Ethical Treatment of Animals (July 2015): Home

In what has become a decennial tradition, this is our third Choice bibliographic essay titled “Ethical Treatment of Animals.”  The first, in 1995[1] was conceived as an update to Charles Magel’s foundational 1989 bibliography, Keyguide to Information Sources in Animal Rights.[2]   A decade later, our 2005 essay covered books published subsequent to the earlier one.[3]   Now, this 2015 piece surveys the literature published in the last ten years, with a focus on monographs.  Included are approximately one hundred English-language nonfiction works, published in 2005 or later, related to the ethical treatment of animals.

The myriad publications seemingly available in this category include works on animal behavior, animal capabilities, wildlife conservation, and human-animal relationships.  However, upon inspection, many proved to be only peripherally concerned with animal welfare or animal rights.  Other standards used to vet the several thousand available books included suitability for academic collections and stature of publisher and author(s).  We also attempted to provide roughly proportionate representation of the topical literature.  We therefore included a greater number of titles on well-published topics such as the ethics of using animals for food and for laboratory experimentation than we supplied for more specialized topics such as hunting ethics.

Walter Hogan is a professor and technical services coordinator, and Eric Owen is a professor and information systems librarian. Both are at Eastern Michigan University Library.