Are We Pushing Animals to Their Biological Limits?

Welfare and Ethical Implications

Temple Grandin, Martin Whiting, Temple Grandin, Martin Whiting

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781786390547
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786390561
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Veterinary Medicine

Stimulating and thought-provoking, this important new text looks at the welfare problems and philosophical and ethical issues that are caused by changes made to an animal's telos, behaviour and physiology, both positive and negative, to make them more productive or adapted for human uses. These changes may involve selective breeding for production, appearance traits, or competitive advantage in sport, transgenic animals or the use of pharmaceuticals or hormones to enhance production or performance. Changes may impose duties to care for these animals further and more intensely, or they may make the animal more robust.The book considers a wide range of animals, including farm animals, companion animals and laboratory animals. It reviews the ethics and welfare issues of animals that have been adapted for sport, as companions, in work, as ornaments, food sources, guarding and a whole host of other human functions. This important new book sparks debate and is essential reading for all those involved in animal welfare and ethics, including veterinarians, animal scientists, animal welfare scientists and ethologists.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Use New Genetic Technologies and Animal Breeding Methods Carefully to Avoid Problems
• 2 Domestication to Dolly and Beyond: A Brief History of Animal Modification
• 3 Good for Whom? Differences between Human and Animal Enhancement
• 4 Working Equids: The Welfare of Those Worked to Their Limit
• 5 Genetics and Other Technologies for Increasing the Productivity of Cattle, Sheep and Pigs: Welfare Implications
• 6 Technologies for Increasing the Productivity of Poultry: Welfare Implications
• 7 Selective Breeding, Cloning and Gene Editing of Dogs and Cats for Appearance and Performance Traits
• 8 Methods to Increase Fish Production: Welfare and Sustainability Implications
• 9 Welfare Concerns in Genetically Modified Laboratory Mice and Rats
• 10 Cloning, Editing and GMOs for Animal Enhancement
• 11 From Bionic Cat to Superdog: Ethical Challenges of Advanced Prosthetic Technology in Veterinary Medicine
• 12 Animal Welfare and the Brave New World of Modifying Animals
• 13 A Duty to the Enhanced, not a Duty to Enhance: Welfare Responsibilities Associated with Domestication
• 14 Pressing Animals beyond Their Biological Limits
• 15 Concluding: Pushing Animals to Their Limits
• Index
• Back Cover