Animal Dignity Declaration signed by World Animal Protection and 300+ others

To fight climate change, biodiversity loss, and widespread animal cruelty, animals should be treated as beings with dignity and not as 'things'.

We declare that the dignity of animals originates in their agency and autonomy, and in species capacities including but not limited to their rich emotional lives, relational qualities, cultures, and creativity. We declare that to acknowledge and assert the dignity of animals is to refrain from actions that degrade them to the status of objects or things.

The Declaration, endorsed by well-known figures like Dame Jane Goodall and respected philosophers and scientists from around the world, including Indigenous scholars, responds to the urgent challenges human societies face in their exploitation of nature by tackling the cruelty and disregard that perpetuates harm. The principle of respect for all animals targets the exploitation of nature at the heart of climate change, biodiversity loss, and animal welfare issues.

The Declaration has inspired the Pledge for Animals, which individuals, organisations, and businesses can take to help build fairer and kinder relations with other animals. The Pledge is supported by many of the world's largest animal welfare charities, including Eurogroup for Animals, RSPCA, and Compassion in World Farming, bringing dignity to the heart of animals welfare movement for the first time.

The Pledge focuses on three simple steps that any individual can take to treat other beings with dignity: to stop using language that degrades or objectifies other animals (words like "vermin", for example); to avoid treating another living being as an object or thing; and to respect animals as subjects when we make decisions that are critical to their lives. See www.animaldignity.info.

Why dignity?

Today around two thirds of all farmed animals live in factory farms, where degrading or distressing conditions include live transport, restricted and enclosed housing, and brutal practices like live shackling. These kinds of practices currently impact around 50 billion animals a year. Industrial meat and dairy farming disproportionately impact environment and climate, with around 60% of emissions from animal-based food systems.

Dignity is recognised as a necessary next step in the wellbeing of other species and in human-nature relations. The animal welfare movement was launched over 200 years ago and the animals rights movement in the 1970s. These movements came before we had a wide body of research on animal perception, consciousness, intelligence, and communication, and before the recognition of the human systems and institutions that contribute to climate change, biodiversity loss, or the arrival of new technologies like CRISPR gene-editing that allow for novel forms of animal exploitation. Dignity, the cornerstone of human rights, offers much-needed status to other species, and recognises that biological beings are vulnerable to structures that routinely devalue their lives and lead to cycles of harm.

The Declaration signatories include leading scientists and philosophers Jane Goodall, Amia Srinivasan, Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi, Matthew Calarco, Julius Kapembwa, Dale Jamieson, Sue Donaldson, Will Kymlicka, Alfonso Donoso, Christine M. Korsgaard, Ralph Acampora, Robert Garner, Gieri Bolliger, Jeff Sebo, Marc Bekoff, Gary Steiner, Alexandra Horowitz, Danielle Celermajer, César Rodríguez-Garavito, Revd Michael J. Reiss, Alasdair Cochrane, David George Haskell, Alice Crary, Jeff McMahan, and Eva Meijer.

View the full list of signatories

Media Contacts:

Melanie Challenger (melaniechallenger@gmail.com)

Becca Franks (beccafranks@nyu.edu)

Eva Bernet Kempers (eva.bernetkempers@uantwerpen.be)