Ethical Justifications for the Use of Animals in Competitive Sport

ABSTRACT

Recently, shifting societal attitudes towards animals have resulted in an increasing challenge to the ‘social license’ to use animals in competitive sport. Against that background, this paper explores whether the use of animals in competitive sport is ever justifiable from the perspective of three commonly used ethical theories: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. In so doing, it recognises the importance of human understanding of animals as sentient beings. The author argues that when deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics are each used to consider the question ‘Is the use of animals in sport ethically justifiable?’, only absolutist rights theory leads to a negative conclusion. Specified rights theory, utilitarianism and virtue ethics all allow for the human use of animals in sport. However, the author then goes onto argue that even if one does not accept an absolutist rights point of view and does believe that the use of animals in sport is generally ethically justifiable, that use should be limited by fulfilment of certain ‘qualifying constraints’: (a) minimisation of negative welfare effects and maximisation of positive welfare effects, to enable ‘good lives’ for animals (b) identification of and mitigation against avoidable, unnecessary risk and (c) compliance with governing body regulations and the law.

KEYWORDS:

• Animal sport
• ethics
• horses
• sled dogs
• greyhounds

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Note that if one applies current scientific understanding of sentience (in which the majority of invertebrates are not considered to be sentient) to Singer’s argument then it must necessarily follow that some animals have different moral status from others. Furthermore, the capacity for sentience is not the only way of determining the moral status of animals—Kagan, for example, suggests that ‘agency’ may be more appropriate (Kagan, S (2019) How to Count Animals, more or less Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics Oxford, Oxford Academic, Ch1). A further discussion of both of these points is beyond the scope of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by WORLD HORSE WELFARE