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Do animals deserve a voice in society?
290 Plays4 months ago
The terms 'animal rights' and 'animal welfare' are often used interchangeably - but they can actually mean very different things. But what are animal rights, and how do they differ from good animal welfare? And what might a society that embraces animal rights look like, and is it realistic?
Broadcaster and journalist Kate Quilton chats to Dr Sean Butler, who lectures Animal Rights Law at Cambridge University; and is Director of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law. He explains what animal rights are, how they differ from animal welfare, and why he thinks huge changes in how society and laws think about animals could be coming in the next 50 years.
She’s also joined by author and bioethicist Melanie Challenger, an RSPCA vice-president. Her work explores if, and how, animals can be represented in the process of making crucial decisions that affect their lives. Melanie’s 'Animals in the Room' project is a global collaboration, bringing together philosophers, scientists and others to consider and test models for the representation of non-humans in decision-making.
The Animal Futures podcast is part of the RSPCA Animal Futures Project, which explores five possible scenarios of what the world could be like for animals in 2050. People listening between 5 and 28 February or 17 March to 6 April 2025 can join The Big Conversation. After that, you can find out more by playing the interactive Animal Futures game.
Dr Butler's views are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law.
Host: Kate Quilton
Guests: Dr Sean Butler and Melanie Challenger
Produced by: Mark Adams, Chris O'Brien, Emily Prideaux and Jo Toscano.
Animal Futures Project: https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/latest/animalfutures
Animal Futures Game: https://www.rspca.org.uk/webContent/animalfutures/
Animal Futures: The Big Conversation: http://rspca.org.uk/bigconversation
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Transcript
Introduction: Do Animals Deserve a Voice?
00:00:01
Speaker
RSPCA presents Animal Futures, hosted by Kate Quilton. Episode 3. Do animals deserve a voice in society?
00:00:12
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Welcome back to Animal
Recognizing Animal Rights in Society
00:00:13
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Futures. I'm Kate Quilton, and today we're exploring how we recognise animals' rights to a good life in laws and in society.
Introducing Dr. Sean Butler
00:00:22
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First up, I'm speaking to Dr. Sean Butler, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and a lecturer at St. Edmunds College.
00:00:30
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He's teaching one of the first ever animal rights law
Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare
00:00:34
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modules. I spoke to him about what animal rights are, how they differ from animal welfare, and why he thinks huge change might be coming in the next 50 years.
00:00:47
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Thanks so much for joining us, Sean. Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation. So tell me how it all started for you and where your interest in animals came from.
00:00:58
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i think it probably started for me maybe the usual 10 years ago, reading Peter Singer, reading about how to live a a good life, ethical life, animal liberation, those ideas.
00:01:12
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Alas, I probably never took them anywhere. They seem very hard work, seem very complicated, very challenging. ah So I sort of put them down again and carried on with my normal life. ah And then about six years ago, I met up with my now colleague, Dr. Raphael Farsel, and he was organizing a series of talks about animal welfare and animal rights. I went along and was absolutely bowled over, just...
00:01:39
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so so intrigued and fascinated and excited because what he was talking about was something I'd never thought about, never thought about at all.
00:01:53
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You know, you have your yeah have your roast chicken or you have your burger or you have your whatever. idea of the animal, there's an animal back there somewhere, did not occur to me.
Sean Butler's Journey into Animal Rights
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That's a sort of awful, rather depressing thing to say.
00:02:07
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But it's true. um You don't think about it. Or if you do, it's fine. you know welfare We have high welfare in the UK, good welfare standards, so things can't be that bad.
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And that was as far as I got. And then went to this talk, and I say, just got very excited about whole new way of looking at the world, whole new way of thinking about it.
00:02:34
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um And so I wrote to him and said, well, mean, he was a PhD student at the time. I was a fellow at St. Edmunds and lecturer in the law faculty. And I wrote and said, look, is this something we'd like to lecture it? Should we teach the subject?
00:02:47
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And he replied said, yes, we'd like to teach it. So we we met up and we spent about six months writing a course because as far as we can tell, didn't really exist anyway. Nobody was teaching animal rights.
00:03:00
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The field was being done. People were writing and researching, but they were scattered around. They were in different places. And what we tried to do is to bring it together as a single story.
00:03:13
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We ah got support from the law faculty here at Cambridge. They gave us a lecture hall, gave us a classroom, and we advertised it widely. And on a Monday evening at, think, 5 o'clock for...
00:03:27
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16 weeks we have students from all faculties and and post-grads come to us and Listen to her talks about animal rights law and that really got it going and then we did that for about three years and then the law faculty agreed for it to become part of the law degree so we now Quite get quite a few students coming and taking the subject. so That's great um So that's that's how it began. That's how we got here And have other universities picked it up? Yes.
00:03:57
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um One of the things we started doing was helping colleagues in other universities to teach it. After we'd done it, we obviously wanted other students in other universities to teach it. So we then started a program where twice a year we travel somewhere teaching all lecturers how to teach a subject. We give them all our material, give them all our design and notes and things and help them ah write their own courses. So there's about 40 courses around the world now.
Sentience: The Core of Animal Rights
00:04:27
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So for most of us, you know, we often hear the terms animal rights, animal welfare, and they can be used interchangeably. But what is the difference between the two?
00:04:38
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Animal welfare is about ensuring animals are protected from cruelty and ensuring they have good welfare. So that's what those sort of rules are about. And animal rights, if you like, in many ways are about extending that, making sure they have a better life, making sure that they have a good life.
00:04:58
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So in one sense, there's ah there's a continuum. But in another way, they're almost fundamentally different. So the paradigms, if you like, the perceptions behind them are very different.
00:05:12
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So the perception of animal welfare, the paradigm of welfare is doing what we do. We own animals, we keep them, we can can't do what we like with them, but we can kill them and eat them, we can experiment on them, we can chase after them, try and kill them, we can have them do shows, they can have them entertain us.
00:05:37
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All of those things, and provided where we're not cruel, unnecessarily cruel, providing there is good welfare, then that is allowed.
00:05:49
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Animal rights, on the other hand, says, well, that's not really treating animals very well. You're treating them as property, as objects, as things. And really, they're not things.
00:06:03
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what we've known What we've learned the last 50, 60 years from people like Jane Goodall onwards is they're not things. They're sentient. They're aware. They have families. They have friends.
00:06:16
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They have kinship. they They plan. They organize. they they They live social lives and they can and and engage with their environment. they They are fully sentient.
00:06:30
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Are they like humans? Yes, in many ways. some ways, they're more efficient than us, but they're on a continuum with us. So they're they're different from humans, but not so very different.
00:06:43
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So the idea that the law has this lie that divides humans and other animals really doesn't stand up, if you like, to biological and ah scrutiny.
00:06:57
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They're not so different. And separating them legally is really quite quite wrong. it It doesn't reflect their capacity, their status, um there their ability for enjoyment.
00:07:12
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And what rights does is to say, well, just as humans have rights, so this barrier is really not appropriate. And the barrier shouldn't exist.
00:07:23
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So animals should be seen as different from humans, but not fundamentally different, and therefore should have some
Exploring Animal Rights: Life and Integrity
00:07:33
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rights. Not the same rights as humans, but still some rights. They shouldn't just be there for human dominion, if you like.
00:07:41
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And so that's the basic difference that welfare will improve and has improved the quality of life of animals, but will always do so in a cage.
00:07:52
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So much like human beings have rights, animals should also have rights. And how do you lineate delineate between the two? I mean, what would you propose ultimately?
00:08:04
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I think the rights of animals will be different, as I say, from the rights of humans. Probably a right to life, probably a right to bodily integrity.
00:08:17
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So in other words, the right not to be killed, the right not to be tested on.
00:08:23
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Other rights, ah possibly the right of companionship, company, possibly the right of good labor, good work, possibly the right of freedom, ah the bodily freedom.
00:08:36
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Those would be some of the rights um that are being explored. I must say, of course, that rights don't exist for animals. And all we have at the moment are people like me and my colleague in Cambridge and other universities and individuals thinking about what rights might mean.
00:08:56
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So we don't really know what they'll be. and They could be more limited. It could be a right not to be experimented on. and It could be a right of life.
00:09:07
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We don't really know what rights animals will have. um At the moment, they don't have any. And what about when it comes to thinking, right, animals should have rights? Should all animals have the same rights?
00:09:21
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these ah These are the great questions that we can't answer yet.
00:09:26
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So the...
00:09:30
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Basis of animal rights, if you like, the the grounds for animal rights is largely based on the concept of sentience. In other words, sentience is the driver or the trigger for the idea of having rights.
00:09:45
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If you're sentient, you're aware of your surroundings. You have choice agency. You have preferences. So sentience is the basis of it. So in a way, i mean, some people, Martha Nussbaum, for example, a philosopher, talks about the idea of the right it that animals should be able to flourish, the idea that their rights should reflect ah flourishing.
00:10:08
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Other philosophers talk about the idea of need and yeah what what they need to have. So they're all variations of this same approach, which is how do we enable animals to enjoy their lives, ah have a life worth living, just as we try and do with humans, with with human rights.
00:10:31
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And for you in your work, ah do you get a sense of whether the public are in support of this? So in terms of animals actually being given rights.
Public Perception and Global Laws
00:10:44
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Interestingly, the ah RSPCA Kindness Index suggested that some younger generations see animal welfare as almost slightly dropping down the list of priorities at the minute. It's very difficult to tell because something like concern for animals is ah is a social rule.
00:11:03
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It's based on our perception of things and what we think is right and wrong, what we think is intrinsic and important to society. we have this capacity to think about animals in very different ways when, if you like, biologically and, you know, in terms of sentience and so on, there's very little difference, and yet we separate the two.
00:11:23
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Now that sort of gives to me both comfort and hope and concern. Comfort and hope that we go, well, we can push the boundaries a bit, but also concern because you're going, why don't we push the boundaries?
00:11:38
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Why don't we extend the affection we have for dogs and cats? Why don't we extend it to others? why Why don't we see that similarity? But these are these are matters for public discussion and debate and and so on.
00:11:55
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And how do you feel, i mean, after going deep on all the research globally, you know, in broad brushstrokes, how would you describe the current backdrop?
00:12:06
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In very round terms, the about a third of the world has animal welfare laws, so improving welfare, animal and anti-cruelty laws. About a third of the world just has anti-cruelty, so you have something cruel to an animal, and about a third has nothing much at all.
00:12:23
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So it's half empty or half full. In one sense, it's it's it's excellent that so much so many countries protect welfare and anti-cruelty, prohibit cruelty.
00:12:36
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It's also concerning that so many don't. And that that's the backdrop. That's where we are. ah Welfare, to some extent, welfare is not necessarily moving in a direction of better welfare.
00:12:56
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Because, of course, welfare is a regulation. Regulation brings cost. And the more that there's competition, the more that no we want to bring costs down. And one way of doing so is is reducing welfare standards.
00:13:09
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Farmers don't want to do it, of course. But I think there's always that that tension of how it changes.
Societal Shifts: Impact of Granting Animal Rights
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So, in a way, that's one of the problems with welfare, that it is...
00:13:24
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um it's linked with the idea of stopping us doing things, adding to cost. And if the public don't really see animal welfare as ah as an important thing, then those costs and those constraints don't make a lot of sense.
00:13:45
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And do you see that happening? I mean, if animals were granted rights in the future, what would society look like? If we look into the crystal ball.
00:13:56
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Let's assume animals just had a basic right to life. So that means that keeping animals and killing for food would not be possible.
00:14:07
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That means that there'd be no animal farming. There would be no abattoirs. ah There'd be no meat on people's plates, at least not meat from a live animal.
00:14:23
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It would be a big shift. Now, would farming continue? Yes, of course, because we'd be eating other proteins, other other food ingredients.
00:14:35
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I think you'd be seeing, many ways, things very much the same. It's just that the ah meat counters in the shops wouldn't be there.
00:14:46
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You see, I think about animal rights as being part of two larger stores, And one is the idea of violence. Animals involve a lot of violence.
00:15:01
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um know we Again, it's the sort of thing we don't want to think about. but It's one of the last areas where we condone violence. We don't want to think about it, but we condone it.
00:15:13
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And there's a bigger story as well. And that is the idea of
00:15:20
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recognition that we're just part of the story. We're just part of being here, um global if you like, and that actually we do have to be aware of the other participants, if you like, the other parts of the world.
00:15:39
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I think the idea of human exceptionalism has given us a sense that, well, we're we with number one. we can We can do what we like. And then a few years ago, people said, well, actually throwing things in the ocean isn't really a great idea because it'll come back round. And having things coming out of the chimney isn't really a great idea because it's going to come back round. And all this, you know, burning the the fossil fuels isn't actually a great idea. And we said, well, you know, we can do it.
00:16:08
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and And so I think the idea of animal rights, the idea of saying, wow, so we don't just do whatever it is we want to do. We actually have to take account, genuinely take account of other participants, genuinely have to recognize that animals are here too and they're part of the story and they have some rights that we have to take account of.
00:16:33
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So I think looking into the crystal ball, I think it could be a very much more aware society. because we will have had to have reflected on our status and our relationship and our obligations to others, whether it's s sentient animals or climate or or air or or you know the planet generally. So I think it's part of that wider story.
00:17:00
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And how realistic is that, do you think? Do you think that's going to happen?
00:17:07
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Yes.
00:17:10
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I love that. Yeah. I do think it will happen so
00:17:16
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for two sets of reasons. One is that we've seen an evolution. I think is i think these things require generations.
00:17:28
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They require almost human duration generations. We've seen this. We've gone from vegetarian being weird 50 years ago to vegetarian being normal and then vegan being weird 25 years ago.
00:17:43
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Now, you know, you go into a shop or a supermarket or a restaurant, of course you can have the vegetarian menu, you know, and here are the items marked vegan. So I think you need those generational things. I think you need two more generations.
00:17:57
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Next generation is, you know, would you like the meat menu or the non-meat menu? um You know, here's the meat counter over here separated. that'll be 25 years.
00:18:08
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And then another 25, it'll be, ah you know, you'll have to go to a special restaurant where they have meat, you know, and and you... Gosh, yeah okay. Think of smoking.
00:18:20
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If you like opposing this or saying, no, I like the status quo, it's basically arguing for the right to kill animals.
00:18:33
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And that's very weird.
00:18:37
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But in your work, I mean, do you do you encounter that? I mean, you must hear arguments like that all the time from different quarters. Oh, no, no, no, it's all right as it is. Animals don't need rights.
00:18:48
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Yes. I mean, just to be clear, we're an educational charity. We're registered educational charity. So we don't try and we're not trying to influence the comments I'm making, ah personal comments.
00:18:59
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They're not the center. So in in our work, what we're trying to do is understand why animals should have rights, whether they can...
The Mission to Normalize Animal Rights Law
00:19:09
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what legal personality they would need, um what sort of criteria would be necessary, and then trying to answer some of the questions you've raised. who know What rights would animals have and what would they look like and which animals would have them? and you know What about crustaceans and and and and so on?
00:19:28
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So the work we do in the center is primarily about ah trying to understand what rights might look like, what they might be, so that we can basically present them to people.
00:19:43
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Because one of the objectives of the center, the main objective is to normalize animal rights law, just to make it normal. So people go, ah don't agree with this, but at least I know it exists, rather than where we are now, which is This is weird. Don't be ridiculous. Animals can't have rights.
00:20:06
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Move on. So what what we're trying to do is to normalize it so it becomes, if you like, part of a discourse. And related to that, what one of our objectives is is what we say, helping make change possible.
00:20:22
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as we're not We're not advocates for change because we're academics, but we think by doing the legwork, the groundwork, it'll help make change possible.
00:20:33
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So somewhere there's going to be a little political party will find themselves having a casting vote and they'll they'll say, right, well, I want this on this animal rights law.
00:20:45
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And, you know, we and and colleagues and So on around the world, they'll say, yeah, we we know about that. Yes, here's some options. Here's some choices. You know, do you want to go for a big bang animal rights or do you want to just go focus on? ah I don't know any international treaty on ah Sea creatures or do you want to just give them rights for bodily integrity not to be experimented on? You what would you like to have?
00:21:12
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um so I think we're helping make change possible, but you're absolutely right. I think people are people find it a strange notion, but I don't want to be rude, but I think people have found notions strange, and then suddenly they stop being strange and become become normal and mainstream.
00:21:36
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And history is full of full of change of that sort of magnitude. Things we thought were impossible and ridiculous and extraordinary suddenly become normal.
00:21:51
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And may I ask, and forgive me for asking, and of course we don't need to go there if you don't want to, but has your work influenced your own behavior personally in your life? Yes. um It would be very difficult for me to order a meal or eat a meal with meat in.
00:22:07
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In fact, I don't do it. I'm not a vegan. It's a direction of travel for me. a certain amount of dairy, no no dairy milk, no meat, some fish.
00:22:19
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it's um It's a direction of travel which I think works reasonably well for me. and I think that
00:22:30
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the interesting thing about animal welfare, animal rights, is the power of the individual is huge. the individual should I'm not doing this, not eating this, I'm not ordering this.
00:22:44
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And that has that has quite significant economic implications for others. A relatively small number of people want to on the vegan sausages in the supermarket.
00:22:55
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the suit The supermarket will stock them. If animal rights were in place, you know maybe, I don't know, looking at the timeline, decade from now to a couple of decades from now, do you think there'd actually be less animals on the planet?
Future of Animal Rights by 2050
00:23:11
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In one sense, yes. um i mean, if you take the states, say about 97% of animal food eaten there is from ah factory farms.
00:23:23
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So all the animals in the factory farms will not be around. ah But since they're inside a shed, we don't really see them anyway. ah Other animals, yes, I think there will be.
00:23:36
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mean, there's an interesting question, for example, wool. Can we keep sheep for wool? Now, there's a number of colleagues working in this concept of good labor, good work.
00:23:51
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If you're a sheep, and I mean, my own personal view is if you're a sheep and you're given access to their land and and shelter and food and medical treatment when required, and you live out your life on this farm with plenty of room, and you know once or twice a year someone comes and cuts the wool off, I don't think that is incompatible with with reasonable rights.
00:24:18
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So think would those things. I think the Ahimsa dairies are safe for milk. um Eggs, some people think we can we can continue to have eggs. Obviously, we'll need to deal with the male chick problem, um but it's it's perfectly possible.
00:24:34
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You get questions like, well, you know, surely animals make the countryside attractive. Well, yes, they do. You know, nothing like looking out the old train window and seeing the the cows comfortably in pasture. And that's true.
00:24:49
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But we also subsidize the countryside a lot. So it can be that difficult just to subsidize a little more, to say, keep the farm keep the animals on your farm, let them live out their natural life, and you've got get to pay a subsidy for that.
00:25:03
Speaker
I mean, as say, it's not an area I know about, but it's perfectly doable. It's a perfectly normal thing. I think we'll see farms existing for visitors, animal farms existing for visitors to come.
00:25:16
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and people that come around and and see the animals and enjoy them. I think those things will continue. But yes, I think the sort of billions of animals kept for fairly short, well, very short lives, they they won't be around.
00:25:32
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So if we look forward to 2050, what do you think the law will look like for animals? i think by 2050, we'll start to see some animal rights.
00:25:45
Speaker
And it's going to be quite possible, I said, for rights to be on part of the that, on some animals or some situations. So, for example, you could so you could have a right of bodily integrity, which means that animals couldn't be used in testing.
00:26:03
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And there's quite ah I think there is public concern about using animals, particularly so dogs, primates, and so on. So I think we could see rights for that.
00:26:15
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ah Secondly, I think we could see rights for my own personal theory is we'll see rights, an international treaty on on ocean animals, whales, sedations.
00:26:27
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um I think it's quite possible we could see an international treaty giving rights to ah whales and dolphins in international waters.
00:26:38
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In words, they can no longer be caught, they can't be killed, they are not property, they can't be exploited, they can't be taken away and put in a there in indian and water park or any of those things.
00:26:52
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Some of those laws we have now, but in other words, essentially we do it from the right set angle. We say, no these animals are autonomous. You can't can't just go they're no longer available just for you to catch and and take.
00:27:05
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think that's quite a feasible one. ah The country of Panama, for example, has passed a law protecting the rights and passage and environment of sea turtles around the shores of Panama.
00:27:19
Speaker
Now, that's quite interesting. They're doing it as a right rather than just a sort of regulatory obligation. they're saying these animals have rights. These sea turtles have rights. They have the right of not being impeded, not being caught, not being trafficked.
00:27:34
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So i think we could start I think the second thing we could see an international treaty like that. I think thirdly, we might start seeing things on that have a welfare look to them, but actually start looking rights.
00:27:52
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could start looking like rights things like quality of life, um in in terms of factory farming, something like that where you know you actually have better standards.
00:28:07
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hu I think those things may well be in place in 25 years time. What an amazing chat. Honestly, you've opened my eyes. thank you very much for a very nice conversation, Kate.
00:28:22
Speaker
We'd love to hear what you think on the topic of animal rights. You can share your views by getting involved in Animal Futures, The Big Conversation. Search RSPCA Animal Futures to find out more.
Global Challenges and Historical Wins
00:28:35
Speaker
Next up, I spoke to RSPCA Vice President Melanie Challenger, author and bioethicist. Melanie's current work includes Animals in the Room, which brings together philosophers, scientists and animal welfare specialists to explore how to represent animals in decision making.
00:28:54
Speaker
Thanks, Melanie. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, it's a pleasure. No, I'm delighted to be here. I am so excited to talk to you. I've been reading a lot about you, lot about your work.
00:29:06
Speaker
I listened to your podcast. Oh, that was such a pandemic podcast. I loved it, though. Deep science. We got to the top 10 science and nature podcasts in the US and places like that, which was just bizarre.
00:29:22
Speaker
um So i didn't I didn't see that one coming. And I just think it speaks to maybe an appetite for having encounters, like with other people. species in that kind of way so I am going to do a second series but not until I finish my current book because it is quite time consuming as I'm sure you know amazing brilliant well I look forward to the second series um so Melanie what do you think the biggest challenges are facing animals in the UK and globally right now yeah UK is a microcosm of the problems that we see globally.
00:29:52
Speaker
So i would say one of the easiest ways into the challenges that animals face and the kind of interconnectedness of, if there's a kind of flip side here, is if we look at mammals.
00:30:03
Speaker
So when we look at the biodiversity crisis, it's really stark to see just how few wild mammals there are, how endangered wild mammals are, including our closest relatives. So um Those in our family, the primates, we're looking at sort of 60% plus that are endangered.
00:30:22
Speaker
have about 4% wild mammals left, but we have 70% that are animals held captive in human food systems. that The extent to which there are billions of animals whose lives are enthralled to human systems and here are living miserable lives very far away from their own ability to live with autonomy, that that's the great moral stain on humanity right now.
00:30:47
Speaker
And for you, if you look at the last 200 years of the animal protection movement, which obviously kicked off when the RSPCA was launched, what do you think are the biggest wins for animal rights?
00:31:00
Speaker
It's an interesting one because there's so there's so much to be proud of. And sometimes we can tend to look at the sort of really big picture, like legislative sort of change. um ah but But actually, if I look at it, I think it's the psychological change. So if we move from um those first movements that the RSPCA really brought into focus, which was to see the way that we treat other animals as part of our virtue and to recognize that these these other beings mattered. They were morally considerable. That was a really incredible moment um for human psychology and kind of pushing back against human exceptionalism.
00:31:40
Speaker
If we think about 1960s with Ruth Harrison, another Brit, you know, um coming in with ah really changing and transforming how we see the lives of farmed animals.
00:31:52
Speaker
Some of this came out of the rights movement, but the the ah Peter Singer and also the philosopher Mary Midgley, who sometimes gets forgotten about, but I think was crucial um in in getting us to ah move beyond speciesism, to see other a wider ah picture for animal wild animal welfare as well as just farmed animal welfare, and to start to really see other animals from their own perspective. So it's those psychological shifts and that kind of experience expansion of the moral circle that I think um excites me. And against that backdrop of wins, where have been the moments where you've seen actually things have gone backwards in terms of animal rights?
00:32:34
Speaker
I don't know that I would say things have gone backwards in the thinking or even in um people's values. So if we just take, for example,
00:32:47
Speaker
um using animals in research, we are looking at an upward trend in Publix wanting to see animals pulled out of the research landscape.
Empathy vs. Exploitation
00:33:00
Speaker
But if we look at other graphs like meat consumption, for example, we will also see their trending upwards. So what what we've got is two things that are in tension. You've got on the one hand, a public that are much more aware about animal welfare and who care more and who are more and more and empathetic and compassionate and who value our governments and our nations leading on animal welfare more. But at the same time,
00:33:27
Speaker
We are having an intensification in our consumption and our utilisation of ah non-human animals. Their use in research models is is increasing as well.
00:33:38
Speaker
So we've got the three ah R's of research, but we now have gene edit editing and genetic editing that makes animal models more successful. So they're increasing as well. So we've on the one hand got this real increase in the industrialisation of the use of animals' lives.
00:33:55
Speaker
What we're missing, to answer your question, is moral and legal standing that is sufficient to meet that challenge for other other living beings. What do you think we can do about that?
00:34:09
Speaker
How can we boost that? How can we boost the moral standing, the legal standing? What can we do? I think you've got to get the moral standing right before you can really get a robust legal standing.
00:34:20
Speaker
So at the moment, most sort of protective measures for animals come secondarily. So they're conferred through us in some way or another um because we see them as bringing value to an ecosystem, for example, or ah They're becoming rare, so we give them protective status because of some sort of wider concept of the value of nature or the value of an
Intrinsic Value and Moral Standing
00:34:41
Speaker
ecosystem. But it's not coming from the individual animal themselves.
00:34:44
Speaker
Despite the fact that you know we've had the Declaration on Animal Consciousness since... 2012, New York University and that team ah renewed that last year.
00:34:56
Speaker
So we we tend to think about animals in the collective as an aggregate, as a species, for instance, or as a genetic sort of group. We don't think about them enough as individuals.
00:35:09
Speaker
and You know, obviously the Non-Human Rights Project attempted to do that through personhood. So this was sort of taking a human model of what we think gives us value and standing.
00:35:22
Speaker
But um none that hasn't sort of hasn't taken off really. And I think one of the reasons why is because actually human consciousness is not in fact what gives us moral standing and therefore legal standing.
00:35:35
Speaker
If you look at what it is that grounds our status, our moral status, it is the fact that we are human. We love and value one another despite our consciousness consciousness, not because of it. We value one another because we recognize that we are all we we see one another as all equal. and And dignity is the word that we use for that or the concept that we use for that.
00:36:00
Speaker
We don't have that piece done yet for other animals. And I think that is the critical bit that is missing. We need to recognise their intrinsic value. We need to stop seeing them as objects and see them as subjects.
00:36:14
Speaker
And through that, you will get a much clearer, logical path through to to the kind of legal standing that they might need. So with that in mind, probably doesn't feel appropriate to even ask you, well, do you think that some animals have more rights than others.
00:36:31
Speaker
Is that the framework we should apply to animals? No, I don't think it is. Not not from my position. I think one of the easiest ways to think about how we could and and should relate to other living beings is to recognise that living beings broadly have agency. So,
00:36:49
Speaker
They are living in a kind of very purposeful world. That's what's particular about biological beings. They do things for reasons. They're goal driven and they know what is good for them.
00:37:01
Speaker
So they're able to just sort of define their own good, even if they can't think about it, even if they can't talk about it. They still move towards what's good for them and then move away what's from what's not good for them.
00:37:12
Speaker
And we are right to value that. So you can have a basic respect there. And then, of course, we're interdependent living beings. So we relate to our environment, we shape our environment, and we need our environment to be flourishing. So that's as true for us as any kind of organism. So obviously, if you have a brain, you have a central nervous system,
00:37:32
Speaker
the kinds of choices that you might make and the things that might come to matter to you are going to differ. So we see a huge amount of difference within biology um and within other living beings.
00:37:43
Speaker
And I think, you know, that the easiest way to approach biology Biology is to recognise baseline every life deserves some respect, but the duties that we might owe to another living being flow from the kind of being that they are themselves. So what matters to them and and what kind of being are they? What kind of creature are they?
00:38:07
Speaker
It's not about saying this living being has is where we can draw the line that they matter. And it's not necessarily around a scale. It's just let's pay attention to that other living being. What do they need and want?
00:38:21
Speaker
ah What's their kind of field of choice? And, and, you know what what they need to have a flourishing life. And it will differ massively if you're a tiger versus a ah honeybee.
00:38:33
Speaker
But i I think we need another kind of category in law that can that can recognise that no life has has standing and and we owe other living beings respect and dignity.
00:38:45
Speaker
But we but kind of quite what that looks like differs depending on on the being that we face. So we don't sort of tumble into absurdity. or start sort of treating other animals in ways that they don't actually require of us. you know Giving them funerals, for instance, that they don't have no interest in having. or you Those sorts of things are where we can sort of um lose our way a bit. what What I want to see us move away is from false false boundaries within biology that that don't get us anywhere in the end.
00:39:16
Speaker
Currently, do you think we're operating with false boundaries? Yes. i yeah Yeah, absolutely we are. It's it's a madness that we are essentially treating, let's just take primates.
00:39:29
Speaker
It is, of course, a complete madness to treat primates as though, at some level, Still, as if they're objects. Yes, we have protections for primates, especially if they're endangered.
00:39:40
Speaker
But we can also clone primates. We can keep them in cages and do experiments on them. We can translocate them, despite the fact that we understand the kind of cultures that primates have.
Overcoming Objectification and Inclusion in Decision-Making
00:39:55
Speaker
that gross objectification when we know full well that primates feel and need and experience really very similar things to us.
00:40:06
Speaker
I want to be warm. I want to be held. I need to, I don't want to feel ashamed in my social group. All of those sorts of things, as well as, you know transmitting cultural information and knowledge.
00:40:18
Speaker
um You know, that's a brilliant work of people like Andrew Wyden and who are, who are, you know getting us to see the importance of animal cultures as well. It's a madness, of course, that our legal system and our moral system can't get up to speed with that. And what we need to account for is how it is that human beings can objectify other living beings as they do.
00:40:39
Speaker
How do you think we can make steps towards representing the voices of animals effectively be it you know in our communities in politics and industry this is my big sort of mission I mean I'm a writer I did not intend to find myself involved in in ethics um you know I work on history of ideas so I study how the how these sorts of ideas about status and you know um consciousness and how you know philosophy of science unfolds. And it's through through that work that I was very aware of the sorts of things that we've been talking about, that there there is this missing piece.
00:41:20
Speaker
you know There's the objectification issue and then there's the missing voice of other living beings. I'm actually part of a group called Animals in the Room and our ah we're we're mostly academics who work across sort of political representation and philosophy through to animal welfare and animal preferences.
00:41:36
Speaker
And what we're trying to do innovate. is innovate our systems. So those could be our communities, our community decision making, organization, it could be governance, it could be a business.
00:41:51
Speaker
um But in situations where clearly other living beings are being affected, they are subjects of justice who are affected by a decision or a process or something that's taking place.
00:42:03
Speaker
How can we make them present? How can we represent their voices? Now, it's important to bear in mind that we've been experimenting with human democracy for thousands of years, and we're still not getting it quite right.
00:42:16
Speaker
So it's very difficult to bring in marginalized voices within any kind of community. We have a language barrier with other living beings. I don't mean that they can't communicate with us. I just mean that our legal and ah Political systems are built around the human language. So we have to get very innovative if we're going to bring in and the non-human communications.
00:42:41
Speaker
Do you think that AI is going to enable better communication with animals in the future? I certainly think AI is going to have a role here. So I think there's lots of ways that AI um communication models may um help in in that sort of work that we talked about before. So one of the ways that I think it will it could help is in...
00:43:07
Speaker
giving us a kind of ah more robust level of trust. Do I think that we'll be having one-on-one sort of conversations with animals in in this sort of hyperhuman way?
00:43:18
Speaker
I don't think so. I think most wild animals don't want to have those sorts of conversations. But I guess I would also point out the obvious, which is, you know, i i I live in a farming community. I've grown up in rural places and I've lived in rural places all my life where um I know that most people who work with animals in one way or another, whatever side they are on the kind of how they value or or relate to other living beings, people who live in proximity to other animals or work with other animals,
00:43:50
Speaker
have been communicating with animals for a long time and know very well what those animals are saying to them. They know when an animal is unwell. They know when an animal, that they know there's complete individual variation within you know animals that there's different personalities. They have different things that you matter to them more than others.
00:44:08
Speaker
They're able communicate their interests. We already do communicate with other living beings and this shouldn't surprise us. you know The ability to communicate goes back millions of years in the evolutionary past and is very widespread across different kinds of animals.
00:44:24
Speaker
We already do communicate and can communicate.
Legal and Moral Challenges of Exploitation
00:44:26
Speaker
The issue with us is that it doesn't seem to stop us from exploiting other living beings or devaluing them or objectifying them if it suits us.
00:44:36
Speaker
Wow, that's fascinating, isn't it? I loved also how You just reflected on the fact that, oh yeah, well, you know, AI might be kind of coming where we maybe can validate some thoughts we're already having about what animals communicating. at the end of the day, animals are communicating with us.
00:44:56
Speaker
And if you listen, they're communicating, you know, if you watch and you spend time. Do you think at the moment we're in a spot where animals are communicating and we choose to ignore?
00:45:08
Speaker
Yes, I do. i think we're also doing that with one another. So if we just start with the human story, you know we're living in very, very polarized times. Our democracy is under...
00:45:22
Speaker
are under enormous strain. We tend do we do tend to belittle or um those who whose value systems don't seem to re align with ours. we ah We're hypercritical of one another. We get very groupish. so And we can see this everywhere.
00:45:38
Speaker
I think in in those sorts of situations, the easiest thing to do is kind of just seal yourself off and switch off from it. it's not yeah you know even That's the situation where we're not even being aggressive towards another. We're just slightly turning off or kind of our deep emotion and connection to them because it just feels too impossible.
00:45:57
Speaker
So I think bearing in mind that human beings already do that the these sorts of moves with one another routinely all the time, I think that's our easiest route in to understanding exactly yeah how that is at the heart of everything that that's happening in our relationship to other living beings. you You are looking at trillions of dollars and pounds and every other currency on the planet that is...
00:46:27
Speaker
pouring into the exploitation of other living beings. Like going right to our first conversation, you know, opener, going back to that shocking kind of shift that has happened where we've got 4% of wild mammals left.
00:46:42
Speaker
So wild taken to mean animals that are actually able to pursue their own interests and preferences on their own terms as as as free beings. And um as as autonomous beings, as they can and should um ordinarily. We have 4% of them left, our fellow mammals, and 70% who are living captive in our food systems. Many living absolutely miserable lives.
00:47:10
Speaker
Not all, but many. So ah given that situation, you know we can really see that we've we've generated a world that is convenient for us.
00:47:23
Speaker
weve We've basically become lazy predators, if you like. you know That's still predation, but we're just we're just doing it in a domesticated controlled way.
00:47:34
Speaker
And it is huge and it earns huge amounts of money. And that's so messed up. but and And so complex that I think people just cannot imagine how it could change.
00:47:48
Speaker
And so the easiest thing to do is to continue just to think, no, they don't really feel anything. They don't really matter. It's okay. you know We're just, um you know to continue to objectify them because I think the alternative is just feels too impossible um for for so many people.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, gosh, huge concepts and a huge, it's a big ideological shift. But are you seeing progress? you seeing moments where, oh okay, that really, really did just nudge the needle?
00:48:21
Speaker
So we know that engaging you know encounters with other beings changes the way that we see things, transforms our mindsets, transforms our perspectives, increases our empathy.
00:48:33
Speaker
But the important thing is keeping it there, right? Because if you then go back into a world that's completely made for humans and it all then feels impossible again, that effect will
Incorporating Animal Perspectives
00:48:43
Speaker
evaporate. It won't stay there. It's not good enough just to transform people's imaginations for an hour.
00:48:49
Speaker
you have to to have a meaningful change, which is why then you have to make more of a political move. So then you have to really, um in the first instance, I think we just need to start experimenting with bringing their voices into our lives. And we can experiment as individuals in that way. Just carry an animal with you when you are...
00:49:10
Speaker
making an online purchase. like Think about another living being when you walk through the woods. Let's say you're taking your dog, who you probably communicate with very well all the time, and definitely see as a member of your family and as someone he who thinks and feels and is an individual.
00:49:28
Speaker
But a dog is, you know, is is a predator coming into a nature reserve, for instance. And there are vulnerable birds in that nature reserve. So when you flip your mind and you don't just think about yourself and then your dog going out for a nice walk, but you think, well, I'm in a nature reserve now, actually. And there are there were nesting birds here and there are birds who are going to be stressed and anxious when confronting um a dog that's kind of charging through the nature reserve.
00:49:56
Speaker
Little things like that, just taking in that wider field of vision and carrying the perspectives of more animals with us can alter how we, ah you know, how we make decisions and the things that we might choose to do.
00:50:12
Speaker
That's just like a personal level of how it can start to, and just having a very you know, a bit more of ah an expansive imagination can start to change the sorts of choices that you might make. But, you know, what we really need is to bring the perspectives of other animals into our more substantial decisions that we're making.
00:50:31
Speaker
and and And for that, we just need we need to get our hands dirty and try it. Is there one guiding principle that you would leave people with?
Dignity and Legal Foundations
00:50:41
Speaker
in terms of you know moving towards this different relationship with animals?
00:50:49
Speaker
Yeah, so i've i I'm not the only one to to um speak to this, but in in the last kind of year or two, I've really been pushing for animal dignity as a really helpful concept to go forward.
00:51:03
Speaker
So think dignity treating another being with dignity, treating them as a subject, and not as an object is one of the easiest and most intuitive things that we can do. What that might go on to mean in a kind of more legal sense is not my you know expertise. i I suspect it might go that way eventually. might help with that third category in law further down the line. And there's there's brilliant thinkers like Ava Burnett-Kempers, who's a ah ah legal scholar who's sort of doing work in this area.
00:51:34
Speaker
And and and I think that will be the direction of travel. And again, I'm not the only person to talk about this. Martha Nisbaum has put forward the idea of animal dignity. There are there are others um who have been calling for this for a long time.
00:51:49
Speaker
But I think that that that's a really, I think just at a personal level, allowing the light of respect to turn on all around us in the wild animals, the smallest and most neglected creatures, the prawns, the shrimp, the bees, the ants in the forest, as well as those animals who really can call on us and talk to us and communicate to us more directly, allowing that kind of light of respect to turn on it just makes for a richer movement through the world for us as humans anyway.
00:52:22
Speaker
And how do you think, sorry, sorry, how do we do that in practice, do you think? Well, it's it's a site so is a psychological shift first. But then if it has a more normative implication, so in other words, if we go it's going to change how we act in a more sort of a call on us to to do things in a more ethical sense, then I think no you know simple steps that you can take.
00:52:46
Speaker
Don't talk about another living being or treat them as if they are an object. They're not objects. So that's the first thing that you can do in practical terms. Don't talk about an animal as though it's a pest. Yes, you can talk about the conflict that you're having, but using very objectifying language, again, talking about animals as it, as a resource, as anything that is about objectification is you can make steps to watch
00:53:18
Speaker
how you think and how you talk. ah Those are, the I think, the two ah most sort of immediately actionable things that you
Human Rights Analogies in Animal Rights
00:53:25
Speaker
can do. Yeah, I found that absolutely fascinating. And I love just that, you know, if we can work towards that psychological shift and think about dignity, then we'll be moving in the right direction.
00:53:38
Speaker
i hope so. But it's... it You know, it's when you're asking, it it is possible. I think we have to remember, you know, we're both women. We have to remember that 100 years ago, um we would have been perceived in a certain kind of way as as less intelligent, as less capable, as intelligent.
00:54:01
Speaker
Less trustworthy in a political sense. 100%. know, basically only there for our eggs in some scenarios. Perceptions can shift. Yes, yes, yes. When the truth is on your side, perceptions can shift. but so So I think we have to hold on to that when we think it's not possible for there to be this kind of shift for other animals. I think we have to remember that we have...
00:54:26
Speaker
objectified one another so extensively and we've been able to move beyond that um still some work to go sadly around the world but but i think that you know um that can give us hope that these changes can happen And that change for women occurred in the lifetime of the RSPCA.
00:54:45
Speaker
Well, absolutely. and the relationship with Wilberforce and the emancipation and the slave um you know ah the slave trade and, you know, let's not forget that all turns on objectification and stripping people of their agency, their intelligence, their value, their feelings, their humanity.
00:55:07
Speaker
ah and turning them into, brutally turning them into a resource. So human beings have done this in horrific ways with one another. And we you know and i I'm proud of that role that the ah founding of the RSPCA had in the Emancipation Act as well.
00:55:27
Speaker
h Yeah, I think these analogies are really useful at a time like this, these human analogies, because ultimately we just need a similar approach seismic shift towards how we treat animals.
00:55:40
Speaker
Brilliant.
Conclusion: Explore the RSPCA Animal Futures Project
00:55:41
Speaker
Thank you so much, Mel. No, it's a pleasure. Love talking to you.
00:55:50
Speaker
I love discussing this topic with Sean and Melanie. If animals were granted rights, what would it mean for us? And would we have to change the way we live? You can explore this topic and more by checking out the ah RSPCA Animal Futures Project.
00:56:04
Speaker
Thanks to our guests and thank you for listening. We're going to take a short break, but we'll be back with a few more episodes in a couple of weeks.
00:56:15
Speaker
Animal Futures was hosted by Kate Coulton. With thanks to our guests today, Dr. Sean Butler and Melanie Challenger. The series is produced by Mark Adams, Chris O'Brien, Emily Perdeaux and Joe Toscaro.