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    The debate over hunting and other field sports has raised important questions concerning animal welfare. What exactly do we mean by this term, and how do we judge the extent to which an activity contributes, negatively or positively, to the welfare of the animals involved in it? These are difficult and controversial questions. In this position statement we make initial tentative suggestions, which nevertheless seem to us to correspond to the reasonable intuitions and observations of those currently engaged in the discussion.

1. Welfare or rights?

    We do not think that the concept of animal rights is helpful in addressing questions of welfare, for two reasons. First, the idea of a right is a quasi-legal construct, designed to adjudicate the relations between people. Creatures with rights also have duties, since that is how rights are paid for. To treat animals as though this were true of them is to expect them to behave in ways that they can neither understand nor emulate. It is, in short, to mistreat them.
    Secondly, if a creature has any rights at all, it at least has the right to life, limb and freedom, and such rights have an absolute force. If animals have rights, therefore, we cannot eat them, kill them, keep them for food or as pets, or do anything to them that infringes their sovereignty over their lives. Some people take this line; but we think it to be both counter-intuitive and unsustainable. If the only way we can settle the questions relating to animal welfare is by ruling out every normal relationship between people and animals - including the keeping of pets - then we have not settled it in a way that will appeal to the mass of ordinary humanity.
    In short, it is through the idea of welfare, and not that of rights, that we should articulate and implement our concern for other species.

2. Welfare and Science.

     Growing recognition of the importance of welfare considerations has led to the establishment of 'animal welfare science' as a distinct area of enquiry into the world of animals. Initially applied to the study of domestic animals (and in particular those raised on farms) it is now being applied more widely, and more controversially, to adjudicate difficult questions of wildlife management. When confronted by a difficult question, we look round for the expert. But the expert may not have the right kind of expertise; alternatively the question may not admit of an expert answer. There are scientific experts, but no 'moral experts', and many of the most important questions concerning our relations to other species are really moral questions. Science concerns what is; morality what ought to be. The answer to a moral question is given by conscience, not by experiment and hypothesis. Many of the questions to do with animal welfare are moral questions; others still are to be settled by ordinary experience rather than scientific measurement. The normal sequence of sensation in which physical stimuli lead to a mental state, such as pleasure, anxiety or fright, which may in turn result in a physical manifestation such as flight, does not lend itself to scientific measurement.
    It is worth pointing out, moreover, that animal welfare science has suffered from the outset from conceptual problems, with no agreed definitions of welfare or suffering, and no agreed method for summating the welfares of different animals or of one animal at different times. The science arose from the study of domestic animals, not wild animals; it concerns itself with the individual to the virtual exclusion of the population; it studies moments of the individual life and rarely the life as a whole, and it concentrates on suffering and its prevention, to the virtual exclusion of any positive concept of welfare. When it comes to answering questions of wildlife management, therefore, animal welfare science, in its present state, will often be an imperfect guide.

3. Conceptions and definitions.

     Nevertheless the literature of animal welfare science has made various attempts to define or explain the concept of animal suffering, from which a few tentative conclusions may be drawn. We propose the following account:
(a) The Burns Inquiry Panel defined suffering (poor welfare) as difficulty in controlling mental or physical functioning (difficulty in coping). We accept this definition. So understood suffering includes both sensations of pain and discomfort, and emotions of fear. Emotions differ from sensations in that they imply an assessment of the situation.
(b) There is a distinction between stress and distress. The first is not necessarily a form of suffering, since it may not impede mental or physical functioning. (For example, the stress of a high performing athlete, or a race-horse.) Distress is stress which has gone beyond this limit. Just where this limit lies, and how you might measure it, is one of the controversial questions.
(c) Fear is a response to anticipation. Human beings anticipate death and recoil from it in terror. Animals do not anticipate their own death, and what is called their fear-behaviour is really an instinctive avoidance reaction, and certainly not a recoiling from the abyss of nothingness. This does not mean that animals do not suffer during flight. They may do so; but their suffering is of a different kind from that endured by humans in war. What usually goes by the name of fear in animals is a normal and functional part of the 'fight or flight' mechanism which ensures their survival. It is for this reason that welfare scientists do not, in general, classify what they call 'avoidable fear' as a form of suffering.
(d) When dealing with distress of any kind, we are dealing with experiences that can vary in intensity from the very mild to the very severe. These experiences also have thresholds of tolerance, and these thresholds can shift. Pain may even be suppressed entirely, by 'exercise-induced or stress-induced analgesia' - something widely observed in human soldiers, in athletes, and also in animals at the moment of combat or capture. If an experience is one that an animal willingly repeats, we can conclude that, even if it involves an element of pain, stress or avoidable fear, it is not intolerable. And an animal may be unwilling to repeat an experience which it will nevertheless risk incurring. (Thus a sheep will risk the electric fence, if running from a predator.) This suggests at least three grades of physical pain: discomfort, severe pain that is nevertheless risk-worthy, and pain towards which an animal has an unconquerable aversion. And in many normal cases pain may be suppressed, due to the analgesic effect of exercise and stress.
(e) Positive welfare. By describing suffering as negative welfare we are implying a contrast with positive welfare. But, while we may define suffering as above, this does not tell us what the positive welfare of an animal consists in. We believe that welfare is a matter of degree, and that an animal possesses it to the extent that it is flourishing according to its nature and its needs. This means living in an environment suited to its powers, where it can feed itself, and exercise the mental and physical capacities that are inherent in its behavioural repertoire. A captive animal in a cage may not be suffering in the sense defined above; but it is surely not in the best condition, from the welfare point of view.

4. Individual and population. 

    The Burns Inquiry states that 'animal welfare is concerned with the welfare of the individual animal, not the management of the wider population' (6.12). But, as the Inquiry also recognizes, we often need to consider the health, well-being and vigour of a population, maybe even of a species, if we are to make humane and rational judgements. It is not in the interest of a population of wild animals that it should contain members liable to some genetic defect or disease; but it is not in the interest of those members that they should be culled. This kind of conflict is familiar to all who have to manage wild animals, and it is one that could never be resolved if we believe in animal rights: for rights are the property of the individual, and if animals have them, then so do the sick, the weak, the genetically impaired and the dangerously aggressive. Wild-life management requires us to recognize that the welfare of one animal may compromise the welfare of others, and therefore that the welfare requirements of a population may on occasion override the interests of some individual member. (See below.)

5. The life and the moment.

    Even if we restrict our attention to the individual, we must recognize that there is a distinction between its overall welfare throughout its life, and its welfare at a given moment. Most people recognize that benefits have costs, and hence that suffering may be a necessary part of some greater good. The suffering involved in physical exercise is an example; or that involved in a medical operation. It can even be the case that the suffering involved in a certain kind of death could be justified in this way, provided it is the price paid for a life of positive well-being. In general welfare science has paid insufficient attention to the relation between the life and the moment. It does not help us to decide how to treat animals, if we consider only the moment of death, say, and ignore the quality of life that goes with it. Caged birds have easy deaths; but they are not for that reason happier than birds in the wild.

6. Domestic and wild.

     This brings us to another important distinction. Domesticated animals have different needs from wild animals, and cannot, in general, flourish without our assistance. Not only do we stand to them in a different moral relation from that in which we stand to wild animals; what is acceptable to a domestic animal may be harmful to a wild animal and vice versa. Pet dogs may not suffer unduly when temporarily imprisoned in a kennel or a cage. But foxes are deeply distressed by this experience, as are most wild animals when caught in a trap, even when the trap inflicts no physical pain. Likewise, wild animals like rats, squirrels or rabbits which are daily pursued by predators seem not to be traumatized by the experience, and return to their normal habits immediately the threat has passed.
    There is another distinction which needs to be borne in mind when considering ethical questions. Many domestic animals are also pets, entirely taken under human care. In such cases we not only deprive an animal of its ability to survive unaided; we accept responsibilities towards it not unlike those that we have towards our children. In return we seek affection and companionship, and there grows between the pet and its owner a moral relationship in which the pet becomes the individual object of care. You wrong your dog when you do not properly provide for its needs: but you do not wrong the squirrel in your garden by leaving it to its own devices.
    This transference of human attitudes on to our pets is natural; and it may be as good for them as it seems to be for us. But it cannot be replicated in our relations to wild animals - to try to replicate it is to deny their wildness, to misunderstand their needs, and therefore to cease to relate to them as they are. Much confusion enters the debate about wildlife as a result of the tendency to extend towards creatures that are essentially outside our domestic realm the anthropomorphic attitudes that prevail within it. People may imagine that they are doing good to deer or rabbits by seeing them in the manner of Bambi or Watership Down. But it is more likely that they are doing harm, since they are undermining the motive for good management.

7. The need to manage wildlife.

     Populations of wild life and their habitats often have to be managed. Those who doubt this tend to focus their attention on species that seem (to them at least) harmless, such as hares or blackbirds. As soon as they are reminded of rats and crows they tend to recognize that we cannot, now, take a merely passive approach to the species that share our habitat. Management is needed for several reasons: first, because populations can directly threaten human interests, by spreading disease, consuming crops, competing for game and other harvested species, or killing domestic animals; secondly, because in modern, man-made conditions animals may be unlikely to achieve an acceptable equilibrium with the resources available to them; thirdly, because populations are threatened with diseases which might cause them to suffer unduly and which we can remedy; fourthly, because wildlife itself is a human interest, both for its intrinsic beauty and for its contribution to bio-diversity and to the ecological balance of which we are a part. It is pure wishful thinking to believe that, in modern conditions, wild animals and humans could achieve a sustainable equilibrium under a regime of laissez-faire.
    Management includes the preparedness to kill. There are those who think we are never entitled to do this. But we believe that their opinion is neither acceptable to common sense nor endorsed by the majority of ordinary people. That said, it is of course a controversial question which species we should promote and why, and by what method.

8. Welfare in management.

     Welfare considerations arise in the context of wildlife management in two ways: when considering the treatment of individuals, and when considering the condition of the population as a whole. You may decide to shoot a wounded deer in order to end its suffering; or you may equally decide to shoot a healthy deer in order to reduce the population, and so enhance the supply of food and territory. Many of the arguments about hunting, shooting and fishing arise because of the potential conflict between these two considerations. How should the conflict be resolved, and what standards can we apply?
    It is at this point that we might wish to take expert advice, and it is in order to provide some of that advice that welfare science exists. Like other sciences, welfare science depends on measurement, and one of its principal concerns has been to provide some measure of negative welfare - i.e. of the extent of animal suffering. There are two questions here: first, how do we measure suffering? And secondly, how do we use our measurements to compute the relative kindness of the alternative ways of achieving our (justifiable) goals? In response to this second question people tend to have recourse to utilitarian arguments: i.e., they consider the problem in terms of the kind of cost/benefit analysis favoured by economists, and try to summate the positive and negative welfare quota of the animals concerned. While this is is sometimes acceptable, there are important moral objections which we mention below.

9. How to assess suffering.

     With regard to the first question, how we measure suffering, several suggestions are current. All of them are problematic since, although there is a physical component to suffering, we are also trying to measure mental phenomena. There is always some assumption, therefore, that the mental and the physical are correlated. We can sometimes confirm or refute this in our own case, by introspection. But it is very hard to confirm or refute it in the case of animals, except by making large assumptions about the nature of their mental life. Some of these assumptions are more intuitively plausible than others. For example, it is plausible to assume that the extent of an animal's injury is directly correlated with the intensity of its pain. Even so, this correlation obtains only when the animal is not also in a state of stress. Stress-induced analgesia ensures that, in an emergency, the experience of pain is, as it were, postponed. (It is quite obvious, from the point of view of evolution, why this phenomenon should exist.) This means that the pain experienced by an animal that has been pursued and then caught is very difficult to calculate. It is likely to be entirely suppressed at the moment of capture, and intolerable at a later time, should the animal escape in a wounded condition. Experiments involving laboratory animals, which measure pain by the size of the reward needed to tempt an animal into incurring it, are obviously of little application to conditions in the wild, and certainly of no relevance to animals that are chased, shot or trapped for the purposes of culling.
    That said, how might we measure suffering, in the wider sense defined above, which includes emotional as well as sensory experiences?

10. The individual.

    (i) Suffering. Many welfarists set great store on the measurement of elevated serum cortisol levels as indicators of first-stage stress. However, as acknowledged by the authors of Lord Burns's welfare contract (Contract 7), even very high cortisol levels are not necessarily indicative of distress or suffering and may be merely a consequence of exercise. Moreover there can be suffering even when cortisol levels are low. If raised cortisol level is neither necessary nor sufficient for suffering, then it can scarcely be a measure of it.
    Other measures are more realistic: for example, if an animal exerts itself to the point of producing real and not easily reversible damage to muscle tissue and inner organs, this is surely a sign that it has been pushed beyond normal stress limits. On the other hand, stress-induced analgesia probably has the consequence that this damage is a cause of physical pain only if the animal survives the pursuit: if captured it will die while the pain is still, as it were, submerged.
    Furthermore, we do have two continua on which to situate suffering: time and the degree of impairment. Other things being equal, a pain that lasts for two minutes is, it might be suggested, twice as bad as a pain of the same intensity lasting only one minute. And a pain that hampers functioning twice as much as another is, other things being equal, twice as bad.
    (ii) The life and the moment. Overall negative welfare of an animal life can be measured in terms of the length of periods in which it is not fully functional, and the degree of impairment during periods of illness, hunger or injury. When viewing an animal life as a whole, factors like analgesia are of comparatively little significance, and we can rely on our own experience to suggest that the intensity of a pain corresponds roughly to the extent of malfunctioning.
    (iii) Computing overall welfare. Obviously we should like to have a measure of positive welfare. Time is again of some help in making comparisons: an animal enjoying an active, well-provisioned life in an environment to which it is fully adapted, for one year, enjoys twice as much positive welfare as a similar animal which is in that condition for only six months. Relative assessments of positive welfare at a single moment are more difficult to make. The caged tiger is, we think, less well off than the tiger roaming free, uninjured and in its natural habitat. But how do we assign numbers to their comparative bliss?
    Still, assuming that some rough metric can be devised, we could proceed to apply cost/benefit analysis to compare the relative welfare of wild animals subjected to rival forms of management or interference from humans. We frequently do this. For example, we frequently decide to put a wild animal out of its misery, on the assumption that the sum of negative welfare would otherwise simply go on increasing, due to injury or disease. And we will sometimes subject animals to painful or frightening experiences in order to give them the chance to enjoy life to the full - as when we take a pet to the vet, or drive a herd to a better habitat of which we, but not the animals, have knowledge. Not that utilitarian calculations are always soundly based. Anthropomorphic attitudes may lead us to recoil from killing, even when that is the kindest response to injury.

11. The population.

     The same kind of rough and ready cost/benefit analysis can be extended to populations: a population with two seriously injured members and 100 thriving ones is, from the welfare point of view, in a better condition than a population with 100 sick members and 2 healthy ones. But here an important qualification must be entered. Although the application of cost-benefit analysis to animals is slightly more plausible than it is to human beings, it is still questionable as a general procedure. Even if we can satisfy ourselves that the measure of suffering, in terms of intensity, duration and so on, is less in a herd a tiny proportion of whose members are subject to the risk of serious and agonizing injury than in a herd which is peacefully protected but every member of which is somewhat below par, we should hesitate to adopt management procedures which produced the first kind of herd rather than the second. The sight of intense suffering, whether in man or beast, is distressing to us. We feel a spontaneous duty to alleviate it or to prevent it if we can. This feeling arises from compassion, and it would be wrong not to feel it . We operate with an intuitive concept of 'acceptable' suffering - suffering which may be inflicted, should the balance of welfare require it - which we contrast with 'unacceptable' suffering, which should not be tolerated at all, whatever the welfare gains. And this distinction is part of our respect for life, and our sympathy for our fellow creatures. Once our compassion is activated, it blows all utilitarian reasoning apart. And that is probably as it should be.
    This means that, however happy we may be to calculate 'welfare equations' when comparing methods of culling, harvesting or managing wildlife populations, we cannot, by this means, solve the most difficult of our moral questions. (See below.)

12. Compromising welfare.

     The Burns Inquiry into hunting with dogs makes the following statement:

'There is a lack of firm scientific evidence about the effect on the welfare of a fox of being closely pursued, caught and killed above ground by hounds. We are satisfied, nevertheless, that this experience seriously compromises the welfare of the fox.' (p. 117)

    The Inquiry makes similar remarks about other forms of hunting. In the light of the above, we would interpret this to mean that, during the final phase of a hunt the quarry is seriously suffering. This is self-evident from the definitions given, since these last moments are moments of unavoidable fear. We doubt, for reasons given, that the suffering is principally a matter of physical pain - as the Burns Inquiry says, in the vast majority of cases, the death of a captured fox follows in a matter of seconds, and catastrophic injury in a state of stress is very likely to be accompanied by analgesia. Similarly, the deer brought to bay is quickly despatched with a shot to the head. Moreover, for much of a hunt the quarry is either unaware that it is being pursued, or simply taking natural measures of avoidance. It is a common error to suppose that the longer the hunt, the worse the suffering: on the contrary, the longer the hunt, the more likely it is that the quarry will escape without ever being closely pursued. The Burns Inquiry's statement, therefore, gives us no clear guidance when it comes to assessing the welfare implications of hunting.
    The Inquiry accepts that alternative culling methods (including shooting with shotguns) are also problematic from the welfare point of view. But it does not ask the crucial questions: first, how do we summate this 'compromise' of the fox's welfare at the moment of death with the rest of its welfare during the life beforehand? After all, suffering at the point of death is the inevitable lot of animals. Secondly, how do we complete the welfare equation, for the fox population as a whole? These questions are understandably left open by the Inquiry and of course they are not easy questions. In the light of what has been said about wildlife management, it is surely plausible to argue that we must consider also the kind of life that the individual fox has in places where foxes are hunted (e.g. what benefits does this practice bring in terms of habitat, food, protection of cubs and so on) and also the welfare of fox populations under the influence of this kind of cull. If we do not take these aspects into consideration, then we shall draw conclusions about what we should do to promote welfare on the basis of only one relevant strand of evidence.

13. How does all this apply to hunting?

    Surely we can draw no conclusion from the Burns report that would justify a ban on welfare grounds. We need far more knowledge to assess the life-time's welfare of the hunted individual, and also to balance that against the overall welfare of the population of which it is a member. Moreover, we need to think in relative, not absolute terms. That is to say, we need to compare the welfare enjoyed by the quarry population in places where hunting is the principal form of management, from the welfare enjoyed under other and comparable regimes, including the regime offered by nature. Are other forms of death (for example disease, starvation, old age) to be preferred, from the welfare point of view, to capture by a pack of hounds? We seriously doubt it. And while the hunting of deer and foxes involves moments of distress, we should compare this negative feature with the extreme suffering of those animals that are wounded but not immediately killed when shot, remembering too that shooting comes to the animal normally as a complete surprise, and therefore without the pain-suppressing mechanism that obtains during flight or fight.
    We believe it is important that this comparative way of thinking be applied consistently across the whole range of human dealings with animals. It is estimated, for example, that domestic cats are responsible for 200 million deaths annually in this country: these deaths are some four thousand times as many as those inflicted by foxhounds, and usually more protracted. The complete public indifference to this fact suggests that considerations of animal welfare are of no real importance in the current debate. Moreover, the organisations that campaign against hunting on grounds of animal welfare seem to be remarkably inconsistent in their attitude. The RSPCA, for example, has so far said nothing against the keeping of domestic cats, and given only a cursory glance at the implications of a hunting ban for the welfare not only of the quarry, but of the hounds, horses or other animals which depend directly or indirectly on hunting.

14. Cruelty.

     We have suggested that the concept of welfare, rather than that of rights, is the true foundation for a humane approach to other species. However, both for the welfare organisations and for the general public, the key concept, it seems, is not welfare but cruelty. To focus on cruelty is to turn one's attention from the suffering to the person who causes it, whether by commission or omission. Cruelty, in the ordinary understanding of the term, is taken to mean gratuitous suffering, inflicted for its own sake; or behaviour which any normal person should assume would lead to unnecessary suffering. This intuitive conception can be applied directly to our treatment of wild animals. Hence the common objections to hunting have to do with the nature of the enjoyment attached to the sport rather than the effect on the quarry population. The suffering of the quarry may be the minimum necessary to ensure proper management: but it is an object of enjoyment, the critics say, and therefore profoundly immoral. Were the critics right about this, then it would surely be difficult to defend the sport. But they are wrong. It is not the suffering that is enjoyed, but something completely different.

15. Hunting is done by hounds, not by people.

     Most of the latter are merely following, whether by foot, horse, bicycle or car. The followers do not enjoy the kill - indeed, they seldom if ever witness it, and are often noticeably relieved when the quarry gets away. Their enjoyment is focussed on the event, the procedure of hunting itself: on the hounds, the huntsman, the spectacle of their intent cooperation, and the environment in which it all takes place.
    The very basis of hunting as it is known in Britain is the pursuit of the quarry in its wild and natural state with a pack of hounds. Hunting is therefore totally different from those genuinely cruel sports like bear-baiting and dog-fighting, in which animals are imprisoned, deprived of their natural defences, and then made to suffer for the amusement of a crowd. The greatest source of enjoyment among hunters is the work of the hounds: their pleasure is not a sadistic pleasure in the death of the quarry, but a pleasure of sympathy, of the kind that many people feel when watching a wild cat stalking through the undergrowth, or a hawk circling above a field. Indeed, hunting is much more like falconry than its opponents seems to recognize: it stems from the cooperation between people and animals, and expresses the intense but unsentimental love which results from this.
    Furthermore, this element of socially-driven enjoyment serves to humanize hunting. From the point of view of many legitimate human interests, foxes are pests, and their numbers must be controlled, whether by hunting, shooting or trapping. So much is generally admitted. But hunting with hounds raises the fox from pest to quarry. Hence it accords to the fox a respect that is never shown to its fellow pest, the rat. In a way that is hard to explain to outsiders, those who hunt the fox are also on the fox's side. Their sport is a way of living with foxes, rather than declaring outright war on them, and is governed by its own ethic of fair play and restraint. The same applies to stag hunting.
    It is often suggested that the chase is deliberately prolonged, for the sake of enjoyment. This is entirely false. Once the hounds are on to the scent they are trying with their whole might to overtake the quarry: something which they can do only if there is a strong scent maintained over a sufficient distance. During most of the hunt neither the quarry nor the hounds are extended, since the scent may be temporarily lost.
    Such considerations seem to suggest that hunting is no different to angling: the fox, if caught, suffers for a few seconds at most, while the deer, brought to bay, is despatched with a shot to the brain. Anglers enjoy the contest with the fish; but they do not enjoy the suffering. Paradoxical though it may seem to those who have no experience of such activities, hunters and anglers are foremost among animal-lovers and have a sensitivity to the needs and well-being of wildlife which is all the more beneficial for being unsentimental and unanthropomorphic.

16. Legal protection of wildlife.

     Many people feel that the law is still confused and inadequate, and that some comprehensive legislation is needed in order to protect the welfare of animals in the wild. The core component of existing legislation has been the concept of cruelty, defined legally as the intentional infliction of unnecessary suffering on an animal. This definition involves the perpetrator of such suffering being deemed to have intended the natural consequences of his actions. But what do we mean by 'unnecessary'? The suffering involved in clearing a barn of rats is greater when poison is used than when the rats are flushed to terriers. In this sense poisoning involves 'unnecessary' suffering. But few people seem to condemn the practice as cruel, since it is often impracticable to make use of the more humane alternative. And, so far as we can see, the law agrees with them. The law does, indeed, distinguish between types of poison: only those whose effects fall within the range of 'acceptable' suffering are permitted. Nevertheless, the law does not oblige us to use terriers, and poisoning - not withstanding the protracted suffering that it always involves, and not withstanding the harmful effect on other species and on the environment -is still the preferred and permitted way of controlling rat populations.

    As the example suggests, wildlife protection cannot be easily guaranteed by a single definition, whether of cruelty, or of welfare. Wildlife management is a complex affair, in which many competing interests must be brokered and, where possible, reconciled. Any legislation for the protection of wild animals must acknowledge this fact, and allow a measure of flexibility in dealing with pests and predators.

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