Animal-welfare science tries to get inside the minds of a huge range of species — in order to help improve their lives.
"...a true ethical question, one that troubled the entire premise of a multibillion-dollar global industry: "whether or not it is ethical to keep these hens for the sole purpose of egg-laying, only to have them slaughtered at the end." Among the scores of students we watched over the course of a weekend, LeBlond and her teammates from the Atlantic Veterinary College were the only ones who, in the final seconds of their talks, raised deep questions about the scenario's entire premise — about whether, in the end, these fictional animals should have been put in these fictional situations in the first place.
It was a question that the judges of the Animal Welfare Assessment Contest had no doubt considered, but it also was one that seemed to lie outside the contest's purview: In its either-or structure, the contest is helping train future professionals how to improve, rather than remove, the ties that bind animals into human society. Unless the day arrives when there is no need for laboratory rats, or poultry barns, or facilities to house desert tortoises and other captive wildlife, the animals of North America will be in the hands of veterinarians and animal scientists like LeBlond and her classmates, to help shape their situations the very best way they can." nyt
"...a true ethical question, one that troubled the entire premise of a multibillion-dollar global industry: "whether or not it is ethical to keep these hens for the sole purpose of egg-laying, only to have them slaughtered at the end." Among the scores of students we watched over the course of a weekend, LeBlond and her teammates from the Atlantic Veterinary College were the only ones who, in the final seconds of their talks, raised deep questions about the scenario's entire premise — about whether, in the end, these fictional animals should have been put in these fictional situations in the first place.
It was a question that the judges of the Animal Welfare Assessment Contest had no doubt considered, but it also was one that seemed to lie outside the contest's purview: In its either-or structure, the contest is helping train future professionals how to improve, rather than remove, the ties that bind animals into human society. Unless the day arrives when there is no need for laboratory rats, or poultry barns, or facilities to house desert tortoises and other captive wildlife, the animals of North America will be in the hands of veterinarians and animal scientists like LeBlond and her classmates, to help shape their situations the very best way they can." nyt
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