittal would model a new, more compassionate world. He had broken the law, yes—but the law, the jury seemed to agree, might be wrong.

A lot has changed in our relationship with animals since 1975, when the philosopher Peter Singer wrote “ Animal Liberation ,” the book that sparked the animal-rights movement. Gestation crates, like the ones in Utah, are restricted in the European Union, and California prohibits companies that use them from selling in stores, a case that the pork industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court—and lost. In a 2019 Johns Hopkins survey, more than forty per cent of respondents wanted to ban new CAFO s. In Iowa, which is the No. 1 pork-producing state, my local grocery store has a full Vegan section. “Vegan” is also a shopping filter on Sephora, and most of the cool-girl brands are vegan, anyway. Wearing fur is embarrassing.

And yet Singer’s latest book, “ Animal Liberation Now ,” a rewrite of his 1975 classic, is less a celebratory volume than a tragic one—tragic because it is very similar to the original in refrain, which is that, big-picture-wise, the state of animal life is terrible. “The core argument I was putting forward,” Singer writes, “seemed so irrefutable, so undeniably right, that I thought everyone who read it would surely be convinced by it.” Apparently not. By some estimates, scientists in the U.S. currently use roughly fifteen million animals for research, including mice, rats, cats, dogs, birds, and nonhuman primates. As in the seventies, much of this research tries to model psychological ailments, despite scientists’ having written for decades that more research is needed to figure out whether animals—and which kind of animals—provide a useful analogue for mental illness in humans. When Singer was first writing, a leading researcher created psychopathic monkeys by raising them in isolation, impregnating them with what he called a “rape rack,” and studying how the mothers bashed their infants’ heads into the ground. In 2019, researchers were still putting animals through “prolonged stress”—trapping them in deep water, restraining them for long periods while subjecting them to the odor of a predator—to see if their subsequent behavior evidenced P.T.S.D. (They wrote that more research was needed.) Meanwhile, factory farms, which were newish in 1975, have swept the globe. Just four per cent of Americans are vegetarian, and each year about eighty-three billion animals are killed for food.

It’s for these animals, Singer writes, “and for all the others who will, unless there is a sudden and radical change, suffer and die,” that he writes this new edition. But Singer’s hopes are by now tempered. One obvious problem is that, in the past fifty years, the legal standing of animals has barely changed. The Utah case was unusual not just because of the verdict but because referendums on farm-animal welfare seldom occur at all. In many states, lawmakers, often pressured by agribusiness, have tried to make it a serious crime to enter a factory farm’s property. The activists in Utah hoped they could win converts at trial; they gambled correctly, but, had they been wrong, they could have gone to prison. As in 1975, it remains impossible to simply petition the justice system to notice that pigs are suffering. All animals are property, and property can’t take its owner to court.

Philosophers have debated the standing of animals for centuries. Pythagoras supposedly didn’t eat them, perhaps because he believed they had souls. Their demotion to “things” owes partly to thinkers like Aristotle, who called animals “brute beasts” who exist “for the sake of man,” and to Christianity, which, like Stoicism before it, awarded unique dignity to humans. We had souls; animals did not. Since then, various secular thinkers have given this idea a new name—“inherent value,” “intrinsic dignity”—in order to explain why it is O.K. to eat a pig but not a baby. For Singer, these phrases are a “last resort,” a way to clumsily distinguish humans from nonhuman animals. Some argue that our ability to tell right from wrong, or to perceive ourselves, sets us apart—but not all humans can do these things, and some animals seem to do them better. Good law doesn’t withhold justice from humans who are elderly or infirm, or those who are cognitively disabled. As a utilitarian, Singer cites the founder of that tradition, the eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that justice and equality have nothing to do with a creature’s ability to reason, or with any of its abilities at all, but with the fact that it can suffer. Most animals suffer. Why, then, do we not give them moral consideration?

Singer’s answer is “speciesism,” or “bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species.” Like racism and sexism, speciesism denies equal consideration in order to maintain a status quo that is convenient for the oppressors. As Lawrence Wright has written in this magazine , courts, when considering the confinement of elephants and chimpanzees, have conceded that such animals evince many of the qualities that give humans legal standing, but have declined to follow through on the implications of this fact. The reason for that is obvious. If animals deserved the same consideration as humans, then we would find ourselves in a world in which billions of persons were living awful, almost unimaginably horrible lives. In which case, we might have to do something about it.

Equal consideration does not mean equal treatment. As a utilitarian, Singer’s aim is to minimize the suffering in the world and maximize the pleasure in it, a principle that invites, and often demands, choices. This is why Singer does not object to killing mosquitos (if done quickly), or to using animals for scientific research that would dramatically relieve suffering, or to eating meat if doing so would save your life. What he would not agree with, though, is making those choices on the basis of perceived intelligence or emotion. In a decision about whether to eat chicken or pork, it is not better to choose chicken simply because pigs seem smarter. The fleeting pleasure of eating any chicken is trounced by its suffering in industrial farms, where it was likely force-fed, electrocuted, and perhaps even boiled alive.

Still, Singer’s emphasis on suffering is cause for concern to Martha Nussbaum , whose new book, “ Justice for Animals ,” is an attempt to settle on the ideal philosophical template for animal rights. Whereas Singer’s argument is emphatically emotion-free—empathy, in his view, is not just immaterial but often actively misleading—Nussbaum is interested in emotions, or at least in animals’ inner lives and desires. She considers several theories of animal rights, including Singer’s, before arguing that we should adopt her “capabilities approach,” which builds on a framework developed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, and holds that all creatures should be given the “opportunity to flourish.” For decades, Nussbaum has adjusted her list of what this entails for humans, which includes “being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length,” “being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves,” and having “bodily integrity”—namely, freedom from violence and “choice in matters of reproduction.” In “Justice for Animals,” she outlines some conditions for nonhuman flourishing: a natural life span, social relationships, freedom of movement, bodily integrity, and play and stimulation. Eventually, she writes, we would have a refined list for each species, so that we could insure flourishing “in the form of life characteristic to the creature.”

In imagining this better world, Nussbaum is guided by three emotions: wonder, anger, and compassion. She wants us to look anew at animals such as chickens or pigs, which don’t flatter us, as gorillas might, with their resemblance to us. What pigs do, and like to do, is root around in the dirt; lacquer themselves in mud to keep cool; build comfy nests in which to shelter their babies; and communicate with one another in social groups. They also seek out belly rubs from human caregivers. In a just world, Nussbaum writes, we would wonder at a pig’s mysterious life, show compassion for her desire to exist on her own terms, and get angry when corporations get in her way.

Some of Nussbaum’s positions are more actionable, policy-wise, than others. For example, she supports legal standing for animals, which raises an obvious question: How would a pig articulate her desires to a lawyer? Nussbaum notes that a solution already exists in fiduciary law: in the event that a person, like a toddler or disabled adult, cannot communicate their decisions or make sound ones, a representative is appointed to understand that person’s interests and advocate for them. Just as organizations exist to help certain people advance their interests, organizations could represent categories of animals. In Nussbaum’s future world, such a group could take Smithfield Foods to court.

Perhaps Nussbaum’s boldest position is that wild animals should also be represented by fiduciaries, and indeed be assured, by humans, the same flourishing as any other creature. If this seems like an overreach, a quixotic attempt to control a world that is better off without our meddling, Nussbaum says, first, to be realistic: there is no such thing as a truly wild animal, given the extent of human influence on Earth. (If a whale is found dead with a brick of plastic in its stomach, how “wild” was it?) Second, in Nussbaum’s view, if nature is thoughtless—and Nussbaum thinks it is—then perhaps what happens in “the wild” is not always for the best. No injustice can be ignored. If we aspire to a world in which no sentient creature can harm another’s “bodily integrity,” or impede one from exploring and fulfilling one’s capabilities, then it is not “the destiny of antelopes to be torn apart by predators.”

Here, Nussbaum’s world is getting harder to imagine. Animal-rights writing tends to elide the issue of wild-animal suffering for obvious reasons—namely, the scarcity of solutions. Singer covers the issue only briefly, and mostly to say that it’s worth researching the merit of different interventions, such as vaccination campaigns. Nussbaum, for her part, is unclear about how we would protect wild antelopes without impeding the flourishing of their predators—or without impeding the flourishing of antelopes, by increasing their numbers and not their resources. In 2006, when she previously discussed the subject, she acknowledged that perhaps “part of what it is to flourish, for a creature, is to settle certain very important matters on its own.” In her new book, she has not entirely discarded that perspective: intervention, she writes, could result in “disaster on a large scale.” But the point is to “press this question all the time,” and to ask whether our hands-off approach is less noble than it is self-justifying—a way of protecting ourselves from following our ideals to their natural, messy, inconvenient ends.

The enduring challenge for any activist is both to dream of almost-unimaginable justice and to make the case to nonbelievers that your dreams are practical. The problem is particularly acute in animal-rights activism. Ending wild-animal suffering is laughably hard (our efforts at ending human suffering don’t exactly recommend us to the task); obviously, so is changing the landscape of factory farms, or Singer wouldn’t be reissuing his book. In 2014, the British sociologist Richard Twine suggested that the vegan isn’t unlike the feminist of yore, in that both come across as killjoys whose “resistance against routinized norms of commodification and violence” repels those who prefer the comforts of the status quo. Wayne Hsiung, the Direct Action Everywhere activist, was only recently released from jail, after being sentenced for duck and chicken rescues in California. On his blog, he wrote that one reason the prosecution succeeded was that, unlike in Utah, he and his colleagues were cast as “weird extremists.”

It’s easy to construct a straw-man vegan, one oblivious to his own stridency, privilege, or hypocrisy. Isn’t he driving deforestation with all his vegetables? (No, Singer replies, as the vast majority of soybeans are fed to farm animals.) Isn’t he ignoring food deserts or the price tag on vegan substitutes, which puts them out of the reach of poor families? (Nussbaum acknowledges that cost can be an issue, but argues that it only emphasizes the need for resourced people to eat as humanely as they can, given that the costs of a more ethical diet “will not come down until it is chosen by many.”) Anyone pointing out moral culpability will provoke, in both others and themselves, a certain defensiveness. Nussbaum spends a lot of time discussing her uneasiness with her choice to eat fish for nutritional reasons. (She argues that fish likely have no sense of the future, a claim that even she seems unsure about.) Singer is eager to intervene here, emphasizing that animal-rights activism should pursue the diminishment of suffering, not the achievement of sainthood. “We are more likely to persuade others to share our attitude if we temper our ideals with common sense than if we strive for the kind of purity that is more appropriate to a religious dietary law than to an ethical and political movement,” he writes. Veganism is a boycott, and, while boycotts are more effective the more you commit to them, what makes them truly effective is persuading others to join them.

Strangely, where Singer and Nussbaum might agree is that defining the proper basis for the rights of animals is less important, at least in the short term, than getting people not to harm them, for any reason at all. Those reasons might have nothing to do with the animals themselves. Perhaps you decide not to eat animals because you care about people: because you care that the water where you live, if it’s anything like where I live, is too full of CAFO by-products to confidently drink. Perhaps you care about the workers in enormous slaughterhouses, where the pay is low and the costs to the laborer high. Perhaps you believe in a God, and believe that this God would expect better of people than to eat animals raised and killed in darkness. Or perhaps someone you love happens to love pigs, or to love the idea that the world could be gentler or more just, and you love the way they see the future enough to help them realize it. Nussbaum, after all, became interested in animal rights because she loved a person, her late daughter, an attorney who championed legislation to protect whales and other wild animals until her death, in 2019. Nussbaum’s book is dedicated to her—and also, now, to the whales. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash .

The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool .

Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier .

Where the Amish go on vacation .

How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune .

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves ?

Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Jay Caspian Kang

By Jessica Winter

By Amy Davidson Sorkin

Presentations made painless

• Get Premium

119 Animal Welfare Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Title: 119 Animal Welfare Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Introduction: Animal welfare is an important issue that encompasses the well-being of animals, their treatment, and the ethical considerations surrounding their use in various industries. Writing an essay on animal welfare can help raise awareness about the various challenges animals face and the need for better protection and treatment. To assist you in choosing a topic, we have compiled a list of 119 animal welfare essay topic ideas and examples. This comprehensive list covers a wide range of subjects, ensuring that you will find something that resonates with your interests and concerns.

I. Animal Testing and Research:

• The ethical implications of animal testing: Discuss the morality of using animals for scientific research.
• Alternatives to animal testing: Explore the development and effectiveness of alternative methods in scientific research.
• The impact of animal testing on medical advancements: Assess the contribution of animal testing to the progress of medical science.
• Animal testing in cosmetics industry: Evaluate the necessity and ethical implications of animal testing for beauty and personal care products.
• The role of legislation in regulating animal testing: Analyze the effectiveness of laws in ensuring ethical treatment of animals in research.

II. Factory Farming and Animal Agriculture: 6. The environmental impact of factory farming: Discuss the ecological consequences of intensive animal agriculture. 7. Animal welfare in intensive farming: Examine the conditions and treatment of animals on factory farms. 8. The role of antibiotic use in animal agriculture: Explore the effects of antibiotics on animal welfare and public health. 9. The ethics of consuming animal products: Discuss the moral implications of supporting an industry that often neglects animal welfare. 10. The potential of plant-based diets: Evaluate the benefits of plant-based diets for animal welfare, the environment, and human health.

III. Wildlife Conservation and Habitat Preservation: 11. The impact of climate change on wildlife: Examine how climate change affects animal habitats and biodiversity. 12. The role of zoos in wildlife conservation: Assess the effectiveness of zoos in preserving endangered species and educating the public. 13. Trophy hunting and its consequences: Discuss the ethical considerations surrounding trophy hunting and its impact on animal populations. 14. Wildlife trafficking and illegal trade: Analyze the effects of illegal wildlife trading and explore potential solutions. 15. Human-wildlife conflict: Investigate the conflicts that arise when human and animal habitats overlap, and propose strategies for coexistence.

IV. Pets and Companion Animals: 16. The responsibility of pet ownership: Discuss the obligations and ethical considerations of owning a pet. 17. Animal shelters and adoption: Explore the importance of adopting animals from shelters and the challenges faced by these organizations. 18. Animal abuse and neglect: Investigate the causes and consequences of animal abuse and propose preventive measures. 19. The benefits of therapy animals: Examine the positive impact of therapy animals on human well-being. 20. The influence of popular culture on pet trends: Analyze how media and trends affect pet ownership and animal welfare.

Conclusion: Animal welfare is a multifaceted and vital topic that demands attention and action. By choosing a compelling animal welfare essay topic from this comprehensive list, you can contribute to the ongoing discourse surrounding the treatment and protection of animals. Remember to consider your own interests and passions when selecting a topic, as this will ensure that your essay is both engaging and impactful. Whether you choose to explore the ethics of animal testing, the environmental consequences of factory farming, or the challenges faced by wildlife conservation efforts, your contribution to raising awareness about animal welfare is essential.

Want to create a presentation now?

Instantly Create A Deck

Let PitchGrade do this for me

Hassle Free

We will create your text and designs for you. Sit back and relax while we do the work.

Explore More Content

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service

© 2023 Pitchgrade

• Open access
• Published: 29 December 2023

Animal welfare research is fascinating, ethical, and useful—but how can it be more rigorous?

• Georgia J. Mason 1  

BMC Biology volume  21 , Article number:  302 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

2114 Accesses

28 Altmetric

Metrics details

The scientific study of animal welfare supports evidence-based good animal care, its research contributing to guidelines and policies, helping to solve practical problems caused by animal stress, and raising fascinating questions about animal sentience and affective states. However, as for many branches of science (e.g. all those with replicability problems), the research rigour of welfare science could be improved. So, hoping to inspire methodologies with greater internal, external, and construct validity, here I outline 10 relevant papers and provide potential “journal club” discussion topics.

Welfare science now: a thriving field with ethical, practical, and fundamental relevance

As noted by Marian Dawkins, a long-standing leader in this field, animals with good welfare are healthy and have what they want (in terms of, for example, space, shelter, and opportunities to perform highly motivated natural behaviours). This results in them having more positive “affective states”, i.e. moods, emotions, and similar. Identifying such states, and understanding how they could be achieved, is the remit of animal welfare research. Studying animal welfare was somewhat fringe when the field emerged in the 1970s and 1980s: a European eccentricity. But today, animal welfare publications number in the thousands annually; animal welfare conferences involve hundreds of researchers; welfare presentations are not uncommon at agricultural, ecology, animal cognition, and even human emotion meetings; welfare research happens in BRICS and developing nations, not just the developed world; and in many countries, welfare research informs policies on how to treat animals. In parallel, welfare research techniques have become more sophisticated, often inspired by studies of human well-being (e.g. mood-sensitive cognitive changes like “judgment bias”).

The growth of welfare science partly reflects its ethical importance, along with increased acceptance by other branches of biology. It also reflects the rewarding nature of working in this field. Intellectually, welfare research touches on fascinating scientific questions such as the evolutionary functions of emotions and moods and the distribution of sentience. Furthermore, despite some tensions between human interests and animal needs (especially in agriculture), understanding and improving welfare can also help solve some practical problems: reducing behavioural problems in pets, tackling poor reproduction in zoos and conservation breeding centres, and increasing job satisfaction for laboratory animal technicians, to name a few. Welfare science is truly an absorbing, satisfying field to be in.

Welfare science in the future: towards greater rigour and validity

BMC Biology’s twentieth anniversary collection comprises comment articles that provide an overview of different fields and projection of future trends, limited to referencing 10 papers. What to cover in my piece? The promise of new technologies for automated welfare assessment? How human research could reveal the functions of conscious affect? The need for wild animal welfare studies in a time of climate change? So many topics, yet underpinning all is a bedrock need for welfare science to be valid: to say something true and relevant about the animals it aims to understand. Validity is therefore my focus, especially given today’s understanding of the unintended consequences of academia’s “publish or perish” culture. I collate 10 papers and provide discussion topics (Table 1 ) for an imaginary journal club on internal, external, and construct validity. A perfect introduction is a seminar by Hanno Würbel, on the principles of good welfare science ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXJ1TDEUf3U&t=1666s ). Overall, I hope to provoke enjoyable debate, (perhaps uneasy) self-reflection, and ultimately more transparent, valid research.

Internal validity: are our studies bias-free and replicable?

Preclinical animal research (aiming to understand human disease) has been subject to devastating scrutiny especially around “spectacular cases of irreproducibility” [ 1 ]. Only half — at best — of biomedical studies are replicable, impeding biomedical progress with vast numbers of false leads. Causes include research designs that bias data (e.g. absence of blinding or randomisation), statistical misbehaviours like “P-hacking”, and selective reporting of results [ 1 ]. A survey of 271 biomedical publications thus identified “a number of issues” [ 2 ], randomisation being reported in just 12% for example. Practices like blinding are crucial in welfare research too, as Tuyttens and colleagues [ 3 ] demonstrated. Students, trained to extract data from ethological videos, produced skewed data if given false information about the subjects being scored (cattle believed to be hot being scored as panting more, for instance), leading the authors to lament, “can we believe what we score, if we score what we believe?”.

Adding further concerns, Kilkenny and colleagues found that only 62% of biomedical experiments that were amenable to factorial designs actually used them. Reassuringly, 87% did seem to use appropriate statistical methods [ 2 ]. However, P-hacking is often impossible to detect post-publication. Furthermore, other work (e.g. excellent publications by Stanley Lazic, including [ 4 ]) identifies pseudoreplication as a common statistical error. The Kilkenny paper also reported some lack of clarity in writing, inconsistent with a priori hypothesis testing, with 5% of studies not explaining their aims. (This issue resonated with me; in my lab, we recently screened the introductions of 71 papers on judgement bias and found it impossible to ascertain the research aims of 8 of these [11%]).

External validity: are our studies relevant to real-world situations?

Even when results are internally valid and replicable, they might be irrelevant to other populations or contexts. Thus, biomedical research results often do not translate to humans; and for animal welfare, data collected in a welfare research lab may not translate to commercial situations. Solutions to this could include “introducing systematic variation (heterogenization) of relevant variables (for example species/strains of animals, housing conditions, tests)” [ 1 ]. Dawkins [ 5 ] takes this further, arguing that, at least for poultry, controlled laboratory situations have limited value. “Working directly with the poultry industry on commercial farms … shows what works in practice, out there in the real world”: it is critically important because “what is true of 50 birds in a small pen is not necessarily true of 50,000 birds in a large poultry house”.

Construct validity: do our measures mean what we think they mean?

Welfare researchers have another challenge: making defensible inferences about something that cannot be measured directly — affective states. Doing this well requires knowing our measures have construct validity, and understanding a priori their strengths and weaknesses. Welfare studies thus largely fall into two types: those seeking to validate new indicators of affect (via manipulations known a priori to influence affective state) and those using well-validated indicators to discover new things about animal well-being. Both must be logical and transparent. Thus, validation studies must use defensible validation methods; and if a potential indicator fails, that measure must not be treated as if still valid. Likewise, welfare studies must select well-validated, appropriate indicators, such that increased/decreased values have meanings that are known a priori , not invoked post hoc once results are known.

If we do not work in this logical way, we risk “HARK-ing” (‘Hypothesising After the Results are Known’): a form of circular reasoning where aims and predictions are covertly tweaked after seeing patterns in the data, which looks (indeed is ) biased. Perhaps worse, we may draw mistaken conclusions about animals: ones which fail to improve their well-being. As Rosso et al. [ 6 ] argue in a preprint, “HARKing can invalidate study outcomes and hamper evidence synthesis by inflating effect sizes... lead researchers into blind alleys … and waste animals, time, and resources”.

So, how to ensure an indicator has construct validity? Jake Veasey and I [ 7 ] outlined three methods: (1) assessing whether a potential indicator changes alongside self-reported affect in humans (assuming homology between species), (2) assessing whether it changes in animals deliberately exposed to aversive treatments, and (3) assessing whether such changes can be reversed pharmacologically, by giving, e.g. analgesics or anxiolytics. Another two — as beautifully laid out by philosopher Heather Browning [ 8 ] — are as follows: (4) recording effects of exposing animals to factors important for fitness and (5) identifying correlates of existing, well-validated indicators. And to give one illustration of construct validation done well, Agnethe-Irén Sandem and colleagues investigated eye-white exposure as a potential indicator of negative affect in cattle (e.g. [ 9 ]); see Table 1 for details.

Underneath all these issues lies the problematic incentive structure of academia. As Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet , wrote in 2015, “No-one is incentivised to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivised to be productive”. Obsessions with publication rates and P -values under 0.05 affect animal welfare science just as they do other disciplines. One partial solution could involve “open science” practices [ 10 ], such as pre-registering planned studies (so that hypotheses and statistical analyses are spelled out a priori , and, for registered reports, manuscripts are peer-reviewed and accepted before results are generated) and providing open access to data (so that anyone can re-analyse them). But perhaps more radically, perhaps a more fundamental overhaul is needed: a transition to a slower, better science that could improve researchers’ welfare as well as animals'?

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Würbel H. More than 3Rs: the importance of scientific validity for harm-benefit analysis of animal research. Lab Anim. 2017;46:164–6.

Article   Google Scholar  

Kilkenny C, Parsons N, Kadyszewski E, Festing MF, Cuthill IC, Fry D, Hutton J, Altman DG. Survey of the quality of experimental design, statistical analysis and reporting of research using animals. PloS One. 2009;4:e7824.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Tuyttens FAM, de Graaf S, Heerkens JL, Jacobs L, Nalon E, Ott S, Stadig L, Van Laer E, Ampe B. Observer bias in animal behaviour research: can we believe what we score, if we score what we believe? Anim Behav. 2014;90:273–80.

Lazic SE. The problem of pseudoreplication in neuroscientific studies: is it affecting your analysis? BMC Neurosci. 2010;11:1–17.

Dawkins MS. Commercial scale research and assessment of poultry welfare. Brit Poultry Sci. 2012;53:1–6.

Rosso M, Herrera A, Würbel H, Voelkl B. Evidence for HARKing in mouse behavioural tests of anxiety. bioRxiv. 2022: 2022-12. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.01.518668

Mason GJ, Veasey JS. How should the psychological well-being of zoo elephants be objectively investigated? Zoo Biol. 2010;29:237–55.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Browning, H. Validating indicators of subjective animal welfare. Philos Sci. 2023.1-10. https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.10

Sandem AI, Braastad BO, Bøe KE. Eye white may indicate emotional state on a frustration–contentedness axis in dairy cows. Appl Anim Behav Sci. 2002;79:1–10.

Muñoz-Tamayo R, Nielsen BL, Gagaoua M, Gondret F, Krause ET, Morgavi DP, Olsson IA, Pastell M, Taghipoor M, Tedeschi L, Veissier I. Seven steps to enhance open science practices in animal science. PNAS Nexus. 2022;1:106.

Download references

Acknowledgements

With thanks to many colleagues for past discussions (especially Melissa Bateson, Marian Dawkins, Joe Garner, Birte Nielsen, Mike Mendl, Christian Nawroth, Anna Olsson, Liz Paul, Clive Phillips, Jake Veasey, Hanno Würbel, and the members of the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare); to Olga Burenkova, Shay Forget, Lindsey Kitchenham, Aileen Maclellan and Alex Podturkin for comments on this paper; and to the many graduate students who took my “Assessing affective states” class (2010–2020). I apologise for relevant studies not mentioned here due to the tight word and reference count restrictions. This work was conducted on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

The Mason Lab is funded by NSERC.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare/Integrative Biology Department, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

Georgia J. Mason

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

GJM wrote the article and read and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Georgia J. Mason .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Mason, G.J. Animal welfare research is fascinating, ethical, and useful—but how can it be more rigorous?. BMC Biol 21 , 302 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-023-01793-x

Download citation

Received : 01 December 2023

Accepted : 01 December 2023

Published : 29 December 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-023-01793-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

BMC Biology

ISSN: 1741-7007

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]

Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics pp 148–159 Cite as

Animal Welfare: A Critical Examination of the Concept

• John Rossi 3 &
• Samual Garner 4  
• Reference work entry
• First Online: 21 November 2014

479 Accesses

Animal ethics; Animal welfare science; Animal well-being; Prudential value theory

Introduction

The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic increase in both philosophical and social concern about animals. Much of this concern is about animals’ moral standing and the ethical permissibility of various animal-harming practices. However, a parallel track of concern relates to animal mind and animal well-being. Some of the motivation for concern about animal mind and animal well-being can be traced to scientific curiosity; however, the investigation of what animals are like, and what makes an animal’s life go well or poorly, is an important part of moral philosophy. Normative judgments about what humans owe animals usually presuppose some account of what is beneficial or harmful to them, and philosophical work in normative ethics therefore must proceed apace with conceptual and empirical work regarding animal welfare. In addition, an important historical and sociological aspect...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). (2003). Veterinary leaders support science-based OIE animal welfare policies. AVMA News . December 1, 2003. Available at: https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/Pages/031201n.aspx . Last accessed on October 2, 2012.

American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). (2005). A comprehensive review of housing for pregnant sows. JAVMA, 227 (10), 1580–1590.

Google Scholar  

Carbone, L. (2004). What animals want: Expertise and advocacy in laboratory animal welfare policy . New York: Oxford University Press.

DeGrazia, D. (1996). Taking animals seriously: Mental life and moral status . New York: Cambridge University Press.

DeGrazia, D. (2007). The harm of death, time-relative interests, and abortion. The Philosophical Forum 38 (1), 57–80.

Fraser, D. (1995). Science, values and animal welfare. Animal Welfare, 4 , 103–117.

Fraser, D. (1999). Animal ethics and animal welfare science: Bridging the two cultures. Applied Animal Behavior Science, 65 , 171–189.

Fraser, D., Weary, D. M., Pajor, E. A., & Milligan, B. N. (1997). A scientific conception of animal welfare that reflects ethical concerns. Animal Welfare, 6 , 187–205.

Harman, E. (2011). The moral significance of animal pain and animal death. In Beauchamp, T.L., & Frey, R.G. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics (pp. 726–737). New York: Oxford University Press

Haynes, R. P. (2011). Competing conceptions of animal welfare and their ethical implications for the treatment of non-human animals. Acta Biotheoretica, 59 , 105–120.

Heathwood, C. (2006). Desire satisfactionism and hedonism. Philosophical Studies, 128 , 539–563.

Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). (2009). Scientists and experts on Gestation Crates and Sow welfare. Humane Society of the United States . October 23, 2009. Available at http://www.hsus.org . Last accessed October 2, 2012.

Jones, W.T. (1975). Logical positivism. In A history of western philosophy, Vol. V, The twentieth century to Wittgenstein and Sartre (2nd ed., revised, pp. 218–249). New York: Harcourt Brace.

Korte, S. M., Olivier, B., & Koolhaas, J. M. (2007). A new animal welfare concept based on allostasis. Physiology and Behavior, 92 , 422–428.

Mason, G., & Mendl, M. (1993). Why is there no simple way of measuring animal welfare? Animal Welfare, 2 , 301–319.

McGlone, J. (2006). Comparison of sow welfare in the Swedish deep-bedded system and the US crated-sow system. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 229 (9), 1377–1380.

Mench, J. (1998). Thirty years after Brambell: Whither animal welfare science? Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 1 (2), 91–102.

Rachels, J. (1993). Subjectivism. In P. Singer (Ed.), A companion to ethics (pp. 432–441). Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Rollin, B. (1990). The unheeded cry: Animal consciousness, animal pain, and science . New York: Oxford University Press.

Rudner, R. (1998). The scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. In E. D. Klemke, R. Hollinger, & D. W. Rudge (Eds.), Introductory readings in the philosophy of science (3rd ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books.

Smith, Michael, Lewis, David, and Johnston, Mark. (1989). Dispositional theories of value. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 63: 89-111,113-137,139-174

Shrader-Frechette, K. S. (1991). Risk and rationality: Philosophical foundations for populist reforms . Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Tannenbaum, J. (1995). Veterinary ethics: Animal welfare, client relations, competition and collegiality (2nd ed.). St Louis: Mosby.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Community Health and Prevention, Drexel University School of Public Health, 1505 Race Street, Bellet Building, 11th Floor, 19102, Philadelphia, PA, USA

HJF-DAIDS, a Division of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc., NIAID, NIH, DHHS, 6700A Rockledge Drive Suite 200, 20817, Bethesda, MD, USA

Samual Garner

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Rossi .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

Paul B. Thompson

Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

David M. Kaplan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Rossi, J., Garner, S. (2014). Animal Welfare: A Critical Examination of the Concept. In: Thompson, P.B., Kaplan, D.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_313

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_313

Published : 21 November 2014

Publisher Name : Springer, Dordrecht

Print ISBN : 978-94-007-0928-7

Online ISBN : 978-94-007-0929-4

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

• Kristen Stilt
• See full issue

The fields of animal law and environmental law have an uneasy relationship. At a basic level, they are intertwined by the fundamental observation that animals, human and nonhuman, exist in the environment. Environmental law is generally concerned with animals at the level of species (and specifically endangered or threatened species), whereas animal law is concerned with all animals, regardless of particular characteristics. The issue of wild horses in the western United States illustrates this tension. Some environmentalists view the horses as “feral pests” that damage the fragile ecosystem and compete with wildlife — and privately owned cattle — for resources. 1 They argue that the horses should be gathered through helicopter-led “roundups” and euthanized or sold. 2 Animal protection advocates argue that these roundups are cruel and note that the millions of cattle also grazing on these lands are far more damaging to the environment than the horses. 3 They insist that these wild horses should not be killed — the life of each individual animal matters and should be protected. 4

Environmental law is the older and more established field of law. There are many ways to measure this, such as at the constitutional level, which shows environmental law’s seniority and success. Most constitutions address the environment, and the typical phrasing is anthropocentric: a human right to a healthy environment as seen, for example, in article 42 of the Constitution of Kenya: “Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment . . . .” 5 Newer trends adopt ecocentric or biocentric approaches and grant rights to nature (or its component parts, such as a river) at the constitutional or legislative level or through judicial decisions. 6

In contrast to environmental rights, it is only a fairly recent phenomenon that assigns “constitutional significance to the experiences of individual nonhuman animals.” 7 Animals are protected in just a handful of constitutions with no clear adoption trend: Switzerland (1973), 8 India (1976), 9 Brazil (1988), 10 Slovenia (1991), 11 Germany (2002), 12 Luxembourg (2007), 13 Austria (2013), 14 Egypt (2014), 15 and Russia (2020). 16 ) (Russ.), translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, 2020) . The year accompanying each country listed above indicates when the provision was added to an existing constitution or when a new constitution with the provision was adopted. These provisions use terms such as the “welfare” of animals, 17 the “dignity” of animals, 18 animal “protection,” 19 “compassion” toward animals, 20 and animal “cruelty” 21 — all of which follow a general animal welfare approach. In contrast to the environmental context, none of the provisions uses the term “rights.” 22

In this Essay, I show how developments and achievements in the field of environmental rights and specifically rights of nature can be instructive, intellectually and practically, to the cause of animal protection and animal rights. 23 That instruction includes not only positive examples but also notes of caution, where animal law may face different and more formidable challenges. The Essay first assesses the role that a human right to a healthy environment has played in the development of environmental rights and rights of nature, and then it discusses the relevance of this experience for animal rights. In Part II, it turns to how rights of nature have been interpreted and applied in several prominent court decisions and suggests insights that animal rights can take from this jurisprudence. Given the brevity of Forum essays, I cannot be comprehensive. Rather, I chart out the range of my arguments and support them with some notable examples, with the intention to treat this topic more fully in a future work.

I. A Human Right to a Healthy Environment, A Human Right to Animal Protection

The anthropocentric formulation of a human right to a healthy environment initially may not seem like a helpful framing for the cause of animal rights, but it is actually very instructive. “Rights of Nature” have roots in two sources. First, these rights emerged from a recent recognition that current environmental law, including the human right to a healthy environment, has failed to address the global ecological crisis and notably climate change. 24 Second, indigenous traditions and jurisprudence “that have always treated humans as part of nature, rather than distinct from it,” have long provided a rights of nature framework and approach. 25 The widespread acceptance of a human right to a healthy environment served as part of the foundation for the development of a stronger rights of nature approach, which synergistically connected with indigenous approaches to nature.

In an animal context, an analogous formulation would be a human right to animal protection, a right of humans to have all animals adequately protected. This may sound like awkward phrasing, but such an approach does closely match how, in general, legal systems currently treat animals. 26 That is, animal interests are protected to the extent that humans want them to be and benefit from those protections and limitations.

An anthropocentric approach to animal protection along these lines is likely politically more acceptable than an animal rights–based approach. If it were widely adopted, however, it could serve merely to entrench the status quo in animal law. Alternatively, a human right to animal protection could offer the possibility of far more robust protection than currently exists under animal welfare laws. Because different humans will have different ideas about what the protection of animals should involve, a human right could allow more protective views to be recognized. It could also provide an intermediate step to animal rights, laying a foundation for future expansion. More needs to be known about the evolution from the right to a healthy environment to rights of nature, and how animal rights might be able to follow a similar path.

II. Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

Ecocentric or biocentric approaches that lodge a right in nature or its component parts also may be promising for the development of legally recognized animal rights. Rights of nature are not widespread, but they have potential for growth and impact. At the constitutional level, Ecuador was the first to recognize the rights of nature. Article 71 begins: “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.” 27 Bolivia adopted this approach through the Law on the Rights of Mother Earth (2010); 28 the enumerated rights are the rights to life, diversity of life, water, clean air, equilibrium, restoration, and pollution-free living. 29 Other countries have recognized the right in judicial opinions. 30

A. Animals as Part of Nature

At the most fundamental level, if nature has rights, and if nature includes animals, then rights-based claims could be made on behalf of animals using existing rights of nature doctrine and strategy. A 2008 case from the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil, known as the Wild Parrot case, illustrates this possibility. 31 The case involved an individual who had kept a single wild animal, a blue-fronted parrot, in custody for more than two decades and in inadequate living conditions. 32 This parrot was considered a wild species; this no doubt facilitated the connection to nature, but the court engaged in language that stretched beyond concern for a wild species. The court cited article 225 of the constitution as evidence for Brazil’s “ecological approach.” 33 Article 225 is an anthropocentric human right to an “ecologically balanced environment,” not a rights of nature provision, and the constitutional framing of animal protection comes through an environmental, “fauna and . . . flora” framework. 34 What is remarkable is that the court took this limited language as a starting point to reach a discussion of rights of nature and recognition of sentient beings in general.

The court called for a rethinking of the “Kantian, anthropocentric and individualistic concept of human dignity.” 35 Dignity should be reformulated to recognize “an intrinsic value conferred to non-human sensitive beings, whose moral status would be recognized and would share with the human beings the same moral community.” 36 The treatment of animals “must be based no longer on human dignity or human compassion, but on the very dignity inherent in the existence of nonhuman animals.” 37 The court brought together two strands of jurisprudence: the protection of animals in the German and Swiss Constitutions 38 and the rights of nature language in the Ecuadorean Constitution and Bolivian Law on the Rights of Mother Earth. By doing so, it reached a language of rights: “This view of nature as an expression of life in its entirety enables the Constitutional Law and other areas of law to recognize the environment and non-human animals as beings of their own value, therefore deserving respect and care, so that the legal system grants them the ownership of rights and dignity.” 39 The court conceptually moved nonhuman animals out of the environmental constraints of article 225 to attain their own independent status, for which the court advocated both rights and dignity.

B. Nonhuman Rights

Even if the concept of nature is not currently understood to include individual animals, provisions recognizing the rights of nature still implicitly acknowledge that a nonhuman can have rights. This may seem obvious since corporations and other nonhuman entities are legal persons and have rights, but entities such as rivers or ecosystems traditionally have not been extended the same recognition by legal systems worldwide. Rivers have been treated as legal persons in some jurisdictions, notably in Bangladesh, 40 Colombia, 41 Ecuador, 42 India, 43 New Zealand, 44 and the United States. 45

One of the most significant cases involving river rights was decided by the Constitutional Court of Colombia in 2016 (the Atrato River Case). 46 The plaintiffs challenged the pollution and degradation that industrial and illegal mining and logging had caused to the Atrato River basin, the tributaries, and surrounding territories. 47 They showed that the Atrato banks were the ancestral home to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities such as themselves. 48 The river provided a subsistence means of living based on agriculture, hunting, fishing, and artisanal mining. 49 The plaintiffs asked the court to protect their fundamental rights to life, health, water, food security, a healthy environment, and the culture and territory of their ethnic communities. 50 They also asked the court to impose measures to address the crisis in the Atrato River basin resulting from the environmental pollution and degradation. 51

While the plaintiffs framed their claims as rights of the individuals living in the Atrato River basin, the court did not limit itself to a consideration of anthropocentric rights. For the court, the importance of nature “[was] established, of course, in reference to the humans that inhabit it and the need to count on a healthy environment to live a dignified life in conditions of well-being; but [nature’s importance was founded] also in connection with the other living organisms with whom the planet is shared, understood as entities deserving of protection in and of themselves .” 52 Nature was a subject of rights. 53

Thus, theoretically, the rights of nature may be violated even in the absence of any injury to humans. A decision from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights made this point clearly: “The Court consider[ed] it important to stress that, as an autonomous right, the right to a healthy environment, unlike other rights, protects the components of the environment, such as forests, rivers, and seas, as legal interests in themselves, even in the absence of the certainty or evidence of a risk to individuals.” 54

An excellent example of an approach that leads with the rights of nature is the Turag River case, decided by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in 2019. 55 Through time-sequenced photographs, a news article that the court relied on in its decision showed the encroachment on the Turag River due to “river-grabbers,” pollutants, and the failure to keep the river navigable through dredging. 56 Despite laws and many judicial decisions, encroachers walled off land in the river and deployed bulldozers and excavators to fill their newly claimed territory, expanding the reach of dry land at the river’s expense. 57 The same actions were taking place in other rivers in the capital of this “riverine country.” 58 The NGO Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh brought the case to eject all the illegal occupiers and stop landfilling and construction activities on the river’s territory. 59

The Turag River itself was at the center of the case from the outset. But the river for its own sake? The court echoed the language of the Daily Star article, speaking in terms of the Turag becoming a “dead river” 60 or facing “extinction” if the activity was not stopped. 61 The court also acknowledged that the occupation and pollution had caused a “major shortage of potable water, for which people are constantly facing health risks.” 62 And given the centrality of waterways to Bangladesh, “[d]estroying the rivers is . . . the same as our collective suicide.” 63 As a last resort to save the river, the court declared the Turag and indeed all rivers in the country legal persons. 64 It also ordered the removal of all unlawful pollution and construction and issued seventeen other wide-ranging orders. 65 The Turag River case and others show that rights can be lodged in a nonhuman, but in practice the human rights are also significant components.

C. Nonhuman Remedies and Enforcement

Finally, the remedies discussion in rights of nature cases demonstrates that there are adequate ways for humans to assess and implement the desires and needs of nonhuman entities. In what is known as the Deforestation Case, the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil held that in addition to the requirement to restore the damage caused to the environment, a defendant may also be required to pay monetary damages, or “pure ecological damage,” for “degrading nature in itself, an asset that is not and cannot be owned.” 66 Applied to the animal context, it could stand for the principle that wrongful treatment of an animal, for example, could require the payment of compensation without any particular showing of physical harm. The payment would presumably go into a trust established to support the needs of the animal or her ecosystem.

In the animal context, the idea that humans are capable of making such an assessment has been questioned. In Naruto v. Slater , 67 the Ninth Circuit took a generally irritated tone toward the organization that brought the case on behalf of Naruto, a crested macaque. 68 Concurring in part, Judge Smith stated: “But the interests of animals? We are really asking what another species desires. . . . We have millennia of experience understanding the interests and desires of humankind. That is not necessarily true of animals.” 69 If so — and without conceding the point — that is also not necessarily true of rivers, forests, or ecosystems, but courts that grant rights to nature routinely appoint guardianship bodies to make these determinations. 70

There is a limit to the analogy between nature and nonhuman animals that appears at the stage of remedies in some cases and goes to the heart of the comparison. For a river, the component of nature for which there is the most extensive case law, courts typically speak in terms of “rights that imply its protection, conservation, maintenance” and “restoration,” as in the Atrato River Case. 71 That court sought to have the conditions of the river improved so that the human communities could again make full use of the river for agriculture, hunting, fishing, and artisanal mining. The remedy raises a deeper question, one that the court did not ask: What is the intrinsic purpose of a river? The implication of rights of river judgments is not that a river simply seeks to be left alone. The purpose of a river in these decisions is to serve humans, through access to water, transportation, and the animals who live in them.

The rights that advocates seek for animals are far more robust and categorically reject that the inherent purpose of an animal is to serve human interests and uses. In the habeas corpus cases, the animals are in captivity, such as in a zoo or research facility. 72 The plaintiffs seek release of these animals to a setting in which they can live more natural lives, such as a sanctuary, given that these animals generally cannot be placed in a fully natural, wild environment. 73 While the presumption is that the transfer to better environments would aid in the protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration of these animals, the point was not that the animals will look and feel better for any kind of human benefit. The remedy of habeas corpus seeks to release the animals from a human environment so that they could be, to the extent possible, left alone to be animals.

This difference in the issue of remedies and their enforcement may be significant and may project back onto the fundamental question of whether humans will recognize animal rights at all. Rights of nature call for some major changes in the way that humans live in the world, as seen in the above cases. Viewed from the remedy angle, the rights of animals are an even greater challenge to the behavior of humans. Rights of animals impact fundamental questions such as what humans eat and drink, what they wear, and what kinds of entertainment they engage in, to name just a few. A judge may seek to avoid remedies that would alter human behavior in dramatic ways, and the mere possibility of these remedies may also work to undermine the cause of action itself. 74

Rights of nature approaches are instructive to the cause of animal rights, intellectually and practically. They do not offer a model to be copied wholesale, but instead call for careful study of the parallels and points of disconnection, of the commonalities and the conflicts, with the potential for significant results.

* Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty Director, Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program. I thank Sam Bookman, Doug Kysar, Justin Marceau, Kathy Meyer, and Steve Wise for insightful comments on this Essay. I thank the editors of the Harvard Law Review for their thoughtful engagement and editorial assistance. Andy Stawasz, J.D. ’21, provided outstanding research assistance. I also thank the translators who assisted with translations of the cases cited in the Essay: Cibele Maria Melendez Texeira Bandeira and Harvard Law School S.J.D. candidates Beatriz Botero Arcila, Sannoy Das, and Nicolás Parra-Herrera.

^ Karin Brulliard, The Battle over Wild Horses , WASH. POST (Sept. 18, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/09/18/wild-horses-have-long-kicked-up-controversy-now-foes-say-they-have-solution [ https://perma.cc/L9BW-GJP7 ].

^ The constitution of Kenya , 2010, art. 42, in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline , 2010) .

^ James R. May & Erin Daly, Global Environmental Constitutionalism 255–56 (2015). A biocentric approach places humans on the same level as all living beings, whereas an ecocentric approach considers all that is in the natural world — living beings and nonliving entities — to all be equally valued. Int’l Rivers et al., Rights of Rivers 10 (2020), https://3waryu2g9363hdvii1ci666p-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/86/2020/09/Right-of-Rivers-Report-V3-Digital-compressed.pdf [ https://perma.cc/JLG7-4QD5 ].

^ Jessica Eisen & Kristen Stilt, Protection and Status of Animals , in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law ¶ 1 (Rainer Grote, Frauke Lachenmann & Rüdiger Wolfrum eds., 2016), Oxford Constitutional Law (article updated Dec. 2016).

^ Id . ¶¶ 26–35.

^ Id . ¶¶ 11–17.

^ Id . ¶¶ 36–38.

^ Id . ¶¶ 39–41.

^ Id . ¶¶ 18–25.

^ Id . ¶¶ 47–56.

^ Id . ¶¶ 42–46.

^ Id . ¶¶ 63–65.

^ See Konstitutsiia Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii [Konst. RF] [Constitution] art. 114(1)(e 5

^ Eisen & Stilt, supra note 7, ¶ 45.

^ Id . ¶ 31.

^ Id . ¶ 23.

^ Id . ¶ 12.

^ Id . ¶ 36.

^ Id . ¶ 69.

^ The desire for more rights is not an unqualified positive, as some have argued. While an important question, this Essay does not engage in that debate.

^ Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 6.

^ Id . In the animal law context, more research is needed on the alignment of beliefs in indigenous communities with animal rights approaches — a partnership that has been important in the contemporary rights of nature movement. Due to issues such as whaling and seal hunting, this alignment has proven difficult, but with thoughtful engagement, it is within reach. See generally Maneesha Deckha, Unsettling Anthropocentric Legal Systems: Reconciliation, Indigenous Laws, and Animal Personhood , 41 J. Intercultural Stud . 77 (2020).

^ There is a long line of thinking in animal protection that preventing cruelty to animals is also beneficial for humans. One strand of this thinking focuses on a connection between violence against animals and violence against humans, referred to as the “link” theory. For a discussion and critique of this theory, see Justin Marceau , Beyond Cages 193–250 (2019).

^ Constitución de la República del Ecuador [Constitution] 2008 , art. 71, translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, Jefri Jay Ruchti, ed., Maria Del Carmen Gress & J.J. Ruchti, trans., 2018 ) .

^ Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra [Law of the Rights of Mother Earth], Ley 071 (2010) ( Bol .) .

^ See Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 15–49.

^ S.T.J., No. 1.797.175/SP, Relator: Ministro OG Fernandes, 21.03.2019, Revista Eletrônica da Jurisprudência [R.S.T.J.], 13.05.2019 (Braz.), https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/revista/documento/mediado/?componente=ITA&sequencial=1806039&num_registro=201800312300&data=20190513&peticao_numero=-1&formato=PDF [ https://perma.cc/TZ76-P4E3 ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Wild Parrot Case].

^ Id . at 2–3.

^ Id . at 9.

^ Constitução Federal [C.F.] [Constitution] art. 225 (Braz.), translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, Jefri Jay Ruchi, ed., Keith S. Rosenn, trans., 2020) .

^ Wild Parrot Case, supra note 31, at 10.

^ Id . at 12.

^ See Eisen & Stilt, supra note 7, ¶¶ 22–24, 28–29.

^ Wild Parrot Case, supra note 31, at 14.

^ See Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 47.

^ See id . at 23.

^ See id . at 33.

^ See id . at 44.

^ See id . at 17.

^ See id . at 39. In India, the decisions have been stayed by the Supreme Court. Id . at 46. In the U.S. context, Native American tribal jurisdictions have led the way in recognizing rights of nature. The Navajo Nation Code Annotated, tit. I, § 205 (2014), states that “[a]ll creation, from Mother Earth and Father Sky to the animals, those who live in water, those who fly and plant life have their own laws and have rights and freedoms to exist.” The publication of Christopher D. Stone’s Should Trees Have Standing? — Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects , 45 S. Cal. L. Rev . 450 (1972), was influential for Justice Douglas, dissenting in Sierra Club v. Morton , 405 U.S. 727, 741–42 (1972) (“Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.”). Recently, some local governments in the United States have attempted to declare that natural communities and ecosystems have rights. For a discussion of these efforts, see David R. Boyd, The Rights of Nature 109–30 (2017).

^ Corte Constitucional [C.C.] [Constitutional Court], noviembre 10, 2016, Sentencia T-622/16 (Colom.), https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2016/t-622-16.htm [ https://perma.cc/CP7X-3NCJ ], translated in Center for Social Justice Studies v. Presidency of the Republic, Judgment T-622/16, Constitutional Court of Colombia (Nov. 10, 2016), The Atrato River Case , Dignity Rts. Project , http://files.harmonywithnatureun.org/uploads/upload838.pdf [ https://perma.cc/SF8R-W8EC ] [hereinafter Atrato River Case].

^ Id . § I.2.1.

^ Id . § I.1.

^ Id . § I.2.10.

^ Id . § IV.9.27.

^ Id . § IV.9.31.

^ The Environment and Human Rights (Arts. 4(1) and 5(1) in Relation to Arts. 1(1) and 2 American Convention on Human Rights), Advisory Opinion OC-23/17, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) No. 23, ¶ 62 (Nov. 15, 2017), https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/opiniones/seriea_23_ing.pdf [ https://perma.cc/W3HZ-LPX9 ].

^ Bangladesh Supreme Court, High Court Division, Writ Petition No. 13898/2016 (2019) (official translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Turag River Case].

^ See id . at 3; Tawfique Ali, Time to Declare Turag Dead , Daily Star (Nov. 6, 2016), https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/time-declare-turag-dead-1310182 [ https://perma.cc/R5NL-WA6M ].

^ See Ali, supra note 56.

^ See Turag River Case, supra note 55, at 3.

^ Id . at 4.

^ Id . at 54.

^ Id . at 449.

^ Id . at 449–50.

^ S.T.J., No. 1.145.083/MG, Relator: Ministro Heman Benjamin, 27.09.2011, Revista Eletrônica da Jurisprudência [R.S.T.J.], 04.09.2012, 10 (Braz.), https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/revista/documento/mediado/?componente=ITA&sequencial=975073&num_registro=200901152629&data=20120904&formato=PDF [ https://perma.cc/FW7S-C6Q8 ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library).

^ 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018).

^ Id . at 420.

^ Id . at 432 (Smith, J., concurring in part).

^ Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 8.

^ Atrato River Case, supra note 46, § IV.9.32.

^ See, e.g ., Cámara del Fuero Contencioso Administrativo y Tributario [CABA] [Chamber of Appeals in Contentious Administrative and Tax Matters], Buenos Aires, sala 1, 14/06/2016, “Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los Derechos de los Animales y Otros c. GCBA s/ Amparo,” (Arg.), 3, https://www.animallaw.info/sites/default/files/1%20%E2%80%9CASOCIACIO%CC%81N%20DE%20FUNCIONARIOS%20Y%20ABOGADOS%20POR%20LOS%20DERECHOS%20DE%20LOS%20ANIMALES%20Y%20OTROS%20C%3A%20GCBA%20S%3A%20AMPARO%E2%80%9D%20.pdf [ https://perma.cc/7LD3-XCDG ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library); Corte Constitucional [C.C.] [Constitutional Court], enero 23, 2020, Sentencia SU-016/20 (§§ I.1 to .3) (Colom.), https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/comunicados/Comunicado%20No.%2003%20del%2023%20de%20enero%20de%202020.pdf [ https://perma.cc/9EX8-UCYL ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library). For an overview of habeas corpus cases brought in the United States on behalf of nonhuman animals, see Challenging the Legal Thinghood of Autonomous Nonhuman Animals , Nonhuman Rts. Project , https://www.nonhumanrights.org/litigation [ https://perma.cc/69P9-UU7M ].

^ CABA, 14/06/2016, “Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los Derechos de los Animales y Otros c. GCBA s/ Amparo,” 2, 14; C.C., enero 23, 2020, Sentencia SU-016/20 (§§ I.1 to .3).

^ I thank Doug Kysar for the point that this also works in reverse; a judge in a jurisdiction with weak enforcement might be willing to go further with a finding of animal rights, knowing that the implications are unlikely to be seen as a practical matter.

• Environmental Law

March 20, 2021

More from this Issue

Private property managers, unchecked: the failures of federal compliance oversight in project-based section 8 housing.

• Molly Rockett

Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast Essay

Introduction, works cited.

Despite being used interchangeably, the terms animal welfare and animal rights are different. One can state that the term animal rights refers to the privileges that animals should enjoy ( Welfare vs. Rights) . Scholars that support this school of thought argue that animals should have the same privileges as human beings ( Welfare vs. Rights) . On the other hand, animal welfare refers mainly to the human responsibility to ensure that all aspects of animal well-being are upheld ( Welfare vs. Rights ). This essay compares the two concepts in relation to animal research in medical science.

Apart from the definition, animal welfare is different from animal rights as it supports the ethical and responsible use of animals for the benefit of man ( Animal Research ). According to the Animal Research web page, animals are an essential part of medical research. Individuals that debate using animal rights are often against the use of animals for experimental biological studies. To convince them, I would mention some of the ground-breaking researches and studies that have been realized due to animal research. For instance, it is the use of cows in the search for a vaccine for smallpox that eradicated the disease ( Animal Testing and Research ).

While comparing animal rights and welfare, one also has to consider the fact that animals cannot have the same rights as human beings as the former (animal rights) recommends. Man’s complex brain has ensured their position at the apex.

Whereas human beings can reason and know what is right and wrong, animals depend purely on their instincts for survival. It is this reason that allows human beings to keep animals as pets. A person who suggests that animals should have similar rights to human beings should also not keep pets as it can be deemed ‘slavery’. Additionally, one can argue that supporters of animal rights should also be completely vegans.

Whereas one can argue that animals cannot have the same rights as humans, it is important to also point out that animal welfare ensures that animals are treated well at all times. One can state that whereas animals do not have the same complex brain as humans, they can feel pain, love, and other emotions (1). The fact that animals have feelings creates an ethical conundrum in regard to medical research. However, animal welfare ensures that the animals used in medical studies are as comfortable as possible (Butterworth 13). Many of these animals do not suffer during these experiments.

Despite the stated differences and the fact that I support animal research, it is prudent to note that scientists and researchers have a prominent responsibility towards animals. Indeed, animal research can be done on all types of animals that can enhance medical and biological research. Towards this end, scientists have to ensure that there are adequate policies to assure the dignified and ethical use of animals for medical research.

In conclusion, both animal rights and animal welfare aim to improve human interaction with animals for the benefit of both. However, animal welfare encourages the fact that human beings are more superior to animals. It is this superiority that should ensure that animals are not mistreated. Indeed, the use of animals in medical research has led to ground-breaking realizations. Despite this, it is important that all scientists involved in animal research adhere to policies that also protect the welfare of said animals.

Animal Research . AMP, 2019. Web.

Animal Testing and Research . Foundation for Biomedical Research, 2019. Web.

Butterworth, Andrew. Animal Welfare in a Changing World . CABI, 2018.

Welfare vs. Rights . Animal Welfare Council, 2019. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, June 7). Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast. https://ivypanda.com/essays/animal-welfare-vs-rights-compare-and-contrast/

"Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast." IvyPanda , 7 June 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/animal-welfare-vs-rights-compare-and-contrast/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast'. 7 June.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast." June 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/animal-welfare-vs-rights-compare-and-contrast/.

1. IvyPanda . "Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast." June 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/animal-welfare-vs-rights-compare-and-contrast/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Animal Welfare vs. Rights: Compare and Contrast." June 7, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/animal-welfare-vs-rights-compare-and-contrast/.

• Article Critique: “The community action model: A community-driven model designed to address disparities in health” by Lavery S.
• Apex Company Compared to Its Competitors
• Apex Furnishers: Organizational Development
• Conundrum and Twelfth Night comparison
• Jan Morris and her Memoirs "Conundrum"
• Code of Ethics: Apex Inc.
• Reflection of "Conundrum" by Morris
• Examples of Healthcare Fraud and Unjust Gains Through Medical Coverage
• Smallpox During the American Revolutionary War
• Fire and Community Evacuation in Apex, NC
• Animal Testing: Long and Unpretty History
• Moral Status of Animals: Vegetarianism and Veganism
• The Vancouver Principles of Animal Rights Protection
• Adopting a Pet for a Balanced Life
• Companion Animals as Property of Humans

• Animal Rights Essays

Animal Rights Argumentative Essay

Animal rights have been a consistent subject of debate, with animal activists emphasizing the need to differentiate between animal rights and welfare. The government’s failure to lay down sufficient legislation to help in the protection of animals from human predation has made it difficult for several people to believe in animal rights. It is essential to note that animal rights do not concern putting animals over and above humans but instead on the rejection of speciesism and sentience. Humans utilize several ways to exploit animals, including hunting, fur, circuses, and animal products like eggs and meat. There is an urgent need to help in securing strategies that will free animals from human exploitation. Therefore, this paper seeks to analyze the reasons against animal exploitation and reinforce the probable methods to uphold animal rights.

Struggling with your HW?

Get your assignments done by real pros. Save your precious time and boost your marks with ease. Just fill in your HW requirements and you can count on us!

• Customer data protection
• 100% Plagiarism Free

There is a general feeling that the use of animals for both scientific and medical research results yields significant improvement in living standards and medical advancements. Thus, it is sensible for many to agree over the use of animals to test how healthy or harmful a newly discovered medicine is before giving it to the human species for consumption (Lin n.p). However, such tests and exposure to chemicals often result in the killing of thousands of animals for courses that in some instances turn unhelpful (Garner 21). Therefore, animals’ mere use for sciences’ sake is unacceptable since the animals’ suffering vastly outweighs the satisfaction of human curiosity (Lin n.p). It is thus unnecessary to justify animal exploitation on immoral grounds.

Animals cannot think and make rational decisions concerning what should take place in their lives. However, the determination of rights should not be based on intelligence grounds. Otherwise, conducting intelligence tests would be necessary for all humans for them to enjoy certain fundamental rights. Exploiting animals based on their inability to think and reason is unreasonable (Lin n.p). This form of reasoning would mean that babies with no intelligence and mentally challenged humans would have no rights.

Preservation of animal rights and dignity is an appreciation for their life since it develops significant status. Individuals who hold contrary arguments on animal rights protection tend to believe that human life is more critical than animal life (Lin n.p). Therefore, destroying animal life to preserve human life is justifiable. This is an ineffective criterion to determine the importance of having rights since such are usually subjective, and individuals often have selfish personal interests (Garner 9). Interestingly, an individual may find their home-bred animals more important than a stranger in the neighborhood with this scope. It should not allow the individual to kill or misuse animals just for the sake of prioritizing and ranking the importance.

Used our essay samples for inspiration ?

For more help, tap into our pool of professional writers and get expert essay editing services!

In conclusion, the concept that animals should have the ability to move freely without human interference and exploitation affirms the need for animal protection. With the ability to experience emotions, fear, pain, and happiness, the argument that the absence of cognitive abilities makes animals lesser than humans is baseless. Besides, arguments in favor of the protection of animals and giving more rights to animals does not mean putting them at the same level as humans, but attempts to show the value that animals have as a human source of food and labor objects. Therefore, upholding animals’ inherent value is critical for maintaining animals’ rights and ensuring the maintenance of a balanced and organized ecosystem where there is a significant minimization of human predation on animals.

Works Cited

• Garner, Robert, ed. Animal rights: The changing debate . Springer, 2016.
• Lin, Doris. What Are Animals Rights? 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-are-animal-rights-127600

Related Essays

Find Free Essays

We provide you with original essay samples, perfect formatting and styling

Request must contain at least 2 characters

Popular Topics

Samples by Essay Type

Cite this page

About our services

Type Argumentative

Topic Animal Rights

Level College

This sample is NOT ORIGINAL. Get 100% unique essay written under your req

• Only $11 per page
• Free revisions included

Studyfy uses cookies to deliver the best experience possible. Read more.

Studyfy uses secured cookies. Read more.

EDITORIAL article

This article is part of the research topic.

Animal Welfare and the Economic Sustainability of Farms

Editorial: Animal Welfare and Economic Sustainability of Farms Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Michigan State University, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

From the perspective of the farmer, increasing animal productivity has been a time-tested method to mitigate the price versus cost of production pressure and supports the economic sustainability of the farm. The emphasis on the productive performance of farm animals and production efficiency has been criticized as compromising animal welfare (review in Hartcher and Lum (2020) on meat chickens). This paradigm has been challenged by non-governmental organizations, consumers, and policymakers, especially in western countries, resulting in calls for change in farm animal production systems. Moreover, animal welfare is being integrated with environmental sustainability (review in Lanzoni et al. 2023) including sustainable food production strategies (review in Bracke et al. 2023) and trade policies and initiatives (Molitorisová and Burke 2023). All of which impact farm economic sustainability.Scientists have found that improvements to animal welfare can be facilitated by changes to entire or parts of the working farm. The willingness of farmers to produce in this way (review in Balzani and Hanlon 2020) and consumers' perceptions and willingness accept trade-offs for these positive attributes are developing areas of research (Schütz et al. 2023;Alonso-Carillo et al. 2020). The economic benefits related to improved animal welfare including good animal health, reproduction, longevity etc. have also gained scientific attention (Kuruc and McFadden, 2023;Owusu-Sekyere et al. 2023). Animal welfare assessment and audit tools have been developed and deployed for the purpose of assessing the welfare state of the animals, farmer compliance, and providing public assurance. Data driven animal welfare assessment protocols like Welfare Quality® (Keeling et al. 2013) offer a potential methodological tool to disentangle the complex relationship between animal performance and animal welfare.In this research topic five papers tackle problems of animal welfare and farm economic sustainability. The first paper reviews the empirical evidence concerning the welfare needs of lactating sows and piglets. An important step to inform decision making and guide the implementation of change. The next two papers explore alternative management practices and assess the economic costs and benefits to farmers. One explores the economic viability of three different dairy cow-calf contact systems and the other investigates the potential economic advantage to extending the egg laying cycle in cage-free hens. The last two papers focus on animal welfare assessment. One evaluates a sheep welfare protocol for use by Mediterranean sheep producers and the final paper reports a 37 method for the costs of animal assessment into the cost of the farm. 38The first step is to identify production and housing practices need change and improve 39 animal welfare. dairy cows in contact with their calves. Using a stochastic approach they determine the short-term 62 cost of employing three types of cow-calf contact systems. 63The egg production cycle for a commercial laying hen is between 65 to 80 weeks after they start to 64 lay. Typically, laying hens are culled when the production cycle has been completed. Based on 65 modern hen productivity, there is an opportunity to extend the laying cycle to benefit environmental 66 sustainability through the conservation of natural resources. The impacts of extending the lay period 67 on hen physiology and egg quality has been a focus of recent scientific research (Alfonso-Carillo et 68 al. 2021). However, demonstrating the economic benefits of extending the lay period is equally 69 important to egg farmers. Canada employs national management of their egg supply and an incentive 70 system to assist egg farmers with the cost of production. Traore and Doyon explored the economic 71 sustainability of extending the egg production cycle under Canada's managed supply system. They 72 use a partial budgeting model, two scenarios for analytical modeling, and mathematical modeling to 73 determine the optimal laying cycle for hens housed in aviaries in Canada. 74The tools developed for animal welfare assessment must be evaluated and validated to assure 75 integrity and utility by assessors and farmers and figured into the cost of on-farm production. 76The heterogeneity of sheep production (Morris 2017) Farm animal housing systems and management practices have been a growing concern for citizens. 95In the western world these animal welfare concerns have driven policymaking affecting change to 96 farm animal housing and management practices via voluntary or involuntary mandates. When 97 political pressure mounts, the end result can be a politically negotiated change or amendment to a 98 housing system or practice which may or may not deliver the perceived benefits to the animal or the 99 farmer. The value of scientific evidence to determine what needs to change and elucidating the 100 impact to the economic sustainability of farms should not be understated. And there is a role for 101 validated data-driven assessment tools to assist in teasing out the benefits and tensions between on-102 farm improvements to animal welfare and the economic sustainability of farms. 103

Keywords: Animal Welfare, Economics, sustainability, Animal agriculture, animal welfare economics sustainability animal agriculture

Received: 28 Jan 2024; Accepted: 25 Mar 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Swanson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mx. Janice C. Swanson, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States

People also looked at

For the 2024 London Mayor Election, 13 Candidates Qualify

T he race for the next mayor of London has attracted 13 candidates, a decrease from the 20 individuals who competed in the 2021 election. Among those who intended to run again was former actor Laurence Fox, who could not secure a spot due to issues with his nomination papers.

As the city gears up for the election, the four leading candidates have vigorously campaigned across London, marking their final efforts before the Easter holiday break.

The list of candidates, presented alphabetically, showcases a diverse range of platforms and political affiliations:

• Femy Amin, representing the Animal Welfare Party, focuses on the intersection of human, animal, and environmental welfare.
• Count Binface of the Count Binface for Mayor of London Party offers a unique approach to city governance.
• Rob Blackie is the choice for the Liberal Democrat Party, emphasizing inclusive policies.
• Natalie Denise Campbell, running as an independent, brings a fresh perspective to the mayoral race.
• Howard Cox of ReformUK campaigns on the slogan “London Deserves Better,” aiming for comprehensive reforms.
• Amy Gallagher of the Social Democratic Party seeks to address social issues head-on.
• Zoë Garbett represents the Green Party with a robust environmental agenda.
• Tarun Ghulati, another independent candidate, offers his vision for London’s future.
• Susan Mary Hall is the Conservative Party’s candidate, promising change and progress.
• Incumbent Mayor Sadiq Khan hopes to continue his work under the Labour Party banner.
• Andreas Christoffi Michli, running independently, brings his unique proposals to the table.
• Brian Benedict Rose of the London Real Party aims to “Transform London” with innovative ideas.
• Nick Scanlon from Britain First advocates for “No To Immigration,” highlighting contentious policies.

During a campaign stop in Barnet, Sadiq Khan emphasized that improving the country doesn’t require diminishing the capital’s resources. He underscored the importance of equality and prosperity for all Londoners.

Conservative candidate Susan Hall has centered her campaign around addressing what she terms a “war on motorists,” opposing the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone and other measures she believes adversely affect drivers.

The Green Party, through candidate Zoe Garbett, plans to support grassroots music and arts by redistributing profits from larger venues to smaller ones without impacting ticket buyers.

Rob Blackie, the Liberal Democrat candidate, criticized the upcoming Silvertown Tunnel project, pledging to promote low-carbon vehicle use and improve transparency regarding environmental impact.

Candidates needed to secure nominations from 330 electors across London to qualify. Despite a last-minute submission, Laurence Fox and the Reclaim Party failed to correct errors in their paperwork, disqualifying Fox from the race.

As London prepares to elect its next mayor, the wide array of candidates promises a vibrant and closely watched contest reflecting the city’s diverse concerns and aspirations.

Must Read Posts:

• UK Strengthens Nuclear Deterrence Need Through Long-Term Capability Approach
• The Durability of the Trump Stock Bubble: An Inquiry into its Sustainability
• Former Tory Councillor Robert Holden Recorded Women on Hidden Cameras Over 400 Times in 15 Years

Boris Groys

Professor of philosophy at the european graduate school / egs..

Boris Groys (b.1947) is a philosopher, essayist, art critic, media theorist and an internationally renowned expert on Soviet-era art and literature, specifically, the Russian avant-garde. He is a Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, a Senior Research Fellow at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, and a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. His work engages radically different traditions from French poststructuralism to modern Russian philosophy, yet is firmly situated at the juncture of aesthetics and politics. Theoretically, Boris Groys’s work is influenced by a number of modern and post-modern philosophers and theoreticians, including Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Walter Benjamin.

Born in the former German Democratic Republic, Groys grew up in the USSR. He studied philosophy, mathematics, and logic at Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University). While a student, he immersed himself in the unofficial cultural scenes taking place in Leningrad and Moscow, and coined the term “Moscow conceptualism.” The term first appeared in the essay “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism,” published in 1979, in the art magazine  A-YA . During this time in the Soviet Union, Groys published widely in a number of samizdat magazines, including  37  and  Chasy . Between 1976 and 1981, Boris Groys held the position of Research Fellow in the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics at Moscow State University. At the end of this fellowship, he left the Soviet Union and moved to the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 1992, Groys earned his doctorate in philosophy from the Universität Münster, where he also served as an assistant professor in philosophy from 1998-1994. During this time, Groys was also a visiting professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by another appointment at the University of Southern California, also in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. From 1994 to 2009, Groys was Professor of Art History, Philosophy, and Media Theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, where he remains a senior research fellow. In 2001, he was the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and from 2003 to 2004, he spearheaded the research program  Post-Communist Condition , at the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany. He assumed the position of Global Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University in 2005 and in 2009 he became a full Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU. Groys is also a senior Fellow at the International Center for Cultural Studies and Media Theory at the Bauhaus Universität (Weimar); a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA); and has been a senior scholar at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London); and a fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK, Vienna), Harvard University Art Museum, and the University of Pittsburg.

In the Anglo-American world, Boris Groys is best known as the author of  The Total Art of Stalinism  (1992), and for introducing the western world to Russian postmodernist writers and artists. His contributions stretch across the field of philosophy, politics, history, and art theory and criticism. Within aesthetics, his major works include  Vanishing Point Moscow  (1994) and  The Art of Installation (1996). His philosophical works include  A Philosopher’s Diary  (1989) , The Invention of Russia  (1995), and  Introduction to Antiphilosophy  (2012). More recently, he has also published  Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of the Media  (2000) , Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment  (2006) ,  and  The Communist Postscript  (2010). In addition to these works, other significant works in art, history, and philosophy include:  History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism  (2010),  Going Public  (2010),  Art Power  (2008),  The Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990  (2008),  Dream Factory Communism: The Visual Culture of the Stalin Period  (2004),  Apotropikon  (1991), and  Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality  (DVD, 2008), which is a trilogy of video-text syntheses, wherein Groys reads the composed text superimposed onto a collage of footage fragments taken from movies and film documentations.

As a prominent contemporary art theorist and critic, Boris Groys has also curated a number of notable exhibitions, including:  Fluchtpunkt Moskau  at Ludwig Forum (1994, Aachen, Germany),  Dream Factory Communism  at the Schirn Gallery (2003-2004, Frankfurt, Germany),  Privatizations  at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2004, Berlin, Germany),  Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960–1990 at the Kunsthalle Schirn (2008-2009 Frankfurt, Germany; Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain),  Medium Religion  with Peter Weibel at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (2009, Karlsruhe, Germany),  Andrei Monastyrski  for the Russian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011, Venice, Italy),  After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer , at BAK Utrecht (2012, Netherlands).

While Boris Groys teaches, lectures, and writes on philosophy, politics, and history, it has been his work in aesthetics, and his co-mingling of ideas through aesthetics, that has brought him the most recognition and where he has made his most significant contributions. Groys proposes and underscores the involvement of the Russian avant-garde in the Bolshevik movement as well as in the early stages of the Bolshevik State. Following this premise, Groys’s work explores the implications of this relationship. One of his fundamental theses is that these artists––like their political counterparts––tried to outpace the developments of modernity, and so, they, like the Bolsheviks themselves, attempted to skip the steps supposed to be necessary and constitutive of historical progress.

While it is widely acknowledged in modern Russian art history that an opposition developed among artists during the revolutionary period between those constituting an avant-garde and those complicit with the state sanctioned art of the Soviet Union, Boris Groys contends that this was the result of a split and not a continuation of a pre-Revolutionary division. More specifically, Groys posits a more refined understanding of the period such that these artists cannot be simply and uniformly grouped as having been in partnership with the state Party and then, slowly, over the period split off into an opposing position. Indeed, he contends that much of the avant-garde remained on the ideological side of the state Party well past its early stages. Moreover, these artistic developments entered the political field and thereby became its extension. Under the leadership of the state, Soviet realism helped fulfil the avant-garde’s dream of demiurgic power. It is in this respect that Groys then posits the relationship between romanticism and twentieth century Russian avant-garde art. The partnership between Soviet realism and the state Party’s ideology resulted in (authorized) artworks as understood as the realization of socialism, thereby abolishing the supposed boundaries between life, art, and politics. According to Groys, the  Lenin Mausoleum  stands as the embodiment of this achievement of synchrony. Complicating and pushing this position further, Groys finds this phenomenon not at all exclusive to the Soviet Union, but in fact points to its uncanny parallel in the readymades of Marcel Duchamp.

Much of Groys’s work has centered on exploring the consequences of this suture resulting in a particular framework in which to think post-Stalinist art. With the fall of Stalinism, and its “iron laws of history,” Russian artists, both of the post-Stalin period of the Soviet Union and the post-Cold War period, have had to confront the difficult task of overcoming a notion of utopia without falling out of history, or rather, how to dissolve the notion of teleology without falling into the abyss of the end of history. Within this framework, Groys investigates not only the historical, political, and aesthetic relations in the Soviet Union and Russia, but as well specific artistic and literary works such as those by Ilya Kabakov, Komar and Melamid, and Prigov.

Without pronouncement, Boris Groys’s work, in all its varied forms, appears to follow a sustained thesis: art is a symptom of society. While the majority of his work is within aesthetics, his thesis is not exclusive to aesthetics. Rather, Groys tends to think politics, and philosophy, with and through the medium of art. This idea is underscored in a conversation between John-Paul Stonard and Boris Groys while he was Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, which was transcribed and published in the Institute’s journal,  immediations  (Vol.1, No. 4, 2007). In response to Stonard’s question as to whether “philosophers have a naturally closer relationship with artists than do art historians?” Groys responded, “We can look at artists in two ways. First, as if we were biologists, trying to construct a neo-Darwinian story of ‘art species’; how artists developed, how they succeeded, failed, survived. In these terms art history is formulated a little like botany or biology. The second way of considering art history is as part of the history of ideas. We have the history of philosophy, the history of science, the history of cultural history, just as we can have the history of art. So the question is whether we define art history more like botany, or more like the history of philosophy – and I tend more to the latter, because, as I have suggested, the driving force of art is philosophical.”

––Srdjan Cvjeticanin

Kommunisticheskiy Postskriptum , Groys, Boris. Kommunisticheskiy Postskriptum. Ad Marginem, 2014.  ISBN: 5911031817

Google: Words beyond Grammar/Google: Worte jenseits der Grammatik , Groys, Boris. Google: Words beyond Grammar/Google: Worte jenseits der Grammatik. Hatje Cantz, 2011.  ISBN: 3775728953

Unter Verdacht: Eine Phänomenologie der Medien , Groys, Boris. Unter Verdacht: Eine Phänomenologie der Medien. Carl Hanser Verlag, 2010.  ISBN: 3446236023

Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of Media , Groys, Boris. Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of Media. Translated by Carsten Strathausen. Columbia University Press, 2012.  ISBN: 0231146183

Going Public , Groys, Boris. Going Public. Sternberg Press, 2010.  ISBN: 1934105309

History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism , Groys, Boris. History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism. MIT Press, 2010.  ISBN: 0262014238

Einführung in die Anti-philosophie , Groys, Boris. Einführung in die Anti-philosophie. Carl Hanser, 2009.  ISBN: 3446234047

An Introduction to Antiphilosophy , Groys, Boris. An Introduction to Antiphilosophy. Translated by David Fernbach. Verso, 2012.  ISBN: 0231146183

Art Power , Groys, Boris. Art Power. MIT Press, 2008.  ISBN: 0262518686

Drei Videos über das Ikonoklastische: Rituelle und Unsterbliche/Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality. , Groys, Boris. Drei Videos über das Ikonoklastische: Rituelle und Unsterbliche/Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality. ZKM/Hatje Cantz, 2008.  ISBN: 3775723374

Die Kunst des Denkens , Groys, Boris. Die Kunst des Denkens. Philo Fine Arts, 2008.  ISBN: 3865726399

Ilya Kabakov. The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment , Groys, Boris. Ilya Kabakov. The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment. Afterall/MIT Press, 2006.  ISBN: 1846380049

Das Kommunistische Postskriptum , Groys, Boris. Das Kommunistische Postskriptum. Suhrkamp, 2006.  ISBN: 351812403X

The Communist Postscript , Groys, Boris. The Communist Postscript. Verso, 2010.  ISBN: 1844674304

Le Post-scriptum Communiste , Groys, Boris. Le Post-scriptum Communiste. Translated by Olivier Mannoni. Libella/Maren Sell, 2008.  ISBN: 2355800057

Postscriptum Comunista , Groys, Boris. Postscriptum Comunista. Translated by Gianluca Bonaiuti. Metemi Melusine, 2008.  ISBN: 8883536738

Die Muse im Pelz , Groys, Boris. Die Muse im Pelz. Literaturverlag Droschl, 2004.  ISBN: 3854206720

Topologie der Kunst , Groys, Boris. Topologie der Kunst. Carl Hanser, 2003.  ISBN: 3446203680

Kommentarii k Iskusstvu , Groys, Boris. Kommentarii k iskusstvu. KhZh, 2003.  ISBN: 5901116089

Politik der Unsterblichkeit: Vier Gespräche mit Thomas Knöfel , Groys, Boris. Politik der Unsterblichkeit: Vier Gespräche mit Thomas Knöfel. Carl Hanser, 2002.  ISBN: 3446201394

Politique de l’Immortalité , Groys, Boris. Politique de l’Immortalité. Quatre entretiens avec Thomas Knoefel. Translator Olivieri Mannon. Maren Sell Editeurs, 2005.  ISBN: 2350040232

Dialogi , Groys, Boris, and Ilya Kabakov. Dialogi. Ad marginem, 1999.  ISBN: 593321003X

Logik der Sammlung , Groys, Boris. Logik der Sammlung. Carl Hanser, 1997.  ISBN: 3446189327

Kunst-Kommentare , Groys, Boris. Kunst-Kommentare. Passagen, 1997.  ISBN: 3851652916

Die Kunst der Installation , Groys, Boris, and Ilja Kabakov. Die Kunst der Installation. Carl Hanser, 1996.  ISBN: 3446185275

Die Erfindung Russlands , Groys, Boris. Die Erfindung Russlands. Carl Hanser, 1995.  ISBN: 3446180516

Über das Neue , Groys, Boris. Über das Neue. Versuch einer Kulturökonomie. Carl Hanser, 1992.  ISBN: 3446165428

On the New , Groys, Boris. On the New. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Verso, 2014.  ISBN: 1781682925

Sobre lo Nuevo , Groys, Boris. Sobre lo Nuevo. Pre-textos, 2005.  ISBN: 848191648X

Du Nouveau , Groys, Boris. Du Nouveau: Essai d’économie culturelle. Jacqueline Chambon, 1995.  ISBN: 2877111156

Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Moskau: Von der Neo-Avantgarde zum Post-Stalinismus ,Groys, Boris. Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Moskau: Von der Neo-Avantgarde zum Post-Stalinismus. Klinkhardt u. B., 1991.  ISBN: 3781403033

Die Kunst des Fliehens , Groys, Boris, and Ilya Kabakov. Die Kunst des Fliehens. Carl Hanser, 1991.  ISBN: 3446160779

Dnevnik filosofa , Groys, Boris. Dnevnik Filosofa. Beseda/Sintaksis, 1989.

全体芸術様式スターリン/ Zentai Geijutsu Yōshiki Sutārin , Groys, Boris. 全体芸術様式スターリン/ Zentai Geijutsu Yōshiki Sutārin. Translated by Ikuo Kameyama and Yoshiaki Koga. 現代思潮新社, 2000.  ISBN: 4329004119

Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin , Groys, Boris. Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin. Translated by Desiderio Navarro. Pre-textos, 2008.  ISBN: 848191925X

Lo Stalinismo Ovvero l’Opera d’Arte Totale , Groys, Boris. Lo Stalinismo Ovvero l’Opera d’Arte Totale. Translated by Emanuela Guercetti. Garzanti, 1992.  ISBN: 8811598346

The Total Art of Stalinism: Russian Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. , Groys, Boris. The Total Art of Stalinism: Russian Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Translated by Charles Rougle. Verso, (1992) 2011.  ISBN: 1844677079

Staline: Oeuvre d’Art totale , Groys, Boris. Staline: Oeuvre d’Aart totale. Jacqueline Chambon, 1990.  ISBN: 2877110370

Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin , Groys, Boris. Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin. Die Gespaltene Kultur in der Sowjetunion. Translated by Gabriele Leupold. Carl Hanser, (1988) 2008.  ISBN: 3446187863

Edited Works

Moscow Symposium: Conceptualism Revisited

Groys, Boris, ed.  Moscow Symposium: Conceptualism Revisited . Sternberg Press, 2012.  ISBN: 3943365115

Empty Zones: Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Action

Groys, Boris, Claire Bishop, and Andrei Monastyrski, eds.  Empty Zones: Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Action . Black Dog, 2011.  ISBN: 1907317341

Die totale Aufklärung: Moskauer Konzeptkunst 1960-1990/The Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990

Groys, Boris, Max Hollein, and Manuel Fontan del Junco, eds.  Die totale Aufklärung: Moskauer Konzeptkunst 1960-1990/The Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990 . Exhibition catalogue. Hatje Cantz, 2008.  ISBN: 377572124 X

Die Neue Menschheit

Groys, Boris, and Michael Hagemeister, eds.  Die Neue Menschheit . Suhrkamp, 2005.  ISBN: 351829363 X

Am Nullpunkt

Groys, Boris, and Aage Hansen-Löve, eds.  Am Nullpunkt . Suhrkamp, 2005.  ISBN: 3518293648

Zurück aus der Zukunft. Osteuropäische Kulturen im Zeitalter des Postkommunismus

Groys, Boris, and Anne von der Heiden, eds.  Zurück aus der Zukunft. Osteuropäische Kulturen im Zeitalter des Postkommunismus . Suhrkamp, 2005.  ISBN: 3518124528

Privatisierungen/Privatisations

Groys, Boris, ed.  Privatisierungen/Privatisations . Revolver, 2004.  ISBN: 3865882285

Dream Factory Communism: The Visual Culture of the Stalin Era

Groys, Boris, and Max Hollein, eds.  Dream Factory Communism: The Visual Culture of the Stalin Era . Hatje Cantz, 2003.  ISBN: 377571328 X

Kierkegaard

Groys, Boris, ed.  Kierkegaard . Schriften. Diederichs, 1996.  ISBN: 3424012874

Fluchtpunkt Moskau

Groys, Boris, ed. Fluchtpunkt Moskau. Cantz, 1994.  ISBN: 3893226125

Utopia i Obmen

Groys, Boris, ed.  Utopia i Obmen . Izd-vo Znak, 1993.  ISBN: 5877070010

Today’s Legacy of Classical Modernism

Thinking Media and the Man-Machine Relation

Alexandre Kojève