Can Suffering Be Assessed Scientifically?
Suffering is a subjective and personal experience. When you are feeling pain, you can talk and express it. Animals cannot talk and other means of communication are difficult to extract any meaning. Other methods then must be used to determine if an animal is suffering. In the case of babies, parents learn to detect pain and suffering through clues such as crying, loss of appetite or unusual behavior. Similar methods can be used with animals. Marian Dawkins's, in 'Animal Suffering: The Science of Animal Welfare' (1980), surveyed and criticized several approaches that can collectively give a picture of when and to what degree animals are suffering.One way is to look at physical health. But this may not be entirely sufficient: although physical health is a necessary condition for well-being of animals, Dawkins argues that animals can still suffer mentally, for example, from boredom. Looking at productivity may also be relevant to welfare, in that productivity testifies that at least certain animal needs are being met. But productivity is fundamentally an economic notion and it can be observed that it is sometimes present in the absence of animal well-being. Animals may, for example, gain weight, but this may be due to the fact that they are immobile; they can still be suffering because of their inability to move.
Comparisons with counterparts in the wild is another way of assessing suffering of farm animals. However, life in the wild may be very different from life in confinement and may not necessarily involve less suffering. Often, domestic animals are quite far removed from their wild counterparts and thus better adapted to confinement. Comparisons with wild relatives are best seen as highlighting areas of concern that should be considered, but not necessarily as definitive indicators of suffering.
Physiological changes, such as long and short term stress responses, may indicate suffering. But the connections between the animal experiences and its physiological responses are unclear. Many beneficial and even pleasant activities, such as exercise and eating, can occasion physiological stress responses. Furthermore, the stress response can be triggered by attempts to measure it.
Looking at animal's behavior can also help us to detect suffering but, according to Dawkins, abnormal behavior should not be equated with suffering, since the very behavior in question may indicate that the animal has adapted to the circumstance.
'Asking the animals' what kind of conditions they prefer is another alternative to identify what could cause suffering from the animals' point of view. This could be done by letting the animals choose, for example, between open conditions and confinement, or between types of bedding. The problem with this approach is that animals do not necessarily choose what is best for them and that their choices can change with experience, conditions, and other factors.
Garry Fairbairn, in his book "Canada Choice," discusses the dilemma
of placing human values and experiences in the animal's context.
"How do humans know when animals are well treated? The needs and
desires of animals are quite different from human needs and desires.
The cat food that looks appetizing to us because it looks and smells
like beef stew may be both non-nutritious and unpalatable from a
feline viewpoint. We may be instinctively appalled by the idea of
living in cages for the most part of our lives, but chickens could
consider it the equivalent of luxury condominiums. In cages, they
are free from predators.
" An extrapolation from human experience
may be made, the problem being, however, that humans are very different
from animals and such a method may mistakenly impose human preferences
on them. Such extrapolations are generally limited to the fundamental
feelings all creatures share, such as physical pain, hunger, and thirst.
Introduction | What is Good Welfare?