This article looks into the ethical issues surrounding keeping animals as pets.
This article looks into the ethical issues surrounding keeping animals as pets.
Keeping pets gives many people companionship and great happiness. And it provides many animals with a loving home and an apparently happy life.
Many breeds of certain animal species - dogs and cats, for example - have a long history of being human companions, and keeping these as pets is morally good, since this is the natural way for these animals to live. Indeed, forcing such animals to live in a wild environment that they are unfitted for would be morally wrong.
Adopting an animal that has no home and might otherwise be destroyed is clearly a morally good thing to do.
But there are ethical problems involved in keeping animals as pets - these become obvious if the animal is not well looked after or if it is an inappropriate animal to keep as a pet.
It's also unethical to keep an animal that is a danger to other people or animals.
It is only ethical to keep an animal as a pet if both the animal's biological and psychological needs are properly catered for.
Here are some examples of moral wrongs associated with pet-keeping:
In January 2009 the UK Kennel Club introduced new breed standards for the pedigree dogs in Britain to protect them from ill health caused by in-breeding.
This followed concerns about genetic disease raised in a BBC documentary, Pedigree Dogs Exposed, that claimed many pedigree dogs suffer ill-health caused by years of inbreeding.
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