animal welfare

Animal Welfare

Fifty years ago a young man was mowing hay on the family farm. About

to make the last two cuts in the centre of the field, he checked to

see that all wildlife had escaped the area. He failed to notice a

brown hare crouching in the golden grass. And his last sweep with the

tractor mower severed the hapless animal's legs. The hare lay writhing

and screeching in agony until the youth, unable to bear that sight and

sound, took a spade from his tractor and with a single blow killed the

animal. He was overwhelmed with a sense of loss and grief, remembering

that it was only a couple of decades earlier that the men had hand

mown the hay with huge hand scythes and how much more protective of

wildlife that mowing had been compared with contemporary intensive

farming mechanisation.

One of the documentaries as part of a week long series on climate

change from the BBC last week, featured David Attenborough, the doyen

producer of all those brilliant nature programmes which have brought

oceans, deserts, forests, mountains and an incredible range of animal

life and behaviour into our living rooms. Through his passion for

wildlife many of us have watched spellbound as he has revealed to us

the way that great apes fashion and use of tools, male seahorses give

birth to the their young, and the complex community life of those

lovable meerkats. An old man now, Attenborough has undergone a

conversion. His engagement with so many features of life on our planet

has made him aware of the catastrophic effects of global warming. He

expressed regret that even the very making of his wonderful

programmes, through its consumption of fuel and other resources has

contributed to the crisis of the animal kingdom to which he is so

obviously committed.

The issue of animal welfare was the subject of another news item this

week. For several years now Oxford University has been trying to

complete a new building to house its extensive animal testing

programme. The building programme has been subject to widespread

disruption by demonstrators opposed in principle to testing new drugs

and medical procedures upon animals. The opponents' sustained and very

effective campaign led Oxford University to some time ago seek an

injunction limiting protests. Last week the University applied for an

additional injunction to further limit protest activities in the city.

The injunction was granted even though it places severe limits upon

Britain's long protected rights of protest. It seems bizarre that the

rights of humans should be curtailed in order to help promote the

allegedly cruel treatment of other species which evidently have no

rights.

One of Oxford's eminent scholars, brain scientist Professor Colin

Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council, who is an outspoken

supporter of animal testing, buoyed perhaps by the University's

success in legally limiting opposition to testing, proposed that the

eight year old British ban on using apes for medical testing, should

be lifted. Admittedly Professor Blakemore was cautious in his advocacy

of relaxing the ban, arguing that in the case of a massive pandemic,

it might be essential to experiment upon apes which share 96 per cent

of their DNA with humans. But still he would like to see Britain join

those nations, Japan, the United States and the Netherlands, which

permit medical experimentation upon great apes.

Sir David Attenborough was among those who responded in opposition to

the use of apes in invasive medical research. The conservationists'

arguments are that the apes share with us characteristics such as

compassion, empathy, self awareness and a sense of mortality which we

regard as fundamentally human. Their social, mental and emotional

similarities to us, along with their incarceration in cages in medical

laboratories raise fundamental moral questions. Given that the UN

Environmental Programme has concluded that all great ape species are

facing the probability of extinction within the next fifty years, our

focus surely needs to be on ensuring their survival rather than

hastening their demise.

Another Oxford academic with very different views from those of

Professor Blakemore, is Professor Andrew Linzey who holds a post in

Ethics, Theology and Animal Welfare, the first of its kind. The writer

of many books including Animal Theology, Linzey is concerned with the

way that humans relate to animals arguing that while animals are an

integral part of God's creation, historically Christianity has failed

to address practically and theologically how animals should be

treated. Far from being a maverick, Professor Linzey stands in an

honoured theological and historical tradition which sees concern for

the animal kingdom as springing from the very fundamentals of

Christianity. As Cardinal John Henry Newman put it 150 years ago

"Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God". Thus in his book

Christianity and The Rights of Animals Linzey argues:

God's right is violated when the natural life of his creatures is

perverted. Those who, in contrast, opt for the welfarist approach to

intensive farming are inevitably involved in speculating how far such

and such may or may not suffer in what are plainly unnatural

conditions. But unless animals are judged to have some right to their

natural life, from what standpoint can we judge abnormalities,

mutilations or adjustments? Confining a de-beaked hen in a battery

cage is more than a moral crime; it is a living sign of our failure to

recognize the blessing of God in creation."

Linzey promotes a theology of creation which as he puts it "rejects

the idea that the rights and welfare of animals must always be

subordinate to human interests, even when vital human interests are at

stake". This is for him the fundamental moral issue. He insists that

the "Christian paradigm of generous costly service" should be applied

not only to human society but to the entire natural world. He further

argues that Christians who claim to model their behaviour on that of

Jesus Christ should, in the exercise of human dominion over creation,

follow the example of Jesus in whom we see power expressed as

powerlessness, and strength expressed in compassion.

The building of Oxford's new laboratory for animal testing is

justified by many on the grounds that without it, medical research

which will benefit humans will be set back decades. Professor Linzey

maintains that the Christian Generosity Paradigm, means "that humans

must bear for themselves whatever ills may flow from not experimenting

upon animals rather than sanction a system of institutionalised

abuse".

But it's not only the issue of animal testing which is of concern, for

across the globe intensive mechanised farming and forestry is doing

untold damage to wildlife habitats. As it is the case that one

person's death diminishes me, so the needless destruction of natural

life, diminishes the beauty and integrity of creation. And in case

you're still wondering who the youth on that hay mower all those years