About the Centre
In 2025, Journal of Animal Ethics celebrates its fifteenth volume year, and in celebration of this milestone, the entire first issue, Volume 1, Issue 1, is free to access during 2025.
The Journal is published by the University of Illinois Press in partnership with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The aim of the Centre is to pioneer ethical perspectives on animals through academic research, teaching, and publication.
The first issue, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla N. Cohn, came out in Spring 2011. In their editorial note, “Terms of Discourse,” they present examples of language bias in reference to animals and suggestions for how to avoid derogatory words and phrases when writing about animal ethics. This sets the tone for the respect and care the editors and authors of the Journal put forth to enact change in scholarly conversations around animals.
After eleven issues, in 2016 Priscilla retired from her editorial role, welcoming in her place Clair Linzey with Volume 6, Issue 2. Thus, Andrew and Clair begin their ninth year as c
o-editors with Volume 15, due out this spring (2025). Around the release of that issue, you can also check back on the University of Illinois Press website and blog for a podcast covering this history and forward trajectory of the journal.
Free to Access Volume 1, Issue 1, until December 31, 2025
Following the editorial note, this issue begins with two arguments: First, “Canada’s Commercial Seal Hunt: It’s More Than a Question of Humane Killing” by David M. Lavigne and William S. Lynn, in which the authors argue that the time has come for conservationists, scientists, managers of free-living animals, bureaucrats, politicians, and society at large to think beyond populations and ecosystems and consider also the well-being of individual, sentient animals.
Second, “On Due Recognition of Animals Used in Research” by Joel Marks, which concludes with a call to science authors to acknowledge formally in their written work the ethical significance of such use of nonhuman animals.
Then, there are five articles, with two responses:
In “Cognitive Relatives yet Moral Strangers?” Judith Benz-Schwarzburg and Andrew Knight provide an empirically based, interdisciplinary approach to the following two questions: Do animals possess behavioral and cognitive characteristics such as culture, language, and a theory of mind? And if so, what are the implications, when long-standing criteria used to justify differences in moral consideration between humans and animals are no longer considered indisputable?
The Food and Drug Administration approved Geron’s first-in-human human embryonic stem cells trial for spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. Andrew Fenton and Frederic Gilbert examine important issues concerning the use of animals in SCI stem cell research that require a reevaluation of the moral permissibility of studies such as Geron’s in their article “On the Use of Animals in Emergent Embryonic Stem Cell Research for Spinal Cord Injuries”
Generally, we group animals used in farming and free-living animals together as subject to the ethic of justice and distinguish both from companion animals, who are subject to the ethic of care. In “‘Pets or Meat’? Ethics and Domestic Animals” Grace Clement argues that animals used in farming, like companion animals, should be understood as within the sphere of care.
Barbro Frööding and Martin Peterson discuss some aspects of animal ethics from an Aristotelian virtue ethics point of view in “Animal Ethics Based on Friendship,” which is followed by “Friendship and Animals: A Reply to Frööding and Peterson” by Mark Rowlands. The article “Should Whiteheadians Be Vegetarians? A Critical Analysis of the Thoughts of Whitehead, Birch, Cobb, and McDaniel” by Jan Deckers also has an accompanying response from Jay McDaniel.
The issue concludes with reviews of the following books:
- Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship. By Gary Steiner. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008. 212 + xii pp. Hardback. $40.00. ISBN: 978-0-231-14234-2.).
- Animal Law in Australasia: A New Dialogue. Edited by Peter Sankoff and Steven White. (Sydney, Australia: Federation Press, 2009. 418 + xiii pp. Paperback. $69.90. ISBN: 978-186287-7191.).
- Ought Implies Kant: A Reply to the Consequentialist Critique. By Joel Marks. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. 132 pp. Hardback. $55.00. ISBN: 0739128779.).
- Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry, Revised Edition. By Karen Davis. (Summertown, TN: Book Publishing Company, 2009. 209 + xiv pp. Paperback. $14.95. ISBN: 978-1-57067-229-3.).
- The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence. Edited by Andrew Linzey. (Brighton, England: Sussex Academic Press, 2009. 346+xxii pp. Hardback and paper. £18.99/£60, $44.95. ISBN 978-1-84519-324-9 and 978-1-84519-325-6.).
Looking for more Journal of Animal Ethics?
If you enjoyed this look at Volume 1, Issue 1, but don’t currently have access to other content from the journal, you can subscribe now to receive new print issues, all past and current online content, or both print and online. There’s also special online access at a reduced rate for students.
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Interested in hearing from the editors themselves? Check out our Q&A blog post with Andrew and Clair Linzey about the Journal and their book Animal Theologians.
Other Article Highlights
The entire collection of Journal of Animal Ethics volumes and issues is available to current electronic subscribers on the Scholarly Publishing Collective (log in here). Current content, starting with Volume 6, is also available on Project Muse. Back content, Vol. 1–Vol. 11, is available through JSTOR.
Across those platforms, below are listed a few highly read articles over the past several years.
“Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Ethical Veganism” by Andrew Nesseler and Matthew Adelstein from Vol. 14, Iss. 1. This article looks at the development of two competing theories that hold prominence in debates among animal advocates: utilitarianism and deontology. Next, it turns toward their divergence in epistemology, the moral status of experiences and individuals, and the limits of permissibility. Last, it unites utilitarianism and deontology by noting where they converge.
Access options: Collective | Project Muse
“Legal Personhood and Animal Rights” by Visa Kurki from Vol. 11, Iss. 1. This article criticizes the notion of legal personhood that the U.S.-based Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) is employing and explains how an alternative understanding of legal personhood could perhaps make nonhuman rights more palatable for courts.
“Are Zoos and Aquariums Justifiable? A Utilitarian Evaluation of Two Prominent Arguments” by Stephen Bennett from Vol. 9, Iss. 2. Keeping animals captive in zoos and aquariums is commonly justified by claiming that doing so produces worthwhile consequences in terms of public education and animal conservation. Bennett takes a utilitarian approach to the issue, and, after establishing a view on the moral status of animals, assert that these arguments in favor of zoos and aquariums fail.
Access options: Collective | Project Muse | JSTOR
“Animals and Climate Change” by Tobias Thornes from Vol. 6, Iss. 1. Climate change represents an unprecedented threat to animal life on Earth, brought about by a single species: humanity. It is argued that humans have both a responsibility and an imperative to take immediate steps to avert climate change for the sake of all animal life.
Access options: Collective | Project Muse | JSTOR
“‘Higher’ And ‘Lower’ Political Animals: A Critical Analysis of Aristotle’s Account of the Political Animal” by Cheryl E. Abbate from. Vol. 6, Iss. 1. Contemporary research in cognitive ethology reveals that many social nonhuman mammals have demonstrated that they are, in fact, political in the Aristotelian sense, as they possess a sense of both general and special justice.
Access options: Collective | Project Muse | JSTOR
EDITOR’S NOTES:
Dr Clair Linzey and The Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics, are available for interview.
Volume 1, issue 1 of the Journal of Animal Ethics can be accessed here.
Images of the JAE and the editors can be accessed here.
For media enquiries please contact Sophie at Panpathic Communications: Sophie@panpathic.com / + 44 7815 860 082.
About the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics is an independent centre pioneering ethical perspectives on animals through academic research, teaching, and publication. The Centre comprises more than 100 academic Fellows worldwide. The Revd. Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics is the subject of a new documentary called ‘The Animal Thing’.
Web: www.oxfordanimalethics.com/home
Web: www.theanimalthing.com
Instagram: @oxfordanimalethics
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@oxfordanimalethics
LinkedIn: Dr Clair Linzey – https://www.linkedin.com/in/clair-linzey-ab012272/