Ecologic and symbiotic approaches to animal welfare, animal rights, and human responsibility

Veterinarians confronted with situations involving animal welfare, animal rights, and human responsibility assume practical importance in the relationships of veterinarians with clients and other constituencies. To help resolve these situations, the authors briefly compare economics and ethics and discuss the types of rights. An attempt is made to bring animal welfare and animal rights into the same conceptual framework, using an ecologic approach. This reaches the thesis that the less human beings allow animals the right of self-determination, the more we should exercise responsibility in their care and welfare. Actively exercised human responsibility in all uses of animals is offered as a practical and valid alternative to the extreme of abolitionism. This alternative also is applied in a cautionary way to the role of veterinary medicine in specieism. The veterinary profession is urged to be active in the middle ground of the field of animal rights and to firmly establish its relationships to animal welfare and human responsibility.