The Veterinary Dilemma: People or Animals First?
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Michael Fox, DVM
August 2014

A blatant example of economic concerns trumping animal welfare concerns is in the transportation of pigs to slaughter, where the economies of transportation justify extreme overcrowding that can result in some economic losses when some pigs succumb to the stress and their carcasses become unfit for human consumption, ( so called ‘slimy cutters’.) Likewise the economies of scale justify large dairy herds, huge hog and poultry factories, and massive beef feedlots. But the costs in animal welfare and health, as well as the environmental and public health costs, have been too long discounted.

Animal health determination includes psychological as well as physical well- being, not simply the absence of disease. Animal health and animal welfare are co-dependent. One cannot be taken away without affecting the other.

The dilemma facing the veterinary profession today is how to respond to a growing public demand for improved treatment of animals in society, especially those who are exploited for commercial purposes, from biomedical research to food production, and the mass production of pure breed dogs in puppy mills, as well as the mistreatment of wild animals in circuses and many zoos. There would be no dilemma if economic concerns took second place to animals’ rights and welfare, and if sectors of the veterinary profession were not aligned with those vested interests in maintaining and expanding an increasingly global market economy based on animal exploitation.

That these animals’ ancestors were taken originally from the wild for the purpose of domestication is a fact that we must all consider when addressing the welfare and well- being of domesticated animals, from the caged ‘pets’ like hamsters and rabbits, the pure-bred and inbred cats and dogs; and the highly productive varieties of pigs, cattle, poultry, fish, and other species, all genetically altered to varying degrees, and forced to live in totally unnatural, stressful conditions, ranging from almost total physical restriction and environmental impoverishment, as is the case for breeding sows and most veal calves, (ditto too many wild animals in zoo and circus cages and rings), or extreme overcrowding, as is the case with battery caged egg-producing hens, farmed salmon in floating net-cages, and piglets in confinement stalls and pens, being efficiently ’finished’ for slaughter.

Human ignorance, customs and conventional attitudes toward animals not withstanding, the domestication and commoditization of once wild animals, who have not all lost their entire ethos or original natures, and are therefore not yet adapted to the kinds of environments and ways of treatment to which we subject them for pecuniary ends, is a long neglected bioethical issue. And a conundrum. How can we claim, as a society, and globally as a species, to care for animals, when economic interests take precedence over animals’ welfare and overall well- being?

One animal welfare resolution put forward in 2006 by over 50 veterinarians, who were members of the American Veterinary Medical Association, (AVMA) to the AVMA’s House of Delegates to simply declare that it was the position of the AVMA that animal welfare is a higher priority than economic considerations was summarily rejected. (See the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, June 15, 2006, pages 1837-1839).

Former AVMA president Dr. Bonnie V. Beaver, in this same Journal on page 1841, voices her desire to see the development of a board specialization in animal welfare. With her background as a veterinary ethologist, who recognizes that an animal’s behavior is an important indicator of well-being, and integral to the formulation of welfare standards in animal production, handling, transportation and slaughter, such an initiative would be providential and timely.

The narrow view of human health as being the absence of disease has been long redundant with the World Health Organization. Likewise the narrow view that the absence of disease in animals especially those who are raised for human consumption, and whose health depends so much on the use of vaccines and an armament of drugs that can have serious adverse environmental, public/consumer health, and long term economic consequences, is no longer acceptable. It is not based on sound science, and the animal productivity paradigm of agribusiness’ economism is devoid of any bioethical framework.

A blatant example of economic concerns trumping animal welfare concerns is in the transportation of pigs to slaughter, where the economies of transportation justify extreme overcrowding that can result in some economic losses when some pigs succumb to the stress and their carcasses become unfit for human consumption, ( so called ‘slimy cutters’.) Likewise the economies of scale justify large dairy herds, huge hog and poultry factories, and massive beef feedlots. But the costs in animal welfare and health, as well as the environmental and public health costs, have been too long discounted.

To reason that antibiotic and other drug and vaccination maintained confinement sheds containing thousands of pigs or poultry are acceptable from an animal welfare perspective because the animals are productive (the pigs and poultry grow quickly and the hens lay many eggs), and disease incidence is low, is patently absurd: except to the neo-Cartesian who still believes that farmed animals are simply production machines, and that only humans have feelings, rights, interests, and a life of their own. Animals can and do experience pain and pleasure, fear and terror.

Animal health determination includes psychological as well as physical well- being, not simply the absence of disease. Animal health and animal welfare are co-dependent. One cannot be taken away without affecting the other. Likewise, animal welfare standards must consider not only an animals’ physical needs and requirements, but also the related psychological/emotional/, behavioral, social, and environmental needs.

It is clearly the professional duty and responsibility of every veterinarian, and of organized veterinary medical associations like the AVMA, to bring these considerations and concerns to bear on how animals are treated, be they domesticated, wild and captive, or still living in what is left of the wild.

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For further discussion and documentation, see F.D. McMillan, (ed), Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals. Ames Iowa, Blackwell, 2005. See also M.W. Fox Healing Animals & the Vision of One Health. CreateSapce/Amazon.com 2011 and Charles Danten Slaves of Affection: The Myth of the Happy Pet.

Dr. Michael W. Fox is a well-known veterinarian, former vice president of The Humane Society of the United States, former vice president of Humane Society International and the author of more than 40 adult and children’s books on animal care, animal behavior and bioethics. He is also a graduate veterinarian from the Royal Veterinary College, London, whose research lead to a PhD (Medicine) and a DSc (ethology/animal behavior) from the University of London, England.

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