Humans suffer. And some religions’ focus on suffering - such as Christianity’s crucifixion of Christ on the Cross, and Buddhism’s view of suffering as core in life and human-caused - promote awareness of this. Animals suffer. The Cambridge Dictionary portrays specifically that they do, giving the meaning of suffering as ‘physical or mental pain that a person or animal [my italics] is feeling’.
The animal welfare Five Freedoms, which emanate from the 1965 Brambell investigation, show recognition of animal sentience. That animals can perceive and feel has only been formally recognised relatively recently. The organisation Compassion in World Farming [CIWF] has been crucial in this regard. It campaigned to reach the eventual outcome of animal sentience being recognised by the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 amendment to the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union [TFEU] in Article 13 of Title II. As CIWF says, ‘this critical law recognises that farm animals experience many of the feelings we [humans] do, from pain, frustration and fear to contentment, delight and joy’.
The 2006 report (first published 2003) of Compassion in World Farming Trust [CIWFT], titled ‘Stop – Look – Listen: Recognising the Sentience of Farm Animals’ says ‘Our treatment of animals must be based on the fact that they are sentient’. So, let us consider what are the circumstances likely to engender suffering in sheep, and what are the kinds of suffering to which sheep could be victim.
As the CIFWT report says, sheep are less likely to show their pain. This is because sheep are prey animals and to display pain could also be indicating weakness and which could be dangerous for them. Another façet of sheep is that they are nervy. They are easily upset and distressed. And, so, it does not take much for them to be suffering. In common with other farm animals, sheep’s existence is run and ordained by humans. This dimension is key: sheep are not at liberty to do as they choose or wish. They are at humans’ mercy.
Sight of the National Animal Disease Information Service [NADIS] list of myriad and numerous diseases from which sheep can suffer immediately conveys that much suffering can come to sheep from the direction of illness. And while disease can be caught or can appear, illness can too be caused.
In essence, sheep are prey to humans. The professional sector, farmers and the industry and processes that support and connect to the sheep-farming endeavour, view sheep essentially as products for their use and income-delivery. They may love the sheep with whom they work, but their fundamental attitude to them is that of pragmatism. Sheep are farmers’ objects. The general public likely has the stereotypical attitude to sheep that they are rather stupid. Moreover, that sheep are so ubiquitous probably renders the public not to value sheep very highly. The public’s pet dogs, however, the public treats with an indulgence such as it gives its children, or itself. And with the outcome that sheep suffer much, and to the points of lamb-miscarriage, great injury or death, due to dog worrying.
There are some particular items and moments of cause of pain and suffering to sheep - such as tail-docking, castration, mulesing, bad - or lack of careful - shearing, rough handling generally, not conducting dipping with proper care, live export and transportation, slaughter not carried out humanely. Many of the ways by which suffering in sheep is produced are less direct, less overt. These range across: not providing adequate food, water, shelter; ignoring lameness or illness or not giving treatment to a sheep soon enough; not bringing in a vet when a vet should be brought in; putting sheep in an environment that is not appropriate for them in some way; putting sheep in a circumstance that will cause them stress, for example where dog-walkers are a frequent presence.
Any farmed sheep will be put in a situation that is not entirely akin to what it would experience ‘in the wild’. It is in a domesticated domain, with its style of life being selected by a human and for that human’s purpose. This is not to say that there is no suffering in a wild, free, existence; but that context leaves the sheep able to do what it perceives is best for itself and what it natural to it. And intensive farming demands more ‘less natural’ processes than traditional farming, for its successful (for the farmer) operation, and so it cannot but ratchet up the suffering for such sensitive creatures as are sheep. In the instance, there is an inevitable probability too, as tends to occur in any mass situation, of controller desensitisation. This is delivered by lack of close familiarity with the living thing with which the person is working: a lack of so much concern on the part of the operator is being produced.
Largely, it can be imagined, humans’ causings of sufferings of sheep, are ‘sins of omission’. What should be done to avoid sheep suffering is not being done, or not being done fully or often enough, because of lack of time, enough thought, or enough forward-thinking.
There might, however, be a more measured evaluation: a calculation being made on grounds of pragmatism - that word again - that to do the thing which is optimum to avoid a sheep suffering would ‘not be worth it’. This representing, therefore, a deliberate choice being made not to do the thing that would avoid a sheep experiencing any suffering. A worse still instance would be if, knowing that either doing or not doing something would cause a sheep suffering, the human chose the option that what would give the sheep suffering.
Regulations and advice to render high standards of welfare for sheep are considerable and detailed. A very comprehensive list of what should be done to ensure that sheep do not suffer is represented by the RSPCA Welfare Standards for Sheep (June 2020). The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [DEFRA] and Animal and Plant Health Agency gave updated animal welfare guidance in March 2021. Going through UK Parliament processes is the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill of 2021 which is ‘to make provision about the mode of trial and maximum penalty for certain offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006’. Yet, despite these and their like, sheep are still suffering - and frequently responsibility for this resides with humans, since it is they most usually who ordain sheep’s lives
29th March 2021