Joy M. Verrinder

Differences in Moral Judgment on Animal and Human Ethics Issues between University Students in Animal-Related, Human Medical and Arts Programs.

Moral judgment in relation to animal ethics issues has rarely been investigated. Among the research that has been conducted, studies of veterinary students have shown greater use of reasoning based on universal principles for animal than human ethics issues. This study aimed to identify if this was unique to students of veterinary and other animal-related professions. The moral reasoning of first year students of veterinary medicine, veterinary technology, and production animal science was compared with that of students in non-animal related disciplines of human medicine and arts. All students (n = 531) completed a moral reasoning test, the VetDIT, with animal and human scenarios. When compared with reasoning on human ethics issues, the combined group of students evaluating animal ethics issues showed higher levels of Universal Principles reasoning, lower levels of Personal Interest reasoning and similar levels of Maintaining Norms reasoning. Arts students showed more personal interest reasoning than students in most animal-related programs on both animal and human ethics issues, and less norms-based reasoning on animal ethics issues. Medical students showed more norms-based reasoning on animal ethics issues than all of the animal-related groups. There were no differences in principled reasoning on animal ethics issues between program groups. This has implications for animal-related professions and education programs showing that students’ preference for principled reasoning on animal ethics issues is not unique to animal-related disciplines, and highlighting the need to develop student (and professional) capacity to apply principled reasoning to address ethics issues in animal industries to reduce the risk of moral distress.

Science, Animal Ethics and the Law

Within the paradigm of the desirability of an age of plenty, science has delivered a rapid expansion in animal production by changing the living standards, morphology and physiology of animals. While various philosophers have espoused more compassionate and just treatment of animals for at least twenty centuries, it is only in recent times that animal welfare research has evolved, providing evidence to inform standards and legal requirements and meet public expectations about the treatment of animals. However this science has struggled to maintain its independence. Its focus has been on the physical impacts of painful procedures, though more recently there has been a growth in studies on animals’ emotions, both negative and positive. While it is important to determine how animals think, feel and experience pain and pleasure, ethics should be central to all these investigations, and the resulting decisions. There has been confusion about what ethics means and how it can contribute to decision making in relation to animal ethics issues. With little ethics research and no unified ethics competencies in animal-related professions, a narrow focus on legislated codes of practice and relativist or pluralist approaches to ethical frameworks are often used. This chapter explains how animal ethics can be addressed more purposefully as the science of morality regarding humans’ treatment of animals, with a structured approach to moral development based on moral psychology.