Maple and Perdue (2022), "Zoos and Aquaria"

 Terry L. Maple and Bonnie M. Perdue, “Zoos and Aquaria.” Chapter 15, pages 190-202, in Routledge Handbook of Animal Welfare, Andrew Knight, Clive Phillips, and Paula Sparks, editors, Routledge, 2022.

• This article offers quite a contrast to Randy Malalmud's "The Problem with Zoos."

• "Elite modern zoos provide innovative operating standards and best practices for achieving animal welfare [p. 190]"; furthermore, “many zoo animals are indeed thriving [p. 190].”

• “Normal social development requires mother-rearing, peer experience, and sufficient space to comfortably socialise with others [p. 190].” [The authors argue that we know how to provide such normal development in zoos, even if we often fail to. But modern animal agriculture (not covered by Maple and Perdue) is incompatible with "normal social development."]

• New (large) zoos are not common, but new aquaria are, and they often adopt an amusement park model, where dolphins, orcas, and whales do not fare well.

• The authors provide brief summaries of contributions by earlier animal behavior researchers, including Harry Harlow (he of the social deprivation experiments). "While Harlow was vilified by animal rights groups for his cruel experiments, his findings greatly benefitted zoo primates as he identified the variables that controlled socialisation [p. 193]." [One might wonder how a similar statement directed at cruel experiments on humans would be received.]

• The authors identify zoo landscape immersion at Seattle's Woodland Park and the "species-appropriate social group [p. 194]" for gorillas at Zoo Atlanta as important institutional developments for promoting animal thriving.  

• Zoo animal wellness is about thriving, not just coping. Scientists and zoos should work together to achieve optimal wellness.

• Zoo hippos, except at Disney(!), tend to have poor wellness (due to lack on riverine habitats); snakes don’t get enough room in zoos.

• 24/7 outdoor access can add to wellness; vertical space can perform a similar function for apes.

• Capture as well as confinement are very costly for whales and dolphins; the treatment of bears for harvesting bile is vile.

• Animal training can promote wellness; so can computers [compare with the iPad commentary in Malamud (2017)].

• Maple and Perdue are keen on zoo accreditation (from the best accrediting organizations) for assuring compliance with high animal welfare standards.

Kerslake, Kemper, and Conroy (2022) on Meat Substitutes

Eleanor Kerslake, Joya A. Kemper, Denise Conroy, “What’s Your Beef with Meat Substitutes? Exploring Barriers and Facilitators for Meat Substitutes in Omnivores, Vegetarians, and Vegans.” Appetite 170: 105864, 2022.

• Meat substitutes are plant-based foods like Impossible Burgers or Beyond Sausages, which are intended to replicate some of the sensory characteristics of meat; chickpeas and tofu and seitan, by these lights, are not meat substitutes.

• For many people, meat is a search good, while meat substitutes are of recent vintage and are experience goods.

• The authors bring together 6 moderated focus groups, with between 5 to 7 members each. Two of the groups are comprised of omnivores; two of vegetarians; and two of vegans. All told, 35 New Zealanders take part, and together produce 346 pages of transcribed discussions. [But the small numbers in each focus group mean that a "finding" could be based on the comments of just two or three people.]

• Factors that facilitate the take-up of meat alternatives, according to the focus groups, include good packaging and labelling. A photo of the product is helpful, and, for vegans, explicit vegan and environmental certifications. 

• Meat substitutes are often tried out in restaurant or takeaway settings. Later, they might be purchased for home preparation and consumption. The restaurant test provides an endorsement, and perhaps then evidence that, at least with proper preparation, the unfamiliar item is palatable. 

• Barriers to take-up of meat substitutes include high prices: the “vegan tax.”

• The only partial resemblance to meat elicits, in some consumers, feelings of distrust towards meat substitutes.

• Some vegetarians and vegans are unimpressed when companies that produce lots of meat products expand into plant-based options: they view this behavior as “vegan washing.”

• “Tensions” are ambiguous properties of meat substitutes, which can facilitate for some consumers but pose a barrier to others. In this article, tensions far outnumber facilitators and barriers.

• The common view that vegans or vegetarians are judgmental can dissuade some omnivores from wanting to consume meat substitutes.

• The availability of meat substitutes at social events enhances inclusivity.

• Plant-based meats can be too meat-like for vegans, but too unlike meat for omnivores.

• Meat substitutes are sometimes seen as healthy, and sometimes as unhealthy.

Sullivan (2013) on Animal Welfare Labels

Sean P. Sullivan, “Empowering Market Regulation of Agricultural Animal Welfare Through Product Labeling.” Animal Law Review 19(2), 2013. 

• The welfare of (so-called) agricultural animals receives little legal protection in the US.

• Two sources of federal animal protection, the Humane Slaughter Act and the Twenty-Eight Hour law, exclude poultry -- and the Slaughter Act excludes fish, too. Even these federal rules are underenforced.

• State-level laws specifying better animal welfare standards (than what federal law calls for) might be ruled unconstitutional as a violation of the Dormant Commerce Clause. [In April 2023, we are awaiting a Supreme Court decision that will (presumably) directly address this issue.]

• The US relies significantly on “market regulation” (consumers voting with their wallets) to provide animal welfare. Under this approach, some firms will cater to consumers who are not very interested in animal welfare, while other firms will provide higher animal welfare (meat and other products) aimed at consumers who are willing to pay for enhanced animal welfare. [Of course, it is asking a lot for market regulation to produce "socially optimal" levels of animal welfare, even if you accept the nearly-always-unspoken-but-there premise that it is only human preferences that count for social welfare.]

• In practice, there seems to be very little consumer willingness-to-pay for higher animal welfare products (at least when this article was published in 2013 – has this situation changed?) People say they are interested in providing better welfare to farm animals, but food purchases provide little evidence of such an interest.

• One “resolution” of the paradox is that consumers do not have an easy means to actually purchase enhanced animal welfare products.  The problem is that the information of how animals are treated is hard (or impossible) to judge when making purchasing decisions – so producers lack an incentive to devote resources to higher animal welfare.

• A credence good or characteristic is one where consumers are not sure of the “quality” of that characteristic even after they have purchased and consumed the product (as opposed to search or experience goods). If you consumed a food item earlier today with a dairy or egg ingredient, do you know the welfare provision for the animal who supplied that product? [My students admit that they don't.]

• Part of the problem is that labels on consumer animal products often lack credibility and clarity.  Current rules forbidding false or misleading labels are rendered pretty toothless when the actual animal welfare conditions are not monitored. Widespread absence of third-party auditing implies that animal welfare claims lack credibility. 

• The voluntary provision of credible labels can be crowded out by a plethora of not credible labels (muddying the waters or signal jamming) – even labels are a credence characteristic! For instance, “free range” does mean something about the living conditions of poultry (though not other animals, and not even egg laying hens) – but it doesn’t mean, for instance, that most chickens ever spend any time outdoors. "Pasture-raised," "grass-fed," "natural" – these terms (and others) lack standardized definitions.

• If animal welfare is a credence attribute, producers will only provide the minimum level of welfare that is consistent with profit seeking. 

• Credible labels could convert animal welfare into a search good, as opposed to a credence good.

• Making labels credible will require some level of harmonization, standards to earn a label like "high-animal-welfare-certified." But what level of animal welfare should be required to earn such a designation?

• And credible labels require that the conditions they certify are subject to verification. Is the USDA the right entity to engage in such verification, given its dual role in both regulating agriculture and promoting it? 

• A fairly coarse label like "high-animal-welfare-certified," could be integrated with less coarse supplements (like "enhanced and diverse outdoor environments").

• So, moving towards a credible system of labelling could help market regulation result in something closer to the levels of animal welfare people really desire. But we still are only talking about consumer preferences, not the preferences of the animals themselves.

Promoting Farm Transparency

The recent New York Times article by Matt Richtel that provoked the previous blog post notes the difficulties that researchers and health officials face in attempting to learn about farm conditions, even when there is evidence that those conditions are exacting a huge human toll in disease and death. There seems a lot to be said for full transparency on large-scale farms (or concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs). Why should the public have to rely on undercover footage (the collection of which is often illegal) to know what is happening on farms and slaughterhouses and other elements (e.g., transport) in the meat supply chain?

The recent exposure of activities at Fair Oaks Farms (a dairy) brought a pledge (see the 2:15 point of the founder's video response) to provide full video surveillance (with public access to the videos) of all farm areas where humans and non-human animals interact. A further pledge has been made (4:30 mark) to solicit frequent, unannounced visits to the farm by an animal welfare expert. Fair Oaks Farms is documenting their ongoing response here.

While it is too soon to know the long-term effectiveness of the reforms at Fair Oaks Farms, and while it may be that the dairy industry descends from unpardonable and ongoing original sins, why can't the video and unannounced audit reforms adopted by Fair Oaks become standard? Even if the only motive is to protect human health (as opposed to protecting the welfare of the farm animals themselves), there is a strong case for transparency in CAFOs.

Although a legal requirement for such transparency does not seem to be on the horizon in many places in the US -- witness those ag-gag laws -- private actions might spur the requisite reform (as in the Fair Oaks Farms case). Certification programs can add enhanced transparency requirements into their standards. Foundations or NGOs could subsidize the acquisition and maintenance of monitoring equipment. Other sorts of agricultural subsidies or benefits could be made contingent on farm transparency. Pressure could be brought on major purchasers (fast food outlets, grocery chains) to only deal with transparent suppliers. There's tons of room for a more radicalized transparency in the food system.

No one enjoys seeing the video evidence of cruel treatment of farm animals; but the easier it is to see it, the less there will be to see.