The organic understanding of animal welfare

The scientific-philosophical debate regarding what animal welfare really is has resulted in three (partly overlapping) categories of definitions (Duncan and Fraser 1997)  

1 The subjective experience approach argues that the welfare of the animal depends on how the animal experiences its situation that is, what matters is its subjective feelings like pleasure, pain or fear (e.g. Sandoe and Simonsen 1992, Duncan 1993). 

3 The natural living approach proposes that an animal s welfare depends on its capacity to perform a natural behaviour and living a natural life in accordance with its genetically encoded nature or telos as suggested by Rollin (1993). Bernhard Rollin writes (p. 48) Not only will welfare mean control of pain and suffering, it will also entail nurturing and fulfilment of the animals natures.  

The third category is possibly in best accordance with organic values. Not only is natural behaviour important, but also food adapted to animal physiology and an environment similar to the biotope natural to the species are considered important. Studies of organic farmers suggest that they understand animal welfare primarily in terms of natural living (Lund ef al. 2002,2004b). 

A valuable experience may (but not necessarily) contain elements that seem to have a short-term negative impact on the individual, but it nevertheless makes the individual learn something that is of longer term value. 

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The same view can be found in the organic farming movement (Lund 1996). The organic understanding of animal welfare differs somewhat from that commonly used in conventional farming, where the biological functioning approach is usually seen as the norm. Researchers also prefer the latter approach, since it makes it comparatively easy to quantify welfare states. 

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