Animal agriculture and the welfare of animals

摘要

Taking proper care of one's animals has always been understood as an ethical responsibility. It is a responsibility that has traditionally been accepted by producers and largely taken for granted by the general public. In the past, producers never thought of the ethical responsibility to care for their animals as being in any sort of conflict with good business practice, and the public never thought much about the welfare of farm animals at all. This is not to say that consumers in the past did not care about the welfare of farm animals. Rather, I think that people who reflected on the well-being of livestock tended to think that farm animals were living lives well suited to the kind of creatures they were and that the producer's self-interest in healthy animals served as a check against cruel treatment.