the humane treatment of dogs

Having Penny living in our household makes us smile and feel good. I guess you could say she works for us, by increasing our health psychologically and by making us fitter. ( She sure needs a walk every day!) And how could we not enjoy romping in the park with this hairy enthusiast?



I read an article in The Age newspaper yesterday about a study into the working conditions of farm dogs. I can't find a link to the actual article, perhaps because the staff of the newspaper were taking industrial action at the time.

Following the trail of the study on the Net I arrived at the site of Melbourne University and read that their Animal Welfare Science Centre believes there are two important principles in human management of pets and livestock:

“These are, on the one hand, management to comply with the objectives of human profit, benefits or pleasure, and on the other hand, management responsibilities under a duty of humane care of animals.

“The vision of the Animal Welfare Science Centre is that animal welfare and its constant improvement are societal and cultural norms...”

But I wonder - is it the norm in our society to believe that we should constantly improve the welfare of animals? We seem to have two opposite views of animals. We love our 'pets' and integrate them into our households. But 'food animals' are treated as if they have no intelligence and no feelings.

I'm looking forward to living in a world where all animals are treated well.

By the way, I got the link to the journalists' strike from Mark Lawrence's blog post, Shame, Fairfax, Shame!