Animal sentience research: Synthesis and proposals

Crump, Andrew; Browning, Heather; Schnell, Alex; Burn, Charlotte C.; Birch, Jonathan

doi:10.51291/2377-7478.1770

Cited by 27 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…In 2021, the Foundations of Animal Sentience project, led by Jonathan Birch at the London School of Economics, created an empirically guided framework for evaluating the plausibility of invertebrate sentience and applied that framework to decapods and cephalopods 5 . This framework, based on popular frameworks used for assessing vertebrate sentience, 6 contains four neurobiological and four behavioural criteria.…”

Section: How Plausible Is Insect Sentience?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This framework, based on popular frameworks used for assessing vertebrate sentience, 6 contains four neurobiological and four behavioural criteria. Cephalopods met seven criteria to a high or very high degree of confidence, while decapods met five 5 . Both groups were subsequently included in the UK's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, legislatively recognising the plausibility of their sentience.…”

Section: How Plausible Is Insect Sentience?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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New frontiers in animal welfare science: an introduction to (farmed) insects

Barrett

2024

Veterinary Record

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Section: How Plausible Is Insect Sentience?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Plausible Is Insect Sentience?mentioning

confidence: 99%

New frontiers in animal welfare science: an introduction to (farmed) insects

Barrett

2024

Veterinary Record

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“…The UK government commissioned us to evaluate the evidence for sentience in cephalopods and decapods, to determine whether their welfare should be enshrined in legislation. We developed eight criteria for sentience, which encompass both whether the animal's nervous system can support sentience, and whether its behaviour indicates sentience 2,3 . In our report, which reviewed over 300 scientific studies, we found strong and diverse evidence for sentience in both cephalopods and decapods 2 .…”

Section: Is There a Welfare Problem?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Invertebrate sentience and sustainable seafood

Crump

Browning²,

Schnell³

et al. 2022

Nat Food

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Octopuses, crabs and lobsters are probably sentient, yet their welfare needs are poorly protected in the food system. Upholding animal welfare in the seafood industry presents challenges and more research is needed to address humane capture, housing and slaughter.Every year, humans consume billions of cephalopod molluscs (including octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) and decapod crustaceans (including crabs, lobsters, crayfish, and shrimp) (Figure 1). Billions more of these invertebrate animals are slaughtered than the combined total of cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens 1 -and are frequently slaughtered using methods that would not be allowed for livestock. Caught octopuses may be asphyxiated or clubbed to death; live crabs are dismembered; and lobsters are boiled alive 1 .

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Regulating Possibly Sentient Human Cerebral Organoids

Browning

Veit

2023

AJOB Neuroscience

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Due to their contested ethical and legal status, human cerebral organoids (HCOs) have become the subject of one of the most rapidly expanding debates in the recent bioethics literature. There is no doubt that their potential scientific usefulness is immense. Human cerebral organoids constitute 3D biological cultures grown in a lab to work as a placeholder model for the human brain, and their similarity can allow us to engage in research that would otherwise not be possible. Yet, it is precisely this similarity that raises ethical issues. That is, if these organoids resemble human brains, might they deserve similar protections?This dilemma was introduced by Greely ( 2021), who argued that as these surrogate systems are becoming more similar to the human brain there is also an increased chance that the same moral considerations apply as to work with human subjects; the same considerations that prompted a move to use of a surrogate system in the first place. With the rapid pace of progression in this field, the ethical issue is one that should be considered with urgency. Primarily, this is because cerebral organoids could develop consciousness, and thus could have moral status, especially if they are able to feel positively and negatively valenced states. In their recent target article, Zilio and Lavazza (2023) draw on work in consciousness studies, in addition to ethical theory, in order to evaluate the moral status of potentially conscious cerebral organoids.

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Animal sentience research: Synthesis and proposals

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

New frontiers in animal welfare science: an introduction to (farmed) insects

New frontiers in animal welfare science: an introduction to (farmed) insects

Invertebrate sentience and sustainable seafood

Regulating Possibly Sentient Human Cerebral Organoids

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