Kirsten Persson

This article captures and critiques a recurring and prominent political argument against animal welfare improvements in Switzerland which we term the “ranking argument”. This states that Swiss animal welfare law ranks among the strictest in the world, therefore no improvements are called for. This argument was advanced three times by Swiss government authorities in 2022 alone, but also in a case dating back to 1984, to advise the electorate on popular initiatives aiming at animal welfare improvements. We argue that, while the argument commits a fallacy of relative privation and is ethically dubious, it can be deployed to great effect by agents opposed to norm change in animal welfare regulation. We conclude with some thoughts on how the ranking argument can and should be challenged in public discourse.

Standard views of good death in human and veterinary medicine considerably differ from one another. Whereas the good death ideal in palliative medicine emphasizes the positive aspects of non-induced dying, veterinarians typically promote a quick and painless killing with the aim to end suffering. Recent developments suggest a convergence of both professions and professional attitudes, however. Palliative physicians are confronted with patients wishing to be ‘put to sleep’, while veterinarians have begun to integrate principles and practices from hospice care. We will argue that the discourses on good human and animal deaths are not distinct, but that they interact and influence each other. On the one hand, veterinary medicine adapts techniques like chemotherapy or sedation from palliative end-of-life care. On the other hand, philosophers, veterinarians, pet owners, patients and the general public alike make certain assumptions about the analogy of human and animal dying or killing. Unfortunately, these interactions have only scarcely been reflected normatively, especially on the part of human medicine. Conflicts and misattributions with potential serious negative consequences for the patients’ wellbeing are provoked. For these reasons, palliative physicians and veterinarians are invited to engage in the debate around human and animal end-of-life care.

The ambivalence of human-animal-relationships culminates in our eating habits; most people disapprove of factory farming, but most animal products that are consumed come from factory farming. While psychology and sociology offer several theoretical explanations for this phenomenon our study presents an experimental approach: an attempt to challenge people’s attitude by confronting them with the animals’ perspective of the consumption process. We confronted our participants with a fictional scenario that could result in them being turned into an animal. In the scenario, a wicked fairy forces them to choose a ticket. Depending on their choice of ticket they have equal chances of becoming a human being with a certain consumption behaviour (meat eater, organic eater, vegetarian, vegan) or, correspondingly, becoming a certain kind of animal (factory farmed meat animal, organically farmed meat animal, animal for dairy/egg production, free living animal). Our results indicate a strong discrepancy between people’s actual consumption habits (mostly regular meat eaters) and their choices in the experiment (strong preferences for the organic or vegan life style). The data reveal a broad spectrum of explanations for people’s decisions in the experiment. We investigated the influence of four different factors on the participant’s choices in addition to reasons they gave as open-ended answers. Correspondingly, different coping strategies to overcome the tension (cognitive dissonance) between real-life consumption choices and attitudes towards nonhuman animals could be detected. Furthermore, many participants indicated a lack of knowledge concerning living conditions in farming but also concerning capacities and properties of nonhuman animals.

The ability to exchange samples and data is crucial for the rapidly growth of biobanking. However, sharing is based on the assumption that the donor has given consent to a given use of her or his sample. Biobanking stakeholders, therefore, must choose 1 of 3 options: obtain general consent enabling multiple future uses before taking a sample from the donor, try to obtain consent again before sharing a previously obtained sample, or look for a legally endorsed way to share a sample without the donor's consent. In this study, we present the results of 36 semistructured qualitative interviews with Swiss biobanking stakeholders regarding these options and the role of ethics committees in the process of authorizing sharing. Our results show that despite a lack of legal or guideline-based barriers to general consent, some stakeholders and ethics committees have reservations about this method of consent. In most cases, however, a general consent form is already in use. Many interviewees describe processes involving the ethics committees as time-consuming and cumbersome and their requirements as too demanding for donors/patients. Greater awareness of donors' opinions and preferences and the content of guidelines and recommendations could therefore be helpful for a better justified perspective of biobanking stakeholders and ethical committee members, equally. Finally, it may be necessary to differentiate between procedures governing future samples, where general consent is clearly desirable, and the use of old yet still relevant samples, where the option of using them without consent can be highly beneficial for research.

In this article the predominant, purely theoretical perspectives on animal ethics are questioned and two important sources for empirical data in the context of animal ethics are discussed: methods of the social and methods of the natural sciences. Including these methods can lead to an empirical animal ethics approach that is far more adapted to the needs of humans and nonhuman animals and more appropriate in different circumstances than a purely theoretical concept solely premised on rational arguments. However, the potential tension between lay people’s moral judgements and ethical theory must be handled with care. The thorough analysis of qualitative data can lead to a deep insight into e.g. ethical problems with the application of laws and guidelines, practicality issues with ethical theories, personal ambivalence, and cognitive biases. The interaction between animal ethics theory and empirical findings can lead to both a more context-sensitive and applicable ethical theory and a less arbitrary folk moral system. Findings from the natural sciences can also contribute valuable information to animal ethics theory—the more we know about the properties and preferences of nonhuman animals the better we can respect them. Here, however, it is vital not to justify invasive procedures for the sake of “ethical progress”. It might be ethically required to forego some scientific findings about nonhuman animals if it is not clear how much a procedure would harm them. Only with robust empirical methods will light ultimately be shed on the nature of our moral relationship with animals