Author:

Keywords:

Companion animals & ethics, Animal ethics, Pets & ethics, Speciesism, Ethics of breeding, Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Agriculture, Multidisciplinary, Ethics, Environmental Sciences, History & Philosophy Of Science, Agriculture, Social Sciences - Other Topics, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, History & Philosophy of Science, companion animals, ethics, pets, speciesism, 2201 Applied Ethics, 2203 Philosophy, Applied Ethics, 4406 Human geography, 5001 Applied ethics

Abstract:

Perhaps one of the commonest reasons for the keeping of pets is companionship (friendship/affection). Pets are, therefore, being 'used' or 'instrumentalized' for human ends in the same way as laboratory or farm animals. So shouldn't the same arguments (pro and contra) apply to the use of pets as to those used for other reasons? In accepting the 'rights' of farm animals to fully express their natural behavior, one must also accept the 'right' of pets to express their intrinsic natural behavior. Dogs kept in houses for most of the day are being kept in an unnatural environment. So are rabbits kept in hutches, and guinea-pigs or birds in cages. These conditions infringe the animals' telos. Dogs are naturally pack animals, so is a dog in isolation being denied its telos? Other actions more deliberately infringe telos and autonomy: enforced shampooing or even exercise, hair-cutting of poodles, putting animals in clothes, and tail-docking. If de-beaking of chickens is considered wrong, then the same must be true for tail-docking of dogs. One should also question the responsibility of breeders - especially when breeding results in physiological disadvantages (f.i. boxers with breathing troubles). There would appear to be no advantage to the animals in having such health problems and when these are the direct result of the breeders' desire for specific cosmetic traits, we should question the ethics of the practice at least as much as when animals are bred for specific agricultural traits.