DOCSLIB.ORG

Introduction to Animal Law by Paul Waldau These Materials Support

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Introduction to Animal Law by Paul Waldau These Materials Support Introduction to Animal Law By Paul Waldau These materials support Lecture One in the series of "Animal Law" lectures by Paul Waldau. Lecture One-Introduction to Animal Law This series of lectures on animal law engage how legal systems encounter the animals outside our own species. This first lecture in the series introduces the most basic topics that fall naturally under the general heading "animal law." Thus, in this first lecture we look generally at the extent to which legal systems, specific cases, legislation, and background cultural values impact ways in which judges, administrators, politicians, lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and lay people think about animals other than humans. We also focus on the most noteworthy changes now found in the substantive areas of tort law, wills and trusts, family law, and criminal law. We also look at the issue of standing, and at the end we briefly summarize the most general differences in the "animal law" now in place regarding companion animals (some will use the word "pets" for this area), research animals, food animals, and wildlife. The lecture is prefaced by the background of the lecturer and some observations regarding language about animals, controversy about "animal rights," and the versatility of law in dealing with the lives outside our own species. These written materials provide a general outline of the lecture, as well as various background materials and citations. Whenever a quote is used in the lecture, the entire quote is included in these written materials along with sufficient bibliographic information to locate the passage cited. Animal Law as a Field The term "animal law" today covers (1) the extent to which legal systems, specific cases, legislation, and background cultural values have affected (and will surely continue to affect) how judges, administrators, politicians, lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and lay people see and speak about animals other than humans; and (2) what is possible in legal systems. Staying Aware of How We Talk about "Animals" The standard vocabulary in law circles tracks the general society's preference for talking as if humans are not animals-hence the prevailing phrase is "humans and animals." Scientific terminology is different, of course, given that humans are primates, mammals, vertebrates, etc. In this lecture a variety of phrases drawn from many different disciplines discussing living beings are used-these include "nonhuman animals," "other animals," and "other-than-human animals." Basic Legal Division The lecture often refers to a basic dualism found in American law (and many other legal systems) that is very significant in current discussions about how law impacts the beings outside our species-the concept legal person includes humans and some human enterprises, such as corporations, while the concept legal things includes all other living beings and inanimate objects. Quote used in text from website of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (opa.faseb.org) regarding the recent launch of an animal law website by the prominent and very active pro-research consortium known as National Association of Biomedical Research, Animal activists and animal rights lawyers have stepped up the campaign to change existing laws as they relate to animals. This campaign involves legislative initiatives at the state and federal level and the establishment of new common law through the courts. These initiatives have the potential to profoundly affect animal research. NABR believes the biomedical research community should better understand existing laws affecting animals as well as the many new legal challenges and theories advocated by animal rights lawyers and activists. [This quote can be found at http://opa.faseb.org/pages/PolicyIssues/animalresearch_links.htm] Questions Asked Early in the lecture, a series of questions is identified as seminal for this first lecture and for the subsequent lectures as well. The following is that list of questions: ¨ What is now happening in the American legal system regarding animals? ¨ What is the meaning of "animal rights"? ¨ In what ways do case decisions and legislation reflect values from outside the law regarding other animals? In other words, what extra-legal sources are relevant to decisions in cases and the interpretation of legislation and administrative regulations? ¨ How well have decision-makers in law seen and/or understood other animals? ¨ What are the future prospects for using various parts of the legal system to address the status of other animals? ¨ How does the American legal system handle new scientific findings regarding the lives and complex realities of nonhuman animals? At strategic points in this first lecture, it is noted that two groups of animals receive particularly heavy attention in modern animal law discussions. The first is the more complex living beings outside the human species, such as elephants, the large-brained social animals we know as whales and dolphins, or our closest evolutionary cousins the other great apes. The second group is composed of cats and dogs-traditionally called "pets," a common name for this group in animal law circles is "companion animals." Polls consistently show that in the early 21st century an enormous majority of Americans-well over 90%-contend that their own dogs and cats are "family members." The latter is one of the principal forces putting into place what is referred to in these lectures as the "companion animal paradigm," which, it is argued, is one of the major driving forces in current changes in animal law. Each of these two groups (the group of 100 or so species comprising whales and dolphins, the nonhuman great apes, and elephants, on the one hand, and companion animals, on the other) reflects important changes that are crucial in understanding "animal law." The first category (the most complex of nonhuman animals) is the subject of much change and development in modern scientific findings about many of these animals. The second category (cats and dogs) have become important because of important shifts in our own habits in treating as integral members of our families those animals we call "pets" or "companion animals". New Findings If you are interested in the new scientific findings referred to, but not specified in any detail, in the lecture, here are some sources that will get you started. The work on our cousin great apes is for many reasons much deeper, but the books listed below on elephants and dolphins will provide many entry points to research on, respectively, elephants and cetaceans. Nonhuman Great Apes · Parker, Sue Taylor, Mitchell, Robert W., and Boccia, Maria, eds, 1994. Self-Awareness in Animals and Humans: Developmental Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) · Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue, and Roger Lewin. 1994. Kanzi: the ape at the brink of the human mind. New York: Wiley. · Waal, F. B. M. de. 1996. Good natured: the origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. · Both books by Steven Wise (2000. Rattling the cage: toward legal rights for animals. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Pub.; and 2002. Drawing the line: science and the case for animal rights. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books) cite many scientific studies on various great apes and other animals. Elephants · Forthman, Debra, et al., editors, An Elephant in the Room: The Science and Well-being of Elephants in Captivity. North Grafton: Center for Animals and Public Policy, 2009. Free versions of each chapter of this book in .pdf format are available at http://home.elephantsincaptivity.org/tabe. · Payne, Katharine. 1998. Silent thunder: in the presence of elephants. New York: Simon & Schuster. · Sukumar, R. 1994. Elephant days and nights: ten years with the Indian elephant. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Cetaceans · White, Thomas. 2007. In defense of dolphins: the new moral frontier. Malden MA: Blackwell Pub. · Payne, Roger. 1995. Among whales. New York: Scribner. Primary Objectives of Lecture What follows is the list of primary goals or objectives mentioned early in the lecture: ¨ Engage the spirit, substance and principles of existing law as it addresses nonhuman animals. ¨ Develop a sense of the many different traditions that contribute to legal and other understandings of nonhuman animals, especially as these traditions affect how we conceptualize and frame legal protections with which court systems and lawyers must work. ¨ Grasp the complex debates about "animal law" and "animal rights" now common in 21st century policy discussions. ¨ Assess future possibilities of using various legal concepts and tools, such as rights, legal personhood and "standing, to address the relationship of humans to living beings outside the human species. The Issue of Influential Changes or "Ferment" Society-wide change regarding views of nonhuman animals that is a factor in the development of the field of animal law is described in various ways in this lecture. A 2001 article which describes this "ferment" in much greater detail is Waldau, Paul 2001. "Will the Heavens Fall? De-Radicalizing the Precedent-Breaking Decision." Animal Law 7:75-118. Conceptual Possibilities At different points, I make the point that the American legal system is capable of offering protections to other-than-human animals if the public supports such a development. Here's one passage from early in the lecture that bears further study: As we go through various substantive areas, one thing which will become clear is that legal protections of nonhuman animals are conceptually possible-by this I mean that our legal system can rather naturally extend its protections to other-than-human animals because there is nothing, such as a logical contradiction or practical impossibility, that absolutely prevents us from using the legal system in this way if we want to. The Legal System as a Tool Box Featuring Multiple Tools The following examples are given in the lecture regarding non-rights tools in the "legal tool box" that can offer effective, fundamental legal protections to some animals.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Lay Persons and Community Values in Reviewing Animal Experimentation Jeff Leslie [email protected]
    University of Chicago Legal Forum Volume 2006 | Issue 1 Article 5 Lay Persons and Community Values in Reviewing Animal Experimentation Jeff Leslie [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf Recommended Citation Leslie, Jeff () "Lay Persons and Community Values in Reviewing Animal Experimentation," University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2006: Iss. 1, Article 5. Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2006/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Chicago Legal Forum by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lay Persons and Community Values in Reviewing Animal Experimentation Jeff Lesliet Is it morally acceptable to use animals in scientific experi- ments that will not benefit those animals, but instead solely benefit people? Most people would say yes; but at the same time most would view the use of animals as a regrettable necessity, to be pursued only when the benefits to people outweigh the harm to the animals, and only after everything possible is done to minimize that harm. Identifying benefits and harms may require specialized scientific and technological understanding, to be sure, but evaluating the tradeoff between them requires not technical expertise, but rather the capacity to make difficult moral judg- ments. We do not usually think of moral judgments as the unique terrain of any particular set of professionals or experts. Anyone capable of ethical reasoning has an equal claim to exper- tise, and a pluralistic society can be expected to exhibit a wide range of moral beliefs.
    [Show full text]
  • COURT of APPEALS of the STATE of NEW YORK ------X in the Matter of a Proceeding Under Article 70 of the CPLR for a Writ of Habeas Corpus
    COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------x In the Matter of a Proceeding under Article 70 of the CPLR for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, THE NONHUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT, INC., on Index Nos. 162358/15 behalf of TOMMY, (New York County); Petitioner-Appellant, 150149/16 (New York -against- County) PATRICK C. LAVERY, individually and as an of Circle L Trailer Sales, Inc., DIANE LAVERY, and CIRCLE L TRAILER SALES, INC., Respondents-Respondents, THE NONHUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT, INC., on behalf of KIKO, Petitioner-Appellant, -against- CARMEN PRESTI, individually and as an officer and director of The Primate Sanctuary, Inc., CHRISTIE E. PRESTI, individually and as an officer and director of The Primate Sanctuary, Inc., and THE PRIMATE SANCTUARY, INC., Respondents-Respondents. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------x MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR PERMISSION TO APPEAL TO THE COURT OF APPEALS Elizabeth Stein, Esq. Steven M. Wise, Esq. 5 Dunhill Road (of the Bar of the State of New Hyde Park, New York Massachusetts) 11040 By Permission of the Court (516) 747-4726 5195 NW 112th Terrace [email protected] Coral Springs, Florida 33076 (954) 648-9864 [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Table of Authorities ................................................................................... iv Argument .................................................................................................... 1 I. Preliminary Statement
    [Show full text]
  • Get Ready to Rumble! 06 Comments 08 Diversions 10 Arts & Culture Uniter.Ca 18 Listings
    THE I SSUE The university of Winnipeg student weekly 222006/03/16 VOLUME 60 INSIDE 02 News GET READY TO RUMBLE! 06 Comments 08 Diversions 10 Arts & Culture uniter.ca 18 Listings » UWSA ELECTIONS 2006 21 Features 22 Sports ON THE WEB [email protected] » E-MAIL SSUE 22 I VOL. 60 2006 16, H C R A M ELECTION 2006 02 MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT MARCH 20 -23 SENSE MEMORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY 12 SARAH CRAWLEY CASTS OFF THE SHACKLES OF REALITY INNIPEG STUDENTINNIPEG WEEKLY W MEDIA DEMONSTRATES DIALOGUE 21 BUT HAS THE IMAGE OF WOMEN IN MEDIA REALLY CHANGED? BOMBERS SPRING CLEAN 23 WILL 2006 BE A BETTER SEASON? HE UNIVERSITY OF T ♼ March 16, 2006 The Uniter contact: [email protected] SENIOR EDITOR: LEIGHTON KLASSEN NEWS EDITOR: DEREK LESCHASIN 02 NEWS E-MAIL: [email protected] E-MAIL: [email protected] UNITER STAFF UWSA Elections in Full Swing INCUMBENTS CHALLENGED ON TACTICS Managing Editor » Jo Snyder 01 [email protected] 02 Business Coordinator & Offi ce Manager » James D. Patterson [email protected] LINDSEY WIEBE bulk food sales, new computer peting for the position of Vice- kiosks to reduce lines at the Petrifi ed President Student Services. NEWS PRODUCTION EDITOR » Sole used Belik’s ideas include free web host- 03 Derek Leschasin [email protected] bookstore, locked compounds bike ing for student groups, an increased foot he University of Winnipeg storage, and an online carpool and patrol presence, and skills workshops 04 SENIOR EDITOR » Leighton Klassen Students’ Association election is [email protected] parking registry. on campus for things like cooking, silk- T under way, and it’s shaping up to Another item on her agenda is ad- screening and bike repair.
    [Show full text]
  • Rattling the Cage Defended Steven M
    Boston College Law Review Volume 43 Article 2 Issue 3 Number 3 5-1-2002 Rattling the Cage Defended Steven M. Wise Follow this and additional works at: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr Part of the Animal Law Commons, and the Science and Technology Law Commons Recommended Citation Steven M. Wise, Rattling the Cage Defended, 43 B.C.L. Rev. 623 (2002), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr/vol43/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Boston College Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RATTLING THE CAGE DEFENDED STEVEN M. WISE* Abstract: In Rattling the Cage: Toward Levi Rights for Animals, the author advocated basic legal rights—specifically common law rights—for chimpanzees, bonobos, and other nonhuman animals. In this Article, the author responds to many of the major criticisms of Rattling the Cage. The author confronts critics of his historical arguments for legal rights for nonhuman animals, tracing those arguments through ancient philosophy and nineteenth century English statutes. The author also expands upon his legal arguments for animal rights, reexamining various theories of rights and justifications for treating animals as property, Finally, borrowing from his upcoming book Drawing the Line: Science and The Case for Animal Rights, the author defends his advocacy of legal rights for nonhuman animals based on the relative autonomy nonhuman animals possess. INTRODUCTION "The 'animal rights' movement is gathering steam and Steven Wise is one of the pistons."l Thus Judge Richard Posner began a Yale Law Journal review of my book, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals, published in 2000.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams
    THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT A FEMINISTVEGETARIAN CRITICAL THEORY Praise for The Sexual Politics of Meat and Carol J. Adams “A clearheaded scholar joins the ideas of two movements—vegetari- anism and feminism—and turns them into a single coherent and moral theory. Her argument is rational and persuasive. New ground—whole acres of it—is broken by Adams.” —Colman McCarthy, Washington Post Book World “Th e Sexual Politics of Meat examines the historical, gender, race, and class implications of meat culture, and makes the links between the prac tice of butchering/eating animals and the maintenance of male domi nance. Read this powerful new book and you may well become a vegetarian.” —Ms. “Adams’s work will almost surely become a ‘bible’ for feminist and pro gressive animal rights activists. Depiction of animal exploita- tion as one manifestation of a brutal patriarchal culture has been explored in two [of her] books, Th e Sexual Politics of Meat and Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals. Adams argues that factory farming is part of a whole culture of oppression and insti- tutionalized violence. Th e treatment of animals as objects is parallel to and associated with patriarchal society’s objectifi cation of women, blacks, and other minorities in order to routinely exploit them. Adams excels in constructing unexpected juxtapositions by using the language of one kind of relationship to illuminate another. Employing poetic rather than rhetorical techniques, Adams makes powerful connec- tions that encourage readers to draw their own conclusions.” —Choice “A dynamic contribution toward creating a feminist/animal rights theory.” —Animals’ Agenda “A cohesive, passionate case linking meat-eating to the oppression of animals and women .
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 21, No. 2 Fall 2010 ______
    INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS NEWSLETTER _____________________________________________________ Volume 21, No. 2 Fall 2010 _____________________________________________________ GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS ISEE Membership: ISEE membership dues are now due annually by Earth Day—22 April—of each year. Please pay your 2010-2011 dues now if you have not already done so. You can either use the form on the last page of this Newsletter to mail a check to ISEE Treasurer Marion Hourdequin, or you can use PayPal with a credit card from the membership page of the ISEE website at: <http://www.cep.unt.edu/iseememb.html>. “Old World and New World Perspectives on Environmental Philosophy,” Eighth Annual Meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE), Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 14-17 June 2011: Please see the full call for abstracts and conference details in the section CONFERENCES AND CALLS below. Abstracts are due by 6 December 2010. ISEE Newsletter Going Exclusively Electronic: Starting with the Spring 2011 issue (Volume 22, no. 1), hardcopies of the ISEE Newsletter will no longer be produced and mailed to ISEE members via snail mail. ISEE members will continue to receive the Newsletter electronically as a pdf and, of course, can print their own hardcopies. New ISEE Newsletter Editor: Starting with the Spring 2011 issue, the new ISEE Newsletter Editor will be William Grove-Fanning. Please submit all ISEE Newsletter items to him at: <[email protected]>. Welcome William! ISEE Newsletter Issues: There was no 2010 Spring/Summer issue of the ISEE Newsletter. Because of the ISEE Newsletter Editor transition from Mark Woods to William Grove-Fanning, there will be no Winter 2011 issue of the ISEE Newsletter.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Vegan? Rev
    THE TRANSFORMATION OF ANIMALS INTO FOOD Many people believe that animals raised for food must be treated well because sick or dead animals would be of no use to agribusiness. This is not true. INDUSTRIALIZED CRUELTY: FACTORY FARMING The competition to produce inexpensive meat, eggs, and dairy products has led animal agribusiness to treat animals as objects and commodities. The worldwide trend is to replace small family farms with “factory farms”—large warehouses where animals are confined in crowded cages or pens or in restrictive stalls. “U.S. society is extremely naive about the nature of agricultural production. “[I]f the public knew more about the way in which agricultural and animal production infringes on animal welfare, the outcry would be louder.” BERNARD E. ROLLIN, PhD Farm Animal Welfare, Iowa State University Press, 2003 Hens in crowded cages suffer severe feather loss. Bernard Rollin, PhD, explains that it is “more economically efficient to put a greater number of birds into each cage, accepting lower productivity per bird but greater productivity per cage… individual animals may ‘produce,’ for example gain weight, in part because they are immobile, yet suffer because of the inability to move.… Chickens are cheap, cages are expensive.” 1 In a November 1993 article in favor of reducing space from 8 to 6 square feet per pig, industry journal National Hog 2 Farmer advised, “Crowding pigs pays.” Inside a broiler house. Birds Virtually all U.S. birds raised for food are factory farmed. 2 Inside the densely populated buildings, enormous amounts of waste accumulate. The result- ing ammonia levels commonly cause painful burns to the birds’ skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts.
    [Show full text]
  • Legal Research Paper Series
    Legal Research Paper Series NON HUMAN ANIMALS AND THE LAW: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ANIMAL LAW RESOURCES AT THE STANFORD LAW LIBRARY By Rita K. Lomio and J. Paul Lomio Research Paper No. 6 October 2005 Robert Crown Law Library Crown Quadrangle Stanford, California 94305-8612 NON HUMAN ANIMALS AND THE LAW: A BIBLIOGRPAHY OF ANIMAL LAW RESOURCES AT THE STANFORD LAW LIBRARY I. Books II. Reports III. Law Review Articles IV. Newspaper Articles (including legal newspapers) V. Sound Recordings and Films VI. Web Resources I. Books RESEARCH GUIDES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES Hoffman, Piper, and the Harvard Student Animal Legal Defense Fund The Guide to Animal Law Resources Hollis, New Hampshire: Puritan Press, 1999 Reference KF 3841 G85 “As law students, we have found that although more resources are available and more people are involved that the case just a few years ago, locating the resource or the person we need in a particular situation remains difficult. The Guide to Animal Law Resources represents our attempt to collect in one place some of the resources a legal professional, law professor or law student might want and have a hard time finding.” Guide includes citations to organizations and internships, animal law court cases, a bibliography, law schools where animal law courses are taught, Internet resources, conferences and lawyers devoted to the cause. The International Institute for Animal Law A Bibliography of Animal Law Resources Chicago, Illinois: The International Institute for Animal Law, 2001 KF 3841 A1 B53 Kistler, John M. Animal Rights: A Subject Guide, Bibliography, and Internet Companion Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000 HV 4708 K57 Bibliography divided into six subject areas: Animal Rights: General Works, Animal Natures, Fatal Uses of Animals, Nonfatal Uses of Animals, Animal Populations, and Animal Speculations.
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluating the Slaughter Techniques in Cattle
    Influence of conventional and Kosher slaughter techniques in cattle on carcass and meat quality By BABATUNDE AGBENIGA B. Inst. Agrar. (Hons). Food Production and Processing University of Pretoria Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree M.Sc. (Agric) Meat Science In the Department of Animal and Wildlife Sciences University of Pretoria Pretoria 2011 Supervisor: Prof. E.C. Webb. © University of Pretoria DECLARATION I declare that this thesis for the degree M.Sc. (Agric) Meat Science at the University of Pretoria has not been submitted by me for a degree at any other University Babatunde Agbeniga November, 2011 CONTENTS Acknowledgements i List of abbreviation ii List of figures iv List of tables v Abstract vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Literature review 4 2.1 Slaughter 4 2.2 Treatment of animals prior to slaughter 9 2.3 Effects of stress on meat quality 10 2.4 Types of muscles, their structure and composition, location and 12 metabolism 2.5 Blood and body fluid 24 2.6 Slaughter methods in international abattoirs 25 2.7 Legislation and regulations guiding animal slaughter 25 2.8 The standard slaughter methods and their effects on meat and 26 carcass quality 2.9 Kosher slaughter method and its principles 35 2.10 Effects of the Kosher slaughter technique on meat and carcass 39 quality parameters 2.11 Electrical stimulation of carcasses 43 Chapter 3: Materials and methods 45 3.1 Pre-slaughter processes 45 3.2 Slaughter processes 45 3.3 Sample collection 55 3.4 Methods 55 3.5 Statistical analyses 57 Chapter
    [Show full text]
  • Even If You Like Meat Leaflet
    Oppose the Cruelties of Factory Farming Thank you for accepting this booklet. As you read on, please bear in mind that opposing the cruelties of factory farming is not an all-or-nothing proposition: By simply eating less meat, you can help prevent farmed animals from suffering. “When we picture a farm, we picture scenes from Old MacDonald and Charlotte’s Web, not warehouses with , chickens.… When we look, it’s shocking. Our rural idylls have been transformed into stinking factories.” The Los Angeles Times “The High Price of Cheap Food,” 1/21/04 Above: The average breeding sow spends most of her life in a two-foot-wide stall, without enough room to turn around;1 others (below) live in crowded pens. Today’s egg-laying hens are warehoused inside battery cages. Most U.S. livestock production has shifted from small family farms to factory farms— huge ware houses where the animals are confined in crowded cages or pens or in restrictive stalls. Due to consumer demand for inexpensive meat, eggs, and dairy, these animals are treated as mere objects rather than individuals who can suffer. Hidden from public view, the cruelty that occurs on factory farms is easy to ignore. But more and more people are becoming aware of how farmed animals are treated 2 and deciding that it’s too cruel to support. “In my opinion, if most urban meat eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to see how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being ‘harvested’ and then being ‘processed’ in a poultry processing plant, they would not be impressed and some, perhaps many of them would swear off eating chicken and perhaps all meat.
    [Show full text]
  • Jm Coetzee and Animal Rights
    J.M. COETZEE AND ANIMAL RIGHTS: ELIZABETH COSTELLO’S CHALLENGE TO PHILOSOPHY Richard Alan Northover SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA PRETORIA, 0002, SOUTH AFRICA Supervisor: Professor David Medalie OCTOBER 2009 © University of Pretoria Abstract The thesis relates Coetzee’s focus on animals to his more familiar themes of the possibility of fiction as a vehicle for serious ethical issues, the interrogation of power and authority, a concern for the voiceless and the marginalised, a keen sense of justice and the question of secular salvation. The concepts developed in substantial analyses of The Lives of Animals and Disgrace are thereafter applied to several other works of Coetzee. The thesis attempts to position J.M. Coetzee within the animal rights debate and to assess his use of his problematic persona, Elizabeth Costello, who controversially uses reason to attack the rationalism of the Western philosophical tradition and who espouses the sympathetic imagination as a means of developing respect for animals. Costello’s challenge to the philosophers is problematised by being traced back to Plato’s original formulation of the opposition between philosophers and poets. It is argued that Costello represents a fallible Socratic figure who critiques not reason per se but an unqualified rationalism. This characterisation of Costello explains her preoccupation with raising the ethical awareness of her audience, as midwife to the birth of ideas, and perceptions of her as a wise fool, a characterisation that is confirmed by the use of Bakhtin’s notion of the Socratic dialogue as one of the precursors of the modern novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare
    WellBeing International WBI Studies Repository 1-2013 Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare Robert C. Jones California State University, Chico, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/ethawel Part of the Animal Studies Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Nature and Society Relations Commons Recommended Citation Jones, R. C. (2013). Science, sentience, and animal welfare. Biology and Philosophy, 1-30. This material is brought to you for free and open access by WellBeing International. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the WBI Studies Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Science, Sentience, and Animal Welfare Robert C. Jones California State University, Chico KEYWORDS animal, welfare, ethics, pain, sentience, cognition, agriculture, speciesism, biomedical research ABSTRACT I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition. Introduction The contemporary connection between research on animal1 cognition and the moral status of animals goes back almost 40 years to the publication of two influential books: Donald Griffin’s The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience (1976) and Peter Singer’s groundbreaking Animal Liberation (1975).
    [Show full text]