Ethical dilemmas and decision-making are a persistent feature of the everyday operations of animal shelters and animal protection organizations. These organizations frequently face difficult decisions about how to treat the animals in their care, decisions that are made all the more difficult by limited funding, material resources, and human labor.
Moreover, animal protection organizations must also determine how to act within and toward the wider social and institutional environment in which non-human animals are routinely exploited. The first section of The Ethics of Animal Shelters contains practical recommendations developed by ethicists in response to the ethical challenges identified by employees of the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. These challenges arise across the organization's activities, including its internal structure; shelter operations; public campaigns and advocacy work; dealing with the public, animal agriculture and governmental agencies; and their work with feral animals.
The second section offers philosophical analyses of the ethical challenges unique to animal shelters. Issues explored include the killing of shelter animals; shelter animals' diets; medical decision-making procedures; adoption policies; and the role shelters might play in transforming social attitudes and norms.
"Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Exploring the ethics of animal shelters: An introduction Part I The Ethics of Animal Shelters: Guidelines and Recommendations Valéry Giroux, Angie Pepper, Kristin Voigt, Frédéric Côté-Boudreau, Nicolas Delon, Sue Donaldson, François Jaquet, Will Kymlicka, Angela Martin and Agnes Tam Part II 1. The value of death for animals: an overview Nicolas Delon 2. Caring in Non-Ideal Conditions: Animal Rescue Organizations and Morally Justified Killing Angie Pepper 3. Decision-making under non-ideal circumstances: Establishing triage protocols for animal shelters Angela Martin 4. What If They Were Humans? Non-Ideal Theory in the Shelter François Jaquet 5. Being Popular and Being Just: How Animal Protection Organizations Can Be Both Agnes Tam and Will Kymlicka 6. Companion Animal Adoption in Shelters: How ""Open"" Should It Be? Valéry Giroux and Kristin Voigt 7. Transformative Animal Protection Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka Afterword Élise Desaulniers"
Valéry Giroux is Associate Director of the Centre de recherche en éthique (CRÉ) at Université de Montréal. Angie Pepper is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Roehampton. Kristin Voigt is Associate Professor at McGill University.
