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Increasingly, people claim that animals have moral status, moral rights, or both. What does this mean? To say that a cat has moral status is to say that the cat has moral importance in her own right and not just in relation to people. ‘The moral status of animals’ considers whether animals, all animals, should have moral status and defines different levels of understanding moral rights: the moral status, the equal-consideration, and the utility-trumping senses of rights. Are all animals equal, including centipedes, slugs, and amoebas? Some animal advocates claim that they are. Not all creatures are sentient, which means having a capacity to feel. ...Less

It is debatable under what conditions animal research is justified. Estimates of the number of animals used worldwide in research range from 41 to 100 million a year. ‘Animal research’ explores the complex issue of animal research, looking at issues such as: whether biomedical progress justifies harming nonconsenting research subjects; if so, whether there is a degree of harm to animal subjects beyond which it is unethical to go; how promising a proposed experiment must be to be ethically defensible; and how aggressively the research community should pursue alternatives to animal use. Animal research has played a part in biomedical progress, but it does not follow that it was necessary. ...Less

Can we regard the harm caused to factory farm animals as necessary? We do not need to eat meat in order to live or even to stay healthy. ‘Meat-eating’ examines the ethics of eating meat by focusing on the issue of consuming meat produced in factory farms, but also takes up the issues of eating meat produced in family farms and eating seafood. Even if we accept a sliding-scale model of moral status, which justifies less-than-equal consideration for animals, we cannot defend the causing of unnecessary harm. Considering the issue of eating seafood, the harms caused to creatures other than those consumed is important, such as animals that get ensnared accidentally. ...Less

What are animals and what are their mental lives like? The Introduction provides a historical sketch of traditional thinking about animals and the emergence of the animal rights movement. The main sources of traditional thinking about animals' moral status have been religion and philosophy which interact with science to shape conceptions of what we see animals as. The Bible largely reinforced the Aristotelian view of animals by asserting that God created humans in his own image, and that we are free to use natural resources, including animals, for our own purposes. Are animals able to reason? ...Less