Animal Welfare

Fifty years ago a young man was mowing hay on the family farm. About to make the last two cuts in the centre of the field, he checked to see that all wildlife had escaped the area. He failed to notice a brown hare crouching in the golden grass. And his last sweep with the tractor mower severed the hapless animal’s legs. The hare lay writhing and screeching in agony until the youth, unable to bear that sight and sound, took a spade from his tractor and with a single blow killed the animal. He was overwhelmed with a sense of loss and grief, remembering that it was only a couple of decades earlier that the men had hand mown the hay with huge hand scythes and how much more protective of wildlife that mowing had been compared with contemporary intensive farming mechanisation.

One of the documentaries as part of a week long series on climate change from the BBC last week, featured David Attenborough, the doyen producer of all those brilliant nature programmes which have brought oceans, deserts, forests, mountains and an incredible range of animal life and behaviour into our living rooms. Through his passion for wildlife many of us have watched spellbound as he has revealed to us the way that great apes fashion and use of tools, male seahorses give birth to the their young, and the complex community life of those lovable meerkats. An old man now, Attenborough has undergone a conversion. His engagement with so many features of life on our planet has made him aware of the catastrophic effects of global warming. He expressed regret that even the very making of his wonderful programmes, through its consumption of fuel and other resources has contributed to the crisis of the animal kingdom to which he is so obviously committed.

The issue of animal welfare was the subject of another news item this week. For several years now Oxford University has been trying to complete a new building to house its extensive animal testing programme. The building programme has been subject to widespread disruption by demonstrators opposed in principle to testing new drugs and medical procedures upon animals. The opponents’ sustained and very effective campaign led Oxford University to some time ago seek an injunction limiting protests. Last week the University applied for an additional injunction to further limit protest activities in the city. The injunction was granted even though it places severe limits upon Britain’s long protected rights of protest. It seems bizarre that the rights of humans should be curtailed in order to help promote the allegedly cruel treatment of other species which evidently have no rights.

One of Oxford’s eminent scholars, brain scientist Professor Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council, who is an outspoken supporter of animal testing, buoyed perhaps by the University’s success in legally limiting opposition to testing, proposed that the eight year old British ban on using apes for medical testing, should be lifted. Admittedly Professor Blakemore was cautious in his advocacy of relaxing the ban, arguing that in the case of a massive pandemic, it might be essential to experiment upon apes which share 96 per cent of their DNA with humans. But still he would like to see Britain join those nations, Japan, the United States and the Netherlands, which permit medical experimentation upon great apes.

Sir David Attenborough was among those who responded in opposition to the use of apes in invasive medical research. The conservationists’ arguments are that the apes share with us characteristics such as compassion, empathy, self awareness and a sense of mortality which we regard as fundamentally human. Their social, mental and emotional similarities to us, along with their incarceration in cages in medical laboratories raise fundamental moral questions. Given that the UN Environmental Programme has concluded that all great ape species are facing the probability of extinction within the next fifty years, our focus surely needs to be on ensuring their survival rather than hastening their demise.

Another Oxford academic with very different views from those of Professor Blakemore, is Professor Andrew Linzey who holds a post in Ethics, Theology and Animal Welfare, the first of its kind. The writer of many books including Animal Theology, Linzey is concerned with the way that humans relate to animals arguing that while animals are an integral part of God’s creation, historically Christianity has failed to address practically and theologically how animals should be treated. Far from being a maverick, Professor Linzey stands in an honoured theological and historical tradition which sees concern for the animal kingdom as springing from the very fundamentals of Christianity. As Cardinal John Henry Newman put it 150 years ago “Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God”. Thus in his book Christianity and The Rights of Animals Linzey argues:

"Since an animal's natural life is a gift from God, it follows that God's right is violated when the natural life of his creatures is perverted. Those who, in contrast, opt for the welfarist approach to intensive farming are inevitably involved in speculating how far such and such may or may not suffer in what are plainly unnatural conditions. But unless animals are judged to have some right to their natural life, from what standpoint can we judge abnormalities, mutilations or adjustments? Confining a de-beaked hen in a battery cage is more than a moral crime; it is a living sign of our failure to recognize the blessing of God in creation."

Linzey promotes a theology of creation which as he puts it “rejects the idea that the rights and welfare of animals must always be subordinate to human interests, even when vital human interests are at stake”. This is for him the fundamental moral issue. He insists that the “Christian paradigm of generous costly service” should be applied not only to human society but to the entire natural world. He further argues that Christians who claim to model their behaviour on that of Jesus Christ should, in the exercise of human dominion over creation, follow the example of Jesus in whom we see power expressed as powerlessness, and strength expressed in compassion.

The building of Oxford’s new laboratory for animal testing is justified by many on the grounds that without it, medical research which will benefit humans will be set back decades. Professor Linzey maintains that the Christian Generosity Paradigm, means “that humans must bear for themselves whatever ills may flow from not experimenting upon animals rather than sanction a system of institutionalised abuse”.

But it’s not only the issue of animal testing which is of concern, for across the globe intensive mechanised farming and forestry is doing untold damage to wildlife habitats. As it is the case that one person’s death diminishes me, so the needless destruction of natural life, diminishes the beauty and integrity of creation. And in case you’re still wondering who the youth on that hay mower all those years ago was, that was me.