Additionally, in Section 3.2 we will examine how recognition of sentience changes the types of housing and husbandry practices deemed appropriate for good welfare. In Section 3.1 we will look at the ways in which recognition of sentience can influence attitudes of those working with research animals, and thus the welfare of the animals used. ![]() Section 3 will cover how this shift impacts the lives of research animals in practice. In Section 2.3, we will discuss the shift towards sentience and the application of the precautionary principle in deciding which animals deserve protection. In Section 2.2 we will look at the use of the historical 3 Rs framework in protecting the welfare of research animals. Here, Section 2.1 will provide an overview of the recent efforts to recognize animal sentience in legislation and other regulations. It is structured as follows: in Section 2, we will look at the development of the recognition of animal sentience. The following paper analyses this shift and its significance for animal research and welfare. The recognition of sentience in animals from the 1990s onwards has thus effected a radical shift in the way we view the moral status of animals and how we provide for and ensure their welfare. 2012, Proctor 2012, Jones 2013, Ginsburg and Jablonka 2019, Birch et al. While there are still substantial debates as to exactly which organisms can be considered sentient, a consensus has emerged that tends to include all vertebrates, cephalopods, and possibly even arthropods (Low et al. the loss of an ant’s leg), sentient organisms can additionally undergo experiential harms such as pain and suffering, which matter to them.Įven if there are multiple ways of thinking about animal welfare (Veit and Browning 2020), a great majority of animal ethicists treat sentience as a necessary condition for welfare (Duncan 2006) and this then typically forms the boundaries for which animals we extend our welfare considerations to. 2 Although other types of organisms may be able to experience biological harms to their functioning, (e.g. This is perhaps most famously expressed by the founder of modern utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham: ‘the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?’ (Bentham 1879, p. It is these experiences that grant a special kind of moral status onto sentient animals. Indeed, there is now a broad consensus that it is sentience that grounds welfare, as all and only those creatures that are sentient are those which are capable of experiencing the pleasure and pain that is central to welfare (Browning and Birch 2022). ![]() the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. Modern views in animal welfare science emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. Indeed, more so than ever before, the welfare of research animals is given primacy in assessing potential research projects. One of the primary goals of this research is to safeguard the welfare of the animals used for the advancement of science. 1 The types of experiments performed range from hands-off observational studies of behaviour to invasive biomedical experiments that can result in pain, pathology, and death and are thus of special ethical concern (Beauchamp and DeGrazia 2020, DeGrazia and Beauchamp 2019, Browning and Veit 2022a). Laboratory animal research uses tens of millions of animals worldwide every year (Jones 2013), covering a diverse range of taxa.
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