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I THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN / COMPANION ANIMAL RELATIONSHIP AND ITS ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS

COMPANION AND ASSISTANCE ANIMALS: BENEFITS, WELFARE SAFEGUARDS, AND RELATIONSHIPS

Jean Harvey

This chapter has to do with our moral responsibilities toward companion animals, although because of space and my own background, I focus on dogs and cats in Western societies.¹ My main goal is to assess one approach to the ethics of companion animals (which I call the “utilization with welfare safeguards” model) that emerges from the dominant historical tradition, and to point to an alternative account. Given space restrictions, I have separated out work on other recent positions²and selected for examination a view that is familiar in everyday thinking and the most prominent in institutional thinking (in scientific and medical research, and veterinary training, for example). Given the work that this appraisal involves, a full development of arguments in favor of the alternative position (which I believe is far more morally sound) would be the subject of another paper. I do, however, explain how it differs from the “utilization with welfare safeguards” model and how some of the moral dangers of that approach are avoided.

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Companion Animals, Moral Progress, and Ethical Veganism: Dogs Versus Dogmatism
In this concluding section I argue that companion animals facilitate the skills necessary for responsiveness in caring, and caring is an essential building block for human moral progress. In other words, we need animals to reach our moral potential. This is a challenging argument from a number of standpoints....
(Pets and People: The Ethics of Our Relationships with Companion Animals)
Livestock Sustainability: Human–Animal Relationship and Sheep and Goat Welfare
During the second half of the 20th Century, in the industrialized nations, production of meat increased; the increase regarded mainly poultry and pig production systems fed on grain and concentrated diets. The increase was less pronounced in sheep and goat production. In the developing countries production...
(The Sustainability of Agro-Food and Natural Resource Systems in the Mediterranean Basin)
BUILDING A MEANINGFUL SOCIAL WORLD BETWEEN HUMAN AND COMPANION ANIMALS THROUGH EMPATHY
Antonio Calcagno In memoriam Jean Harvey, amica What kind of relationship do we have with our companion animals ? What facilitates this relationship, and does it help create a shared, common, meaningful world with our companion animals? In this chapter, I wish to examine the role that empathy...
(Pets and People: The Ethics of Our Relationships with Companion Animals)
The Relationship between Human Nature and the Human Good
One feature common to Fukuyama, Habermas, and Sandel is that they offer general claims about the undesirability of intervening in human nature. Kass, too, seems to have a general agenda, even though his method of argument seems otherwise. But one might instead tackle the issue of human enhancement in...
(The Ideal of Nature: Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment)
The “Utilization with Welfare Safeguards” Model
Given this settled conviction, welfare concerns can enter the scene as a proviso on this prerogative, what I call the “utilization with welfare safeguards” model. Such a proviso can come in weaker and stronger forms. In his book Rain without Thunder, Gary Francione refers to “welfarists”...
(Pets and People: The Ethics of Our Relationships with Companion Animals)
ADOPTION ASSISTANCE AND CHILD WELFARE ACT OF 1980
As a result of a 1961 amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935 (Public Law 74-271), children who were removed from their homes for abuse and neglect could have the costs of their placement funded from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC, “welfare”) program of the Social Security...
(Intimate violence and abuse in families)
Animal Health and Welfare
A sustainable animal production system should pursue long-lasting economically competitive activities enabling to minimize any negative effects to the animals, the people, the environment and the community (McGlone and Sutherland 2007). It is obvious that some of these aims are contrasting. For instance,...
(The Sustainability of Agro-Food and Natural Resource Systems in the Mediterranean Basin)
Livestock Sustainability: Human–Animal Relationship and Sheep and Goat Welfare
During the second half of the 20th Century, in the industrialized nations, production of meat increased; the increase regarded mainly poultry and pig production systems fed on grain and concentrated diets. The increase was less pronounced in sheep and goat production. In the developing countries production...
(The Sustainability of Agro-Food and Natural Resource Systems in the Mediterranean Basin)