Rowan, D'Silva, Duncan, and Palmer (2021) on Animal Sentience

Andrew N. Rowan, Joyce M. D'Silva, Ian J. H. Duncan, and Nicholas Palmer, “Animal Sentience: History, Science, and Politics.” Animal Sentience 31(1), 2021

• “…the lot of animals has worsened considerably since Bentham penned his famous phrase.”

• Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012, pdf): humans are not special when it comes to consciousness! Birds, for instance, demonstrate consciousness.

• The best evidence is that all mammals, all birds, and many other species (like octopuses) possess the neural/physical capacity for consciousness, and they also demonstrate intentional behavior.

• Milestones include Ruth Harrison and her book, Animal Machines (1964); the Brambell Report (1965, pdf) (a report on farmed animal welfare prepared for the British government); and the formation of the British advocacy group Compassion in World Farming (1967).

• In assessing animal welfare, one of the difficulties involves measuring feelings and their intensity -- though clearly subjective feelings are central to wellbeing.

• One way to discern animal welfare is to offer animals two (or more) options, and see which one they choose -- a revealed preference approach. The next step is to gauge the strength of the preference, perhaps by altering the "price" (in effort, say) that animals are willing to pay to take their preferred option. 

• The “Five Freedoms” are well-known and widely adopted guidelines for animal welfare, growing out of the Brambell Report, where the focus was on livestock. 

• "Of all the stimuli or states of suffering in animal agriculture, pain is probably responsible for a bigger reduction in welfare than any other... [p. 6]." Bad flooring generates a lot of pain in farm animals.

• Other sources of pain include difficult social interactions in crowded settings, surgeries conducted without anesthesia, and fast-growth-related problems. Boredom also can harm animal welfare.

• Traditionally, examinations of animal welfare have focused on suffering, but pleasure also is important. 

• Animal sentience is now explicitly recognized in legal documents in many parts of the world, including in the EU, Colombia, and the post-Brexit UK.

• The Animal Protection Index (available at https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/) encapsulates country-level information on the legislative protections for animals.