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Animal Ethics

Animal ethics seeks to examine beliefs that are held about the moral status of non-human animals (Garner 2005:12). More broadly, animal ethics is about understanding animal-human moral issues through critical reasoning and acting for the moral good. Animal ethics is therefore a practical pursuit as well as a scholarly or armchair endeavour. Animal ethics encompasses moral philosophy, animal welfare and animal rights.

You can identify an animal ethical issue when you think people are doing a harm or wrong to animals and something should be done about it. Should we eat eggs from caged chickens and other factory farmed food? Should we wear fur and trap or farm fur-bearing animals to produce fur? Should we subject animals to laboratory tests to assess whether commercial substances are toxic or safe for us to use? Should we hunt animals for sport? Should we experiment on animals to further human health? Should we even wash ourselves with animal-based soap? Endless questions like these abound and according to our answers we may have to change our animal-related habits and even our lifestyles.

References

Garner, Robert (2005). Animal Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Further Reading

Brute Ethics. Animal ethics primer and encyclopedia.