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Equine Welfare As a Mainstream Phenomenon ETHICS IN VETERINARY MEDICINE Equine Welfare as a Mainstream Phenomenon Bernard E. Rollin The 20th century has witnessed a bewildering array of ethical revolutions, from civil rights to environmentalism to feminism. Often ignored is the rise of massive societal concern across the world regarding animal treatment. Regulation of animal research exists in virtually all Western countries, and reform of “factory farming” is regnant in Europe and rapidly emerging in the United States. In 2012, a series of articles in The New York Times focused welfare attention squarely on the horse industry. Opponents of concern for animals often dismiss the phenomenon as rooted in emotion and extremist lack of appreciation of how unrestricted animal use has improved human life. Such a view ignores the rational ethical basis for elevating legal protection for animals. Author’s address: Department of Philosophy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523; e-mail: [email protected]. © 2013 AAEP. 1. Introduction rather than being created ex nihilo (out of nothing), Businesses and professions must stay in accord with society has looked to its ethic for humans, appropri- social ethics or risk losing their autonomy. A major ately modified, to find moral categories applicable to social ethical issue that has emerged in the past four animals. This concept of legally encoded rights for decades is the treatment of animals in various areas animals has emerged as a plausible vehicle for of human use. Society’s moral concern has out- reform. grown the traditional ethic of animal cruelty that began in biblical times and is encoded in the laws of 2. Background all civilized societies. There are five major reasons Although society has always had an articulated for this new social concern, most importantly, the ethic regarding animal treatment, that ethic has replacement of husbandry-based agriculture with been very minimalistic, leaving most of the issue of industrial agriculture. Other concerns include de- animal treatment to people’s personal ethic rather mographic changes in society, ethics changes in re- than to the social ethic. Since Biblical times, that cent history, rise of scholarly literature on ethics limited social ethic has forbidden deliberate, willful, and animals, and media interest. The loss of hus- sadistic, deviant, purposeless, unnecessary infliction bandry to industry has threatened the traditional of pain and suffering on animals, or outrageous ne- fair contract between humans and animals and re- glect, such as not feeding or watering. Beginning sulted in significant amounts of animal suffering in the early 19th century, this set of prohibitions arising on four different fronts. Because such suf- was articulated in the anti-cruelty statutes of the fering is not occasioned by cruelty, a new ethic for laws in all civilized societies.1 Even in Biblical and animals was required to express social concerns. medieval times, however, the social ethic inveighed Because ethics proceeds from preexisting ethics against cruelty. The Old Testament injunctions NOTES AAEP PROCEEDINGS ր Vol. 59 ր 2013 9 ETHICS IN VETERINARY MEDICINE against yoking an ox and an ass together to a plow, the source of funding for the majority of biomedical or muzzling the ox when it is being used to mill research in the United States)—both groups not grain, or seething a calf in its mother’s milk, all inclined to exaggerate the influence of animal eth- reflect concern with and abhorrence for what the ics—by the early 1990s, Congress had been consis- Rabbinical tradition called tsaar baalei chaiim; the tently receiving more letters, phone calls, faxes, suffering of living things. In the Middle Ages, e-mails, and personal contacts on animal-related is- St. Thomas Aquinas, while affirming that, lacking a sues than on any other topic.a,b Whereas 30 years soul, animals enjoyed no moral status, nonetheless ago one would have found no bills pending in the US strictly forbade cruelty on the grounds that permit- Congress relating to animal welfare, recent years ting such behavior toward animals would encourage have witnessed dozens of such bills annually, with its spreading to human beings, an insight buttressed even more proliferating at the state level. The Fed- by more than two decades of recent research.2 For eral bills have ranged from attempts to prevent du- the overwhelming majority of human history, until plication in animal research, to saving marine some four decades ago, the anti-cruelty ethic served mammals from becoming victims of tuna fishermen, as the only socially articulated moral principle for to preventing importation of ivory, to curtailing the animal treatment. parrot trade. Ethical concerns about the welfare of The past 50 years have witnessed a dazzling horses has resulted in passage of the Federal Horse array of social ethical revolutions in Western soci- Protection Act, banning “soring” of Tennessee Walk- ety. Moral movements such as feminism, civil ing Horses, and Federal legislation banning horse rights, environmentalism, affirmative action, con- slaughter has been proposed and introduced in the sumer advocacy, children’s rights, the student move- US Congress several times. ment, anti-war activism, and public rejection of State laws passed in large numbers have increas- biotechnology have forever changed the way govern- ingly prevented the use of live or dead shelter ani- ments and public institutions comport themselves. mals for biomedical research and training and have This is equally true for private enterprise: to be focused on myriad other areas of animal welfare. successful, businesses must be seen as operating Eight states have abolished the steel-jawed leg-hold solidly in harmony with changing and emerging so- trap, as have some 90 countries.3 When Colorado’s cial ethics. For example, it is arguable that morally politically appointed Wildlife Commission failed to based boycotting of South African business was in- act on a recommendation from the Division of Wild- strumental in bringing about the end of apartheid, life to abolish the spring bear hunt (because hunters and similar boycotting of some farm products in the were liable to shoot lactating mothers, leaving their United States led to significant improvements in the orphaned cubs to die of starvation), the general pub- living situations of farm workers. lic ended the hunt through a popular referendum. Not only is success tied to accord with social ethics Seventy percent of Colorado’s population voted for but, even more fundamentally, freedom and auton- this as a Constitutional Amendment.4 In Ontario, omy are as well. Every profession—be it medicine, the environmental minister stopped a similar hunt law, or agriculture—is given freedom by the social by executive fiat in response to social ethical con- ethic to pursue its aims. In return, society basi- cern.5 California abolished the hunting of moun- cally says to professions it does not understand well tain lions, and state fishery management agencies enough to regulate, “you regulate yourselves the have been taking a hard look at catch-and-release way we would regulate yourself if we understood programs on humane grounds.6 what you do, which we don’t. But we will know if According to the director of the American Quarter you don’t self-regulate properly and then we will Horse Association, the number of state bills related regulate you, despite our lack of understanding.” to horse welfare filled a telephone-book–sized vol- For example, some years ago, Congress became con- ume in 1998.7 Public sentiment for equine welfare cerned about excessive use of antibiotics in animal in California carried a bill through the State Legis- feeds and concluded that veterinarians were a major lature, making the slaughter of horses or shipping of source of the problem. As a result, Congress was horses for slaughter a felony in that state. Munic- about to ban extra-label drug use by veterinarians, a ipalities have passed ordinances ranging from the move that would have killed veterinary medicine as abolition of rodeos, circuses, and zoos to the protec- we know it. However, through extensive efforts to tion of prairie dogs, and, in the case of Cambridge, educate legislators, such legislation did not proceed Massachusetts (a biomedical Mecca), the strictest to law. laws in the world regulating research. One major social ethical concern that has devel- Even more dramatic, perhaps, is the worldwide oped over the past four decades is a significant em- proliferation of laws to protect laboratory animals. phasis on the treatment of animals used by society In the United States, in 1985, for example, two ma- for various purposes. It is easy to demonstrate jor pieces of legislation regulating and constraining the degree to which these concerns have seized the the use and treatment of animals in research (which public imagination. According to members of both I helped draft and defend) were passed by the US the US National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Congress in 1985 despite vigorous opposition from the National Institutes of Health (the latter being the powerful biomedical research and medical lob- 10 2013 ր Vol. 59 ր AAEP PROCEEDINGS ETHICS IN VETERINARY MEDICINE bies. This opposition included well-financed, highly animal welfare law in Colorado in 2008, abolishing visible advertisements and media promotions indi- sow stalls and veal crates. The agriculture com- cating that human health and medical progress munity in the United States has been far behind would
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