Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?
@article{Shriver2009KnockingOP, title={Knocking Out Pain in Livestock: Can Technology Succeed Where Morality has Stalled?}, author={Adam Shriver}, journal={Neuroethics}, year={2009}, volume={2}, pages={115-124} }
Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we can…
62 Citations
The Dignity of Diminished Animals: Species Norms and Engineering to Improve Welfare
- Biology
- 2017
It is argued that considerations from evolutionary biology should lead us to treat species norms - such as the possession of typical capacities - as merely a heuristic for rendering judgments about welfare, and that diminishment cases are precisely the cases where the heuristic breaks down, and becomes a bias.
Animal Disenhancement in Moral Context
- PhilosophyNanoEthics
- 2018
To mitigate animal suffering under industrial farming conditions, biotechnology companies are pursuing the development of genetically disenhanced animals. Recent advances in gene editing…
Save the Meat for Cats: Why It’s Wrong to Eat Roadkill
- PhilosophyJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
- 2019
Because factory-farmed meat production inflicts gratuitous suffering upon animals and wreaks havoc on the environment, there are morally compelling reasons to become vegetarian. Yet industrial plant…
Prioritizing the protection of welfare in gene-edited livestock
- PhilosophyAnimal frontiers : the review magazine of animal agriculture
- 2020
It is argued that the global community ought to adopt a modified version of this principle in regard to all genetic modification of animals performed for nonresearch purposes and that assuming that the principle will be followed via “self-regulation” would be both morally wrong and likely to permanently damage trust in food producers.
No Pain, No Gain? In Defence of Genetically Disenhancing (Most) Research Animals
- BiologyAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI
- 2019
This paper argues that the use of gene editing to create research animals with a reduced capacity for suffering, in particular, from pain would be in line with moral principles embedded in European regulations regarding animal research, and that it would facilitate compliance with these regulations.
Animal Captivity: Justifications for Animal Captivity in the Context of Domestication
- Biology
- 2016
The central question of this chapter is whether keeping animals in captivity is morally justified, and it is argued that this is the case to a certain extent, provided that the authors use a less stringent notion of autonomy than they do for humans.
The Logic of the Larder
- EducationDuty and the Beast
- 2019
It is often said, as an excuse for the slaughter of animals, that it is better for them to live and to be butchered than not to live at all. Now, obviously, if such reasoning justifies the practice…
Genome Editing in Livestock, Complicity, and the Technological Fix Objection
- EconomicsJournal of agricultural & environmental ethics
- 2021
The aim of this paper is to formulate and shed some light on the ‘technological fix objection’ to genome editing in livestock, suggesting that three concerns may underlie it, make implicit assumptions underlying the concerns explicit, and cast some doubt on several of these assumptions.
Duty and the Beast: Should We Eat Meat in the Name of Animal Rights?
- Philosophy
- 2019
The moral status of animals is a subject of controversy both within and beyond academic philosophy, especially regarding the question of whether and when it is ethical to eat meat. A commitment to…
What do animals want?
- PsychologyAnimal Welfare
- 2019
Motivation is a central concept for animal welfare; it has inspired methodological breakthroughs and generated a wealth of crucial empirical work. As the field develops beyond its original mandate to…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 45 REFERENCES
Staying good while playing god--the ethics of breeding farm animals.
- Engineering, MedicineAnimal welfare
- 1999
The aim of this paper is to discuss the goals and consequences of farm animal breeding within an ethical context, and it is suggested that there are in fact two very different ethical approaches: the 'quality of life-based' approach and the 'preservationist' approach.
Bad ethics, good ethics and the genetic engineering of animals in agriculture.
- Biology, MedicineJournal of animal science
- 1996
Concerns about a variety of possible risks arising from genetic engineering of animals require careful consideration and dialogue with the public, and a principle of "conservation of welfare" is suggested as a plausible moral rule to guide such genetic engineering.
The prospects for consensus and convergence in the animal rights debate.
- PhilosophyThe Hastings Center report
- 1994
Controversies over the use of nonhuman animals (hence-forth animals) for science, nutrition, and recreation are often presented as clear-cut standoffs, with little or no common ground between…
What Should We Do About Animal Welfare
- Biology
- 1999
The Noah's New Ark is a guide to understanding animal welfare and to having and holding animals, and to voting and lobbies and to have and to hold.
Minding Mammals
- Philosophy
- 2006
Many traditional attempts to show that nonhuman animals are deserving of moral consideration have taken the form of an argument by analogy. However, arguments of this kind have had notable weaknesses…
The Case for Animal Rights
- Political Science
- 1983
I regard myself as an advocate of animal rights—as part of the animal rights movement. That movement, as I conceive it, is committed to a number of goals, including:
the total abolition of the…
Animal Ethics Around the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
- PhilosophyJournal of agricultural & environmental ethics
- 1999
Four questions are raised with regard to the future agenda for animal ethics: what will animal ethics learn from feminist theory; how much can virtue ethics illuminate practical issues involving animals; and what is the role of respect in animal ethics.
The Myth of Pain
- Psychology
- 1999
Pain, although very common, is little understood. Worse still, according to Valerie Gray Hardcastle, both professional and lay definitions of pain are wrongheaded--with consequences for how pain and…
JOINT DAMAGE IN PIGS REARED UNDER CONFINEMENT
- Biology
- 1978
Differences observed in weights of pigs at birth and weaning and in post-weaning growth rate were inversely related to degree of damage, and no meaningful association was found between visual scores for physical soundness of the live animal and degree of joint damage.
The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain
- Psychology, Biology
- 2002
Although it is implausible that fishes can experience pain or emotions, they display robust, nonconscious, neuroendocrine, and physiological stress responses to noxious stimuli and avoidance of potentially injurious stress responses is an important issue in considerations about the welfare of fishes.