Naturalness and Animal Welfare

Area of Science:

• Animal Welfare Science
• Ethology
• Applied Ethics

Background:

• Naturalness is a key, yet ambiguous, criterion for animal welfare assessment.
• Existing definitions lack scientific rigor and practical application for ethical considerations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To define and operationalize the concept of naturalness for scientific and ethical evaluation of animal welfare.
• To differentiate naturalness from related concepts like species-typical behavior and wellbeing.
• To propose a quantitative framework for assessing animal naturalness.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis differentiating naturalness from species-typical behavior and wellbeing.
• Identification of five contingent uses of naturalness in welfare assessment.
• Development of a quantitative, reality-based approach to assess naturalness by degrees.
• Proposal for comparing affected animal populations to unaffected wild populations.

Main Results:

• Naturalness can serve as a prompt for welfare assessment, a hypothesis for wellbeing, an acceptability threshold, a constraint on unacceptable improvements, and a demarcation of non-wrongdoing due to lack of agency.
• A quantitative method is proposed to evaluate animal behavior and assess naturalness.
• Unaffected wild populations are proposed as the baseline definition of naturalness.

Conclusions:

• A scientifically rigorous and practically applicable definition of naturalness is proposed.
• The proposed approach allows for the scientific assessment of naturalness and informs practical decisions regarding domestic animal behavior.
• This framework enhances the ethical evaluation of animal welfare by providing a clearer understanding of naturalness.