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Hello, my name is Dr. Dorothy McKeegan and I'm a lecturer in animal welfare and
ethics at the University of Glasgow.
I'm going to talk to you today about the ethics of meeting animals' welfare needs.
Animal welfare is a term that has arisen in our society
to express our moral concern about the quality of life experienced by animals,
particularly captive animals.
For most of us, the basis of our moral concern for
animals is that we believe many animals to be sentient.
That is, they have the capacity to feel.
They can have positive or negative mental experiences.
Interests flow from these feelings.
That is, if an animal can suffer by feeling pain,
then it has an interest in avoiding pain.
Because we have complete control over the lives of captive animals,
our behavior towards them becomes important.
Animal ethics is complex because not everyone agrees how we
should determine our moral duties to animals,
and this gives rise to controversy over a range of issues.
For example, should we kill and eat animals?
Should we use them for medical research?
And should we keep them in zoos?
Some argue that the best approach to solving these questions is a cost-benefit
analysis, and that is the consequences of our actions that matter most.
The idea is, is that actions that might harm some sentient beings are justified
if they bring about greater benefits to other individuals.
The aim is to achieve the greatest good for
the greatest number, whether that be animals or humans.
A different viewpoint is that our moral behavior towards animals
should be based on respecting the rights of individuals, and
this gives rise to the animal rights viewpoint.
On this view, animals have rights that cannot be overridden
merely because overriding them would give rise to beneficial consequences, and
these rights could be the right to life, or the right not to suffer.
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These differing ethical perspectives have important practical consequences.
On the cost-benefit view, farming is justified if the welfare costs
to the animals are outweighed by the benefits of their products.
However, the animal rights view does not accept agriculture, because animals
are used as a means to an end, and their individual rights are not respected.
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Welfare legislation protects animals from deliberate abuse, and aims to ensure
a reasonable quality of life for captive animals, by setting minimum standards.
The extent of regulation varies widely from country to country.
And if you keep chickens, you should make yourself aware of
the rules in your country that govern how your birds must be kept.
The regulations may vary depending whether you have a few birds as pets or
whether you keep poultry commercially.
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However, there are many factors that affect purchasing choices and
animal welfare is only one of these.
People are influenced by pricing, food safety concerns,
food quality and the knowledge of production methods.
It could be said that the public are generally not very well informed about
poultry production methods and their welfare implications.
This is partly because the media portrayal of farming is not very helpful,
tending to show the extremes of poor welfare for
shock value rather than the reality of normal production.
High welfare products usually cost more.
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This is because the production systems involved are less intensive, so
the costs per bird are higher.
However, these systems are still profitable
because good bird welfare has a link with physical performance.
If a bird is healthy, not only does it produce and
grow better, it needs less treatment.
Research has examined people's willingness to pay for high welfare products and
has found that it is affected by factors such as income, age and nationality.
However, what has also been shown is that although people express a willingness
to pay for
high welfare products, this is not always reflected in what they actually buy.
So what do you think?
Are the welfare costs of farming outweighed by benefits to
the greater good?
Or is there something fundamentally wrong with killing animals?
And do your purchasing habits as a consumer reflect your concern for
animal welfare?
Or are they influenced by other factors?