Veterinarians and animal welfare — A comment

Dear Sir,

The Canadian Veterinary Journal is enhanced with the regular ethics column by Bernard Rollin, acknowledged as the world authority on the ethics of animal use. His commentary on Veterinarians and Animal Welfare (Can Vet J 2007;48:1114) raises some vital aspects of animal welfare and its relationship to veterinary science. I wish to offer a comment on this matter, based on experience in clinical practice, clinical teaching, and applied ethology.

Rollin, himself, has stated that his views on problems in animal use, “result...from firsthand experience of the issues...” (1). This is undoubtedly a vital foundation for a rational opinion on animal welfare matters. He also states that although we have ethical intuitions, “we oftentimes change our intuitions on the basis of our theories” (1). This is also an important truth relevant to animal welfare.

The group of individuals with most firsthand experience of factors relevant to domestic animal welfare happens to be veterinary clinicians. A general animal welfare theory is that it is in the interest of an animal’s welfare in domestication to permit, as far as is practical, the enactment of its natural behavior. To an extent, this theory has modified the ethical intuitions of today’s veterinary body.

The natural behavior of our animals has become quite well understood via publications and some of this has found its way into veterinary teaching. As Rollin correctly implies, such teaching is marginal in the usual veterinary curriculum and, in any case, a knowledge of applied behavior on its own does not necessarily tell us what is morally acceptable.

What does tell us what is acceptable in animal use is the consequence of the manner of use. Here again, the veterinary clinician is in the front line and has firsthand experience of problems resulting from any method of husbandry. Applied animal welfare is clearly a veterinary domain, although research and theory in the subject may be put in other hands, for lack of veterinarians active in that aspect of the discipline.

Animal welfare, in its entirety, should become a major subject in the curriculum of every veterinary school. It would be rational to pair it with preventive medicine, to which it is closely allied in concept. It has, of course, several other supportive components and several of these are already in the veterinary curriculum. Others that should be added include applied ethology, bioethics, and industrial animal care. The responsibility in this lies with our veterinary schools.