Ethics of animal use

69 “ethics of animal use” by Peter Sandøe and Stine Christiansen of the University of Copenhagen is one of the first books directly designed to be used as a textbook to teach animal ethics in veterinary and animal science courses at university level. the authors have also prepared an internet based learning tool called “Animal ethics Dilemma”, accessible free of charge at http:// ae.imcode.com/en/servlet/StartDoc, which is structured around the same ethical framework as the book. The book deals with the most important challenges of present animal use and explains different possible solutions in light of five major theories in the current debate: contractarianism, utilitarism, the animal rights view, relationism and the view of respect for nature. The authors do not take any particular position, but rather try to offer tools for discussion in order to increase the reader’s own critical appraisal. each chapter has been written together with different experts in the various fields. The authors highlight (p. 17-18) the importance of ethics for veterinarians and animal scientists. Professionals in these fields should study animal ethics, because it is important for them to be able to make their positions understandable to people and to deal with the diversity of opinions regarding humane treatment of animals in a rational manner, avoiding the recourse to feelings that are often unstable and ambivalent and encourage double standards. In this way, the authors insert themselves explicitly into the tradition of rationalistic ethics, excluding any appeal to emotions, as opposed to other theories of animal ethics, such as feminist animal ethics. The core message of the first chapter is the fact that the rationale behind animal protection has changed dramatically. these changes have gone from the utilitarian view of the past (animals are there for humans’ use), to the anti-cruelty legislation of the 18th century and on to the promotion of animal welfare popular since the 1950s. the change from the anti-cruelty to the welfare legislation is explained by an analysis of the changing contextual conditions of farm animal use and production due to industrialisation and market-pressures. After the Second World War, public policies in Western countries promoting more abundant and cheaper food brought on an intensification of animal production. In northern europe, immediately after the Second World War it was typical for people to spend between 25% and 33% of their income on food, whereas nowadays this has been reduced to 10-15%. In the second chapter the authors present in detail the five major ethical theories of the debate. The contractarian view is described as being based on an agreement between rational, independent and self-interested persons who have something to gain from this agreement, as well as in which the maltreatment of animals is described as wrong only if some contractors refuse it explicitly. Unfortunately, the authors forget to mention some valuable recent works that show how at least some forms of this theory entail that non-human animals possess direct moral status, independent of their utility for rational agents (see for example Rowland, 1998; Scanlon, 1998). Utilitarianism is then described as the tradition that pointed out the relevance of an animal’s capacity for suffering. this should lead to the recognition of their moral status and force us to deal with the consequences of how we treat them. the most important reference here is to Peter Singer, but his position on killing animals goes back to an older article (1979), in which he argued that there are no problems in slaughtering animals for meat as long as they have had a good life and the slaughtering itself is painless, but it ignores the change in Singer’s later version of practical ethics (1993), where he inscribed the question of killing with a more sophisticated account of personal beings. this is, I think, an important difference, because Singer’s latest position seems to contrast with what the authors described as the utilitarian position that animal lives are replaceable. the animal rights view is described as the one directly opposed to the concept of animal use, since it puts some clear and definitive limits on our treatment of animals (it is mainly described as an abolitionist position). the relational view is the approach that highlights the importance of our relationships to animals and is based upon considering animals in a sort of hierarchical order (sociozoological scale) that is widely accepted in our society, or so argue the authors. the last position is the view of respect for nature, originally developed in the environmental debate, which concentrates on the moral value of species. Interesting is the fact that the authors conclude the chapter by highlighting Review