What Else Could Be Done to Help: Establishing Welfare Biology

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 78 of the PDF edition · English translation

27.1. What is welfare biology?

The lack of consideration for animals as sentient beings means that wild animals are generally studied only as specimens of species and components of ecosystems. For this reason, there are far fewer data on what affects wild animals as individuals who have well-being.

For this reason, the creation of the field of welfare biology has been proposed, which would study the way animals are affected by their interactions with their environments and with one another, from the standpoint of what is better or worse for them as sentient individuals who have well-being – that is, as beings for whom things can go better or worse¹²¹.

As knowledge from welfare biology increases, ever safer and more efficient programs to help animals could be implemented¹²².

27.2. Welfare biology is a cross-disciplinary field

Research in welfare biology is cross-disciplinary. This is different from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. In terms of their disciplinarity, the different types of research can be classified as follows¹²³. (1) Intradisciplinary research is carried out within a single discipline. (2) Multidisciplinary research involves several disciplines providing different perspectives on a problem. (3) Interdisciplinary research integrates the knowledge and methods of different disciplines, synthesizing their approaches. (4) Transdisciplinary research creates a framework beyond the perspectives of the disciplines involved. (5) Finally, cross-disciplinary research views one or more disciplines from the perspective of another.

Welfare biology would bring together knowledge from several disciplines, such as ecology, animal welfare science, zoology and veterinary science. It is

a cross-disciplinary field of research in the sense that each discipline involved would be conducted from the perspective of welfare biology. That is, all of them would focus on investigating how animals are positively or negatively affected as sentient beings.

27.3. What distinguishes welfare biology from other fields?

Welfare biology is different from conservation biology¹²⁴, in which animals are studied as specimens of species or components of ecosystems. It is also different from compassionate conservation¹²⁵, which consists in using methods that do not harm animals when pursuing conservationist goals. Finally, it is also different from conservation welfare¹²⁶, which investigates how animals' well-being can also be promoted when conservation measures are implemented.

Welfare biology would study what positively or negatively affects animals, regardless of whether or not this knowledge serves conservation. Knowledge from these other fields could be useful to welfare biology and vice versa, but their goals are distinct.

27.4. Which animals would welfare biology study?

Research in welfare biology could be carried out on the situation of any animals. However, far more data are already available in the case of animals living under human control. The way natural processes affect the well-being of animals in the wild is still a widely neglected topic. For this reason, research in welfare biology has reasons to focus on the situation of these animals. However, such research could also include animals who do not live under direct human control and are found in semi-wild, agricultural, suburban and even urban environments (such as pigeons living in cities, for example¹²⁷).

27.5. Creating the conditions for establishing welfare biology

Some people think that the proposal to help wild animals is not implemented because no one has any idea what to do in practice. This belief is mistaken. As we saw in Chapter 26, various things are already being done to help animals in the wild¹²⁸. There is also already a good deal of research in welfare biology¹²⁹, and something is also known about what other kinds of research would be needed. Research programs specializing in welfare biology¹³⁰ are also beginning to emerge at universities.

Why, then, has welfare biology not yet become a well-established field of research, like other fields? There are several factors. One of them is that it is a relatively recent field compared with other areas. Another factor is that, contrary to that common belief, the main obstacles to establishing welfare biology are not practical but ideological. That is, there is little research on the situation of wild animals simply because that situation is not yet seen as a problem, and also because the prevailing view is that it is wrong to help these animals. In short, the problem is not that there is nothing to be done, but that there is a lack of will to do something.

Thus, for welfare biology to become a well-established field, it is important to combat these ideological obstacles. Below we will look at these obstacles in more detail.

27.6. Ideological obstacles that hinder the development of welfare biology

Speciesism

Because of speciesism, wild animals are normally reduced to components of ecosystems and specimens of species. They are not seen as individuals we should be concerned about. According to this view, when wild animals are victims of natural processes, this gives us no direct reasons to prevent their suffering and deaths: what matters is letting nature take its course, ensuring ecological balance, biodiversity, the conservation of ecosystems, preserving rare species, etc. According to the

prevailing view, we should help wild animals only if doing so is useful for achieving environmentalist or anthropocentric goals.

However, when humans are the victims, the prevailing view is exactly the opposite. The objections raised against the proposal to help wild animals would almost certainly not be raised if the victims were human. Thus, the prevalence of speciesism is one of the main reasons why research in welfare biology is not yet a consolidated field.

The idyllic view of nature

Another obstacle is the idyllic view of nature¹³¹, that is, the idea that, if we let nature take its course, the outcome will be predominantly positive for animals. This bias causes the problem of wild animal suffering to be neglected even within animal advocacy, simply because many activists do not know how much wild animals are harmed by natural processes¹³².

Veneration of what is natural

A third obstacle is the veneration of what is natural. This veneration leads many people to have an idyllic view of nature. But, above all, it also leads many people to oppose reducing the suffering and deaths of wild animals, even when they know that the idyllic view of nature is false. Of course, this veneration of what is natural is normally subordinate to speciesism, since it is not applied when humans are the victims.

The origin-of-harm bias

A fourth obstacle is the idea that we are morally responsible only for harms that originated in human practices. We discussed this view in detail in Chapter 21 and saw that there are good reasons to reject it. Moreover, once again, this view is normally subordinate to speciesism, since it is not accepted when the victims are human.

Several biases operating together

Finally, there are also several biases that incline people to neglect the situation of animals in the wild and even to oppose the proposal to help them. Some examples are status quo bias (the tendency to prefer that things stay as they already are), conservatism bias (insufficiently revising one's beliefs in light of new evidence); the Semmelweis reflex (the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm); anchoring bias (which leads us to rely heavily on the first piece of information we receive about a subject) and the just-world hypothesis (that is, the belief that the bad things that happen in the world are fair).

These biases can lead people to claim that "anything we try to do will only make things worse," or "the public will never accept this proposal," not because they have examined the issue thoroughly and reached this conclusion, but so as not to have to put to the test the belief they already held, that we should not help animals. That is, what is said is "I agree with the proposal, but unfortunately it won't work," but this is a way of disguising disagreement with the proposal (it is a case of a normative objection disguised as a strategic objection).

These are just a few examples of ideological obstacles to the proposal to help wild animals. Challenging these and other ideological obstacles is crucial if the available means are actually to be used to help animals and if more knowledge is to be pursued in this direction.