Editing Precautionary principle (section)

=== Animal sentience precautionary principle ===
{{See also|Ethics of uncertain sentience}}

Appeals to the precautionary principle have often characterized the debates concerning animal sentience – that is, the question of whether animals are able to feel "subjective experiences with an attractive or aversive quality",<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Birch|first=Jonathan|author-link=Jonathan Birch (philosopher)|date=2017|title=Animal sentience and the precautionary principle|url=http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/84099/1/Birch_%20Animal%20sentience%20and%20the.pdf|journal=Animal Sentience|volume=16|issue=1}}</ref> such as pain, pleasure, happiness, or joy – in relation to the question of whether we should legally protect sentient animals. A version of the precautionary principle suitable for the problem of animal sentience has been proposed by [[London School of Economics|LSE]] philosopher [[Jonathan Birch (philosopher)|Jonathan Birch]]: "The idea is that when the evidence of sentience is inconclusive, we should 'give the animal the benefit of doubt' or 'err on the side of caution' in formulating animal protection legislation."<ref name=":0" /> Since we cannot reach absolute certainty with regards to the fact that some animals are sentient, the precautionary principle has been invoked in order to grant potentially sentient animals "basic legal protections".<ref name=":0" /> Birch's formulation of the animal sentience precautionary principle runs as follows:{{blockquote|Where there are threats of serious, negative animal welfare outcomes, lack of full scientific certainty as to the sentience of the animals in question shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent those outcomes.<ref name=":0" />}}This version of the precautionary principle consists of an epistemic and a decision rule. The former concerns the "evidential bar" that should be required for animal sentience. In other words, how much evidence of sentience is necessary before one decides to apply precautionary measures? According to Birch, only ''some'' evidence would be sufficient, which means that the evidential bar should be set at low levels. Birch proposes to consider the evidence that certain animals are sentient sufficient whenever "statistically significant evidence ... of the presence of at least one credible indicator of sentience in at least one species of that order" has been obtained.<ref name=":0" /> For practical reasons, Birch says, the evidence of sentience should concern the [[Order (biology)|order]], so that if one [[species]] meets the conditions of sentience, then all the species of the same order should be considered sentient and should be thus legally protected. This is due to the fact that, on the one hand, "to investigate sentience separately in different orders" is feasible,<ref name=":0" /> whereas on the other hand, since some orders include thousands of species, it would be unfeasible to study their sentience separately.

What is more, the evidential bar should be so low that only ''one'' indicator of sentience in the species of a specific order will be sufficient in order for the precautionary principle to be applied. Such indicator should be "an observable phenomenon that experiments can be designed to detect, and it must be credible that the presence of this indicator is explained by sentience".<ref name="Birch 1–16">{{Cite journal|last=Birch|first=Jonathan|title=Animal sentience and the precautionary principle|journal=Animal Sentience|pages=1–16}}</ref> Lists of such criteria already exist for detecting animal pain. The aim is to create analogous lists for other criteria of sentience, such as happiness, fear, or joy. The presence of one of these criteria should be demonstrated by means of experiments which must meet "the normal scientific standards".<ref name=":0" />

Regarding the second part of the animal sentience precautionary principle, the decision rule concerns the requirement that we have to act once there is sufficient evidence of a seriously bad outcome. According to Birch, "we should aim to include within the scope of animal protection legislation all animals for which the evidence of sentience is sufficient, according to the standard of sufficiency outlined [above]".<ref name="Birch 1–16"/> In other words, the decision rule states that once the aforementioned low evidential bar is met, then we ''should'' act in a precautionary way.<ref name=":0" /> Birch's proposal also "deliberately leaves open the question of how, and to what extent, the treatment of these animals should be regulated", thus also leaving open the content of the regulations, as this will largely depend on the animal in question.<ref name=":0" />