Naturalness and Animal Welfare

Abstract

Simple SummaryMany people feel that we should ensure that animals have natural lives and can perform natural behaviours. However, it is unclear what exactly we mean by ‘natural’ and how we can assess it scientifically. We might use naturalness to highlight possible suffering that needs looking into, as a rule of thumb about what is good for animals, and to establish a threshold for what is acceptable or unacceptable in how we affect animals. We can assess animals’ naturalness in terms of how similar they are to their closest wild counterparts, both in scientific assessments and in decisions about how we care for animals.AbstractNaturalness is considered important for animals, and is one criterion for assessing how we care for them. However, it is a vague and ambiguous term, which needs definition and assessments suitable for scientific and ethical questions. This paper makes a start on that aim. This paper differentiates the term from other related concepts, such as species-typical behaviour and wellbeing. It identifies contingent ways in which naturalness might be used, as: (i) prompts for further welfare assessment; (ii) a plausible hypothesis for what safeguards wellbeing; (iii) a threshold for what is acceptable; (iv) constraints on what improvements are unacceptable; and (v) demarcating what is not morally wrong, because of a lack of human agency. It then suggests an approach to evaluating animals’ behaviour that is quantitative, is based on reality, and which assesses naturalness by degrees. It proposes classing unaffected wild populations as natural by definition. Where animals might have been affected by humans, they should be compared to the closest population(s) of unaffected animals. This approach could allow us both to assess naturalness scientifically, and to make practical decisions about the behaviour of domestic animals.

Interspecies Sustainability to Ensure Animal Protection: Lessons from the Thoroughbred Racing Industry

“…The welfare discourse however diminishes the idea of "naturalness". Animal welfare science defines naturalness as relating to animal behaviour only [59]. Fraser ([60], p. 2) somewhat acknowledges this difference in interpretation of the term when he states the term naturalness predominantly reflects the views of social critics and philosophers, whereas farmers and veterinarians use the term to represent a view that defends practices such as the confinement of animals.…”

“…A turn to the individual is evident in ecology and ethology, and in the case of wild animals, it means replacing conservation with compassionate conservation [70]. It is also been referred to in animal agriculture, for example, above by Buller and Morris [67], and is beginning to occur in animal welfare science [59]. For the purpose of this study, this author therefore introduces the concept of telos+.…”

Philosophy and animal welfare science

“…For example, an animal that has to exercise its natural ability to flee a predator seems to be in a worse welfare state than one that does not (Dawkins, , p. 942; Dawkins, , p. 80). The intake of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics to treat infections or analgesics to relieve pain is unnatural (Yeates, , pp. 1–2), but it seems that an animal with a painful, natural infection is in a worse welfare state than one being cured with an antibiotic and in less pain due to unnatural analgesia.…”

“…The intake of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics to treat infections or analgesics to relieve pain is unnatural (Yeates, 2018, pp. 1-2), but it seems that an animal with a painful, natural infection is in a worse welfare state than one being cured with an antibiotic and in less pain due to unnatural analgesia.…”

Livestock Farming at the Expense of Water Resources? The Water–Energy–Food Nexus in Regions with Intensive Livestock Farming

“…These private sector initiatives aim at achieving a differentiation of animal products for customers. A commonly applied criterion is more space allowance for the individual animal [53,55]. Farmers who participate in such schemes receive a financial compensation for keeping a reduced number of animals in their stables.…”