Abstract
The practice of ‘management euthanasia’, in which zoos kill otherwise healthy surplus animals, is a controversial one. The debate over the permissibility of the practice tends to divide along two different views in animal ethics—animal rights and animal welfare. Traditionally, those arguments against the practice have come from the animal rights camp, who see it as a violation of the rights of the animal involved. Arguments in favour come from the animal welfare perspective, who argue that as the animal does not suffer, there is no harm in the practice and it is justified by its potential benefits. Here, I argue that an expansion of the welfare view, encompassing longevity and opportunities for positive welfare, give stronger considerations against management euthanasia, which then require greater benefits to justify its use.
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Notes
Some writers, e.g. Regan (1983) consider that the second requirement—the death being in the interests of the individual—is also essential for a practice to be considered euthanasia rather than killing. Here I simply follow the common usage within animal industries of ‘euthanasia’ as referring to the manner of killing rather than its intention.
There are other potential ethical frameworks through which we can view our treatment of animals (see e.g. Gray 2017), but these are by far the two most common.
For the latter view, see e.g. Penfold et al. (2014)—“Welfare reflects a combination of positive and negative mental, physical, and emotional states that are co-dependent and vary over time. Longevity of an animal does not translate into “better welfare”, as welfare is not a cumulative characteristic for the individual” (25).
This is not necessarily the only consideration in welfare calculations—for example we might want to add something like: no animal should have their welfare drop below a certain baseline even if it maximises welfare overall.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. Thanks to Seth Lazar for assistance and comments on drafts of this article. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2016 Australasian Postgraduate Philosophy Conference, and benefitted greatly from the surrounding discussion there.
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Browning, H. No Room at the Zoo: Management Euthanasia and Animal Welfare. J Agric Environ Ethics 31, 483–498 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9741-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9741-8