Normally we focus on finding solutions for problems, because we want to solve problems. Hence, this website was called the ‘Animal Welfare Solutions Network’ (AWSN), and, not surprisingly, its aim is to provide solutions for animal welfare problems. However, in order to present potential solutions, it should be clear what the problem is. Hence, the title of this page ‘Problems for Solutions’.
What then is the problem associated with animal welfare? Why is animal welfare a problem? That is the question to be addressed here, because an important part of finding solutions involves asking the right questions.
Now, in order to delineate the animal welfare problem we need to circumcise the term ‘animal welfare’ first. Animal welfare may be defined briefly as that which matters to animals. In particular, what matters to animals is how we treat them, i.e. how our actions affect their well-being. The problem of animal welfare, therefore, primarily concerns the actions and events that affect animals and for which we can and will be held morally accountable.
Normally, the word ‘animal’ refers to a non-human animal. However, this is part of the problem of animal welfare, namely that we ‘rational’ humans (i.e. members of the species homo sapiens, the ‘wise man’) have a strong tendency to think that we are different from animals and (much) more valuable. This is probably a big mistake, and hence part of the problem. If so, i.e. if we are animals too, as surely we are, then animal welfare problems must include human welfare issues. However, not all welfare issues can be addressed here, so the focus will be on issues related to non-human animals, directly or indirectly. In any case animal welfare, i.e. non-human welfare, has, or should have, a considerable impact on human welfare, namely in as far as we humans have a capacity for empathy. And, in as far as this capacity is deficient, that too contributes to the magnitude of the animal welfare problem.
So far, however, the argument failed to address the question what, and how big, the animal welfare problem is per se, i.e. to what extent our human actions negatively affect the welfare of non-human animals.
In brief, the magnitude of the animal welfare problem is tremendous, likely to be far beyond the wildest imagination of most people.
Firstly, our colonization of the world and our ant-like economic industry encroaches upon nature as if we were cancer cells slowly but surely destroying wildlife habitat, including our own life-supporting environments.
Perhaps even more important than driving wild animal species to extinction and destroying ecosystems is our practice of large scale intensive livestock farming. This practice intends to provide animal protein to the ever growing world population. In this process and behind closed doors billions of farmed animals are treated as if they were prisoners on death row, living in conditions that are reminiscent of the concentration camps. Not intentionally perhaps, but our current treatment of farm animals is far beyond the requirement of our most basic decency. It is legitimized by free-market rationality and our drive to prioritize human welfare and personal material gains.
Two final areas constituting the animal welfare problem concern (a) the pet and entertainment industries and (b) the science and education industries, involving billions of pets and laboratory animals respectively, all sacrificed for the sake of our cultivated, bottomless pits of desires and needs.
In fact, almost all benefits and pleasures of modern society constitute the animal welfare problem, from the bacon and eggs at breakfast, the pet rabbit for our children, our wife’s fur coats and contraceptives, aspirins and the enjoyment of a glass of whine in the evening. Some use terms like animal suffering and exploitation to describe this problem and refer to the holocaust to capture its moral magnitude. Probably, however, the problem is even much bigger and more pervasive.
That, my dear reader, delineates the animal welfare problem for which this website wants to propose a network of solutions. Please, feel invited to contribute!
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