WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)
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Animal sentience in Indian culture: Colonial and post-colonial changes
Get PDFThe Indian tradition has respected animal sentience and non-injury toward all life. It is repeated consistently in Sanskrit literature and the later literature of the Jains and the Buddhists. Change came with the advent of Islamic rule followed by the British, who built slaughterhouses. The hunting of wildlife increased and several wild predator species were wiped out. The result was the series of legislations for animals which were initially proposed by the SPCAs and later by NGOs. In 1976, the Constitution of India was amended to make the protection of wildlife and compassion for living creatures a fundamental duty. However, in spite of the importance of the non-killing of animals, the meat industry for both domestic consumption and export has been growing. It is an ongoing struggle between activists, governments and the business class
Factory Farming Who Benefits? How a ruinous system is kept afloat?
Get PDFFactory farming – industrial livestock production – is a key driver of multiple harms. Its crowded, stressful conditions can lead to the emergence, spread and amplification of pathogens, including zoonoses. It heightens the risk of further pandemics. It is dependent on the routine use of antimicrobials. Its huge demand for cereals and soy as animal feed leads to soil degradation, overuse and pollution of water, air pollution, biodiversity loss and deforestation. It places several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals out of reach and contributes to making it difficult to meeting the Paris Climate Agreement targets. How did we get to the point where factory farming so dominates global animal agriculture?
This report examines a number of self-serving myths that help perpetuate factory farming. It then looks at the big input providers whose profitability is dependent on continuing industrial animal agriculture practices
Slowly but Steadily, Animals are being Replaced in Safety Testing
Get PDFPeriodically, WellBeing News (WBN) carries a story on using animals to test the safety of chemicals (see May 2021 and December 2021). Advocacy campaigns to switch from animal tests to non-animal alternatives started over a hundred years ago. Public policy initiatives and technological advances leading to the implementation of alternatives began several decades ago. The WBN December 2021 story included an illustration of five selected countries showing animal use in laboratories increased rapidly from 1900 to the mid-1970s and then declined almost as rapidly to around 20-40% of peak laboratory animal use. It should be noted that the technical capacity to create genetically modified organisms (GMO mice) resulted in brief upward blips in laboratory animal numbers in most countries this century. However, animal use is again declining because GMO mice have not provided the expected research discoveries and insights. Instead, the latest focus is on developing so-called “organs-on-a-chip” using human cells grown on silicon wafers to mimic the behavior of human organs. Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and TISSUSE in Berlin are pioneers of this technology
Saving Tigers in America: Part 2
No full textIn the second of three articles, the reasons individuals and organizations keep tigers are examined with the help of three case studies of failed tiger keeping
The Mind of the Bee by Lars Chittka, PhD
No full textIn The Mind of the Bee, Professor Lars Chittka shares some of the remarkable discoveries regarding the tiny alien brains of bees and the ethical and conservation implications of these discoveries
Regarding Animals by Arnold Arluke, Clinton R. Sanders, and Leslie Irvine
No full textThe new edition of Regarding Animals is an update of a modern classic on the sociology of human-animal interactions
Lack of imagination can bias our view of animal sentience
Get PDFHow an animal reacts to a sensory stimulus is often used to assess whether that animal can experience feelings such as pain and pleasure. This behavioural path is typically complemented with reference to how a human would normally respond to and experience an analogous stimulus. Together, these approaches can lead to a “hard to imagine otherwise” argument for feelings. It is time to go beyond these qualitative assessments and to now determine whether a nervous system can execute the neural functions necessary for sentience
Motivated science: What humans gain from denying animal sentience
Get PDFResistance to the idea that non-human animals are sentient resembles erstwhile resistance to the theory that the earth is not the centre of the universe, or that humans evolved from “apes”. All these notions are psychologically threatening. They can remind people of their own creatureliness and mortality and might make them feel guilty or uncertain about their way of life. An honest debate over animal sentience, welfare and rights should consider the human motivation to deprive animals of these things in the first place. I briefly review empirical evidence on the psychological function of denying animal minds
The United Nations, Animal Welfare and the Environment
Get PDFA sustainable global future requires the world to address the well-being of not only people but animals and the environment. This view is also the founding premise for WellBeing International (WBI). A one-minute video produced by WBI includes the following message. “A responsible caretaker of our world must safeguard people, animals, and the environment for each element is tightly connected and depends on the well-being of the others.”
WBI is encouraged by the recent resolution on the nexus between the well-being of people, animals, and the environment passed at the fifth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5). However, considerable effort will still be needed to ensure that the requested report on the nexus between animal welfare-environment-sustainable development is comprehensive. Furthermore, the report’s findings should influence and be integrated with the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP) work plan and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Does Having a Pet Really Benefit Your Mental Health?
Get PDFA study in the United Kingdom of the effect of pet\u27s on owner\u27s mental health during the COVID pandemic produced surprising results. The owners of pets did not have improved mental health and those owners who were more attached to their pets were more depressed and lonelier than less attached owners