the rat. These human decisions are driven by the same incentives that motivate non‐human animals since they reflect the will of us as individuals and as a species to survive and achieve a sense of well‐being. We need good food and we seek highly nutritious eggs at little cost. We need good hygiene and seek to remove rats that carry germs. We choose to provide for our pets in sickness and in health because they enrich the lives of us and our children. We admire the tiger not only for its fearful symmetry but as a symbol of freedom itself, so we offer it more freedom than we give the laying hen. However, in either case it is impossible to escape the conclusion that both are living on our terms.’
The history of human attitudes to animals (and to other humans) is awash with ignorance and inhumanity. The European Judeo‐Christian belief was inscribed in Genesis as ‘every beast of the earth and every fowl of the air…I have given for meat’. The attitude of other religions to non‐human animals varies. Of the Eastern religions, Taoism and Buddhism recognise the sentience of our fellow mortals and treat them with respect. More of this later. So far as I can gather, Confucianism regards non‐human animals as commodities or tools, and therefore ‘off the page’ so far as philosophy is concerned. Islam and Judaism display rituals of respect for their food animals at the point of slaughter but these bring no comfort to the conscious animal while it bleeds to death. The Hindu veneration of the Holy Cow is driven more by fear of divine retribution than any concern for animal welfare.
The French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596–1650) sought to justify the Judeo‐Christian attitude by asserting that humans are fundamentally different from all other animals because we alone possess mind, or consciousness. His notorious phrase Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am – further implied non cogitant ergo non sunt – they don’t think therefore they aren’t. He saw non‐human animals as automata, equivalent to clockwork toys, and thereby provided an ‘ethical’ basis for treating them simply as commodities on the assumption that it is not possible to be cruel to animals because they lack the capacity to suffer. His view may appear to us as totally lacking in any understanding of animals. However, he was not alone. For most of history, the moral concepts of right and wrong were applied only to intentions and actions within the human species. The utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was an exception when he wrote of animals ‘the question is not can they reason…. but can they suffer?’. The supreme challenge to this limited concept of morality came from Albert Schweitzer who wrote ‘the great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all that comes within his reach’. This became the basis for his principle of reverence for life (10).
The last Century has seen a steady progression of the evolution of morality into law. The UK Protection of Animals Act (1911) made it an offence to ‘cause unnecessary suffering by doing or omitting to do any act’ (59). The 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam acknowledged that ‘since animals are sentient beings, members should pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals’ (73). The UK Animal Welfare Act (2006) imposed a duty of care on responsible persons to provide for the basic needs of their animals (both farmed animals and pets) (25). This act signified a considerable advance, since it is no longer necessary to prove that suffering has occurred, it is only necessary to establish that animals are being kept or being bred in such a way that is liable to cause suffering. These proscriptive laws are written in broad terms, which gives them the flexibility to deal with a range of specific circumstances. However, they beg several questions: ‘what constitutes suffering, especially necessary suffering? ‘what are the welfare requirement of animals?’, and (above all) ‘what is meant by sentience?’ One of the main aims of this book is to guide all those directly and indirectly involved in matters of animal welfare (which means almost everybody) towards a deeper understanding of the complex biological and psychological properties of animal minds that determine their perception and their behaviour, thus determining the principles that should govern our approach to their welfare.
Despite the evidence of progress in the law relating to the protection of animals, there is still too much evidence of cruelty, both deliberate and mindless. Deliberate cruelty is a crime punishable by law and relatively rare. Mindless cruelty is far more common. It reflects a mindset conditioned by ignorance or training to the assumption that animals are automata, thus incapable of suffering. We are constantly presented with images of abuses to animals from all over the world. I cite only three examples.
A few years ago, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) released a shocking video of behaviour in a small abattoir. Lambs for slaughter were hung up by driving a hook through their legs behind the Achilles tendon prior to stunning and having their throats cut. In this video, four lambs were hung on hooks and left to struggle while the slaughterman went off to smoke a cigarette. From the lambs’ perspective, this was cruelty in the extreme. I suggest, however, that from a human perspective this may not have been deliberate cruelty but an extreme case of mindlessness. It had never occurred to him, or been explained to him, that sentient animals are capable of suffering. If he had been really cruel, he would have watched.
My most extreme personal experience of the mindless ill‐treatment of animals came from a large commercial pig abattoir in Beijing. Pigs transported to the abattoir in crates had been gaffed by the neck and hauled out of their crates on long poles like inert sacks of corn. This was not only appallingly cruel, to our eyes, but spectacularly counterproductive because the pigs fought them every inch of the way. The Bristol team designed a humane handling system whereby the pigs were able to move out of the vehicles and down a well‐designed passage at their own speed with minimal stress and human interference. The abattoir owners were delighted with this new system because they were able to reduce the number of staff needed to ‘handle’ the pigs by over 50%.
These two instances of mindless ill‐treatment may be attributed to ignorance. However, ill‐treatment on an industrial scale, carried out with the approval of the highest authorities, remains a problem in the so‐called developed world and to the present day. The number of chickens killed and consumed by humans every day is approximately 70 million. Furthermore, most of them are unlikely to experience much that could be quality of life before they die. In the words of Ruth Harrison, the godmother of the Animal Welfare movement: ‘If one person is unkind to one animal, it is considered as cruelty but when a lot of people are unkind to a lot of animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people’ (29). It was Ruth who pointed out the absurdity of the UK Protection of Birds Act (1964) which required any caged bird to be given enough space to flap its wings but then stated ‘provided this subsection does not apply to poultry’. This subsection meant that, at the time, the Act did not apply to about 99% of caged birds. This is perhaps the most egregious example of the fallacy of classifying animals as commodities in term of their utility to us, rather than as sentient beings whose minds have been shaped by their genetic inheritance and their individual experience of life. It was sustained public pressure generated by pioneers like Ruth Harrison that compelled the European Union to pronounce in the Treaty of Amsterdam that ‘Members shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals’ (73). This is a clumsy sentence from a clumsy clause that is also littered with caveats and exceptions for regional and religious practices. Nevertheless, it did recognise in law the principle that animals used by us for food, scientific enquiry, or health and safety legislation should not be considered simply as commodities but treated with respect and concern for their wellbeing.
Animal Behaviour Science
This exploration of the minds of sentient animals draws heavily on scientific studies of animal psychology and behaviour. The scientific investigation of animal behaviour is concentrated on two main themes. The first is the study of how animals behave in their natural habitat. This can establish their behavioural needs and the actions they perform to meet these needs. From this, we can build up a reasonably comprehensive picture of the resources (e.g. diet, physical and social
