2018-2023 Animal Ethics
2018-2021 Yale Animal Ethics Study Group Schedule
October 11th, 2018: Natalie Kofler PhD Founder, Editing Nature, Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies will lead a discussion on the ethical implications of genetic engineering of animals.
November 15th, 2018: Kathryn Lord, PhD, a post-doctoral researcher on the evolution and development of animal behavior at The University of Massachusetts Medical School and The Broad Institute of MIT/Harvard will present:
“Stuck in the middle: a discussion of wolf-dog hybrids”
Dogs and wolves behave very differently towards humans. Yet, they are so similar genetically they can (and do) breed and have fertile offspring. Some wolf-dogs are the result of intentional breeding as pets; many wolf-dogs acquired as pets are eventually relinquished or forcibly removed to sanctuaries. Others are produced in the wild when wolves struggling to find mates in disturbed habits come into contact with dogs; many wolf-dogs in the wild are culled to preserve the genetic purity of endangered species. Given that wolf-dogs are not well suited to survive in the habitat of dogs or wolves, how should they be managed?
Dr. Lord will also present a public lecture on the Yale campus on November 15th; details TBD
December 6th, 2018: Professor Jessica Rubin, Director of Legal Practice and the Animal Law Clinic at University of Connecticut Law School will give a presentation about her role in the creation of and implementation of “Desmond’s Law”, the first law to allow legal advocates to testify on behalf of animals in cases of abuse and neglect. For more information see this story on the law: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/nyregion/animal-abuse-connecticut-court-advocates.html
January 24th, 2019: Dr. Steve Niemi, Director of Animal Resources at Harvard will be coming to the study group to discuss “Ethical Gaps in Pet Breed Standards”.
February, 21st, 2019: Yuka Suzuki, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bard College and affiliated with the Environmental Studies, Africana Studies, and Asian Studies programs at Bard will join the study group to discuss her work on human-wildlife interactions in Southern Africa
March 21st, 2019: CANCELLED. Rescheduled for next year. Daniel Promislow, PhD, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington with a research interest in the evolutionary genetics will be coming to the study group to tell us about his lab’s large and well publicized Dog Aging Project (https://dogagingproject.com/). The Dog Aging Project is the first ever nationwide study proposed to understand canine aging and consists of multiple basic research projects and a large scale citizen science project.
May 2nd, 2019: Matti Wilks, PhD of the Mind and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, Yale University will be discussing her research on the moral psychology of consumers attitudes toward cultured or lab grown meat.
October 11th, 2019: Lindsay Stern, author in Yale’s Comparative Literature department, recently published a novel, The Study of Animal Languages. Lindsay is the co-host of a popular podcast, “When We Talk about Animals”. She’ll be discussing her non-fiction work in progress about primate language experiments.
November 14th: Liv Baker Van de Graaff, PhD, from The Hunter College program of Animal Behavior & Conservation will introduce us to the concept of compassionate conservation and share some of her planned research projects at farm sanctuaries.
February 6th, 2020: Alex Blanchette, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Tufts University, will discuss his work on the ethics of labor, pigs and commercial hog farming. Professor Blanchette has published extensively on various aspects of human relationships around pigs, hog farming, pork consumption and labor, including his book Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the “Factory” Farm.
CANCELLED:March 26th, 2020: Jonathan Kramnick, PhD, The Maynard Mack Professor of English and director of the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University will discuss his cross-disciplinary undergraduate course “Animals in Literature and Theory”. He’ll be discussing what the goals were, how it was organized, and what undergraduates seem most compelled by and interested in. See this link for more information: https://news.yale.edu/2019/04/24/professors-curiosity-sparks-literary-course-animals-and-consciousness
POSTPONED until Fall 2020: Professor William Lynn, a research scientist in the George Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University, a research fellow at New Knowledge Organization, and former Director of the Masters in Animals and Public Policy (MAPP) program at Tufts University.
The focus of his work is the ethics of sustainability with an emphasis on animals and alternative paradigms of conservation (e.g., compassionate conservation, rewilding, social nature). Professor Lynn will be talking to the study group about these paradigm shifts. He will also present a public lecture about the science and ethics of controlling free-roaming cats.
CANCELLED May 7th, 2020: Viveca Morris, executive director of the newly formed initiative: The Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School and co-host of the podcast, “When We Talk about Animals”. LEAP is an interdisciplinary “think and do tank” at the Yale Law School, dedicated to drawing attention to the questions of conscience raised by human-animal relationships and developing new strategies to address industrialized animal cruelty.
March 4th 2021:
Primatologist Lisa Jones-Engel, Ph.D., will present “Where She Walks Monkeys Dance: Our Complex Relationship with Macaques” about the large number of contexts and long term relationships that humans have with macaques and the consequences for macaque conservation and public health. Lisa Jones-Engel is a Fulbright scholar who has studied the human-primate interface for decades. Her scientific career has spanned the field, the research laboratory, and the undergraduate classroom. Her latest co-edited volume, Neglected Diseases in Monkeys: From the Monkey-Human Interface to One Health, was published by Springer Nature in 2020. Dr. Jones-Engel serves as senior science adviser on primate experimentation for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
April 16th 2021:
A Moral panic over cats
William Lynn, Ph.D. will discuss his recent works on moral panic over free-ranging cats’ impact on biodiversity. For a taste of this topic, readhttps://theconversation.com/dont-blame-cats-for-destroying-wildlife-shaky-logic-is-leading-to-moral-panic-138710 . If you would like to read Professor Lynn’s scholarly publications on this subject, please email me for links. Bill is a research scientist in the George Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University, a research fellow at New Knowledge Organization, and Political Animals editor for the journal Society & Animals. He is a founding editor of the international journal Ethics, Policy and Environment, former chair of the Ethics Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), former Director of the Masters in Animals and Public Policy (MAPP) program at Tufts University, International Associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, and an author in many journals and books
October 7th 2021: Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth
Animals and the State: Legal Battles in the Indian Circus with Dr Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth
Animals have always been an indispensable part of circus around the world until the recent legal proscriptions in many countries and the emergence of new concepts such as ‘Noveau Cirque’. Despite the fact that Indian circus is almost a century and a half old, its pasts have hardly been explored. Social scientists have begun posing the question ‘can animals have histories?’ in recent times, recognizing the position of animals as analogous with marginal human groups who are under-represented. That circus animals who are a ‘minority’ in every sense hardly figure even in histories on wildlife, environment, and livelihood in India, is not at all surprising. Animals in circus brings to the fore a long tradition of animal trade, taming, training, and human accompaniment, raising significant questions regarding their acquisition, captive life, breeding and changing relation to forests and wilderness over the periods. They are inextricably linked with a colonial genealogy of the ‘exotic’ and ‘exhibit’. This paper explores various discourses around animals, both wild and captive, in relation to the bans of wild animals in circus in India and the legal battles that ensued. This would unravel how the very idea of scientific conservation becomes a violent guile of State and civil society while actively propagating the binary of cruelty and mercy in the case of circus animals.
Nisha P R is currently a Fulbright fellow with Yale Macmillan Centre, Yale University. Her book, Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus was published with Oxford University Press in 2020.
October 28. 2021: Larry Carbone
Ethics of Uncertainty in the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals with Dr. Larry Carbone
Scientists must prevent pain in their laboratory animals, treat it if they cause it, or justify proposals to cause significant unalleviated pain. This requires competently diagnosing when animals of various species are experiencing pain. In this session, renown laboratory animal pain expert, Larry Carbone, explores how ethical practice should reflect our current lack of validated tools to adequately recognize animal pain.
Larry Carbone, DVM, PhD, has worked in laboratory animal care in the academic setting as animal care staff, veterinarian, researcher and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee member for over 35 years. He is specialty board-certified in Animal Welfare (ACAW) and Laboratory Animal Medicine (ACLAM). His PhD dissertation on the intersection of ethics, history, and epistemology in laboratory animal welfare policy was published in 2004 as What Animals Want: Advocacy and Expertise in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press). His research in animal welfare science and policy focus primarily on pain management for laboratory animals, and on how scientists write about animal pain in their research publications.
November 4th 2021: Suresh Neethirajan
Digital Animal Farming and the Ethical Conundrum
The demand for animal products is expected to continue to rise, which requires the development of efficient livestock farming systems. Environmental, societal and economic concerns regarding this farming sector are however accumulating, addressing the large resource demand, pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and health concerns that the livestock industry is responsible for. Precision livestock farming systems allow the continuous automatic monitoring of various physiological, behavioural, emotional and phenotypic parameters of animals in order to increase productivity and animal welfare while controlling and minimizing the environmental impact. Problems and concerns are still present in the farming sector starting with the ethical aspects regarding the animal, including its objectification, human-animal relationships and welfare and ending with the societal implications of this digitalization. We will brain-storm and co-create ideas via discussions and conversations in this meeting.
Suresh Neethirajan is an Associate Professor in the Animal Sciences department of the Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands. Using Artificial Intelligence and sensor technologies, his research group is focused on developing sustainable and inclusive solutions for enhancing welfare and health of farm animals.
Dec 16th 2021: Joann M. Lindenmayer, DVM, MPH and Gretchen E. Kaufman, DVM
Exploring an Ethical Foundation for One Health
During this seminar we will present the rationale for and definition of One Health, compare it to a broadly accepted definition of health, and contrast the research and practice of One Health with its original intent. We will then explore the need for an ethical foundation for One Health in an effort to recapture the original vision and carry it forward. We will introduce four normative concepts inherent to the widely accepted definition of One Health and desire to open a conversation about an ethical foundation for One Health.
Dr. Lindenmayer is a veterinary epidemiologist and public health professional and educator who is affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine, the One Health Commission, the Evidence-Based Veterinary Medical Association, and the Massachusetts Animal Coalition.
Dr. Kaufman is a wildlife veterinarian and One Health educator who is affiliated with the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State University; Tufts Center for Conservation Medicine at Tufts University; and the Veterinary Initiative for Endangered Wildlife.
2022-2023 Lecture Series
Please join us for these Zoom-based lectures, open to the public. Email us at animalethics@yale.edu to register.
November 16, 2022, 11:00 am EDT, virtual: James Reynolds, DVM, MPVM, DACAW. Ethical considerations of Ventilation Shutdown + heat (VSD+) as a method of depopulating swine and poultry farms in the US.
December 16, 2022, 12:00 pm EDT, virtual: Kat Poje, PhD Candidate in the History of Science, Harvard University. Ethics, Technology, and the Invention of Animal Euthanasia.
January 11, 2023, 12:00 pm EDT, virtual: E.B. Bartels, Author of “Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter. Caring for beloved pets in life and mourning them in death.
February 1, 2023, 4:00 pm EDT, virtual: Professor Culum Brown PhD, Macquarie University. Fish Cognition, Behavior, and Sentience
March 1, 2023, 12:00 pm EDT, virtual: James Serpell, PhD, University of Pennsylvania. The Hunter-Gatherer’s Dilemma.
April 17, 2023, 12:00 pm EDT, virtual: Temple Grandin, PhD, Colorado State University. Animal Welfare Today.