Written evidence submitted by Rethink Priorities (AWB0016)

Rethink Priorities: Submission of Evidence to Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill

About Rethink Priorities

Rethink Priorities is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)3 policy think tank. Rethink Priorities is not funded by any candidate or political party committee and does not survey on behalf of any political candidate or party. This survey was conducted out of our research interest in invertebrate welfare and the psychology of thinking about non-human animals.

Executive summary

●        We conducted a UK national survey of 1963 participants, adjusted to match a UK nationally representative sample, to address the term of reference: ‘Is the Government correct to limit the scope of the Bill to vertebrate animals?’

●        We found high levels of support for the idea that invertebrates are capable of feeling pain. At the upper end, the vast majority of participants agreed that lobsters (83.03%), octopuses (80.65%), and crabs (78.09%) can feel pain.

●       While participants were more reticent to endorse animal sentience than capacity for pain, agreement was still high.

●       The overwhelming majority of participants agreed that if scientific experts believe there is some evidence that an animal could be capable of feeling pain, we should be careful about potentially harming them (91.06%).

Overview

1. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill proposes to enshrine animal sentience in United Kingdom (UK) law. The bill distinguishes between two classes of animals, invertebrates and vertebrates, and only offers protection to the latter. Yet, few generalisations can be made about invertebrates, given that they comprise a large and heterogeneous array of animals, from earthworms and beetles to spiders and jellyfish, honey bees and sea hares to fruit flies and cockroaches (Rethink Priorities, 2019a). The UK Government should consider public attitudes and concerns, in addition to high-quality, evidenced-based research on invertebrate sentience, before limiting the scope of this Bill to an extreme minority of animal species (vertebrates comprise less than 2% of all animal species; Bar-On, Phillips, & Milo, 2018; Rethink Priorities, 2019a).
2. Research on invertebrate welfare has been gaining increasing traction and there is some evidence to suggest that some large groups of invertebrates, such as cephalopods (e.g., octopuses, squid) and arthropods (e.g., lobsters, crabs), are sentient (Elwood, 2011; Rethink Priorities, 2019a). Octopuses, crayfish, and crabs, for example, display behaviors suggestive of painful experiences (Rethink Priorities, 2019b). Octopuses are skilled navigators, use tools, and can show signs of experiencing distress whilst crabs have been observed making tradeoffs and experiencing stress in ways that are analogous to vertebrates. Eusocial insects such as honey bees and ants also exhibit complex learning, cognitive skills, and meta-cognition. Although there are more unknowns than certainties in this area (Rethink Priorities, 2019b), the available behavioural and neurobiological evidence suggests we should reconsider the dichotomy currently embedded in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. As the empirical research on invertebrate sentience is synthesised elsewhere by Rethink Priorities (see our list of invertebrate welfare publications), we instead focus on investigating public perceptions in this submission.
3. The UK parliament aims to represent the interests of the public and ensure that they are taken into account by the Government (UK Parliament, n.d.). Consequently, the opinions and attitudes of the UK public should be considered when evaluating whether the Government is correct to limit the scope of the Bill to vertebrate animals. Previous research suggests that the general population do not view the question of which animals can experience pleasure and pain as synonymous with their skeletal structure. A survey of  US respondents found high levels of support for the idea that insects were sentient (Rethink Priorities, 2021). The majority of respondents thought that honey bees (65%), ants (56%), and termites (52%) could feel pain. Public sentiment on this topic, however, has not been examined in the UK.
4. In this study we surveyed the UK public, adjusted to match a UK nationally representative sample, on their perceptions of animal sentience. Our aim was to provide an indication of whether the public believes that some invertebrates are sentient, capable of feeling pain, and should be taken into consideration.

Methods

Participants

5. We sampled 2000 UK respondents from Prolific.co, an online platform where people are recruited and paid to complete surveys. Demographic details for the  unweighted sample are provided in Appendix A. Respondents were paid £0.63 for a median hourly rate of £8.66.

Survey Design and Distribution

6. Our survey was advertised to participants on the platform as “A survey about attitudes” with the description: “In this survey you will be asked various questions about your views about different animals. You will also be asked for demographic information.” The nature of the survey was not disclosed any further, so we would not expect any additional selection bias in who takes the survey. The survey was live on 29 June 2021 between 10am and 1pm.
7. Survey items were developed to understand whether respondents believe certain animals can feel pain and are sentient, how this information should affect our actions, deference to scientific opinion, and relevant demographics. The full list of survey items can be found in Appendix B.

Data Quality Filtering

8. We began with 2000 responses.  Fifteen respondents were excluded for reporting being under the age of 18. Twenty-two responses were removed because when asked “How honestly have you answered these questions?”, at the very end of the survey, they replied “Not honestly at all” or “Somewhat honestly” instead of “Very honestly” or “Completely honestly” (see Robinson-Cimpian, 2014). After this quality filtering, there were 1963 remaining responses.

Results

Weighting Procedure

9. As our interest was in how the UK public perceive animal sentience, it was most relevant to determine how a representative sample of UK respondents would respond to the survey items. Survey samples can differ from the composition of the UK population as a whole (e.g., younger respondents may be more or less likely to complete the survey), and as such we re-weighted the survey composition so that it matched the composition of the UK census. If different groups of respondents respond to the survey questions differently, this procedure should make the overall results more reflective of the responses that we would see from the UK population as a whole. We used the surveyweights Python package developed by Peter Hurford at Rethink Priorities to create weights to adjust for race, age, gender, income, UK region, Brexit vote, and 2019 UK General Election vote. These weights were used to upsample and downsample responses accordingly to produce results in line with UK Census data. All data to form weights, and sourcing for that information, is contained within the publicly available source code for the package. After conducting the re-weighting procedure we observed a margin of error of <3%. Below we report on the weighted results, but unweighted results are also provided in Appendix C.

Perceptions of Animal Sentience

Capacity to Feel Pain

10. We found high levels of support for the idea that invertebrates were capable of feeling pain. Whilst agreement with this sentiment was generally lower for invertebrates (43.95%-83.08%) than vertebrates (77.23%-99.10%), a significant share of UK respondents endorsed this statement for all animals. We found that the majority of respondents thought that honey bees (73.09%), shrimp (62.20%), caterpillars (58.06%), and flies (54.23%) could feel pain. In fact, agreement that lobsters (83.03%), octopuses (80.65%), and crabs (78.09%) could feel pain was higher than for some vertebrates—fish (77.23%). Disagreement regarding the capacity of invertebrate animals to feel pain was low (ranging from 3.17% for lobsters to 18.79% for mealworms), with uncertainty being higher for some animals (e.g., ants; 13.79%, and mealworms; 14.93%) than others (e.g., dogs; 0.02%, and pigs; 0.13%).
11. When asked to indicate whether it is possible that each of these animals feel pain, the overwhelming majority indicated yes. Whilst respondents were more divided on mealworms and flies, 67.05% and 69.28% of the sample, respectively, still indicated that it was a possibility.

Sentience

12. Similar results were observed on the question of sentience, with the majority of respondents believing that most animals included in the survey were sentient. Results ranged from  95.77% agreement (dogs) to 31.97% (mealworms). Overall, respondents were less likely to agree that an animal was sentient than that they could feel pain. The biggest discrepancy concerned lobsters, where 83.08% of the sample agreed that the invertebrate could feel pain but 59.13% agreed that they were sentient.

Taking animal pain into consideration

13. We found high levels of agreement that if certain animals can feel pain, we should take that into consideration. The majority of the sample agreed that if dogs (96.19%), cows (95.21%), pigs (94.71%), chickens (94.10%), honey bees (81.46%), fish (80.48%), octopuses (78.34%), lobsters (77.52%), crabs (75.03%), shrimp (66.53%), and caterpillars (53.43%) can feel pain, we should consider that.

14. We also asked respondents whether we should potentially be careful about harming an animal if relevant scientific experts thought that there was evidence that they could feel pain. Overwhelmingly, 91.06% of the sample agreed with this position.

Limitations

15. The results of our survey are not intended to be a substitute for a synthesis of the scientific evidence.  Such syntheses are available elsewhere, such as in our list of invertebrate welfare publications. Invertebrate welfare is an emerging field of research, and it is possible that participant responses were influenced by familiarity with, and / or preference for, vertebrate animals over invertebrates (e.g., by having dogs as pets).

Summary and Recommendations

16. Support for the view that invertebrate animals can or could feel pain was relatively high among our UK sample. Further, there was extremely high agreement that if scientific experts believe that an animal can feel pain, we should be careful about potentially harming them. Taking these two findings into account, in addition to the empirical evidence indicating that some invertebrates may be capable of experiencing pain (Rethink Priorities, 2019a), suggests that the reasons to rethink the current limitations of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill concern both scientific and public support.
17. Whilst the research in this space is not conclusive, we should take a ‘proceed with caution’ approach—ensuring humane care for vertebrates and invertebrates that might feel pain (Elwood, 2011). At a minimum, we should avoid restricting definitions of sentience to a particular class of animal. Understanding which animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and pain is complex and likely not going to be conducive to simplistic categorisations.

References

Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), 6506-6511.

Robinson-Cimpian, J. P. (2014). Inaccurate estimation of disparities due to mischievous responders: Several suggestions to assess conclusions. Educational Researcher, 43(4), 171-185.

Schukraft, J. 2019a, (July 9). Invertebrate Welfare Cause Profile. Rethink Priorities. https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/blog/2019/7/6/invertebrate-welfare-cause-profile

UK Parliament. n.d. Parliament and the Government. https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/relations-with-other-institutions/parliament-government/

Waldhorn, D. R. 2019b, (June 14). Invertebrate Sentience: Summary of findings, Part 2. Rethink Priorities. https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/blog/2019/6/14/invertebrate-sentience-summary-of-findings-part-2

Appendix A

Unweighted demographic data

Gender

Race

Education             

Region

Area type

Income

Brexit vote

2019 General election vote

Food consumption in the past three months

Diet type

Age group

Appendix B

List of Survey Items

1. In this survey you will be asked to indicate whether you think certain animals can feel pain and should be considered when making laws and policies in the UK. You will need to answer every question on a page in order to be able to proceed with the survey, so please check carefully.What is your Prolific ID
2. How much do you agree or disagree that the following animals are capable of feeling pain? {Dogs / Chickens / Cows / Pigs / Fish / Honey bees / Ants / Crabs / Lobsters / Octopuses / Shrimp / Flies / Mealworms / Caterpillars}

●        Strongly disagree | Disagree | Neither agree nor disagree | Agree | Strongly agree | Don’t know

3. Do you think that it is possible that the following animals are capable of feeling pain? {Dogs / Chickens / Cows / Pigs / Fish / Honey bees / Ants / Crabs / Lobsters / Octopuses / Shrimp / Flies / Mealworms / Caterpillars}

●        No | Yes

4. How much do you agree or disagree that the following animals are sentient? {Dogs / Chickens / Cows / Pigs / Fish / Honey bees / Ants / Crabs / Lobsters / Octopuses / Shrimp / Flies / Mealworms / Caterpillars}

●        Strongly disagree | Disagree | Neither agree nor disagree | Agree | Strongly agree | Don’t know

5. How much do you agree or disagree that if the following animals can feel pain, we should take that into consideration? {Dogs / Chickens / Cows / Pigs / Fish / Honey bees / Ants / Crabs / Lobsters / Octopuses / Shrimp / Flies / Mealworms / Caterpillars}

●        Strongly disagree | Disagree | Neither agree nor disagree | Agree | Strongly agree | Don’t know

6. How much do you agree or disagree that if relevant scientific experts think that there is some evidence that an animal could be capable of feeling pain, we should be careful about potentially harming these animals?

●        Strongly disagree | Disagree | Neither agree nor disagree | Agree | Strongly agree | Don’t know

7. With which gender do you identify?

●        Male | Female | Other

8. What is your race?

●        Asian | White | Black | Mixed | Other

9. What is the highest level of education you have completed

●        [Dropdown box]

10. In which year were you born? Please enter a four-digit number (e.g. 1970)

●        Text response

11. What UK region do you live in?

●        East

●        East Midlands

●        London

●        North East

●        North West

●        Northern Ireland

●        Scotland

●        South East

●        South West

●        Wales

●        West Midlands

●        Yorkshire And The Humber

●        I don't live in the UK

12. Which best describes where you live?

●        Urban | Suburban | Rural

13. What is your income?

●        Less than £15,000

●        £15,000 to £20,000

●        £20,000 and £30,000

●        £30,000 to £50,000

●        £50,000 to £70,000

●        £70,000 to £100,000

●        More than £100,000

14. How did you vote in the EU (Brexit) referendum?

●        Leave | Remain | I didn’t vote

15. Who did you vote for in the 2019 UK General Election?

●        Conservative party

●        Labour Party

●        Scottish National Party

●        Liberal Democrats

●        Change UK

●        Plaid Cymru

●        Green Party of England and Wales

●        Brexit Party

●        Other

●        I didn’t vote

16. How often, in the past 3 months, did you eat the following? {Dairy (cheese, milk,yoghurt, etc.) / Chicken (fried chicken,chicken soup, grilled chicken, etc.) / Fish and seafood (tuna,shrimp, crab, etc.) / Beef (steak, meatballs,burgers, etc.) / Eggs (omelet, in salad,in baked goods, etc.)}

●        Not at all | Less than 1 time per week | 1-6 times a week | 1-3 times per day | 4 or more times per day

17. Which of the following, if any, do you identify as:

●        Vegan

●        Vegetarian

●        Pescetarian

●        Flexitarian

●        Reducetarian

●        None of the above

18. Do you have any comments about anything peculiar about this survey or any errors that occurred?

●        [Text box]

19. How honestly have you answered these questions?

●        Not honestly at all

●        Somewhat honestly

●        Very honestly

●        Completely honestly

Appendix C

Weighted survey results

How much do you agree or disagree that the following animals are capable of feeling pain?

Do you think that it is possible that the following animals are capable of feeling pain?

How much do you agree or disagree that the following animals are sentient?

How much do you agree or disagree that if the following animals can feel pain, we should take that into consideration?

How much do you agree or disagree that if relevant scientific experts think that there is some evidence that an animal could be capable of feeling pain, we should be careful about potentially harming these animals?

Unweighted survey results

How much do you agree or disagree that the following animals are capable of feeling pain?

Do you think that it is possible that the following animals are capable of feeling pain?

How much do you agree or disagree that the following animals are sentient?

How much do you agree or disagree that if the following animals can feel pain, we should take that into consideration?

How much do you agree or disagree that if relevant scientific experts think that there is some evidence that an animal could be capable of feeling pain, we should be careful about potentially harming these animals?