Ethical arguments that support intentional animal killing

Benjamin Allen^1,2*Andrew Abraham³Robert Arlinghaus^4,5Jerrold Belant⁶Daniel T Blumstein⁷Christopher Bobier⁸Mike Bodenchuk⁹Marcus Clauss¹⁰Stuart Dawson^11,12Stuart Derbyshire¹³Sam Ferreira^14,15Peter John Sabine Fleming^16,17Tim Forssman¹⁸Vanessa Gorecki¹⁹Christian Gortazar²⁰Andrea S Griffin²¹Jordan Hampton^22,23Peter Haswell²⁴Graham Kerley²Christopher Lean^25,26Frédéric Leroy²⁷John D. C. Linnell^28,29Kate E. Lynch^23,30Celesté Maré³Haemish Melville³¹Liaan Minnie¹⁸Yoshan Moodley³²Danial Nayeri³³M. Justin O'Riain³⁴Daniel M Parker¹⁸Stéphanie Périquet³⁵Gilbert Proulx³⁶Frans Radloff³⁷Alexander Schwab³⁸Sarah-Anne Jeanetta Selier^15,39Samuel Shephard⁴⁰Michael John Somers⁴¹T. Adam Van Wart⁴⁰Kurt VerCauteren⁴²Erica von Essen^29,43

• ¹Wildlife Management Sciences, Grantham, Australia
• ²Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
• ³Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark
• ⁴Division of Integrative Fisheries Management, Faculty of Life Science and Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environmental Systems, Berlin, Germany
• ⁵Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Humbolt University, Berlin, Germany
• ⁶Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
• ⁷University of California Los Angeles Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Los Angeles, United States
• ⁸Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, United States
• ⁹No affiliation, Hondo, United States
• ¹⁰Universitat Zurich Vetsuisse-Fakultat, Zürich, Switzerland
• ¹¹Murdoch University Harry Butler Institute, Murdoch, Australia
• ¹²Western Australia Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Bentley Delivery Centre, Australia
• ¹³National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
• ¹⁴South African National Parks, Pretoria, South Africa
• ¹⁵North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa
• ¹⁶New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Orange, Australia
• ¹⁷University of New England School of Environmental and Rural Science, Armidale, Australia
• ¹⁸University of Mpumalanga, Nelspruit, South Africa
• ¹⁹University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
• ²⁰Instituto de Investigacion en Recursos Cinegeticos, Ciudad Real, Spain
• ²¹The University of Newcastle - Newcastle City Campus, Newcastle, Australia
• ²²Murdoch University School of Veterinary Medicine, Murdoch, Australia
• ²³The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
• ²⁴Bangor University, Bangor, United Kingdom
• ²⁵Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• ²⁶ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• ²⁷Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
• ²⁸Norsk Institutt for Naturforskning, Trondheim, Norway
• ²⁹Universitetet i Innlandet, Elverum, Norway
• ³⁰The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
• ³¹University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
• ³²University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa
• ³³Texas A&M University, College Station, United States
• ³⁴University of Cape Town Institute for Communities and Wildlife, Rondebosch, South Africa
• ³⁵Ongava Research Centre, Okaukuejo, Namibia
• ³⁶Alpha Wildlife Research & Management, Sherwood Park, Canada
• ³⁷Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa
• ³⁸No affiliation, Nelson, New Zealand
• ³⁹South African National Biodiversity Institute, Silverton, South Africa
• ⁴⁰Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, United States
• ⁴¹University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
• ⁴²USDA-APHIS-WS National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, United States
• ⁴³Stockholms Universitet Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm, Sweden

Killing animals is a ubiquitous human activity consistent with our predatory and competitive ecological roles within the global food web. However, this reality does not automatically justify the moral permissibility of the various ways and reasons why humans kill animals – additional ethical arguments are required. Multiple ethical theories or frameworks provide guidance on this subject, and here we explore the permissibility of intentional animal killing within (1) consequentialism, (2) natural law or deontology, (3) religious ethics or divine command theory, (4) virtue ethics, (5) care ethics, (6) contractarianism or social contract theory, (7) ethical particularism, and (8) environmental ethics. These frameworks are most often used to argue that intentional animal killing is morally impermissible, bad, incorrect, or wrong, yet here we show that these same ethical frameworks can be used to argue that many forms of intentional animal killing are morally permissible, good, correct, or right. Each of these ethical frameworks support constrained positions where intentional animal killing is morally permissible in a variety of common contexts, and we further address and dispel typical ethical objections to this view. Given the demonstrably widespread and consistent ways that intentional animal killing can be ethically supported across multiple frameworks, we show that it is incorrect to label such killing as categorically unethical. We encourage deeper consideration of the many ethical arguments that support intentional animal killing and the contexts in which they apply.