Taking Ethics into Account in Farm Animal Breeding: What can the Breeding Companies Achieve?

Animal welfare and the ethical issues it raises have been discussed intensively for a couple of decades. The emphasis has been on the direct effects of housing and husbandry, but more attention is now being given to problems originating in selective breeding. European attempts to adjust animal welfare legislation to deal with these problems have been largely unsuccessful, but the fact that selective breeding can introduce welfare problems continues to place an ethical responsibility on the animal breeding industry. Since breeding decisions are made centrally and, increasingly, internationally, strategic change is only likely to occur if it is embedded in an international agreement of some kind. The aim of this paper is to describe the key ethical issues facing animal breeding and assess the suggestion that the breeding industry itself can deal with ethical issues by means of an ethical code. Results from recent projects involving commercial breeding enterprises are presented.     

Sustainable Aquaculture: Are We Getting There? Ethical Perspectives on Salmon Farming

Aquaculture is the fastest growing animal producing sector in the world and is expected to play an important role in global food supply. Along with this growth, concerns have been raised about the environmental effects of escapees and pollution, fish welfare, and consumer health as well as the use of marine resources for producing fish feed. In this paper we present some of the major challenges salmon farming is facing today. We discuss issues of relevance to how to ensure sustainability, by focusing on animal production systems, breeding approaches, sources for feed ingredients, and genetic engineering strategies. Other crucial issues such as animal welfare, environmental quality, and ethics are elaborated with regard to relevance for the sustainability of aquaculture. Additionally, we comment on socio-economic distributive implications by intellectual property rights (IPR) strategies on access to genetic material and traceability. To improve sustainability of salmon farming we suggest that there is a need for new approaches to guide research, for identification of ethical issues, and for engaging stakeholders in resolving these challenges.     

Genetic Engineering and the Integrity of Animals

Genetic engineering evokes a number of objections that are not directed at the negative effects the technique might have on the health and welfare of the modified animals. The concept of animal integrity is often invoked to articulate these kind of objections. Moreover, in reaction to the advent of genetic engineering, the concept has been extended from the level of the individual animal to the level of the genome and of the species. However, the concept of animal integrity was not developed in the context of genetic engineering. Given this external origin, the aim of this paper is to critically examine the assumption that the concept of integrity, including its extensions to the level of the genome and the species, is suitable to articulate and justify moral objections more specifically directed at the genetic engineering of animals.     

Ethics and farm animal welfare

In this paper the authors argue that ethical considerations are relevant for evaluating animal production systems and that in consequence agrologists should seriously consider the arguments of animal welfare supporters. Furthermore, the authors point out the ethical basis for some (though not all) of the conclusions proposed by supporters of animal welfare. In consequence it is necessary to determine the nature of animal welfare and methods of evaluating the welfare of animals and to recognize when production systems fail to satisfy the needs of animals.     

How Should Death Be Taken into Account in Welfare Assessments?

That death is not a welfare issue appears to be a widespread view among animal welfare researchers. This paper demonstrates that this view is based on a mistaken assumption about harm, which is coupled to ‘welfare’ being conceived as ‘welfare at a time’. Assessments of welfare at a time ignore issues of longevity. In order to assess the welfare issue of death, it is necessary to structure welfare assessment as comparisons of possible lives of the animals. The paper also demonstrates that excluding the welfare issues of being deprived of life from the ethical assessment of killing distorts the ethical considerations.     

Who Cares about Farmed Fish? Citizen Perceptions of the Welfare and the Mental Abilities of Fish

This paper explores citizens’ views about the welfare of farmed fish and the mental abilities of fish with a large survey data sample from Finland (n = 1,890). Although studies on attitudes towards animal welfare have been increasing, fish welfare has received only limited empirical attention, despite the rapid expansion of aquaculture sector. The results show that the welfare of farmed fish is not any great concern in the Finnish society. The analysis confirms the distinct character given to farmed fish compared to traditional farmed animals. Salmon are rated low in their mental abilities, including the capacity to feel pain, which may weaken ethical concerns for fish welfare. When analyzing the social determinants surrounding the rating of the welfare of farmed fish, it was shown that fish welfare attitudes follow general animal welfare attitudes regarding age and place of residence as fish welfare tends to be rated more negatively among younger age groups and among urban residents. However, no clear connection could be identified between gender and the rating of fish welfare, which may suggest that the distinct cultural categorization of fish diminishes the typical gender difference identified in animal attitudes. It is concluded that in order to improve awareness about fish welfare, there is a need to increase dissemination of scientific knowledge about fish and their welfare. Moreover, further research should be directed toward studying the moral positioning of fish and the distinct moral categorization they receive.     

How to Consider the Value of Farm Animals in Breeding Goals. A Review of Current Status and Future Challenges

The objective of this paper is to outline challenges associated with the inclusion of welfare issues in breeding goals for farm animals and to review the currently available methodologies and discuss their potential advantages and limitations to address these challenges. The methodology for weighing production traits with respect to cost efficiency and market prices are well developed and implemented in animal breeding goals. However, these methods are inadequate in terms of assessing proper values of traits with social and ethical values such as animal welfare, because such values are unlikely to be readily available from the product prices and costs in the market. Defining breeding goals that take animal welfare and ethical concerns into account, therefore, requires new approaches. In this paper we suggest a framework and an approach for defining breeding goals, including animal welfare. The definition of breeding goals including values related to animal welfare requires a multidisciplinary approach with a combination of different methods such as profit equations, stated preference techniques, and selection index theory. In addition, a participatory approach involving different stakeholders such as breeding organizations, food authorities, farmers, and animal welfare organizations should be applied. We conclude that even though these methods provide the necessary tools for considering welfare issues in the breeding goal, the practical application of these methods is yet to be achieved.     

A Critique of FAWC’s Five Freedoms as a Framework for the Analysis of Animal Welfare

The Brambell Report of 1965 recommended that animals should have the freedom to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs. The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) developed these into the Five Freedoms, which are a framework for the analysis of animal welfare. The Five Freedoms are well known in farming, policy making and academic circles. They form the basis of much animal welfare legislation, codes of recommendations and farm animal welfare accreditation schemes, and are the foundation of the Welfare Quality^® assessment scheme. The Five Freedoms are also extensively employed for the education of veterinary and animal welfare science students. Hence they have proven to be of great practical utility. In this paper, the Five Freedoms framework is examined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for the analysis of animal welfare. Overall, the Five Freedoms are judged to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient as a framework for the analysis of animal welfare. FAWC has recently criticized the Five Freedoms for concentrating on negative aspects of welfare. However, it is shown here how the satisfaction of the Five Freedoms should lead to good welfare, from the animal’s point of view. The Five Freedoms are formulated as ideals of animal welfare. This has significant advantages that have likely contributed to their impact. However, the ideality of the Five Freedoms means that the framework is without power to determine what a satisfactory level of animal welfare is, in an ethical sense.     

Genetic engineering and the Moral Status of Non-Human Species

Genetic modification leads to several important moral issues. Up until now they have mainly been discussed from the viewpoint that only individual living beings, above all animals, are morally considerable. The standpoint that also collective entities such as species belong to the moral sphere have seldom been taken into account in a more thorough way, although it is advocated by several important environmental ethicists. The main purpose of this article is to analyze in more detail than often has been done what the practical consequences of this ethical position would be for the use of genetic engineering on animals and plants. The practical consequences of the holistic standpoint (focused on collective entities) of Holmes Rolston, III, is compared with the practical consequences of the individualistic standpoints (focused on individual living beings) of Bernard E. Rollin and Philipp Balzer, Klaus Peter Rippe, and Peter Schaber, respectively. The article also discusses whether the claim that species are morally considerable is tenable as a foundation for policy decisions on genetic engineering.     

Ethical Opportunities in Global Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry: The Role for FAO

FAO has a unique and essential rolein addressing the ethical problems facinghumanity and in making these problems intoopportunities for practical resolution. A broadrange of ethical issues in agriculture,fisheries, and forestry were identified byanalysis of the literature and by interviewswith FAO staff. Issues include sharing accessto and preserving natural resources,introduction of new technology, conservatismover the use of genetic engineering, ethics inanimal agriculture, access to information, foodsecurity, sustainable rural development,ensuring participation of all people indecision making and in receiving benefits ofagriculture, reducing corruption, andinvolvement of private and public sectors indecision making. Rather than viewing theseissues as problems, they should be viewed asopportunities for debate, learning aboutothers' views, and resolution. The UnitedNations has an important role to play in howdecisions are made in the global ethical debatein food and agriculture. The ethical role ofFAO is to promote global food security,balanced conservation, management andutilization of natural resources, andsustainable rural development. FAO should fullyand publicly assume its ethicalresponsibilities, gathering and sharinginformation on ethics in its areas of mandate,acting as an interactive forum, and providingexpert guidance on policy options and choicesbased on practical ethical analysis.     

Fish Welfare in Aquaculture: Explicating the Chain of Interactions Between Science and Ethics

Aquaculture is the fastest growing animal-production sector in the world. This leads to the question how we should guarantee fish welfare. Implementing welfare standards presupposes that we know how to weigh, define, and measure welfare. While at first glance these seem empirical questions, they cannot be answered without ethical reflection. Normative assumptions are made when weighing, defining, and measuring welfare. Moreover, the focus on welfare presupposes that welfare is a morally important concept. This in turn presupposes that we can define the capacities of fish, which is an empirical undertaking that informs and is informed by ethical theories about the moral status of animals. In this article we want to illustrate the need for a constant interaction between empirical scientific research and ethics, in which both fields of research make their own contribution. This is not a novel claim. However, the case of fish sheds new light on this claim, because regarding fish there is still much empirical uncertainty and there is a plurality of moral views on all levels. Therefore, we do not only want to show the necessity of this interaction, but also the added value of a cooperation between ethicists and empirical scientists, such as biologists, physiologists, and ethologists. We demonstrate this by considering the different steps in the process of reflection about and implementation of fish welfare.     

Is animal welfare a central issue for consumers of luxury goods?

The compatibility between luxury and sustainable development has been increasingly examined in recent literature, but a number of ethical issues remain unexplored. One such concern is animal welfare, a recurrent question in the luxury goods sector. This is one of the first research articles to shed light on this subject, utilising two studies, one qualitative and the other quantitative with conjoint analysis, conducted among 12 and 253 French consumers, respectively. The results reveal that consumers are sensitive to the challenge of animal welfare in luxury, but fall into two different groups. Some have a preference for animal‐based raw materials sourced from livestock farms that respect animal welfare, whilst others are more favourable to the use of synthetic raw materials. In particular, the results show that the use of synthetic raw materials is accepted by some consumers but can lead to a reduction in the perceived value of luxury products.     

A New Framework for the Assessment of Animal Welfare: Integrating Existing Knowledge from a Practical Ethics Perspective

When making an assessment of animal welfare, it is important to take environmental (housing) or animal-based parameters into account. An alternative approach is to focus on the behavior and appearance of the animal, without making actual measurements or quantifying this. None of these tell the whole story. In this paper, we suggest that it is possible to find common ground between these (seemingly) diametrically opposed positions and argue that this may be the way to deal with the complexity of animal welfare. The model will have to be acceptable for the different parties that will be affected by it and real benefits for the animal should result from it. This will be the basis of a practical ethical approach. All this can be condensed into a model that essentially is made up out of three basic elements: the classical welfare analysis with an existing welfare assessment tool, an assessment of the stockholder, and an implementation of the Free Choice Profiling technique. This new framework does not pretend to be a different or better animal welfare matrix; it is intended to integrate existing knowledge and to provide a practical tool to improve animal welfare. It identifies whether there are welfare problems on a farm, if present whether these problems are caused by the housing system or the stockholder, and what can be done to improve the situation.     

Finfish Aquaculture: Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Ethical Implications

The aim of this review is to assess the ethical implications of finfish aquaculture, regarding fish welfare and environmental aspects. The finfish aquaculture industry has grown substantially the last decades, both as a result of the over-fishing of wild fish populations, and because of the increasing consumer demand for fish meat. As the industry is growing, a significant amount of research on the subject is being conducted, monitoring the effects of aquaculture on the environment and on animal welfare. The areas of concern when it comes to animal welfare have here been divided into four different stages: breeding period; growth period; capturing and handling; and slaughter. Besides these stages, this report includes a chapter on the current evidence of fish sentience, since this issue is still being debated among biologists. However, most biologists are at present acknowledging the probability of fish being sentient creatures. Current aquaculture practices are affecting fish welfare during all four of the cited stages, both on physical and mental levels, as well as on the ability of fish to carry out natural behaviors. The effect fish farming has on the environment is here separated into five different categories: the decline of wild fish populations; waste and chemical discharge; loss of habitat; spreading of diseases; and invasion of exotic organisms. There is evidence of severe negative effects on the environment when looking at these five categories, even when considering the difficulty of studying environmental effects, due to the closely interacting variables. The ethical arguments and scientific evidences here reviewed have not all come to the same conclusions. Nevertheless, the general agreement is that current aquaculture practices are neither meeting the needs of fish nor environment. Thus, the obvious environmental and animal welfare aspects of finfish aquaculture make it hard to ethically defend a fish diet.     

Telos and the Ethics of Animal Farming

The concept of animal welfare in confinement agriculture—and an ethical theory based upon this concept—necessitates an idea of what kind of being it is that fares well and what “well” is for this being. This double-question is at the heart of understanding and adequately defining welfare as qualitatively embedded in the experiencing subject. The notion of telos derives (philosophically) from Aristotle and is a way of accounting for the good life of an animal from the unique speciesness of the animal in question. The first part of the article will address the contemporary philosophical and ethical analysis of animals based upon this Aristotelian idea (Rollin in Animal rights and human morality (1st ed. 1981). Prometheus Books, New York, 2006b). Telos is here employed to illustrate the dimensions of what matters in welfare assessment and ethical evaluation. The second half of the article addresses some of the welfare problems in modern animal agriculture and how they relate to the telos concept. Two main examples are dealt with: Boredom (Wemelsfelder in Mental health and well-being in animals. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2005) is argued as being the suffering of choicelessness in animals that are inherently beings that choose—and loneliness is the suffering of social isolation in animals for whom standing in active relations to others is part of what they are.     

Animal Welfare Considerations in Small Ruminant Breeding Specifications

After satisfying their quantitative and qualitative needs as regards nutrition, consumers in developed countries are becoming more involved in the ethical aspects of food production, especially when it relates to animal products. Social demands for respecting animal welfare in housing systems are increasing rapidly, as is social awareness of human responsibility towards farm animals. Many studies have been conducted on animal welfare measurement in different production systems, but the available information for small ruminants remains insufficient. In this study, a 75 criteria-evaluation tool has been set up on the basis of the five freedoms concept. Animal welfare considerations have been analyzed in 25 documents, including labeling schemes, regulations, and recommendations from different European countries. The results show many differences between regular and organic small ruminant farming standards. Emergency measures are generally lacking. A weak representation of psychological aspects of animal welfare, especially by the current European legislation, is highlighted.     

Meat and Morality: Alternatives to Factory Farming

Scientists have shown that the practice of factory farming is an increasingly urgent danger to human health, the environment, and nonhuman animal welfare. For all these reasons, moral agents must consider alternatives. Vegetarian food production, humane food animal farming, and in-vitro meat production are all explored from a variety of ethical perspectives, especially utilitarian and rights-based viewpoints, all in the light of current U.S. and European initiatives in the public and private sectors. It is concluded that vegetarianism and potentially in-vitro meat production are the best-justified options.     

Captive Bears in Human–Animal Welfare Conflict: A Case Study of Bile Extraction on Asia’s Bear Farms

Bear bile has long been used in the Asian traditional pharmacopoeia. Bear farming first started in China ~30 years ago in terms of reducing the number of poached bears and ensuring the supply of bear bile. Approximately 13,000 bears are today captivated on Asia’s bear farms: their teeth are broken and the claws are also pulled out for the sake of human safety; the bears are imprisoned in squeeze cages for years; and a catheter is daily inserted into a bear’s gall bladder or a tube is implanted inside its body in order to collect the dripped bile—captive bears moan in severe pain whenever the bile is extracted. When the bears cannot produce sufficient bile, they are often left to die of starvation. It must be impossible to justify the bile extraction from living bears because (1) medicinal/herbal alternatives are similar to bear bile; (2) there is no evidence to suggest that bear farming has any beneficial effects on wild bear populations; and (3) ethical problems lie not only in the painful bile extraction but also the whole lifecycle of captive bears. In conclusion, human welfare (health care) based on traditional medicine is upheld by sacrificing bear welfare. Since a trial calculation suggests that it is economically unfeasible to keep a proper balance between bear welfare and the traditional pharmacopeia, the cultivation of herbal alternatives seems to be a possible solution to phase out bear faming and maintain the practice of traditional medicine in Asia.     

Does Organic Farming Face Distinctive Livestock Welfare Issues? – A Conceptual Analysis

The recent development and growth oforganic livestock farming and the relateddevelopment of national and internationalregulations has fueled discussions amongscientists and philosophers concerning theproper conceptualization of animal welfare.These discussions on livestock welfare inorganic farming draw on the conventionaldiscussions and disputes on animal welfare thatinvolve issues such as different definitions ofwelfare (clinical health, absence of suffering,sum of positive and negative experiences,etc.), the possibility for objective measuresof animal welfare, and the acceptable level ofwelfare. It seems clear that livestock welfareis a value-laden concept and that animalwelfare science cannot be made independent ofquestions of values and ethics. The questioninvestigated here is whether those values thatunderpin organic farming, in particular, alsoaffect the interpretation of livestock welfare,and, if so, how. While some of the issuesraised in connection with organic farming arerelatively uncontroversial, others are not. Theintroduction of organic farming values seems tointroduce new criteria for what counts as goodanimal welfare, as well as a different ethicalbasis for making moral decisions on welfare.Organic farming embodies distinctive systemicor communitarian ethical ideas and the organicvalues are connected to a systemic conceptionof nature, of agriculture, of the farm, and ofthe animal. The new criteria of welfare arerelated to concepts such as naturalness,harmony, integrity, and care. While the organicvalues overlap with those involved in theconventional discussion of animal welfare, someof them suggest a need to set new prioritiesand to re-conceptualize animal welfare – forexample, with respect to ``naturalness,' inrelation to the possibilities for expression ofnatural behavior and in relation to animalintegrity as a concept for organismic harmony.The organic perspective also seems to suggest awider range of solutions to welfare problemsthan changes in farm routines or operations onthe animals. The systemic solutions include thechoice and reproduction of suitable breeds,changes in the farm structure, and changes inthe larger production and consumption system – including consumer perceptions andpreferences. But the organic values may alsocall for sacrifices of individual welfare in aconventional sense in order to advance welfarefrom the perspective of organic farming.Whether this is good or bad cannot be decidedwithout entering into an inquiry and discussionof the values and ethics involved.     

The Ethics and Politics of Animal Welfare in New Zealand: Broiler Chicken Production as a Case Study

The cause of poor welfare in broilers is multifactorial, but genotype is a major contributor. Modern broilers have been bred for rapid growth, and this leads to increases in lameness and ascites as the legs and hearts of the heavier birds find it difficult to cope with the extra demands placed on them. Visible lameness indicative of pain is more common in New Zealand than in Europe. The government, however, insists that New Zealand welfare standards are higher than Europe. The government also appears to have a strong antipathy to those demanding better welfare for broilers. Reasons for this antipathy and disparities between government statements and research results are discussed. Government publications reveal that animal welfare is seen as a question of image for market access and that there is little concern with animal welfare as an ethical imperative for its own sake. The Animal Welfare Act in theory makes it an offence to ill treat an animal, but in practice allows exemptions for industrial agriculture. The interests of animals may be better protected by an independent animal welfare advisory service.