The implications of cognitive processes for animal welfare

Abstract

In general, codes that have been designed to safeguard the welfare of animals emphasize the importance of providing an environment that will ensure good health and a normal physiological and physical state, that is, they emphasize the animals' physical needs. If mental needs are mentioned, they are always relegated to secondary importance. The argument is put forward here that animal welfare is dependent solely on the cognitive needs of the animals concerned. In general, if these cognitive needs are met, they will protect the animals' physical needs. It is contended that in the few cases in which they do not safeguard the physical needs, it does not matter from a welfare point of view. The human example is given of being ill. It is argued that welfare is only adversely affected when a person feels ill, knows that he or she is ill, or even thinks that he or she is ill, all of which processes are cognitive ones. The implications for welfare of animals possessing certain cognitive abilities are discussed. For example, the extent to which animals are aware of their internal state while performing behavior known to be indicative of so-called states of suffering, such as fear, frustration, and pain, will determine how much they are actually suffering. With careful experimentation it may be possible to determine how negative they feel these states to be. Similarly, the extent to which animals think about items or events absent from their immediate environment will determine how frustrated they are in the absence of the real item or event but in the presence of the cognitive representation.

A “How-To” Guide for Designing Judgment Bias Studies to Assess Captive Animal Welfare

“…This work builds on a long history of discussion about animal emotions (e.g., Darwin, 1872) and earlier work developing cognitive theories of emotion in animals (e.g., Dawkins, 1990;Desiré, Boissy, & Veissier, 2002;Duncan & Petherick, 1991;Spruijt, van den Bos, & Pijlman, 2000;Wemelsfelder, 1997). Harding et al (2004) used the term "cognitive bias" to describe the effect of emotion on judgements about ambiguous cues.…”

Can fish suffer?: perspectives on sentience, pain, fear and stress

“…Although a case for fish welfare could be reasonably argued within the scope of any one of the main animal welfare concepts, it is the approach put forward by Duncan (1996) that provides a conceptual framework to answer the question "why should fish receive welfare consideration or a welfare status?". In Duncan's approach, it is not necessarily the state of health or amount of stress that an animal has, that matters to its welfare, but the possession and state of a number of cognitive capacities (Duncan and Petherick, 1991;Curtis and Stricklin, 1991;Duncan, 1996). The cognitive capabilities in question are those which form the basis of sentience.…”

Setting the farm animal welfare scene in North America

“…The third school is a naturebased school that values the animals' natural behaviors under natural conditions. Often welfare researchers will formulate their own definitions that cross over one or more of the outlined schools of thought (Broom, 1986, Duncan andPetherick, 1991). In turn, due to these variable schools of thought welfare researchers are still unable to agree on one welfare definition.…”