Critical Thinking Applied to Animal Ethics, Animal Rights, and Animal Welfare

Abstract

Executive Summary

This chapter on animal ethics, animal rights, and animal welfare is a logical sequence to and ontological consequence of the arguments in earlier chapters. By respecting Mother Nature in all her ecosystems and biodiversity levels, especially by recognizing animal rights and their uniqueness, autonomy, and intrinsicality, we actively contribute to natural sustainability and animal welfare. Our anthropocentric economic models that are profoundly insensitive to the complex interdependencies between human and nonhuman behavior systems and their irreversible environmental challenges endanger both animal rights and global sustainability. Philosophically, we confront epistemological and anthropocentric structures that uncritically privilege humans disproportionately to nonhumans and unwittingly rationalize, moralize, and commodify meat production and consumption such that animal rights and welfare get seriously compromised. To achieve animal welfare, however, we need to seriously rescale Nature's hierarchies first by dethroning ourselves from self-appointed and self-serving, uncontested and critically unexamined presumed human superiority over the nonhuman world and restoring global equality of being an opportunity for all.

Citation

Mascarenhas, O.A.J., Thakur, M. and Kumar, P. (2024), "Critical Thinking Applied to Animal Ethics, Animal Rights, and Animal Welfare", A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 119-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83753-346-620241004