In Celebration of World Animal Welfare Day

Dear Colleagues,

The human population has now exceeded 8 billion and is continuing to rise exponentially. Given that their cognitive similarity to humans is frequently being demonstrated by science, are we scientifically or morally entitled to keep sentient animals in intensive systems in order to have meat for the exponentially growing population of humans?

Intensive animal husbandry units, however much money they and their dependent industries make, are causing enormous environmental problems. Worldwide, they have a very considerable carbon footprint, requiring energy to both build and run them. Agriculture is also responsible for the greatest effect on the reduction in biodiversity, thereby threatening the survival of all life as we know it. One of the major effects is more land being turned into monoculture arable land to feed the animals in intensive systems, resulting in pollution of the air, water, land, and sea.

A justification for the raising of non-human animals in intensive systems on grounds that their welfare can be acceptable (e.g., the German government’s outline for pigs) does not in reality answer to their welfare since they continue to be deprived of the majority of their freedoms, nor does it address the environmental problems caused by this industry.

It is high time that rather than developing and expanding intensive animal welfare throughout the world, we reconsider how we could live with other sentient beings in some sort of symbiotic way. This involves using livestock to re-establish species diversity (e.g., pigs in forests, and cattle, sheep, goats, and horses on grassland) wherein their natural foraging and grazing, kept in the right numbers and carefully managed, can increase the species diversity, clean air, land, and rivers, reduce flooding, and massively reduce the human carbon footprint.

This does not mean becoming vegetarian because keeping domestic animals around means they must reproduce, so populations can be harvested, but it does mean that humans will have to eat less meat and that it will be more expensive; that said, the meat will be of higher quality and the animals will have lives of quality (not just lives where they do not show overt signs of long-term suffering). In addition, the animals will be contributing to increasing biodiversity and the continuation of the living world.

The veterinary and farming professions now need to genuinely confront these problems if future generations of humans are going to survive. We need more research, not on how to reduce suffering in intensive systems but on how to abolish intensive animal systems and give other sentient mammals a life of dignity without destroying the world we all depend on.

Papers on how carbon emissions can be cut and animal welfare integrated with conservation and biodiversity are welcome for submission to this Special Issue.

Dr. Marthe Kiley-Worthington
Guest Editor

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