Introduction

Abstract

The purpose of Part I is to provide an overview of the emergence of the “science of lab animal welfare:” How did it start? What were its aims and limitations; and what conceptions of animal welfare did it develop? In Chapter 2, I will describe the historical roots of this science in Great Britain. As I said in the Introduction, the historical roots in Great Britain for what I am calling “the emerging science of animal welfare” can be found in the work of Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW), which was “founded in 1926 as the University of London Animal Welfare Society (ULAWS) by Major Charles Hume, based on his belief that ‘animal problems must be tackled on a scientific basis, with a maximum of sympathy but a minimum of sentimentality’” (www.ufaw.org.uk/History). A second major source for the development of this “science” was the creation of scientific advisory committees within the RSPCA in 1972 on farm, laboratory, and wild animal welfare [see p. 54 of Richard Ryder’s brief description of these efforts in Chapter 3 of his The Political Animals. The Conquest of Speciesism (London: McFarland and Co., 1998)]. The efforts of these committees and the research funding that they gave to scientists “helped to trigger a new field of scientific study” (Ryder, 1998, p. 55). [See Ryder, p. 55 for other outcomes in the establishment of chairs and modules.] In the 1980s, the RSPCA “established its own in-house scien-tific departments” (Ryder, 1998, p. 55), and began publishing its own Science Review in 1991.