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Claiming a billion-dollar price tag for compliance, the biomedical research community reacted forcefully to two new provisions of the 1985 Animal Welfare Act amendment calling for exercise programs for dogs and for maintenance of the psychological well-being of primates. This chapter reviews this history, including a look at the scientific studies of dog exercise that were deployed to allay expensive exercise regulations, as veterinarian-scientists fought an uphill battle in convincing the USDA that despite what “everyone knows” about dogs, they neither need nor choose more exercise than what they can get living alone in a small cage.

The ultimate goal in animal experimentation is not necessarily to eliminate all experiments, but rather to establish a benign ethic for its practice. An interim ethic is described, which includes changes in current animal legislation, specifically with regard to the Animal Welfare Act. Paying attention to animal husbandry conditions and utilizing preference tests can go a long way in establishing a more humane practice of animal experimentation. Finally, the idea of pet keeping is offered as a model for treating experimental animals much as we would pets. The result would be a movement away from simply an instrumental and often harmful use of animals, to one which is based on the intrinsic value of animals.

This chapter examines the factual situation with regard to animal experimentation. It includes information on the important definitions, as well as the prevalence of the practice, the type and number of animals used, the different types of research typically performed on animals, and animal legislation in place to protect them. The Animal Welfare Act is presented, along with its various amendments throughout the years.

This chapter addresses the question of what lines should be drawn in the discussion of animal rights. It evaluates the most popular theories of moral standing, and suggests that the whole business of line drawing is misguided and that the distinctions between species made in the U.S. Animal Welfare Act are unjustifiable. The chapter argues that the appropriate protection of animals should depend in large part on what their capacities are.

This chapter examines issues around animal rights and wildlife rights exploring the notion of wildlife as belonging to ‘no-one’ or as belonging to ‘everyone’ in a manner that arguably should create a form of rights. Animal rights debates often centre around the need to provide rights for recognized sentient species (chimpanzees, dolphins, apes) and this chapter critically considers these debates, arguing that our exploitation of wildlife amounts to an infringement of certain rights. The chapter also contrasts the greater level of protection and limited rights provided to companion animals with that provided to wildlife, and argues for a limited extension of rights to wildlife in the form of legal personhood that protects them from certain forms of exploitation. The chapter includes case studies of the recent US case that attempted to argue for legal personhood in respect of several chimpanzees and the Argentine case that granted legal personhood to the Orang-utan, Sandra.

This chapter considers matters pertaining to animal rights and animal welfare. More specifically, it deals with the concept of speciesism. This refers to the practice of discriminating against nonhuman animals because they are perceived as inferior to the human species in much the same way that sexism and racism involve prejudice and discrimination against women and people of different colour. The chapter examines questions such as which species are threatened, Illegal wildlife trade and why some species are favoured by human communities and some are non-valued. How harm to animals is conceptualised thus very much depends upon the perspective one has on the ontological status of animals, the endangered species (their essential ‘nature’ or ‘being’), and how one views the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals.

Raymond Anthony addresses the role of technology in promoting sustainable agri-food systems and animal well-being. Food production under an industrial model makes it difficult to appreciate the good of animals in their own right, apart from their instrumental use for us. The problem is not merely our attitude toward animals but the very modes of production in which we deal with them. Agricultural technologies reflect our values and norms, for better or worse. Anthony suggests a virtue ethics approach to technology in order to counter the instrumentalist view we typically have about man-made things. If virtues can be embedded within machinery it might be possible to design animal agricultural systems that can recognize the instrinsic good of animals. An environmental virtue ethics of care (EVEC) is the antidote to commodification of humans, animals, and the natural world. EVEC affirms ethical consumerism, which requires that we take others into consideration in our consumer choices. But it also requires that industry technocrats be mindful of how they innovate, what products they market, how they design facilities, and, above all, how they might find better ways to meld business, profit, and technology with care for humans, animals, and the environment.

The international and interstate trade in amphibians is enormous and legally complex. The U.S. Federal Animal Welfare Act of 1966 regulates the use of animals for research and exhibition, as well as for the pet trade. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora, which became law in 1973, prohibits the importing, exporting, or reexporting of wildlife or plants (or their parts or derivatives of certain species) unless permitted to do so by both the importing and exporting country. The CITES treaty, signed by 145 member nations, is a step in the right direction, but it has not stopped the smuggling and illegal trade in amphibians and reptiles. The commercial interest in amphibians and reptiles has grown rapidly, driven in part by the general interest in amphibian population declines and the popularity of amphibians and reptiles in the entertainment and advertisement industries. The solution to the problem of commercial exploitation of amphibians and reptiles in general, and amphibians in particular, lies in communication, education, legislation, and enforcement.

This afterword turns from the early modern material to think about the role of nostalgia in discussions of agricultural animal welfare that are taking place today. It explores how animals are understood in Qualitative Behavioral Assessment methodology that is being used to evaluate farm animal welfare today, and compares that to the understanding of animals that is evidence in early modern ideas. It argues that QBA offers a kind of return to a way of living alongside and understanding animals that Cartesian and behaviorist thinking has left behind.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on animal rights or the question of the animal. It suggests that we should be nondiscriminatory with regard to species in recognizing the characteristics and potentialities that are widely agreed to constitute the subject of a life. This chapter also highlights the problem in approaching the question of ethics and animals in purely pragmatic or immanent terms. It also discusses postmodern ethics, the imperatives of posthumanist theory and the Great Ape Project or the revision and upgrading of the United States Animal Welfare Act.

Wyatt Galusky examines the role of technology in producing meat for human consumption. He rehearses the litany of arguments against industrialized animal agriculture, as well as the arguments in defense of in-vitro (laboratory produced) meat. But Galusky complicates the idea that technology solves the problems of factory farming by considering meat as a technology, not just a product of it. He does this in order to understand meat as human creation that involves a network of relationships among technologies, humans, and the natural world. When we view meat as technology we highlight the worldviews, contexts, and agents that make it possible and that we are responsible for. For Galusky, these include the view of the natural world as “plastic,” the ultimate virtue of control over nature, and the diminished view of what an animal’s life as mere source of protein. Industrialized meat technologies raise the ethical question about what kind of nature, what kind of human, and what kind of animals we are designing. He reminds us that the more technologies we make, the more responsibilities we take on.

The fourth chapter argues that explanation may be the function of social cognition, aiding survival and driving human evolution. It explores the psychological literature on anthropomorphism—instances where people bring non-human agents and entities to life by engaging social cognition—and describes it as a type of ‘magical’ or imaginary thinking. It then contrasts this ability with dehumanizing people, describing the brain mechanisms enabling dehumanization, and the functions of withholding social cognition to people. It then considers extending social cognition to animals as a domain where the flexible nature of social cognition is revealed. Finally, it implicates explanation as a causal factor in intractable group conflict.