This year, the Centre for Animal Ethics, coordinated by UPF, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. For a decade it has promoted leading research in the international field of animal welfare. The centre, which involves the collaboration of researchers from research centres around the world, is dedicated to studying the discrimination, abuse and oppression of animals in different areas, such as the food industry, entertainment or scientific experimentation, as well as carrying out awareness-raising activities and social and political advocacy.

Interdisciplinary and international research on animal ethics

The Centre for Animal Ethics (CAE) is co-directed by UPF professors Núria Almiron (Department of Communication) and Paula Casal (Department of Law). Its Scientific Board also includes researchers from other universities in Catalonia (UB, UAB and UdG), the rest of Spain (UCM and UPV/EHU), and indeed the world (such as Harvard). The CAE also has an Advisory Board that involves researchers from universities in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. In all, a total of 42 researchers from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, communication, law, anthropology, psychology and literature support the CAE. Since 2021, the CAE team has also published the scientific journal Animal Ethics Review.

The co-directors of the Centre for Animal Ethics, Núria Almiron and Paula Casal, highlight the growing interest generated by the CAE’s lines of research and social and political advocacy. While a decade ago only a small number of women researchers were working on the subject at their respective departments, today the centre is “inundated with applications from people who want to participate as doctoral students, visitors and volunteers”. They point out that some of them are international benchmarks in animal ethics research, making the UPF-CAE a “global benchmark” in the field.

Social and political advocacy for animal welfare

Beyond the academic aspects, the CAE carries out outreach and awareness-raising activities and projects concerning the need to protect and uphold animal welfare. For example, in 2020, it launched the Animal Ethics Classroom, a project to include the issue in education and for younger generations to take other ways of relating to animals and their habitat into account. Another of the centre’s most relevant initiatives is the Media Observatory of Speciesism, which was set up in 2018 to contribute to the eradication of discriminatory media discourse against animals (speciesism), based on critical analyses and the preparation of proposals for communication professionals, such as the “Guidelines towards an ethical news coverage of nonhuman animals” (2016).

Thus, the CAE is fully autonomous to position itself on different practices that put animal welfare at risk, through different declarations or partnerships that address both the Government of Catalonia and the Government of Spain, as well as the European Commission. For example, the CAE has supported platforms or initiatives against to bullfighting (Prou Correbous); or displaying animals in zoos (ZOOXXI), which advocate reconverting these spaces into rescue and recovery centres for injured or sick animals or into spaces for animal ethics documentation, outreach and awareness-raising. It has also denounced the model of macrofarms, intensive farms with hundreds or thousands of animals confined in a very small space and in very precarious conditions; or blood farms (in Europe concentrated in Iceland), where the blood of the mares is extracted to obtain a hormone used to increase reproduction by sows. In addition, it has firmly positioned itself against animal testing and is working to promote compliance with the current European Directive on animal testing, whose ultimate goal is to completely eradicate the practice.

The 10 years of the Centre for Animal Ethics, in figures

In the framework of its 10th anniversary, the CAE has published a report on its activities for 2015-2025, the main data of which are broken down below:

• 252 presentations at academic and non-academic events
• 112 scientific publications
• 56 master’s degree final projects and doctoral theses supervised
• Collaborations with more than 30 institutions, research centres and organizations for the defence of animals, nature and sustainable food around the world.
• More than 20 declarations and campaign adhesions
• 18 hosted researchers (predoctoral and postdoctoral)
• 12 CAE-Talks
• 9 internship students.

An exhibition to commemorate its 10th anniversary

The exhibition organized on occasion of the CAE’s 10th anniversary, which can be seen on the UPF Poblenou campus from this Thursday, 16 January, is entitled “Quan el mico va trobar la guineu: la traïció sense fi” (When the monkey met the fox: the endless betrayal). The exhibition aims to make the viewer reflect on the complex relationships between human beings and non-human animals, as well as on the dynamics of discrimination and the power structures that have shaped and sustained them, based on the works of Ruth Montiel Arias and Carlos Alba. A dialogue is thus proposed between two complementary approaches: the former explores the systematic exploitation of non-human primates from a global perspective while the latter focuses on urban interactions with foxes, revealing the cultural and social barriers that condition our perception of other species. The exhibition is an opportunity to question our relationships with animals and the ethical values of today’s world.

The artists will be giving the conference titled “Cuando el mono encontró al zorro. El origen” this Thursday, 16 January at 6.30pm, before the opening ceremony of the exhibition, which will be held at 8 pm.  The exhibition can be seen at the Tallers Area Gallery on the Poblenou campus until 27 March.