scholarly journals A Christian Case for Farmed Animal Welfare

Animals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1116
Author(s):  
Margaret B. Adam ◽  
David L. Clough ◽  
David Grumett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
Tom Regan

It is now common to blame Christianity for broader society’s general inattention to the needs and comfort of animals in general, and farmed animals in particular. This critique of Christianity claims that certain biblical themes and particular biblical passages form the foundation for an anti-animal position that Christianity has imposed on Christians and on wider Western society. This article concedes that Christianity has often been used to justify exploitation of animals, but argues that it is a mistake to consider Christianity inevitably opposed to concern for animals. After reviewing the views of critics such as Lynn White Jr., Peter Singer, and Tom Regan, the article demonstrates the complexity of interpreting biblical passages and the possibility of readings that affirm the importance of treating animals well. It shows that Christians have indeed been advocates for animals, notably in relation to the first legislation against animal cruelty in the early nineteenth century and the formation of the RSPCA. Finally, it proposes a constructive framework for a Christian ethics of farmed animal welfare that could provide the basis for Christian action to reduce consumption of animals and shift to higher welfare sources of animal products.

Animal Rights

2015 ◽  
pp. 24-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary L. Francione ◽  
Anna E. Charlton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Animal Liberation ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
The Law ◽  
Oxford Group

The term “animal rights” is used broadly and often inconsistently in discussions of animal ethics. This chapter focuses on seven topics: (1) the pre-nineteenth-century view of animals as things and the emergence of the animal welfare position; (2) the work of Lewis Gompertz and of Henry Salt; (3) the Vegan Society, the Oxford Group, and Peter Singer’s animal liberation theory; (4) Tom Regan’s animal rights theory; (5) the abolitionist animal rights theory; (6) animal rights and the law; and (7) animal rights as a social movement. Herein, “rights” describes the protection of interests irrespective of consequences. The chapter’s position that veganism (not consuming any animal products), is a moral baseline follows from the widely-shared recognition that animals have moral value and are not merely things; veganism is the only rational response to that recognition.

The Rights of Beasts in the Early Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-248
Author(s):  
Jane Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Novel ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Cruelty To Animals

This chapter argues that the parliamentary animal welfare campaign of the early nineteenth century, culminating in Martin’s Act (1822), was the heir to the radical movements of the 1790s. The literary representation of animals as feeling subjects, and the complex relationship between human and animal rights, both had profound effects on the anti-cruelty debate. Focusing on contributions by John Lawrence, an early exponent of legal rights for animals, Thomas Erskine, who introduced an unsuccessful Cruelty to Animals bill in 1809, and Margaret Cullen, who brought the debate about animals into the domestic novel, I show how they used and adapted radical political ideas in the service of animal welfare. The literature of animal subjectivity underpinned the anti-cruelty campaign and helped achieve legislation; but success depended on melding new attitudes with old hierarchies and turning away from the more radical implications of the reassessment of animal life.

scholarly journals Animal welfare versus animal abolitionism: a comparison of the theories by Peter Singer and Tom Regan and their influence on the Brazilian Federal Constitution

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 251
Author(s):  
Amanda Formisano Paccagnella ◽  
Patricia Borba Marchetto
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Tom Regan ◽  
Animal Abolitionism

With the emergence of environmental concerns and the awakening regarding animal treatment issues, the anthropocentric paradigm has begun to shift, causing many countries to review their position on the legal status of animals. Within the movement for animals, there are two mainly followed philosophical theories: the animal welfare perspective, which has Peter Singer as its leading author, and the animal rights theory, likewise known as the abolitionist movement, with Tom Regan as its central theorist. Utilizing the method of comparative analysis, this article seeks to analyze each author’s thought process and compare theories, contrasting each viewpoint’s moral and philosophical foundations and which principle each author has determined as most fundamental. The main differences between them will also be compared, as well as their conclusions and effects on society, with a particular focus on their influences on the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988. 

scholarly journals Utilitarianism and Animal Cruelty: Further Doubts

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Davies
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
Common Response ◽  
The Common ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
Eating Animal

Utilitarianism has an apparent pedigree when it comes to animal welfare. It supports the view that animal welfare matters just as much as human welfare. And many utilitarians support and oppose various practices in line with more mainstream concern over animal welfare, such as that we should not kill animals for food or other uses, and that we ought not to torture animals for fun. This relationship has come under tension from many directions. The aim of this article is to add further considerations in support of that tension. I suggest three ways in which utilitarianism comes significantly apart from mainstream concerns with animal welfare. First, utilitarianism opposes animal cruelty only when it offers an inefficient ratio of pleasure to pain; while this may be true of eating animal products, it is not obviously true of other abuses. Second, utilitarianism faces a familiar problem of the inefficacy of individual decisions; I consider a common response to this worry, and offer further concerns. Finally, the common utilitarian argument against animal cruelty ignores various pleasures that humans may get from the superior status that a structure supporting exploitation confers.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

Disease and Civilization: A Scottish Atlantic Network of Physicians in the Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
American Physician ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Current

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.

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