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On the need to redress an inadequacy in animal welfare science: toward an internally coherent framework

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Abstract

The time is ripe for a greater interrogation of assumptions and commitments underlying an emerging common ground on the ethics of animal research as well on the 3 R (replacement, refinement, reduction) approach that parallels, and perhaps even further shapes, it. Recurring pressures to re-evaluate the moral status of some animals in research comes as much from within the relevant sciences as without. It seems incredible, in the light of what we now know of such animals as chimpanzees, to deny that these animals are properly accorded high moral status. Barring the requirement that they be human, it is difficult to see what more animals such as chimpanzees would have to possess to acquire it. If the grounds for ascribing high moral status are to be non-arbitrary and responsive to our best knowledge of those individuals who possess the relevant features, we should expect that a sound ethical experimental science will periodically reassess the moral status of their research subjects as the relevant knowledge demands. We already can observe this reassessment as scientists committed to humane experimental science incorporate discoveries of enrichment tools and techniques into their housing and use of captive research animals. No less should this reassessment include a critical reflection on the possible elevation of moral status of certain research animals in light of what is discovered regarding their morally significant properties, characteristics or capacities, or so I will argue. To do anything short of this threatens the social and moral legitimacy of animal research.

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Notes

  1. As explained by Van Sluyters et al.,

    • Replacement: Use of nonanimal systems or less-sentient animal species to partially or fully replace animals.

    • Reduction: Reduction in the number of animals utilized to the minimum required to obtain scientifically valid data.

    • Refinement: Use of a method that lessens or eliminates pain and/or distress and therefore enhances animal well-being (Van Sluyters et al. 2003: 10).

  2. For agency policies in these countries see: http://apc.homeoffice.gov.uk/; http://www.ccac.ca/en/CCAC_Main.htm; http://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/references/phspol.htm#principle.

  3. Frey, a well known proponent of a sliding-scale approach to animal moral status, adds quality of life to considerations of psychological capacities and complexity (Frey 2005), when assessing the moral value of an animal’s life.

  4. Of course, there will be shared ethical concerns. We can reasonably expect a concern to avoid causing undue stress or suffering, as well as for unnecessarily adversely affecting the well-being of the animal subject, her group or even the greater ecosystem (e.g., Sherwin et al. 2003; Sherwin 2006).

  5. By 2000 at least 23 countries regulated animal research, though to varying degrees (Orlans 2002), while by 2005 at least 30 countries regulated animal research (Taylor et al. 2008).

  6. Other moral limits clearly drawn from the greater socio-cultural context include the special consideration given animals from species commonly chosen as pets. Examples are provided by legislated special considerations for dogs, cats and horses (see Rollin 2006).

  7. For two examples of this type of argument see: the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (2003); Botting and Morrison (1997).

  8. There are at least two distinct ways to understand a sliding-scale approach that might be at work here. One understanding would have it that the states or capacities that ground animals’ respective interests are importantly different relative to supporting cognitive or affective capacities. For example, pain in rats is qualitatively different from pain in dogs which is again different from pain in humans because of supporting cognitive or affective capacities that inform these qualitative differences (e.g., pain matters more to dogs than rats but less than to humans). A second understanding would have it that the relevant states or capacities supporting the relevant interests of any given animal may simply be qualitatively different as ‘one’s gaze’ moves across the relevant portion of the animal kingdom. Perhaps, for example, pain in rats has a lower degree of unpleasantness than in dogs, which is, in turn, of a lower degree of unpleasantness than in humans. These different understandings do not affect the substance of my concerns with this general approach to animal moral status.

  9. With regards to great ape experimentation Knight notes that, as of 2008, “legislative or policy bans or restrictions were in place within seven European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand” (Knight 2008: 11).

  10. This claim may seem too strong to some ethologists (see Kennedy 1992). However, that many humane experimentalists are willing to ascribe pain capacity to mammals and other vertebrates incurs attendant moral obligations (Beauchamp 1997).

  11. I must tread very carefully here so as not to imply a cognitive capacity implausibly ascribed to primates other than humans. We do well to allow for a continuum of self-cognizance that requires varying degrees of self-understanding (with or without an associated phenomenal consciousness) in a social space. This can include the ability to discriminate ‘self’ from other in contexts where territoriality or food possession is socially important through to what, in many humans, we regard as ‘full-blown’ self-consciousness (Bekoff and Sherman 2004; de Waal 2008).

  12. One need not have a conflict situation limited in description to aggressor and defender. Conciliatory responses to aggression are also important for this point (de Waal 1996).

  13. I acknowledge that learned helplessness can complicate the approach I am advocating here, as can other behavioural problems acquired while in laboratory contexts (see Brüne et al. 2006). These are the kinds of important details which require the consensus building efforts of stake holders, including those directly charged with the psychological well-being of the animals in question.

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Acknowledgments

Research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, NNF 80045 “States of Mind: Emerging Issues in Neuroethics”. Thanks also to Letitia Meynell, a symposium audience from the Neuroscience Institute at Dalhousie University (particularly Alan Fine), and an anonymous reviewer at Philosophy and Biology for feedback on certain points or arguments.

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    Andrew Fenton

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Fenton, A. On the need to redress an inadequacy in animal welfare science: toward an internally coherent framework. Biol Philos 27, 73–93 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-011-9291-1

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