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Notes
1 For an excellent discussion of human attitudes towards animals see M Radford, Animal Welfare Law in Britain: Regulation and Responsibility (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001) Chapter 1.
2 For example, in the UK (not including Northern Ireland) in 2022, 2.76 million experiments were conducted on living animals. These experiments range from being considered to cause ‘mild’ to ‘severe’ suffering. These statistics do not include the use of ‘additional animals’ used for research purposes, which also involves the use of millions of live animals for research every year. This is just a small snapshot of one of the areas in which animals are exploited. ‘Additional statistics on breeding and genotyping of animals for scientific procedures, Great Britain 2017’ (Home Office Statistical Bulletin 27/18, 8 November 2018) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/754408/breeding-genotyping-animals-scientific-procedures-2017-hosb2718.pdf.
3 For an in-depth look at some of these issues see C Scanes and S Toukhsati, Animals and Human Society (Abingdon, Routledge, 1994).
4 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (London, The Bodley Head, 2015).
5 S Kagan, How to Count Animals (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019).
6 C Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018).
7 D Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
8 C Brown, ‘Fish Intelligence, Sentience and Ethics’ (2015) 18 Animal Cognition 1.
9 For example, see S Kittilsen, ‘Functional Aspects of Emotions in Fish’ (2013) 100 Behavioural Processes 153.
10 See, for example, D DeGrazia, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996); see also D DeGrazia, ‘Sentience and Consciousness as Bases for Attributing Interests and Moral Status: Considering the Evidence and Speculating Slightly Beyond’ in LSM Johnson, Andrew Fenton and Adam Shriver (eds), Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals (Heidelberg, Springer, 2020) 17, 29 (stating that providing a bee has both consciousness and sentience, the bee would have moral status).
11 GL Francione, Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (New York, Colombia University Press, 2009).
12 Korsgaard (n6).
13 CM Sherwin, ‘Can Invertebrates Suffer? or, How Robust is Argument-By-Analogy?’ (2001) 10 Animal Welfare 103–118.
14 For a history of animal experimentation and some of the ways in which we have used science to consider sentience in animals see I Duncan, ‘The Changing Concept of Animal Sentience’ (2006) 100 Applied Animal Behaviour Science 11.
15 In terms of ethics, we can use as an example DeGrazia, who asserts that we may be able to infer sentience (to bees specifically) on the following grounds: 1, An organism is likely to have a characteristic if it is a selective advantage for that organism, and 2, it is a selective advantage for a conscious organism to have sentience. DeGrazia (n10) and C Abbate, What It’s Like, or Not Like, to Bee’ (2023) 26 Between the Species 1. In terms of science, there are numerous examples of studies concluding that insects likely have sentience: see C Klein and AB Barron, ‘Insects Have the Capacity for Subjective Experience’ (2016) 9 Animal Sentience 1 and A van Huis, ‘Welfare of Farmed Insects’ (2020) 7 Journal of Insects as Food and Feed 573.
16 B Fischer, ‘Bugging the Strict Vegan’ (2016) 29 Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 255.
17 Ibid.
18 H Browning and W Veit, ‘Improving Invertebrate Welfare’ (2020) 29 Animal Sentience 3.
19 Ibid.
20 Singer (n 4).
21 R Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1999) 41.
22 See NS Clayton, TJ Bussey and A Dickinson, ‘Can Animals Recall the Past and Plan for the Future?’ (2003) 4 Nature Reviews Neuroscience 685.
23 T Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004).
24 Kagan (n5).
25 GL Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2000).
26 S Clark, Moral Status of Animals (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977).
27 W Quinn, ‘Identity and Loss’ (1984) 13 Philosophical Public Affairs 49.
28 D DeGrazia, ‘Moral Status as a Matter of Degree?’ (2008) 46 The Southern Journal of Philosophy 181.
29 Some morally relevant characteristics that are taken into account could include self-awareness, rationality, autonomy, complexity of social relationships, ability to plan for the future and sentience.
30 Sencerz demonstrates the way in which we may take into account such morally relevant characteristics and attempt to place being on such a sliding scale here: S Sencerz, ‘Toward a Moderate Hierarchical View About the Moral Status of Animals’ [2023] Etyka 18.
31 MW De Veer and R van den Bos, ‘A Critical Review of Methodology and Interpretation of Mirror Self-Recognition Research in Nonhuman Primates’ (1999) 58 Animal Behaviour 459.
32 AW Huttunen, GK Adams and ML Platt, ‘Can Self-Awareness be Taught? Monkeys Pass the Mirror Test—Again’ (2017) 114(13) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 3282.