Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series)

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English View all editions and formats Summary: Philosophy and Culture explores how animal suffering is made meaningful within Western ramifications. It is often argued that today's culture is ambivalent in its attitudes toward non-human animals: The book gains its impetus from here, as it seeks to map out both the facts and norms related to animal suffering. It investigates themes such as animal welfare and suffering in practice, scepticism concerning the human ability to understand non-human suffering, cultural and philosophical roots of compassion, and contemporary approaches to animal ethics.

At its centre is the pivotal question: What is the moral significance of animal suffering? The key approach brought forward is 'intersubjectivity', via which the suffering of other animals can be understood in a fresh light. Find a copy online Links to this item View full text. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private.

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Would you like us to take another look at this review? No, cancel Yes, report it Thanks! You've successfully reported this review. But what about mental suffering? Again, sentience — or, more broadly, phenomenal consciousness — acts as a basic criterion. Those beings who can experience their existence as something will most likely also be able to have substantially negative experiences that constitute suffering. However, it needs to be noted that both the content and form of suffering can vary greatly, simply because suffering is linked to a variety of capacities and traits.

We may talk of a multitude of capacities that can lay the basis for suffering, such as the capacities for attachment, self-awareness, intentionality, rational- ity and moral agency. The Practice 17 enable suffering, such as curiosity or the desire to roam freely.

Hence, one being can suffer social loss because she has the capacity for attach- ment, whilst another being can suffer due to moral remorse; a being can also suffer because she is kept in a barren environment that pre- vents curious exploration, or denies her species-specific need to roam. Alongside mental capacities and traits, the emotional level is another significant factor. A being capable of fear, sadness or anxiety will be capable of related suffering. Therefore, sentience acts as the basic cri- terion for mental suffering, and specific capacities, traits and emotions dictate which particular types of suffering an animal is capable of.

As cognitive ethology has only begun to show us the breathtaking scope of abilities found in the animal kingdom, it is to be expected that many animals are not only able to suffer, but are also capable of types of suf- fering to which anthropocentric society has thus far remained blind. The well- known ethologist John Webster claims: Therefore, if the capacity to experience is taken as a sufficient criterion, it becomes evident that many non- human animals are, indeed, capable of suffering.

Moreover, there is an increasing amount of data on specific forms of animal suffering. Neurophysiological evidence suggests that many animals have a capacity for the type of affective states that can lead to both suffering and joy for a thorough review, see Nordenfelt Many animals respond to mood-enhancing drugs, such as benzodi- azepine, used to relieve anxiety and related forms of mental distress in human beings, and conversely animals will also begin to act anx- iously if administered anxiety-inducing drugs.

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For instance, depression and anxiety have been induced in animals from rats to pigs by subjecting them to constant inescapable electric shocks NRC Philosophy and Culture states which the studies in question seek to research. When combined with the emerging evidence of animal traits, emotion and cognition, this suggests that many animals are capable of a wide variety of suffer- ing, ranging from that related to anxiety and depression to that linked to core emotions and the frustration of key traits or cognitive ability.

That is, when taking into account not only the sentience of non-human animals, but also the scope of emotions, traits and capacities innate to their species, it emerges as very likely that many of them are, indeed, capable of suffering. To use a simple example, if a pig is an experienc- ing being with traits, emotions and capacities linked to socialization, it becomes very difficult to deny that she would suffer if prevented from any form of social interaction with members of her species. There are good reasons to support this view. When one observes the behaviour of animals, it strikes one as absurd to suggest that they are not capable of feeling the type of substantial pain or mental distress that can be called suffering.

Our everyday interaction with non-human animals tells us quite clearly that Descartes was wrong: However, it should be added that often observation needs to be very astute in order to recognize animal suffering. Just as animal pain can be manifested in ways that human beings struggle to read, animal suffering can generate behaviours that are not usually linked to suffering. For instance, prey animals will often hide their suf- fering, and therefore will simply stay still and stare when in the grip of unbearable fear, anxiety or frustration.

Signs of suffering can, in fact, be very peculiar: It is very easy for a farmer to walk past suffering animals each day, year after year, and never recognize any suffering; what is needed is willingness to stop and pay heed to the animal viewpoint in all its difference. But can we compare the suffering of non-human animals to that of human beings?

One common argument suggests that, due to the com- plex forms of intellect that many human beings manifest, they can experience greater levels and more severe types of pain and suffering than other, allegedly less intellectually complex, animals. Because of this, we cannot compare the pain or suffering of a human being to that of a pig or a hen. The Practice 19 reasons for pain and suffering, or to predict their duration, renders the pain and suffering in question more intolerable.

Hence, for instance, small children who have fractured a bone will experience their con- dition as much more excruciating than it would seem to adults, who understand the cause of their pain and can anticipate its short dura- tion.

Animal Studies Bibliography

One claim is that pain and suffering reach their highest levels when a sense of helplessness is present, when the cause is unknown, when the implications of the pain or suffering are viewed as dire, and when the pain or suffering seems to be never-ending Mayerfeld This claim is fruitful. This would mean that, in fact, non-human animals may have to go through much more than human animals. They will, particularly at the hands of human beings, often feel helpless and remain unable to know why their suffering is happening.

They will also perhaps perceive the suffering through fear and apprehension, and feel that it will never cease. The pig in the farm and the rat in the testing laboratory will have no power over their own condition, and no understanding of what is happening to them. This will render their suffering something intolerable and enormous, like a great black hole from which there is no escape. This suggests that, if anything, comparisons between the pain and suffering of human beings on the one hand, and those of non-human animals on the other, need to take into account that the latter may experience their own adversity much more strongly.

Following this line of thought, Judith Jarvis Thomson has argued: For animals, there is no escape. Philosophy and Culture Moreover, it is quite possible that, based on their unique cognitive abilities and senses, animals are capable of types of suffering human beings cannot fathom. What is it like to be a fish dragged out from the sea, or a bird shot down from the skies? The variety of capacities in the animal world is astonishing. Many creatures experience the world in wholly different ways from human beings, by using entirely differ- ent sensory capacities.

Even the animals most familiar to us, such as dogs, have ways of making sense of the world that are utterly unknown to human beings. The worrying prospect is that the make-up of ani- mals may lead to types of pain and suffering that are alien to us, and that will therefore escape our attention.

Perhaps the dog left alone in the yard harbours feelings that can never be understood by the human mind, and perhaps the chicken or the pig in the factory farm has a repertoire of extremely negative experiences that human beings cannot even begin to comprehend. There may be a silent world of suffering on the other side of the species border of which human beings — often the very perpetrators of that suffering — have no understanding. Instead of concentrating on whether non-human animals share all the types of suffering human beings are capable of, it may be more worthwhile to pay attention to the specific forms of non-human suffering that thus far have gone unnoted.

It should be added that cultural and social meanings can impact human suffering Kleinman et al. However, it would be a sweeping mistake to assume that this excludes the possibility of non-human suffering. Combined with introspective self-awareness, cultural and social ele- ments can facilitate the specificity of given variants of human suffering, just as the richness of non-human cognition and sense perception can give rise to the specificity and multitude of animal suffering.

However, these factors are not the necessary conditions of suffering per se.

Rather, it is the sentience behind them that acts as the key factor. One practical field of study that has explored this question is animal welfare science. The sciences only began to take animal welfare seriously in the latter part of the twentieth century. Even this was due to external pressures. The book depicted the harrowing way in which animals are treated within industrial animal production, as little more than machines. Just a cou- ple of years earlier, Rachel Carson who wrote the foreword to Animal Machines had published her Silent Spring, which brought to the fore the alarming environmental destruction that had until then gone unnoted.

The British government responded to this awareness by appointing the Brambell Committee to look into how animals were being treated on British farms. Some members suggested that science should be used to detect the pain and suffering of animals, and, following this suggestion, the committee concluded that fields such as veterinary science should pay more attention to the experiences of farmed animals.

This devel- opment proved the birthstone of a new science: Now, it should be noted that animal welfare science does include some problematic presumptions. Moreover, it tends to assume that the use of ani- mals per se is acceptable. Some choices of terminology also indicate a highly mechanistic understanding of animals and their treatment. Most worryingly, qualitative research, which concentrates on the experiences of animals, has remained at the margins Fraser More precisely, it refers to the way the animal experi- ences her own quality of life: It is commonly argued that welfare concerns the manner in which individual animals cope with the demands placed on them by their environments and their own bodies.

Thus, one of the leading scientists in the field of animal welfare, Donald Broom, defines welfare in the following terms: Within such usage, it does not imply happiness as such, but rather a contented life, which is free from substantial physical pain or mental discomfort. Because of this underlying reference to absence of suffer- ing, welfare studies have the potential to tell us what types of suffering non-human animals are both capable of and subjected to. A typical stress situation involves the body gearing up to face a challenge such as a fight.

In this process, the body releases energy, slows down the production of sex and growth hormones, and reduces the activity of the immune system. Usually, stress is only momentary, and the body therefore gets back to normality quite quickly. However, sometimes the stress situation does not cease, and instead keeps the body in its grip, leading to the production of cytokines, which urge the being in stress to rest by causing a feeling of ill-health.

Significantly, stress is intrinsically linked to negative experiences. It is the negative experiences of animals that pave the way for stress responses by activating the stress system called the hypothalamic—pituitary—adrenal or HPA axis. Therefore, stress is caused by the way in which animals experience the challenges of their environment. Most commonly, the stress response exists because animals are faced by environmental challenges that will not go away, and thus, for instance, lack of space or the presence of hostile human beings can trigger it.

The Practice 23 hormone levels, and also by paying attention to matters such as bodily health: In particular, it is dangerous to reduce welfare to physical health. The well-known ethologist Marian Stamp Dawkins argues that welfare includes not only physical but also mental factors. Because of this, purely physical methods of understand- ing welfare, such as health and productivity, are highly limited. An animal in great distress can have a beautiful fur coat and a perfectly healthy body, just as long as her nutrition is kept to an optimal level. Ill-health can be an important indicator of welfare problems, but wel- fare comprises more than merely the physical Dawkins ; Rollin Similarly, stress hormone levels can be normal even when the animal is clearly in deep distress Duncan Both stress and other factors related to welfare and suffering also ought to be analysed from the viewpoint of animal experience.

But how can we interpret the experiences of non-human animals? In the s, David Levy reported a repertoire of abnormal behaviours in disturbed children. These children would do odd things, such as rock their heads repeatedly from one side to the other. Later, a similar rep- ertoire, often at a much more extreme level, was found in presumably disturbed animals. Macaque monkeys used for experimentation, and routinely kept in solitude in tiny cages, resort to repetitive behaviours and sometimes severe self-mutilation. Fur animals rock from side to side or bite off their own tails and limbs, zoo animals pace endlessly up and down their miserable pens and, again, may resort to self-mutilation, and farmed animals often chew the bars of their cages monotonously, roll their tongues around their lips time and again, or perform other repetitive tasks.

Such behaviours tend to be recognized by the fact that they are repetitive and serve no obvious function other than enabling the animal to vent her frustration. Studies have shown that animals who previously lived in rich environments, but were suddenly placed in barren or otherwise unsuitable conditions, will quickly develop a range of stereotypical behaviours. Philosophy and Culture effort to cope in an unbearable environment, and their presence signals that something is fundamentally wrong with the living conditions of the animal. In other words, they tell us that the animal experiences her situation in an extremely negative way, and therefore speak volumes about animal suffering Fraser ; see also Broom and Fraser Other types of behaviour, too, tell us of animal experience and offer strong reasons to believe that the welfare of animals is compromised.

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These behaviours may seem innocent, but in fact they can reveal a great deal of suffering. These behaviours have been linked to disturbances in brain pathology, and more precisely in basal ganglia, which in human beings entail various mental disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and degenerative brain disease.

This has an alarming implication: Therefore, one argu- ment is that animals, such as laboratory mice, kept in barren environ- ments will begin to suffer problems in their brain development, and will, thus, ultimately become the victims of mental disorders Fraser What society is doing to animals may have far more devastat- ing consequences than previously thought. The frightening prospect is that it is not only inflicting suffering on animals, but also changing the very being of animals in a direction that prevents them from leading wholesome lives.

Additional ways of interpreting animal experience, common within animal welfare studies, include motivational testing and preference testing. In the former, animals must perform various chores before they reach their desired goal, and the more of these chores an animal will carry out, the more she is seen to value the given goal.

The Practice 25 hens will perform a significant number of chores in order to follow species-specific behaviours, such as nesting or dust bathing a less preferable version of this test measures how hard an animal will work in order to avoid something negative. Again, hens will typi- cally choose environments where they can fulfil basic species-specific traits Dawkins Therefore, animals communicate their experi- ences through the tasks they are willing to undergo, and through the choices they make.

Unfortunately, animal welfare sciences often have limited practical impact. As already suggested, they are plagued by bias, as they tend to rest on the idea that the various practices involved in using animals for human consumption are acceptable, and should remain practically fea- sible. This means that welfare scientists are often attentive to the view- point of animal producers, and many will only offer suggestions which do not cause excessive financial loss. Moreover, regulators often ignore scientific studies and reports on animal wel- fare, so that the business of animal industries continues as normal even when we know that things need to change.

In this sense, the danger is that animal welfare sciences remain overly moderate or have their sug- gestions altogether ignored. However, this has not meant that animal existence in human hands is free from suffering. One reason is that different understandings of welfare lead to highly conflicting views on how animals ought to be treated.

David Fraser offers as an example the European Union report on the wel- fare of pigs. According to experts from the EU, the report showed that sows suffer from serious welfare problems even in the most advanced stall-systems. Experts from Australia, after reading the exact same report, came to the opposite conclusion. The key to this difference was found in the fact that European experts linked welfare to affec- tive states, whereas the Australian experts linked it to health Fraser Philosophy and Culture to mutually contradictory views on what is best for the animal, and the same law may thus be interpreted to have altogether differing practical implications.

Here, vested interests often play a part. Scientists funded by animal industries may be even without thinking motivated to use definitions of welfare that suit the interests of the industries. Also, sci- entists may simply hold an anthropocentric, utilitarian stance towards animals, emphasizing the significance of human benefit and downplay- ing the cost faced by animals Fraser This creates a formidable obstacle to the advancement of animal welfare. Although the science of animal welfare is becoming more popular, and although it is used as one basis when drafting welfare legislations, both the science and the legislations are often affected by financial and political influences.

This does not include only the vested interests of animal industries, but also the vested interests of ordinary people who consume animal products. It is much easier to deny that suffering occurs than to face up to the moral challenge posed by suffer- ing. Descartes admitted this quite frankly: Animal agriculture, the pharmaceutical industries, the hunt lobby, the animal entertainment industries, and ordinary consumers of ani- mals all hold an interest in ignoring welfare considerations. This, again, helps to support the case for very moderate welfare legisla- tions that do not have adequate regard for non-human suffering.

Thus, welfare legislations tend to be strongly influenced by financial and utilitarian considerations. One example is the manner in which they reflect current opinions as to which animals can feel pain and which cannot. In the Western world, perhaps the most troubling exam- ple comes from the USA. The Animal Welfare Act of is a federal law that concerns the treatment of animals.

The Practice 27 welfare regulations. This move can be largely explained by vested interests: The Act also excludes many other important non-human groups from its sphere, such as frogs and other cold-blooded vertebrates. Unfortunately, these animals often remain without any legal protection, as far too many states, as well as the fed- eral government, omit them from the scope of animal cruelty laws.

See Rogers and Kaplan ; for a slightly more positive view, see Mench In short, the Animal Welfare Act of the most influential Western country has an extremely narrow focus and thus fails to offer animals any substantial shield against abuse and neglect. The power of financial interest has a definite impact not only on how animals are de facto treated, but also on how their treatment is regulated.

Similar trends can be observed in Europe. Philosophy and Culture have been a powerful obstacle in the path of new welfare proposals. Also, business interests affect how existing legislations are read: The financial considerations are very prominent indeed, as the total turnover output of animal agriculture in was billion Euros.

Unsurprisingly, a common criticism is that the EU welfare regulations are unsatisfactory, and that their implementation and supervision are poor. For a report on the structure of and weaknesses in European regulation, see Sanco In general, both the regulations concerning animal welfare and their implementation often remain minimal. The treatment of animals is not adequately monitored often it is not monitored at all , and, when problems are noted, the culprits face few if any consequences Rogers and Kaplan ; Arluke ; Bisgould First, there is the argument that the current level of welfare infringement and suffering is unbearably high, and that animal welfare laws themselves enable such infringe- ment and suffering by allowing animals to be kept in utterly unsuitable conditions.

For instance, in many countries pigs that weigh kg are only afforded 0. By allowing animals to be kept in such minuscule areas, the welfare regulations actually give their bless- ing to stress, frustration, physical illnesses, and — ultimately — animal suffering. Second, it can be claimed that different ways of using animals should, in themselves, be viewed critically, for it may be that, for any animal industry to be economically viable, it must cause animals pain and suffering.

Some also argue for animal rights or animal liberation, and criticize the use of sentient beings as mere instruments for human benefit. These criti- cisms in regard to animal welfare and suffering are slowly becoming more prevalent, and challenge the standard means by which Western countries have sought to come to terms with animal experience.

The Practice 29 Such politicization is happening not only in Western countries, but also elsewhere in the world. Take China, for example. China has acquired a notorious reputation for its treatment of animals. Whereas the Confucian philosophy of the distant past demanded that animals be treated with care, the communist regime sought to eradicate care for animals as a Western perversion.

This laid the basis for a belief that ani- mals do not suffer or feel pain — at least in any way comparable to that of human beings. Following this belief, China practises many forms of extreme animal abuse, such as bile farms, in which moon bears are crammed into cages where they cannot move, and in which bile is extracted from an open wound on the side of the animal for many years; wild animal markets, where injured wild animals, bewildered and scared, are sold for food, often after days of travelling from the wilderness where they were caught; and fur farms, in which animals are routinely skinned alive Li However, things are beginning to undergo some change.

NGOs have started to operate in the field of animal welfare.

Animal suffering is slowly appearing on the agenda, even if it still retains only a very marginal role. Yet, despite growing criticism, progress is still painfully slow. In many countries where one would expect to see high concern for welfare, wel- fare standards are extremely poor. In fact, it would be entirely mislead- ing to point the finger at China or other non-Western countries as the only sources of extreme animal abuse. However, abuse still exists, and often on a frighteningly intense scale. Perhaps the best example, again, is the USA. US animal agriculture is comparable in size to that of the EU.

However, animal welfare laws are lagging behind, and there are only two minor federal laws to monitor the treatment of farmed animals. These laws date from as early as , and stipulate two minimal requirements: Philosophy and Culture slaughter.

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Yet, transportation can take days, and horses, for instance, are routinely transported exceedingly long distances to be slaughtered in Canada or Mexico. Poultry are still not included in the slaughter regulation — this despite the fact that they are by far the most com- mon farmed animal, with over 9 billion farmed birds being killed each year.

Doubts, often based on accounts of slaughterhouse workers, have also been expressed as to whether other animals are always stunned before bleeding or indeed dead before being dipped into boiling water. State laws are no better. So how is all this possible? One reason for the miserable state of affairs is that attempts to tighten welfare legislation have been hampered by animal agriculture: Money, rather than welfare, is the deciding factor.

These are rather disturbing facts: Since welfare and profit often exist in direct conflict, the rather inevitable consequence is that animal welfare is given the short straw. See also Rogers and Kaplan Thus, when producers say that the welfare of their animals is good, what they are in fact stating is that the animals are producing well, or that mortal- ity figures are tolerable.

Therefore, animal suffering all too easily remains hid- den under layers of jargon and advertisement, and the consumers are often quite willing to sink into the ensuing state of self-deceit. This enables the public to believe that progress is being made in animal wel- fare, whilst in fact the conditions in which animals are reared may be getting worse. For instance, McDonalds, notorious for obtaining their meat from the types of colossal intensive units that are very prone to violate the welfare of animals, have created their own welfare regulation pro- gramme.

One must remain very cautious about these types of industry programmes, as their likely role is to serve as a form of advertisement, with the underlying motive, therefore, most likely to be increased rev- enue. The main problem is that industry programmes may, due to their ambiguous motives, not work in practice: Therefore, it comes as no surprise that various undercover investigations into farms which have signed up to these commercial welfare programmes have revealed that nothing much has changed, and that both routine neglect and extreme abuse are common.

Arguably, the root of the problem goes deep. As long as soci- ety at large will not recognize the moral relevance of animal suffering, the issue of animal welfare will remain on the margins; governments will not be willing to endorse something that people only vaguely care about, especially when it goes against financial interests.

Philosophy and Culture of animal suffering. It should be evident that there is something wrong with this picture. Those who most benefit from ignoring animal wel- fare and suffering should not be the ones who get to choose how ani- mals are treated. The future does not look particularly bright.

As in most Western countries, the US government has pushed for intensification and con- solidation of animal production: This ten- dency exists in conflict with welfare aspirations, as any welfare laws will almost certainly add to the costs of production. The motive behind these measures is market competition, as the government wants to ensure that the US retains a share of both the domestic and interna- tional trade in animal products. In practice, this means that it is willing to push aggressively for decisions that are harsh and even detrimental from the standpoint of welfare Appleby In the meantime, the public remains blissfully unaware of the realities of production, par- ticularly as it takes place in enormous, industrial units, far removed from their sphere of life.

Therefore, aspects of animal agricul- ture that affect human health gain attention, whilst the experiences of the animals often continue to be overlooked. This is reflected also in the prevalence of animal welfare studies, which as a field of science is much smaller than fields which concentrate on food safety or the environmental aspects of animal agriculture. The relative marginality of concern for animal welfare is apparent more widely in the Western societies, and is reflected, for instance, in the lack of media interest. Food safety and the environment are pressing concerns, whilst animal welfare plays second fiddle.

The same problems persist in many coun- tries. For instance, although the European Union is leading the way in welfare considerations, things are far from perfect. The reason for this is obvious: The Practice 33 industry lobbying; as seen, motions for new regulations are routinely hindered or rejected due to industry pressure. Countries with high financial stakes in animal agriculture will fight with all their might against raising existing welfare standards see Wilkins For instance, the World Bank Group has an agricultural department which invests in livestock.

The obvious goal is to intensify and increase animal production, whilst welfare is placed second in relation to financial gain. A representative from the group ponders: Free trade is repeatedly offered as a viable option, although it is precisely endless competition that drives rewards and therefore pushes welfare conditions down. Unfortunately, this laissez- faire attitude has a near monopoly within animal industries, and wel- fare is often seen as an unnecessary restriction.

Hence, regrettably, the World Trade Organization does not allow animal welfare to be used as a AQ9 reason for trade restrictions Bayel Here are a few examples that illustrate the type of treatment to which welfare laws give their blessing. Of these, 60 per cent are kept in gestation stalls and farrowing crates, where the animals cannot turn around, and where even getting up and lying down are difficult; this means that the animals spend the majority of their lives in cages which they struggle to physically fit into. Similarly, veal calves are routinely kept in tiny, barren cages, where turning is impossible Mench ; see also Appleby ; Rollin In fact, the law has been criticized by animal welfare campaign- ers for remaining a superficial publicity stunt, as the cages still remain minuscule, and even the enrichment provided in them is minimal: The EU has also banned gestation stalls starting from the year , but a loophole allows the stalls to be used during the first four weeks of pregnancy; moreover, farrowing crates will still remain legal, which means that pigs can be kept in cages that prevent free movement during the time that they are nursing piglets.

The reality of animal existence within animal agriculture is, with the blessing of the law, often all but well-faring. Most commonly, the squealing piglet is forced to stay still as the skin of the animal is sliced with a knife, and testicles are pulled out until they snap loose. The same happens to lambs, who may have both their tails and testicles cut off without any analgesic.

The price of such mutilation is high for individual animals. Piglets will show signs of pain for up to a week afterwards including trembling, lethargy, vomiting, and leg shak- ing. In lambs, the stress hormone levels take a huge leap as a result of mutilation, and the animals show signs of significant pain by standing still or otherwise behaving abnormally for four hours or more, seemingly unaware of their surroundings. Dairy calves who are dehorned show signs of pain for six or more hours afterwards Turner Birds, too, are mutilated without the use of analgesics, as their beaks are trimmed, and at times inside toes are also cut, in order to prevent damage from the type of fighting that almost always occurs when abnormally large numbers of individuals are crammed into the same small confinement.

After debeaking, the animals will experience acute pain for circa two days, and the chronic pain lasts for up to six weeks Duncan Mutilation is not the only cause for worry. The Practice 35 and a relatively large percentage of them die from these ailments, often without any veterinary care. American cattle farms have animals or more, broiler farms can have hundreds of thousands of individuals, 20 per cent of milk is pro- duced in farms with over cows, and one-third of pig farmers raise over 10, animals for slaughter per year Mench With these numbers, combined with increasing automation of practices such as milking, there is little chance that farmers will notice illness or injury.

It may also make little financial sense to treat animals that are injured or sick, for the profit gained from an individual animal is often less than the costs of veterinary assistance. Illnesses and injuries result from high density, lack of space, lack of mental stimulation, and physical exhaustion. Typically, the animals also have little or no mental stimulation, which means that the only activity available to them is eating and lying down.

It has been argued that both men- tal frustration and physical illnesses are common. For instance, sows are subject to various gastrointestinal illnesses such as stress-induced ulcer , infections, lameness, heart problems, stress and depression. The sows have nothing to do other than chew the bars of their cages, or rock their heads from one side to the other, time and again.

These creatures have serious health problems such as painful stomach ulcers , accentuated by substantial behavioural issues, as they aimlessly suckle on the bars of their cages or sway from side to side European Commission The list of animals who suffer from very restricted confinement is long. Philosophy and Culture and the significant ammonia levels that it causes Mench ; see also Julian Fur farms are perhaps the most notorious example of what severe confinement can do to animals. In Finland, one of the biggest fur producers in the world, brought in new legislation concerning the treatment of fur animals.

Even this new legislation, meant to be an improvement on welfare, only affords 0. A fully grown fox is offered 0. These cages are stacked next to each other in endless rows, and individual farms typi- cally house thousands of animals. When considering that these animals are de facto wild creatures, who in the wild would maintain territories ranging up to tens of square kilometres, and whose days in the wild are depending on species filled with swimming, building nests, climbing trees, hunting, and maintaining social relations, the minuscule meas- urements become incomprehensible.

It is not surprising that severe behavioural problems are common in fur farms. Animals exhibit stere- otypical behaviours, jumping from side to side, swaying their heads and upper bodies time and again, pacing around in endless circles, chewing on their own bodies and those of others, and even mutilating them- selves by, for instance, chewing off their own tails or legs , or killing their own cubs.

Foxes are particularly prone to feel great fear and anxi- ety, and will huddle in the corners of their cages in unusual positions, as if ready to bounce out. For minks, who are naturally solitary crea- tures, it may be unbearable to be surrounded by the smells and sounds of thousands of other individuals; for sociable foxes, it may be equally unbearable to be unable to create social networks Broom and Nimon AQ10 ; ; European Commission AQ11 Besides mutilation and lack of space, animals are faced with further problems.

Intensification of agricultural production has meant that the physiologies of animals are put under a huge strain. As a result of poli- cies on breeding, feeding and lack of space, animals are made to grow faster and bigger, and to produce more. Animals are heavier than ever before — in just 20 years, the carcass weight of cattle and pigs has risen by 23 and 17 per cent respectively, while broilers weigh 2.