Treated Like Animals: Improving the Lives of the Creatures We Own, Eat and Use

‘This fascinating and engaging book challenges us all to make better lives for animals.’

Chris Packham, broadcaster and author of Back to Nature

‘Marvellous: clear-headed, clear-sighted, rigorously unsentimental but compassionate, impeccably informed and researched, and downright wise. A companionable guide through complex and controversial territory. It deserves to be a canonical text in the welfare debate.’

Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild and Being a Beast

‘A thoughtful, well-informed contribution to the animal-welfare and conservation debate.’

Jane Dalton, The Independent

‘Animals are sentient beings, with capacity to experience both suffering and joy. Alick Simmons takes this as his starting point and brings his huge veterinary experience to this book, along with his honesty and desire for reform. The result makes for a highly informative and thought-provoking read.’

Joyce D’Silva, Compassion in World Farming

‘Thoughtful, informative and firm, Simmons skilfully leads us through the complex maze of animal welfare issues and brings us to a stark realisation - for all that we have done, we must do better.’

Professor Adam Hart, biologist, broadcaster and author of Unfit for Purpose

‘Refreshingly, Alick Simmons neither castigates nor judges, but rather leads the reader through these contentious issues with gentle, considered and well-reasoned views that are hard to ignore.’

Ruth Tingay, conservationist and co-director of Wild Justice

‘He writes with expertise and knowledge, posing questions rather than passing judgement.’

James Chubb, farmer and conservationist

‘Simmons’ approach pulls no punches, but it is thoughtful and broad-ranging – and ultimately hopeful: rather than pressing a particular conclusion, he encourages his readers to develop their own ethical framework for considering the consequences of their actions.’

Rosie Woodroffe, Biologist, Zoological Society of London

‘An extremely informative and thought-provoking book that everyone with an interest in animal welfare should read.’

Dr Steve Carver, @LandEthics, Director of Wildland Research Institute

‘This book shines an expert and unflinching light on the uncountable harms that we inflict on other animals. It could easily leave the reader mired in despair but, with great skill, and by recounting his own personal journey, mistakes and recent decisions, Simmons illuminates a path towards redemption. A book to convince us all that we can, and should, do better by our fellow creatures.’

Christine Nicol, Professor of Animal Welfare, Royal Veterinary College, University of London

‘Alick Simmons has written an engrossing and hugely important book taking us into the moral maze surrounding the human exploitation of animals.’

Dominic Dyer, animal welfare campaigner and writer

‘This important, readable, thoughtful, clear book forces us to confront head on the results of our relationships with animals, whether in farming, conservation, medical research, sport or pet ownership . . . I found myself mulling over the facts and the polemic and felt enriched by the obvious care and kindness the author feels for all life.’

Mary Colwell, author of Beak, Tooth and Claw

‘A thought-provoking and fascinating read which should appeal to scientists and the public alike.’

Amy Dickman, Director of WildCRU, University of Oxford

‘A must-read for anyone with an interest in our relationship with animals and will challenge many to think again about animal welfare issues we currently ignore or avoid.’

Dr Mark Jones, Head of Policy, Born Free Foundation

‘A thought-provoking analysis of the inconsistencies in the way we treat both wild and domesticated creatures, told with passion, fascinating detail and a huge depth of knowledge and experience.’

Stephen Moss, author and naturalist

‘A brave and fearless book, asking us to explore our own relationship with the animals we exploit, from food, to pet ownership to animals used for sports.’

Gill Lewis, vet and children’s author

‘Wide-ranging and extensively researched, cogently argued while impressively modest, Alick Simmons’ debut is an accomplished, thought-provoking work that asks all the right questions of our relationship with animals while supporting us to provide our own answers.’

James Lowen, author of Much Ado About Mothing

‘A rigorous, balanced and highly readable examination of the various ways we exploit the animals we live alongside. Full of good story-telling and the distilled wisdom from a distinguished career in the field.’

Ian Carter, author of Rhythms of Nature and Human, Nature

‘This is a lucid, persuasive and deeply thought-provoking contribution on our relationship with animals. In what can be a highly polarised and contested debate Alick Simmons’ view is characterised by clarity, honesty, conscience – and above all carefully argued positions across a wide range of circumstances.’

Steve Ormerod, Professor of Ecology, Cardiff University

‘Stimulating, challenging, and important.’

Hugh Warwick, ecologist and author of Linescapes

‘This is an important and challenging book about how humans treat animals . . . Instead of advocating for a single correct viewpoint, Simmons promotes the importance of developing a rational and coherent personal ethical framework, and applying this evidence-based framework consistently across different animal species and societal contexts.’

Rob Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Zoology, Ecology and Data Analysis at Cardiff University School of Biosciences

Treated Like Animals

Treated Like Animals

Improving the Lives of the Creatures We Own, Eat and Use

Alick Simmons

Pelagic Publishing

Published in 2023 by Pelagic Publishing

20–22 Wenlock Road

London N1 7GU, UK

www.pelagicpublishing.com

Treated Like Animals: Improving the Lives of the Creatures We Own, Eat and Use

Copyright © 2023 Alick Simmons

The moral rights of the author have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Apart from short excerpts for use in research or for reviews, no part of this document may be printed or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, now known or hereafter invented or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78427-341-5 Pbk

ISBN 978-1-78427-342-2 ePub

ISBN 978-1-78427-343-9 ePDF

ISBN 978-1-78427-420-7 Audio

https://doi.org/10.53061/OHKX6488

Cover design: Edward Bettison

Author photo: Fran Stockwell

Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To Mrs Mouse

Contents

   Preface

1 The Exploitation of Animals

2 Why Aren’t All Animals Treated the Same Way?

3 The Welfare of Farmed Animals: an Overview

4 Grazing Animals: the Best, and Some of the Worst

5 Pigs, Poultry and the Rest

6 Snares, Guns and Poison: the ‘Management’ of Wildlife

7 Conservation: Exploitation with Clear Limits?

8 Recreation, Sport and a Little Food

9 Pets: Exploitation Begins at Home

10 Animals Used in Research

11 A Personal Ethical Framework

12 Making Sense of It All

Notes

Glossary and Abbreviations

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

Index

About the Author

Preface

If thinking, agonising and prevaricating about a particular subject counts as research, then this book might have had one of the longest periods of research of any book, ever. The exploitation of animals, good or bad, has played on my mind for decades, even before I became a veterinarian in the late 1970s.

I concluded many years ago that, when it comes to our interactions with animals, much of what we do, much of what we tolerate and much of what we enjoy is inhumane. And yet I gained a qualification and have had decades of gainful employment where I have actively facilitated exploitative interactions.

To be a veterinarian is an odd calling. Young, often idealistic, people become undergraduate veterinary students for a number of reasons, but studies show that it stems mainly from a ‘love’ of animals and a desire to relieve suffering. And why not? However, although the undergraduate courses and employee support have improved over the years, nothing can prepare new graduates for the rude awakening that awaits them in their first few months of practice: the profession is demanding, relentless and often lonely.

It is clear that isolation and lack of support can have a profound effect on an individual’s mental health. I was lucky, and although I found the first few months hellish, I coped – somehow. But others are less fortunate: suicide rates among veterinarians are some of the highest of any type of employment.¹ Two of my contemporaries killed themselves within five years of qualifying. Thankfully, there is help available; an excellent organisation now exists to support vets – run by vets, and staffed by trained volunteers (www.vetlife.org.uk).

Perhaps poor mental health and the high suicide risk in veterinarians is linked to a disconnect between the expectation of young graduates and what society expects of them. For decades, the veterinary profession and the society it serves have deluded themselves into thinking that the veterinarian exists solely to minister to sick and injured animals. Sure, a lot of what vets do either prevents or relieves suffering. But this is only a small part of the job. Most vets spend most of their time facilitating society’s exploitation of animals. This includes ensuring they grow well so we can eat them, ensuring they recover from going lame so we can ride them, and ensuring they aren’t diseased so they don’t poison us. The rest involves straightening out the inherited and acquired defects brought about by irresponsible breeding and incompetent care. These are the veterinary services we don’t like to talk about.

It was into this profession I was thrust a little over 40 years ago. It soon became obvious to me that I was unsuited to private practice, and that the feeling was mutual. However, I was fortunate to be born into a generation, educated in the 1970s, where curious and ambitious people could forge interesting and exciting careers. So I took advantage of the opportunities. Because of an interest in public health I joined the UK government’s veterinary service, and I studied tropical veterinary medicine, animal behaviour and welfare, along the way. I had various and varied jobs which periodically required travel around the world on behalf of the UK government and the EU, including extended stays in Belize and Australia. I left public service in 2015, having been the UK government’s Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer for the previous eight years. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I remain grateful for the many opportunities and for the challenging times.

Despite being intermittently embroiled in gruelling work on BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and other diseases of farmed animals, I managed to maintain a personal and professional interest in animal welfare; this sat alongside my lifelong passion for wildlife. And since leaving public service, I’ve managed to join together those twin interests – I now advise two conservation NGOs on wildlife welfare and ethics. Calling it a second career would be a stretch but for me these are small successes of which I am very proud.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that my veterinary career was simply research for this book, but there is no doubt that my experience has inspired a great deal of the content. While we all, with few exceptions, exploit animals, my career has brought me closer than most to almost every type of exploitation. You cannot help be affected by it.

This is a not a book about the veterinary profession, however. It is about animals, how we treat them and how we could do better. Vets have a role to play here, but this is an issue for everyone – for individuals and for society as a whole. I haven’t played down my career and my profession but, deliberately, the focus is on the animals we exploit.

I am the product of my upbringing and the child of parents who suffered the privations of the Second World War. They knew the value of food and the importance of protein for growing children. That meant three square meals a day, lots of milk and a roast on Sunday. My late mother would be as likely to consider serving a meat-free meal to my three siblings and me as to make a stew of horse meat. But attitudes and tastes change over time – and, ever curious, in her later years my mother became more interested in the provenance of her food, and in vegetarian cooking. I inherited her curiosity.

I am not vegetarian but I am picky about where my meat comes from and avoid certain types altogether. Periodically I go through several weeks of eating only vegetarian food, but I haven’t yet gone the whole hog. My dithering might be explained by my upbringing, my tastes being set by my teens, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. It is because I believe that limited and highly specific forms of animal exploitation can be justified.

While it is almost certainly true that we should eat a great deal less meat, and that many other forms of exploitation need to be reduced, reformed or prohibited, I cannot yet subscribe to the idea that all animal exploitation must cease. Certain types of animal production are good for the environment, some time-limited interventions are necessary to protect threatened species, safety and livelihoods, and some research using animals cannot be avoided if we are to tackle disease in human society.

But change, perhaps radical change, is necessary. All exploitation can be reduced, replaced and refined. The citizen can be better informed, and can be empowered to exert more influence. Operatives and animal keepers can be held to account more effectively than they are at present.

This book is intended to inform and stimulate curious people, people who are questioning their diet and attitudes to animals and who want more information before making a decision about what they will tolerate.

The nature and extent of animal exploitation is a matter of ethics, individual and societal. Exercising choice on the basis of an ethical position, whether individually or collectively, should be on the basis of evidence. After reading this book, perhaps you will change your eating habits, become vegetarian or vegan. Or not. You may even become an advocate for reforming how we treat wildlife, farmed animals, animals used in research and animals used for sport. Whatever decision you make, as long as you feel better informed than you were at the outset then the book has been a success.

A note on the text

There are numerous references in the text to the various nations of the United Kingdom, particularly regarding legislation. Animal welfare, environmental and conservation policy are devolved matters, meaning that most recent Acts and Regulations apply only in one country of the Union. So any reference to legislation in the United Kingdom can mean listing four sets of legislation when often there are only minor differences. This is not consistent, however, and some legislation, particularly that which pre-dates devolution, may apply to England, Wales and Scotland together. Northern Ireland has had separate legislation for many years.

This is not a book about the law; to keep things simple, I generally refer to legislation as applying to ‘Britain’ and refer to an individual country and its legislation only where it differs markedly from the other countries of the UK.

Much environmental, conservation and animal welfare legislation derives from the European Union. Now that the UK has left the EU, there is the opportunity to make new policies and hence new legislation. At the time of writing, this process has yet to begin, and thus references in the text to EU legislation are still valid.

Finally, legislation changes frequently, whether it derives from the EU or is domestic in origin. Indeed, as I write this preface, the government has signalled its intention to make wholesale changes to current legislation that originated from the EU. One can only hope that the best efforts of animal welfare and environment campaigners prevent a substantial reduction in protection for animals wherever they are located.

Alick Simmons

November 2022

1

The Exploitation of Animals

This book is about the way that humans exploit other animals, for good or bad, and how we could and should hold ourselves better to account for that exploitation. Apart from a tiny minority, we all do it – we are all complicit in the exploitation of animals. So much so that our dependence on animals and their products has become integral to our society and our economy. That dependence has developed slowly over time, from the hunting of animals for food and skins by the first humans, to the development of pastoralism, to today’s industrial-scale food animal production.

Alongside food animal production, we exploit animals for other reasons – for companionship, to further the cause of science and health, for sport and entertainment, and to conserve threatened species. Because much of this exploitation takes place some distance from where we live or goes on behind closed doors, many of us have little or no experience of or direct involvement with animals, except perhaps for a few dogs or cats. But make no mistake: it goes on, at scale, and it is increasing. More animals are exploited than ever before.

As well as tolerating large-scale animal exploitation, we tolerate different types of exploitation in some species but are aghast when the same treatment is meted out to others. There is something irrational about relishing eating a 16-week-old lamb while being appalled at the notion of consuming a six-month-old puppy.

In the developed world, we’re fortunate. We have used animals as part of the fuel for the economic and social miracle that gives us the standard of living we enjoy today. For the most part we are well fed, well housed and enjoy good health. When it comes to food from animals, sophisticated rearing and efficient food processing and distribution systems mean low prices, choice and abundance. But that abundance, and our health and comfort, comes at a price. Animal use in the twenty-first century is almost inconceivable in its scale. Unless husbandry, care and our other interactions with animals are consistently good, the potential for real and sustained suffering is great.

To be clear, exploitation isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Yet although many interactions are relatively benign, there are very few that can be considered wholly for the benefit of the animals involved. Exploitation can be subdivided, according to one’s values, into ‘use’ and ‘abuse’, with ‘use’ covering what might be considered benign interaction and ‘abuse’ standing for something that is detrimental in some way. It doesn’t take much thought to realise that these are rather loaded terms. One person’s use is another’s abuse. For this reason, I believe ‘exploit’ is a better term – we exploit animals.

A narrow definition of exploitation covers just ‘unfair or underhand use’, although what types of exploitation that includes is controversial because of the way in which values vary across and between societies. Therefore, when I employ the word ‘exploit’, I use the widest dictionary definition, that is, we ‘make full use of and derive benefit from’ the interaction. It includes everything from the best to the worst, from the least interaction such as observing conserved wildlife through to more significant interventions such as eating the meat of animals and wearing their skins. And, of course, it includes interactions that many find abhorrent, such as bull fighting, and more common interactions which we choose to ignore or are generally hidden from sight. The latter includes the use of rodenticide poisons that are known to be markedly inhumane.

Some of us, including livestock farmers and racehorse trainers, make a living from exploiting animals, and some, such as riders, shooters and hunters, gain satisfaction and excitement from using animals. Some make a ritual of using animals, relying on the defence of ‘tradition’ to justify its continuance. Many people are comforted by the companionship of dogs, cats or other pets – a form of exploitation, albeit one that appears largely benign.

Exploitation of animals includes benefiting from medical advances that have relied on the use of research animals – for example, avoiding infectious disease by using a vaccine previously tested on animals. It includes the killing of animals for sport and the killing of other animals that are perceived to be a threat to that sport or other activity. It includes the removal of animals that are considered to be ‘pests’ and believed to represent a risk to safety, public health or an individual’s business interests. And because we are covering all exploitation, we must also consider the conservation of animals in zoos, reserves and national parks, including where populations are monitored by trapping, ringing and other forms of tagging, and manipulated by culling and reintroductions.

For a few people, the exploitation of animals – whether for farming, hunting, research, tourism or conservation – may be their whole life. However distasteful we might find some of these activities, from their point of view their interactions with animals are simply a reason for being, for living. At the other end of the spectrum, there is a small but growing number of strict vegans who might just be able to claim that they do not exploit animals at all.¹ But for the rest of us, because of the way animals and their products have become part of our lives, it is difficult to make a similar claim.

A change of heart?

My career as a veterinarian could mark me out as being part of what might be described as the ‘animal exploitation establishment’. Veterinarians working in farm practice and for the government are, arguably, part of a system that exists to make animal husbandry efficient and profitable. We manage endemic disease on farms, control and eliminate epidemic disease, and reduce the risk of exotic disease incursion and threats to public health. It would be wrong to say that we lack compassion for the animals raised for meat and milk, but that compassion is constrained within tight bounds. Sure, we care about the welfare of animals on the farm, in transit and at the slaughterhouse, all of which is governed and protected by detailed regulations. But this is designed to protect the status quo – the business of producing meat and milk – and while it would be wrong to say that government veterinarians (and, in my experience, successive agriculture ministers) were not interested in animal welfare, wholesale reform was never on the agenda.

I was a government veterinarian for over 30 years. I’ve had a wealth of opportunities and a wide variety of roles in that time – some of which were challenging, some of which were tough. A series of jobs like that changes you. And that’s why I wrote this book. I think about animals differently now. Did I have a Damascene moment? Was there any particular event that brought about that change of heart? Was it the secondment to Australia, where I was exposed to cultural differences in the treatment of animals that almost turned me vegetarian? Or was it the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, where it seemed the whole country was expected to support an objective of eradication to be secured by killing millions of animals? Or the BSE crisis which ran for several years from 1996, during which, truth be told, I became worn out with it all? Perhaps working with broiler chicken farmers, where the sheer scale of production was hard to grasp? Or was it leading a team collecting data to determine whether the killing of badgers was likely to be useful in controlling bovine tuberculosis?

Well, it was none of these and all of these. However, I had become sceptical of many of the interventions from early in my veterinary career. As a student, I was working in a veterinary practice in the Midlands. It was a mixed practice dealing with horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, cats and everything else. I became good friends with another student, Neil Burnie. We were passionate, enthusiastic and keen to learn, and over beer in the evening we’d discuss the day’s cases and our reaction to what we had seen. Neil once said: ‘I can’t help thinking that most of the treatments we give are either for the convenience of the owner or because of something the owner has done.’ Neil believed that much of what veterinarians were treating was a consequence of how we exploit our animals: breeding dogs for a desirable physical shape, keeping dairy cows to maximise milk yield or riding a horse over jumps to prepare for a competition. It was a profound observation for a slightly inebriated 20-year-old student. But that was Neil. In essence, Neil’s argument was that, in each case, the problem is caused by how we treat the animal that we keep, whether it is respiratory problems in the inbred dog, mastitis in the dairy cow or lameness in the horse.

Inevitably, as with so many of the people I ran into during my itinerant youth, we lost contact with each other. The last I heard of Neil was from his obituary after he had drowned in Bermuda, the island where he had lived for 30 years, while working on a shark protection project. His passion for animals lives on in a foundation in his name (www.neilburniefoundation.com). And his wise observation has stayed with me.

Now I’ve reached a point where through experience, while I am not an abolitionist, I have become an advocate for better, much better treatment of the animals we exploit. This book draws on that experience and argues for change – change that can lead to more humane treatment of the animals we keep and interact with and, in some cases, argues for prohibition of certain practices known to be inhumane.

A sense of scale

It will be helpful at this point to consider the scale of animal exploitation. The mass of kept animals now considerably exceeds the mass of those left in the wild. For instance, farmed poultry today accounts for 70% of the mass of all birds on the planet, with just 30% made up of wild birds. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth, by biomass, are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human, and just 4% are wild mammals.²

This mass of kept animals translates into huge numbers. Britain’s annual production of broiler (meat) chickens is around 1 billion (1,000 million),³ which means that on average we grow, kill and eat 20 million chickens each and every week. That doesn’t include imported chicken meat – we import around 450,000 tonnes of poultry meat annually (because most imports are in the form of chicken portions, it is not possible to determine the numbers of birds involved – but it’s a lot).⁴ Globally, around 66 billion birds are produced annually,⁵ which equates to around 100 million tonnes.⁶ The numbers of pigs, cattle and sheep reared and slaughtered in the UK are much lower, but none of these figures are trivial. We’ll come back to this in Chapters 3, 4 and 5.

When it comes to ‘wildlife’ – or, more precisely, shooting – the numbers are similarly huge. Annually in the UK, around 47 million non-native ring-necked pheasants and 10 million non-native red-legged partridges are released into the countryside, although a much smaller proportion of these totals is eventually shot.⁷ There is more about this in Chapter 6.

An unknown number of rats and mice, perhaps numbering in the millions, are killed annually using techniques many of which are known to be inhumane.⁸ There is more about rodent poisons and other, mainly inhumane methods of killing rodents in Chapter 6.

In 2020 approximately 2.88 million scientific procedures involving living animals were carried out in Great Britain: 57% of procedures used mice, 14% used rats and 13% used fish.⁹ I go into the detail of the use of research animals in Chapter 10.

Whether it is farming, research or wildlife, the sheer scale of these figures should give us all pause for thought, for two reasons. First, you risk slipping into thinking that these are just numbers and not individuals; if we assume that each of these animals has the capacity to suffer, rounding the figures into millions doesn’t change that. Second, even if, say, only 0.5% of these animals suffers in one way or another, that’s a lot of suffering.

A moral imperative

The risk of individual suffering and the potential for amplification of that suffering as a result of the scale imposes on us a moral duty: do we, as the beneficiaries of animal exploitation, have an obligation to make decisions, that is, to get this right? Or do we not bother and stop caring, carry on and leave everything to trust? Do we walk away and have nothing do with animals and their products in any circumstances, or do we try to make and influence better decisions?

If we believe in better decisions, in essence there are two questions here: we need to ask ourselves ‘whether?’ but we should also be asking ‘how?’ That is, as well as doing our best to decide whether any use of animals is acceptable, we should also consider what types of animal exploitation, what procedures and what privations are acceptable. As we will see, although this involves evidence-based decisions that you as an individual are encouraged to make, there is an argument for bringing in wider society to influence the outcome.

Answering these questions is a matter of ethics. Can the inevitable impact of human intervention on each and every animal ever be justified? And if the answer is ‘yes’, under what circumstances? Of course, circumstances which might be acceptable to you might be unacceptable to me, and in some, perhaps many, circumstances the decision might best be left to the individual. On the other hand, the nature and scale of the exploitation might lead society to reach a conclusion that legislation to prohibit or license that activity is necessary, or that other sanctions are justified.

Animal exploitation can be defended in two main ways:

First, because wild animals can suffer terribly – starvation, predation and exposure to the elements are major causes of mortality – why bother to protect the animals we exploit? The answer is simply this: humans are moral beings, and morality brings with it responsibilities, and this extends to the animals with which we interact. Because an impala is pulled limb from limb by a pack of wild dogs, that does not mean we can abrogate our responsibilities to the animals with which we interact.

Second, by breeding them for food or research, these animals are given the ‘gift’ of life. Isn’t that enough? Again, given that the animals have not been given the choice and there is evidence of their capacity to suffer, as soon as we take control, we take on a duty of care.

This brings us to consideration of ‘abuse’. I’m clear where abuse of animals starts, or so I used to think. Yet as soon as you gather a little knowledge and apply a little thought, it is less clear-cut than we might suppose. The line between ‘use’ and ‘abuse’ is not easily drawn. Is it acceptable to grow broiler chickens in groups of 20,000 and more, housed at a density of 20 birds per square metre, when in the wild they might live in groups of 10–15 spread over hundreds of hectares? The farmed birds might grow quickly, mortality might be very low, and the enterprise might be profitable, but at what price to the birds? On the other hand, perhaps the chicken is so lacking in intelligence that inhibiting its natural behaviour through environmental management and genetic selection means little or nothing to the individual.

Whether we accept that animals, particularly those kept under close confinement, have behavioural ‘needs’ is a key issue in animal husbandry. One can imagine that if those needs are genuine then keeping animals in a barren and unstimulating environment is potentially a source of considerable suffering. The behavioural needs of animals will be discussed in more detail in later chapters.

Is it acceptable to perform invasive neurosurgery on a rhesus macaque to insert electrodes in its brain and perform experiments on it, intermittently, for several years, if the results of the research lead to more effective treatments for dementia? What if the research is basic science and simply intended to provide a better understanding of how the brain works, with no immediate practical application? Would you prohibit the latter but not the former?

Wherever the intervention lies on the spectrum between good and bad, there ought to be an abiding concern about the welfare of animals in almost every circumstance where humans intervene. As we saw earlier, animal exploitation is not confined to agriculture and research. It includes anything where humans intervene in the life and fate of animals. Animal exploitation, therefore, includes the keeping of animals in zoos, as pets and companions, intervening against ‘pests’, conservation activities, the impact of the built environment, hunting and trapping, wildlife ‘management’, and any other activity where an animal’s life and experience are altered – and not in every case for the worse.

In choosing to rely on animals for food, clothing, companionship, sport or anything else, we are accepting and condoning some degree of intervention in their lives. This might be direct intervention – I adopt a stray cat, you shoot a pheasant, he keeps cattle. Or perhaps it is indirect – I buy leather shoes, you go to the races, she gets a new heart valve.

Each of those interventions has an impact. The animal might be killed prematurely so we can eat its meat, it might be prevented from breeding and displaying its full range of normal behaviour, it might