Veterinary Medical Ethics

Ethical question of the month — April 2013

The livestock industry is opposed to the use of undercover cameras in barns and slaughter plants for the purpose of documenting animal welfare problems. One objection is that the people taking the video footage do so under false pretenses, often claiming to be truly interested in working for the employer. The industry also claims that if the animal activists filming the abuse were sincerely concerned about animal welfare, then they would report the animal abuse immediately to the workplace authorities rather than holding it for release at an opportune time from the perspective of the animal welfare organization. Another claim is that such footage makes standard industry practices such as gestation crates or castration without analgesia “look bad.” Can banning the use of undercover cameras in animal facilities be justified?

Responses to the case presented are welcome. Please limit your reply to approximately 50 words and forward along with your name and address to: Ethical Choices, c/o Dr. Tim Blackwell, Veterinary Science, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, 6484 Wellington Road 7, Unit 10, Elora, Ontario N0B 1S0; telephone: (519) 846-3413; fax: (519) 846-8178; e-mail: tim.blackwell@ontario.ca

Suggested ethical questions of the month are also welcome! All ethical questions or scenarios in the ethics column are based on actual events, which are changed, including names, locations, species, etc., to protect the confidentiality of the parties involved.

Ethical question of the month — January 2013

You have been out several times to treat newly placed calves in a feedlot belonging to a longtime client of yours. You noticed on your first visit that the old farm dog was moving slowly and appeared a bit “rougher” than when you were last at the feedlot a year ago. You mention this in passing to the owner who agrees that the dog is getting on in years. At subsequent visits it becomes obvious the dog is deteriorating, although reportedly eating normally. You offer to take the dog back to the clinic for an examination and workup, but the owner declines. You gently make the point that the dog may be reaching a point where it is no longer enjoying itself. The owner assures you he knows when it is time to put a dog down and he will handle it himself. You suspect the dog will not be put down until it is too weak to stand. Is there a problem with this approach in an aged companion animal?

An ethicist’s commentary on the case of the declining farm dog

Every animal owner who is ethically conscious worries about the right time for euthanasia. Many times, concerned clients will ask the advice of their veterinarian. During the mid-1970s, when I first began to work in veterinary medicine, it was “common wisdom” to duck that question, on the dubious grounds that answering it would allow the client to later blame you for “killing my dog.” I strongly resisted that response with my veterinarian colleagues, arguing that clients were not seeking to shift blame, but rather to avail themselves of your expertise regarding quality of life to buttress their own lack of knowledge. To be sure, the decision ultimately rests in a value judgment, but a veterinarian may be presumed to have a good deal of experience to draw upon in making that judgment. Thus, in my view, failing to answer a client’s question represented an abrogation of responsibility.

As the strength of the human animal bond has increased in society, and quality of animal life has continued to loom ever more prominently as a consideration, and heroic treatment of chronic disease has proliferated, veterinary “common wisdom” has shifted in the direction of providing a straightforward and experientially based response to the question of “what would you do if it were your dog?” Thus, in this case, the veterinarian feels comfortable offering an opinion to the client without being asked.

How one proceeds in this case depends to some extent on the sort of relationship one has with the client. As we have so often argued in this column, the veterinarian has primary moral obligation to the animal, in particular to avoid and truncate animal suffering. Assuming a normal, non-pathological client, at the point where I believed the animal was experiencing negative quality of life, I would sit down with the client and honestly and straightforwardly relate my primary moral commitment to preventing suffering and my detailed reasons for believing that the dog is no longer happy, providing as much detailed evidence as I had available. If necessary, I would invoke my Aesculapian authority, as well as my overriding commitment to animal well-being. I would also gently explain that in many stressful situations, we perceive with our hopes and rationalizations, rather than with our eyes. As much as possible, I would extract from the client his own criteria for judging poor quality of life. If the dog continued to decline, I would “remind” the owner of his own stated criteria, utilizing Plato’s notion of reminding rather than teaching in morally charged situations. In this way, one has done everything possible to keep the animal’s quality of life in the forefront of the discussion.

Once again, we are dramatically reminded of the extent to which veterinary medicine is as much a “people profession” as it is an animal one. Alleviating the dog’s suffering is going to be as much a matter of your empathetic understanding of the client’s psychology as it is of your knowledge of disease progress and veterinary medicine. For example, it is obviously relevant to know if the client has just lost a loved one.