Description
Substantial controversy has been a consistent feature of UK animal health and welfare policy, as evidenced by BSE, foot and mouth disease, Salmonella in eggs, bovine TB and badger policy, large indoor dairies, and animals in circuses. All policy issues include a substantial ethical component. However, there is currently no formal or consistent mechanism for expert ethical input to the policy process.This paper proposes a body to be termed ‘The Ethics Council for Animal Policy’ to inform government on policy that significantly impacts sentient species. The paper reviews the following councils and frameworks to inform the UK Ethics Council: FAWC, Wolffian pragmatism, Nuffield Council of Bioethics, mixed ethical approaches, Banner’s principles, the ethical matrix and ethical Delphi, multicriteria analysis, public participation and the Netherlands approach.
The UK Ethics Council for Animal Policy must be independent from government and members should have substantial expertise in ethics and related disciplines. A pluralistic six-stage ethical framework is proposed: i) Problematisation of the policy issue, ii) utilitarian analysis, iii) animal rights analysis, iv) virtue-based analysis, v) animal welfare ethic analysis, and vi) integrated ethical analysis. The paper concludes that an Ethics Council for Animal Policy is necessary for just and democratic policy making in all societies that use sentient nonhuman species.
| Period | 26 Sept 2019 |
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| Degree of Recognition | International |