Acknowledgements

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

Introduction

What this book is about

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

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

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

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

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

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

How a researcher in intensive farming is concerned with animal welfare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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