The Sentience Shift in Animal Research

Derecho Animal. Forum of Animal Law Studies

Sentience is the central axis around which the debate for whether animals feel, perceive and experience pain, pleasure, and suffering revolves and, as a consequence, is also the determining factor that enables the evaluation of animal welfare. Evidence for animal sentience as a scientific standard that determines legal regulations is, among other things, the abundance of EU regulation on animal welfare, which has established animal sentience as a regulator for over 40 years. Considering here the connection between sentience, animal welfare and the application of these criteria in the field of regulation relating to animal experimentation-one of the most controversial and contested fields-permits reflection on a particularly relevant question, which is the confluence in the work of veterinarians, bio scientific experts and jurists

People spend much time writing and discussing clever or stupid actions, learning and memory, suffering or feeling happy, and how to deal with the various aspects of the world in which we live. These are the subjects of “Sentience and Animal Welfare by Donald M. Broom. Sentience is a term used in relation to human questions, such as when a foetus or baby is fully functioning, and how we decide when brain function has been lost in the brain-damaged or old. However, its most widespread use concerns the abilities of various animal species. How clever are the animals and what can they feel? The similarities between humans and other animals are described at length. After introducing the term sentience, the ethical background to some of the issues discussed is presented. The relevant aspects of research on cognition, feelings, emotion, awareness and motivation are explained with many examples. The concept of welfare is of key importance in our lives and in that of other animals. Hence the concept and its history are explained and the rapid developments in animal welfare science chronicled. How the methodology is being related to legislation and codes of practice is discussed. Animal welfare is a part of the sustainability of systems in which we use or have an effect on animals. The increase in the power of consumers in dictating to retail companies, production companies and governments is emphasised. Other matters discussed include the welfare of whales, animal welfare and the World Trade Organisation action on seal products, welfare aspects of the use of genetically modified and cloned animals and ethical decisions about human sentience and animal protection.

Animal Sentience

This target article has three parts. The first briefly reviews the thinking about nonhuman animals' sentience in the Western canon: what we might know about their capacity for feeling, leading up to Bentham's famous question "can they suffer?" The second part looks at the modern development of animal welfare science and the role that animal-sentience considerations have played therein. The third part describes the launching, by Compassion in World Farming (now called Compassion), of efforts to incorporate animal sentience language into public policy and associated regulations concerning human treatment of animals. Andrew N Rowan, former professor at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine where he established the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy, former CEO of Humane Society International (HSI), and currently President of WellBeing International. Website Joyce D'Silva, Chief Executive of Compassion in World Farming from 1991 to 2005, has spoken and published widely on the welfare of farm animals and has provided evidence and advice to governments on the genetic engineering and cloning of animals as well as sustainable farming and food in the context of Climate Change. Website

I sketch briefly some of the more influential theories concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals, highlighting their biological/physiological aspects. I then survey the most prominent empirical research on the physiological and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals, focusing primarily on sentience, but looking also at a few other morally relevant capacities such as self-awareness, memory, and mindreading. Lastly, I discuss two examples of current animal welfare policy, namely, animals used in industrialized food production and in scientific research. I argue that even the most progressive current welfare policies lag behind, are ignorant of, or arbitrarily disregard the science on sentience and cognition.

Sentience involves having some degree of awareness but awareness of self is not as complex as some people believe. Fully functioning vertebrate animals, and some invertebrates, are sentient but neither humans nor non-humans are sentient early in development or if brain-damaged. Feelings are valuable adaptive mechanisms and an important part of welfare but are not all of welfare so the term welfare refers to all animals, not just to sentient animals. We have much to learn about what non-human animals want from us, the functioning of the more complex aspects of their brains and of our brains and how we should treat animals of each species. Animal welfare science will continue to play a major part in determining how we fulfill our obligations to the animals with which we interact.

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al.'s target article provides a valuable indication of the work that was required to reach the point where animals are recognised as sentient in various laws. To ensure this work was not in vain, the language of sentience needs to be used as a moral currency to demand further cultural change involving greater human respect for animals.

Journal of Zoology

Despite recent advances in understanding brain function, consciousnessspecifically, how the brain gives rise to conscious experiencesremains 'the hard problem.' In humans, there are often multiple routes to the same actions, some of them involving conscious experience, others not. Furthermore, differences in brain circuitry make analogies between humans and other animals more difficult than is generally acknowledged. In this essay, I argue that both the study of consciousness itself and the science of animal welfare benefit from facing up to these difficulties rather than glossing over them. Animal welfare science, although often defining good welfare in term of what animals feel, does not have to be based on assumptions about which species have conscious experiences. Animal welfare (well-being) can be defined objectively in terms of animal health and what animals want. Such a conscious-free definition is readily understandable by people with very different views about animals and yet is practical enough to point to what factual scientific information is needed in any given case. While not precluding conscious awareness in other species, it allows animal welfare science to move forward without having solved the hardest biological problem of all.

2022

Animal Sentience

Most commentaries on our target article broadly support our approach to evaluating evidence of animal sentience. In this Response, we clarify the framework's purpose and address criticisms of our criteria. A recurring theme is that a framework to synthesise current evidence of sentience is not the same as an agenda for future directions in animal sentience research. Although future directions are valuable, our framework aims to evaluate existing evidence and inform animal welfare legislation. Andrew Crump, Research Officer, LSE, works on the Foundations of Animal Sentience project, specializing in invertebrate sentience and animal welfare. He previously completed a PhD in Biological Sciences at Queen's University Belfast. Website Lecturer, Philosophy, University of Southampton, Heather Browning specializes in animal welfare. Alongside her academic career, Browning has worked as a zookeeper and animal welfare officer.

2008

Veissier I, Forkman B. The Nature of Animal Welfare Science. ARBS Annu Rev Biomed Sci 2008;10:T15T26. The societal concern for animal welfare stems from the acknowledgement that they are sentient beings, whether their sentience makes morally unacceptable any act that would increase their suffering (utilitarian point of view) or animals deserve rights because of their sentience (animal rights point of view). Several definitions of animal welfare have been proposed, based on common sense, mechanisms, or operational indicators. These definitions should not be interpreted as uncertainties about the existence of the concept but rather as different aspects of the same concept. Whatever the definition used, research on animal welfare attempts to answer the following questions: To what extent are the animals used by humans capable of emotions? How does an animal perceive its environment? How can we assess the level of animal welfare in a given situation? What are the impacts of the ways we ...