Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy
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The UN-iversalization of Animal Welfare Law
No full textAdvancing the protection of animal beings is becoming a universal mission in this early twenty-first century. A few years ago, animal welfare was knocking at the door of the United Nations (UN). Today, it is entering this door. Animal lawyers and protectionists are working to support the full inclusion of animal welfare concerns into the agenda of the UN and its organizations, and to create a new UN-iversal regime. The protection of animal beings, long a missing piece of the international law puzzle, seems likely soon to take its place as a UN objective, alongside protection of human beings and the environment.
In this paper, the evolution of animal welfare law from the national level to the UN level is traced (2). The evidence that the subject is of growing interest and concern at the UN is briefly reviewed (3) until showing that animal welfare is becoming a new UN objective (4). Overall, the case is made that animal welfare law is UN-iversalizing
The UN-iversalization of Animal Welfare Law
No full textAdvancing the protection of animal beings is becoming a universal mission in this early twenty-first century. A few years ago, animal welfare was knocking at the door of the United Nations (UN). Today, it is entering this door. Animal lawyers and protectionists are working to support the full inclusion of animal welfare concerns into the agenda of the UN and its organizations, and to create a new UN-iversal regime. The protection of animal beings, long a missing piece of the international law puzzle, seems likely soon to take its place as a UN objective, alongside protection of human beings and the environment.
In this paper, the evolution of animal welfare law from the national level to the UN level is traced (2). The evidence that the subject is of growing interest and concern at the UN is briefly reviewed (3) until showing that animal welfare is becoming a new UN objective (4). Overall, the case is made that animal welfare law is UN-iversalizing
Integrating evolution into the study of animal sentience
No full textLike many others, I see Crump et al. (2022) as a milestone for improving upon previous guidelines and for extending their framework to decapod crustaceans. Their proposal would benefit from a firm evolutionary foundation by adding the comparative measurement of life-history complexity as a ninth criterion for attributing sentience to nonhuman animals
Wolves Revisited
No full textThere are different approaches to wolves and wolf management in the United States of America (USA), depending on the state. Ted Williams, a longtime writer on fish and wildlife conservation, has recently written about the killing of wolves in the Northern Rockies states. Whether or not you agree with Williams’ criticisms of the state governments and the Federal authorities for their approach to wolves, he brings his usual acerbic pen to the discussion of wolf management. He criticizes Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming for resurrecting “America’s tradition of persecuting wolves.
UK Passes its own Animal Sentience Act after Leaving the EU
No full textWhen the UK (United Kingdom) voted to leave the European Union (EU), one of the
consequences would be the loss of legislation on various issues covered in
existing EU laws. The UK government had to pass new laws covering the many
items in EU legislation that would no longer apply to the UK, including the
statement in the EU governing treaty that animals were sentient. The
Conservative Government had promised to address the complicated range of
legislative gaps, including the declaration that animals are sentient beings, that
would be precipitated by the UK’s departure from the EU via new omnibus
legislation. As expected, the very complicated omnibus EU-departure legislation
did not address all the “gap” issues. In particular, the issue of animal sentience
was omitted. This omission prompted public dismay that animals would no
longer have the protection of the EU declaration that they were sentient beings
and led to a campaign calling on the Government to correct the omission. The
Government promised to do so and eventually developed an Animal Welfare
(Sentience) Bill to take the place of the EU language. On April 28, 2022, the United
Kingdom (UK) Government bill stating that animals are sentient received Royal
Assent from Queen Elizabeth, meaning that the bill is now an Act, the law of the
land. What does this new law mean in practice
The Impact Of Diet & Different Animal Advocacy Tactics
No full textMany 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
Defending human difference by raising the bar
No full textChapman & Huffman (C&H) offer a theory of why we humans want to believe that we are different: to justify our cruelty to animals. This commentary offers further supporting evidence of this and examines more closely what the claim that humans are ‘different’ amounts to. It also considers some methodological issues in animal psychology closely related to C&H ‘s theory. These problems result from a common strategy for defending hypotheses about human difference
Sustainable Development Matters for Animals Too: Governments Have a Responsibility to Recognize That.
No full textAnimals matter for sustainable development, and sustainable development matters for animals. Yet animal welfare remains largely neglected in sustainable development governance. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to protect species, biodiversity, and habitats, but not individual animals. This June, governments will convene for the UN Stockholm+50 Conference, which marks 50 years of international environmental decision making. At this conference, governments have an opportunity to recognize the importance of animal welfare for sustainable development, and to aspire to harm animals less and benefit them more as part of sustainable development governance. We call on governments to take these steps for the sake of human and non-human animals alike
Decapod sentience: Promising framework and evidence
No full textStrong points of the target article by Crump et al. are that it offers clear criteria for judging whether decapods are sentient, an effective semi-quantitative grading system for this purpose, and an astute, critical review of the literature. It concludes plausibly that major subgroups of decapods are sentient. A minor problem is that it includes classical, Pavlovian learning as a marker of sentience along with the more valid marker of complex (e.g., operant) learning. Another minor problem is that it does not distinguish results that are negative because of likely absence of sentience from results that are negative because they have not yet been gathered. Future studies should explore how decapods are sentient with so few neurons in their nervous system
Lack of imagination can bias our view of animal sentience
No full textHow 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