Post No.: 0662
Furrywisepuppy says:
I personally think it’s fur to ask – is it egotistical of humans, and against the freedoms of companion animals like dogs, cats, horses and birds, to make companion animals obey humans? Or is it in fact the moral duty of a person responsible for a companion animal to train them so that they can live amongst humans because it’d be cruel not to?
Is it okay to use animals to serve dangerous roles for humans (e.g. police or military service dogs)? Furry creatures have been used in many military experiments, including ‘acoustic kitty’ and Laika the space dog – with fatal consequences :(.
What about creatures used for medical experiments and research? Neutering pets? Or indeed farming and eating livestock? Is a coexistence with nature more moral than trying to dominate and exploit it?
If you love animals then should you love seeing them held captive in zoos rather than free in their natural, wild habitats? It’s like if you love people then should you want to keep them caged, even though you promise to regularly feed and clean them? Doesn’t this sound more like prison? Or do zoos inspire children to care more about every beastie on this planet once they see some wild creatures with their very own eyes? In a broader sense though, who says that the wild needs or wants to be tamed?
We should care about flora too. If you love plants (like I do) then should you love cut flowers as decorations? Flowers, like in bouquets, are basically dying once cut. And because they’re rapidly perishing, they’re typically air freighted around the world in refrigerated cargo planes too, which is bad for the environment.
People don’t always do the best for the fluffy critters or things they supposedly love, such as how a nation of dog lovers can fuel industrialised dog-breeding practices, cruel smuggling operations, and ear-clipping trends, because people want particular pedigrees, want them cheap, and treat them as if they’re fashion accessories. Love, or really ‘love’, is often expressed incredibly selfishly; like a stalker who stalks someone apparently out of a ‘love’ for them.
And Crufts and other dog conformation shows are weird – imagine if they were about humans and awards were given to ‘the purest bred example of a ‘Negroid’ person’ or ‘the purest bred example of a ‘Mongoloid’ person’? Does it take a dog to point out this point of view?(!) Fortunately, dogs aren’t anywhere near as breedist as humans are racist.
‘Relational ethics’ depend on the relationship one has with the subject (e.g. a parent is especially responsible for the welfare of their child, an owner is especially responsible for the welfare of their pet). Different relationships bring different responsibilities. ‘Neutral ethics’ proposes that everybody has the same responsibilities to the same category of being because they have the same emotions and feelings (e.g. there should be no significant difference between how we treat a pet rabbit or a laboratory rabbit). But even if we were to hold consistent attitudes and welfare standards for all creatures regardless of their purpose – what should these attitudes be?
Companion/pet, zoo, laboratory, service, food, wild and pest animals can often refer to the exact same species of fauna (e.g. brown rats can be companions, laboratory experiment test subjects or considered pests) so how come we have inconsistent attitudes to them depending on how we view them? Why do we have different acceptable treatments depending on how we arbitrarily label and use them (e.g. cows as food, dogs as companions)? If it’s okay to use certain animals for farming or as pets because they were specifically bred or domesticated to be so, then would it be okay to specifically breed certain humans as slaves and argue that it’s okay because we specifically designed these particular people to be slaves?
So would it be okay to treat people or other creatures as slaves if they were raised for the purpose of being slaves from the outset? Do strangers have different rights to people we personally (want to) know? Do creatures who people give names to, like Max or Molly, have different rights to creatures that don’t get given such names?
A relatively more recent purpose for zoos or aquariums is conservation, and it’s become the primary purpose of many zoos nowadays; rather than public education, research or entertainment. Initially, capturing rare beasts had a negative impact on the ecosystem but it is recognised that many creatures are endangered now. But that does raise the bigger issue that humans are causing this problem in most cases in the first place!
Unlike companion or farm animals, zoo animals are mainly wild and non-domesticated and so don’t fit in a zoo environment perfectly well at all – and so, to a far greater extent, won’t behave as they naturally would when in the wild (e.g. stereotypy behaviours, excessive stress and aggression, consuming a different diet).
Environmental ‘enrichment’ or improved psychological welfare standards for creatures in captivity include social considerations (e.g. not splitting apart social animals), ensuring cognitive stimulation (so asking certain creatures to perform tricks might actually alleviate their boredom?), ensuring physical comfort, and generally trying to emulate their wild habitats as closely as possible (and that includes the smells too, which humans might neglect).
Ostensibly ‘new formulas’ for cosmetic products are often produced by manufacturers to give the impression that the industry is constantly innovating so that customers will keep buying their products in the hope of finally finding that genuine ‘elixir of youth’. (Skincare products are mainly about two things – UV protection and moisturisation. The rest is about marketing. The rest regarding you is about your diet, lifestyle and your genetics.) But – where it’s legal or even mandatory – these new cosmetics are or must be first tested on non-human animals each time before they can be sold for human use.
Safety testing for new products applied to human skin, and around the eyes in the case of face emollients, shampoos or washes, is important, and it’ll arguably be even more unethical to use human ‘guinea pigs’ – even if people consent, because those who will consent will likely be the exploited i.e. the poor. So consent cannot always decide what’s right (e.g. consensual incest or quid pro quo bribes). Free markets cannot always decide what’s right too (e.g. selling one’s body, arguably, or buying one’s way out of jury duty).
Do all of these problems therefore question the existence of a cosmetics industry altogether? Don’t we already have enough cosmetic products that have already been tested?
For many, animal testing for cosmetics is regarded as highly unethical – risking animal suffering for the sake of human vanity. But what about animal testing for the lethality or toxicity, and allergic reaction or irritation, of new medicines for humans? How many people were bothered about animal testing being used for developing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines? How many even cared to ask to know?
What about using animals to advance scientific knowledge (e.g. regarding DNA, neuroscience), technologies (e.g. brain-computer interfacing technologies) or education (e.g. zoos, dissections)? Mice and rats breed faster and have shorter life spans than humans, which is useful when studying effects across multiple generations more rapidly.
The ‘3R principles’ of replacing animal testing with other forms of testing where possible, reducing the number of animals used, and refining the procedures to minimise the suffering of animals, must be adhered to at a minimum. Perhaps biotechnologies and synthetically grown organ cells could one day reduce the need for some types of animal testing? But there’s still the moral question of using non-human creatures for the benefit of humans even when considered a necessity for humans rather than a luxury. Non-human creatures aren’t ‘for’ humans.
Yet it’s quite natural for creatures to exploit other creatures (e.g. parasites in nature use other beasties for their own ends too, and of course creatures routinely kill and eat other creatures). The food chain is natural and there is a cycle of life that includes critters using or consuming other critters for their own ends. Even plants use or consume live creatures in some cases too (e.g. pitcher plants that digest birds, rodents, lizards or frogs).
It can be very strongly argued that cosmetic products are mere vain luxuries – so isn’t eating meat also a luxury for many people in this world (predominantly in ‘developed’ countries) for they have access to and can afford to eat alternative comestibles to sufficiently survive and be healthy?
I’ll save the discussion concerning the issue of utilising animals as livestock for a future post. There’s already enough to chew on, or erm ponder, here for the time being!
…And as you can see, this has been another ethical philosophy post – which is why there are a raft of questions and few, if any, objective answers! There are a plethora of tough questions in ethics and not many clear and easy answers, and that’s simply because they are dilemmas. And life is full of them if we just thought about and understood things more thoroughly. (There are plenty of dilemmas regarding the subject of genome engineering too, which Fluffystealthkitten wrote about in Post No.: 0601 if you’re interested.)
Woof! Even as a little puppy beast myself, I can see that there are few black-or-white answers. I’m definitely against the testing of any more purely cosmetic products on animals. I don’t like cut flowers as gifts or decorations either – plants in pots are better. You can use the Twitter comment button below to share what you personally think about any of the above dilemmas.
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