WBI Studies Repository (WellBeing International)
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Going Vegan Or Vegetarian: Barriers And Strategies On The Path To Success
Get PDFThis is the third and final report in our series describing the results of Faunalytics’ longitudinal study of new vegans and vegetarians (veg*ns). It focuses on the critical issue of barriers and supports facing people who start a new veg*n diet, as well as the effectiveness of various strategies
UNEP/EA.5/Res. 1; Resolution-Animal welfare-environment-sutainable development nexus
No full texthttps://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/boocov/1024/thumbnail.jp
Living with Urban Foxes
Get PDFThe red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the most widely distributed wild carnivore on the planet, with a natural range that spans the entire Northern Hemisphere. Below the equator, foxes have been introduced to the Falkland Islands and Australia, where they cause widespread damage to domestic livestock and native fauna. Fox predation is a common cause of fox-human conflict throughout their range, leading to a complex relationship with humanity. This relationship varies where the fox is alternatively regarded as verminous, if not demonic, but is also an object of affection and regard — a typically bipolar human-animal relationship.[i
Animal sentience research: Synthesis and proposals
Get PDFMost commentaries on our target article broadly support our approach to evaluating evidence of animal sentience. In this Response, we clarify the framework’s purpose and address criticisms of our criteria. A recurring theme is that a framework to synthesise current evidence of sentience is not the same as an agenda for future directions in animal sentience research. Although future directions are valuable, our framework aims to evaluate existing evidence and inform animal welfare legislation
Attitudes Towards Chickens & Fishes: A Study Of Brazil, Canada, China, & India
Get PDFAcross the world, advocates are working to improve the welfare of animals and to reduce the consumption of animal products. A key front in this work is addressing the consumption of small-bodied animals — namely chickens and fishes — as they are consumed in the highest numbers, by several orders of magnitude. Reducing the consumption of chickens and fishes could result in billions of individuals being saved, and achieving that goal requires us to understand how consumers think of them.
Many of the countries we have surveyed in this line of research—which includes Brazil, Canada, China, India, and the United States—contribute in huge quantities to the enormous suffering of chickens and fishes. For example, China, the United States, and Brazil slaughtered more chickens than any other countries in 2018, with India not far behind. In terms of tons of fishes slaughtered, China ranked first in the world, while India was fourth and the U.S. was sixth. In total, the five countries considered in this research account for over 40% of the global chicken slaughter and more than a quarter of global fish slaughter.
Because of cultural differences across different regions, it is important that advocates understand the context in which they are working rather than assuming that lessons from one part of the world can be applied to audiences in another. Despite the massive quantities of chicken and fish slaughter committed by each of these countries, it is not necessarily the case that their residents share similar beliefs about these animals. By comparing the country-level findings of this study, we can observe similarities and differences in beliefs across countries. This information may be helpful for animal advocates working in their respective national contexts, or in an international context
Protecting the Oceans: Tristan Case Study
Get PDFLate in 2021, the Tristan da Cunha Council (the body that manages the affairs of the permanent residents) approved a measure that established a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the waters around the group of four islands constituting the Tristan archipelago (Tristan, Nightingale, Inaccessible and Gough).
The Tristan MPA is the latest in several large MPAs that have been established since 2006, totaling around 16 million square kilometers. The Pew Trusts and the National Geographic Society have been among the prominent organizations pressing successfully to establish these MPAs. The Tristan da Cunha MPA is now part of the UK’s “Blue Belt” initiative, encompassing over 4 million square kilometers of ocean.
The primary rationale behind establishing an MPA is the restoration of marine ecosystems and sustainable fisheries
UN The Future We Want, 2012
No full texthttps://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/boocov/1028/thumbnail.jp
The Impact Of Diet & Different Animal Advocacy Tactics
Get PDFMany different approaches to advocacy exist within the animal protection movement, from talking to people you know about animal suffering, to sharing social media posts, to protesting in public spaces. Currently, we do not fully understand how these approaches affect people’s behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes towards farmed animals, or even how common they are.
We conducted two studies in the U.S. to address this topic as fully and accurately as possible. The first was a retrospective survey. It explored people’s experiences with different advocacy types within the last five years and measured their current behaviors and attitudes. This tells us how common animal advocacy is from the average person’s perspective and whether previously experiencing animal advocacy is associated with positive behavior and attitude changes towards farmed animals over the long term. However, we can’t necessarily assume that animal advocacy caused those behaviors and attitudes from a study like this. To assess people’s perceptions of what is most impactful, we also directly asked them whether their most recent experience with animal advocacy changed any of their behaviors.
The second study was an experiment, which lets us be surer about causal direction (i.e., whether advocacy caused behavioral and attitudinal changes or instead, whether people with pro-animal behaviors or attitudes sought out advocacy). Here, we investigated the impact of many types of animal advocacy against a control condition on people’s immediate behaviors and attitudes towards farmed animals.
The ultimate goal of this project was to estimate how successful each advocacy type is across both the short- and long-term. While the retrospective survey gives us insightful information about what people think caused them to change their behavior and allows us to consider a wider range of advocacy types, the experiment provides stronger evidence of whether animal advocacy actually changes behavior, in a controlled setting with less opportunity for bias
Free will and animal suicide
Get PDFDavid Peña-Guzmán presents two arguments against the view that because only humans have free will only humans can commit suicide: (1) nonhuman animals may possess free will, and (2) the libertarian notion of free will is incompatible with scientific explanation. The free will objection to animal suicide is indeed mistaken, but Peña-Guzmán’s criticism of the libertarian notion of free will seems misplaced. His target should instead be the assumption that free choices must be made consciously or self-reflectively or the assumption that freedom cannot come in degrees
Legal recognition of animal sentience: the case for cautious optimism
Get PDFRowan et al.’s target article provides a valuable indication of the work that was required to reach the point where animals are recognised as sentient in various laws. To ensure this work was not in vain, the language of sentience needs to be used as a moral currency to demand further cultural change involving greater human respect for animals