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Animal Welfare Institute
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI)
is a non-profit charitable organization founded in 1951 with the goal of reducing pain and fear inflicted on animals by humans. Its legislative division, the Society for Animal Protective Legislation (SAPL), pushes for the passage of laws that reflect this purpose.
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In the organization’s early years, its particular emphasis was on the needs of animals used for experimentation. AWI expanded the scope of its work in the following decades to address many other areas of animal suffering.
One major current area of emphasis is factory farms. AWI speaks out against this cruelty and promotes small, humane independent family farms that follow the organization's animal welfare and husbandry standards. Other efforts include ending the use of steel-jaw leghold traps for catching fur-bearing animals, improving the lives of animals in laboratories and promoting the development of non-animal testing methods.
AWI representatives regularly attend meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to fight for the protection of threatened and endangered species. They also attend meetings of the International Whaling Commission to fight to preserve the ban on commercial whaling and work to protect all marine life against the proliferation of anthropogenic ocean noise.
AWI launched its Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) standards program in Fall 2006, with husbandry requirements for beef cattle and calves, pigs, sheep, ducks, turkeys and rabbits. Standards for additional species will follow.
Only family farms can earn the AWA seal. Families who own, labor on and earn a meaningful livelihood from their farms have a true commitment and connection to their animals that is lost on factory farms managed by distant, corporate owners and run by hired hands. AWI strives to revitalize a culture of independent family farms, in which a humane ethic can be passed on to future generations.
The welfare of farmed animals is related to the extent to which they can adapt without suffering to environments designed by humans. Both the science and the philosophy of animal welfare recognize that animals have a mental life as well as bodily condition (health and vigor) that can be affected by how humans shelter and treat them.
The “Five Freedoms” are used to describe both the needs of domesticated animals and the duties of care owed them. The Five Freedoms have a long history, having first been described in a scientific report to the British government in 1965 and enhanced by the Carpenter Committee in 1980. They underlie the AWA program, reflecting the goals that the standards strive to achieve. They provide a useful benchmark by which farmers can evaluate the outcomes of their husbandry.
The Five Freedoms are: freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition; freedom from physical and thermal discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease (including parasitical infections); freedom to express normal behavior; and freedom from fear and distress.
In 1951, Dr. Albert Schweitzer gave AWI permission to strike a medal in his honor, to be presented for outstanding achievement in the advancement of animal welfare.
In granting his permission, Dr. Schweitzer wrote, “I would never have believed that my philosophy, which incorporates in our ethics a compassionate attitude toward all creatures, would be noticed and recognized in my lifetime.”
In 1954, a gold replica of the Medal was presented to Dr. Schweitzer by Dr. Charles Joy in Oslo, Norway, where he had gone to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
To teach his message of compassion to children, AWI published The Boy Who Loved All Living Things: The Imaginary Childhood Journal of Albert Schweitzer, written and illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka. Inspired by Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s youth, the book teaches young children that animals are friends who should be treated with the utmost respect.