Animal ethics in the context of Utilitarianism

Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society (what decisions are "good" or "bad" and why) and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine ("the ethics of the ordinary"), ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) have held significant and diverse roles in the religions and mythologies of numerous cultures throughout human history. In the context of the history of religion, the roles of dogs range from symbolic representations of virtues like loyalty and protection to teachings about purity and ritual practices. In Animals and World Religion, animal ethicist Lisa Kemmerer explores the relationship between animals and global religious traditions. The work examines how different religions perceive and engage with animals, emphasizing their roles in religious narratives and rituals and highlighting the connection between humans and animals in spiritual contexts.

In mythology, dogs often served in companion and protective roles, such as guarding the gates of the underworld in Indo-European mythologies. Historian Julien d'Huy identifies a common set of three narratives about dogs that appear in various religious traditions. The first narrative emphasizes a connection to the afterlife, reflecting the gatekeeping role often seen in Indo-European mythologies. The second narrative focuses on the bond between humans and dogs, while the third pertains to the association of dogs with the star Sirius. Evidence presented by d'Huy suggests an association between the mythological records from various cultures and the genetic and fossil records related to dog domestication.

Lisa Kemmerer is an American academic who has written on animal ethics and environmental ethics. She is professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at Montana State University Billings, and is the author or editor of nine books.

William Kymlicka OC FRSC (/ˈkɪmlɪkə/ KIM-lih-kə; born 1962) is a Canadian political philosopher best known for his work on multiculturalism and animal ethics. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University at Kingston, and Recurrent Visiting professor in the Nationalism Studies program at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. For over 20 years, he has lived a vegan lifestyle, and he is married to the Canadian author and animal rights activist Sue Donaldson.

Wild animal suffering is suffering experienced by non-human animals living outside human care or control, arising from natural processes. Sources of harm include disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, exposure to weather and natural disasters, killing by other animals, and psychological stress. Assessments of scope emphasize the very large numbers affected and the mechanisms that produce it, including natural selection, high-fecundity reproductive strategies (r-selection), high juvenile mortality, and population dynamics.

Religious, philosophical, and literary sources have variously explained, justified, accepted, or criticized harm in nature, with some advocating compassion or intervention and others defending non-intervention or the value of natural processes. Treatments appear in Christianity and Islam, and in Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism; in religious contexts, it has been linked to the problem of evil and theodicy. Eighteenth-century figures include Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Johann Gottfried Herder; nineteenth-century discussion features Lewis Gompertz, pessimist philosophers, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Stephens Salt; twentieth-century contributors include J. Howard Moore, William Temple Hornaday, and Alexander Skutch. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the topic has featured in scholarship in animal ethics and environmental ethics, including work by Peter Singer, Jeff McMahan, Yew-Kwang Ng, Clare Palmer, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Steve F. Sapontzis, Stephen R. L. Clark, J. Baird Callicott, Holmes Rolston III, David Pearce, Alasdair Cochrane, Kyle Johannsen, Catia Faria, Brian Tomasik, and Oscar Horta, in dedicated university and think tank programs, and in the work of advocacy organizations and research institutes.