Philosophical ethics and the improvement of farmed animal lives

Abstract

Philosophical reflection on human beings’ morally grounded relationships with nonhuman animals has come a long way since the animal welfare/animal rights debates of the 1970s and 1980s. The basis for granting moral consideration to nonhuman animals expanded far beyond Peter Singer’s discussion of sentience (Singer, 1975) or Tom Regan’s view that human obligation’s toward individuals from other species are grounded in their being “subjects of a life” (Regan, 1983). Building on the work of Mary Midgley, a number of authors have developed relational theories that interpret human obligations to animals in terms of the specific relationships that we bear to them (Donovan, 1990; MacKinnon, 2004; Anderson, 2004). Clare Palmer’s book Animal Ethics in Context articulates an almost fully developed relational ethic in which she explains the basis for differential obligations to wildlife and domesticated animals. In general, humans do not have positive duties to extend care toward wild animals, while bringing an animal into our home establishes duties of care that include attending toward the creature’s biological and emotional needs (Palmer, 2010). With a number of important exceptions, philosophers have neglected the relationships that establish duties to farmed animals. This neglect is especially evident with respect to philosophical studies of livestock being raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), or, colloquially, factory farms (Figure 1). Open in a separate window Figure 1. Sows in gestation crates in an indoor swine production system.

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