Abstract of paper presented at ISAZ 2001 conference, 'Human-Animal Conflict: Exploring the Relationships with Conflict between Humans and Other Animals', University of California, Davis, USA. August 3-4, 2001
KILLING ANIMALS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATION INTO CULTURAL ATTITUDES AND MORAL JUSTIFICATIONS
Joanna Swabe, Bart Rutgers and Elsbeth Noordhuizen-Stassen
Department of Animals and Society, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Yalelaan 17, 3584 CL Utrecht, The Netherlands
Across the globe, billions of domesticated animals are deliberately killed each year to provide us with foodstuffs, hides, fur and other products; the lives of millions of others are terminated because they are sick, diseased or simply unwanted. Curiously, in spite of the ubiquity and scale of animal killing in modern society, there has been remarkably little social scientific or ethical research into this human practice.
To some extent, the research presented here hopes to remedy this by providing new insights into cultural attitudes towards and moral justifications of the killing of animals. This research focuses specifically on the Dutch context where killing domestic animals is legally prohibited, unless there are morally defensible and legitimate grounds for doing so. The principle upon which Dutch law is based assumes that terminating animal life is not a neutral moral act and requires moral justification. Established practices, such as the slaughter animals for food production and euthanasia of terminally ill pets, are - it appears - broadly taken to be unavoidable and unproblematic. They consequently enjoy wide, though by no means total, social acceptance.
However, as recent events in the Netherlands, such as the outbreak of swine fever in 1997 and the introduction of new measures to combat aggressive breeds of dog, have illustrated, the killing of ostensibly healthy animals has met with far less societal approval. The so-called 'preventative clearance' of pig farms as a response to the epidemic, entailing the mass destruction of (largely non-infected) pigs and the euthanasia of piglets due to overfull stalls, led to an enormous public outcry. Similarly, the recent bid to eliminate dog breeds with a 'hereditary' abnormal propensity for aggression will ultimately lead to the death of healthy animals with no behavioural problems, since such animals will legally not be allowed to be re-homed. It has become clear that the killing of (healthy) animals, especially where it is perceived as unnecessary or avoidable, is particularly problematic.
This presentation will provide an overview of this research into the killing of animals, presenting our initial research findings. The research is interdisciplinary in nature, combining a mix of sociological and normative-ethical approaches. Social attitudes, cultural beliefs and moral intuitions about killing animals are investigated through both qualitative interviews with individuals routinely involved in killing animals, such as veterinarians and slaughterhouse workers, and a broader public attitudinal survey. The ethical research chiefly involves an analysis of norms and values relating to moral reasoning about killing animals. This analysis focuses mainly on lines of reasoning concerned with animal welfare and the 'intrinsic value of animals', questioning whether these arguments are fruitful in the development of an ethical framework for judging the acceptability of killing animals. Finally, a synthesis of the findings of both disciplinary approaches to the topic will be reached in order to produce a coherent vision of (Dutch) cultural attitudes and moral justifications for killing animals. Thus offering policymakers the possibility of developing adequate guidelines in this area that will receive a broad level of social support.
