Animals, Equality and Democracy

Siobhan O’Sullivan, Animals, Equality and Democracy (2011, Basingstoke: Palgrave)

Comments

O’Sullivan’s book is a preeminent exposition of a method where first, or foundational, principles are avoided in preference to a consistent application of established, and non-controversial, norms. She seeks to eschew contentious moral debates about the way we ought to treat animals and focuses instead on making the claim that the way that some animals are treated is unacceptable from the standpoint of the values that most accept in liberal democratic societies. In particular, the liberal democracy value of equity is transgressed by the very different ways in which animals of the same species are treated. Most notably, the infliction of suffering of animals that liberal democratic states allow in the case of farm and laboratory animals is regarded as morally and legally impermissible in the case of companion animals, despite the fact that the animals cannot be morally separated in terms of cognitive capacities and, in some cases, even species. - ROBERT GARNER