Animal Welfare Reclaimed: Ethics, Rights & the End of Exploitation 

Why Animal Advocacy Needs Its Most Misused Word Back 

Earlier this year, I was accepted onto a postgraduate Masters course at the University of Winchester titled Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law. Designed by Professor Andrew Knight, the course promised something quietly radical: a way to introduce rights-based ethics through the language of welfare. It wasn’t overtly abolitionist, but it was ethically ambitious - a bridge between scientific inquiry and moral clarity.

Then, just weeks before it was due to begin, the university withdrew the course. The reason? “Insufficient interest.” Nine students had already been accepted, and as a remote programme, its running costs would have been minimal. The cancellation felt like more than a logistical decision. It felt like a stolen opportunity to reclaim a word that’s been corrupted and perverted by industry and compromise.

What “Welfare” Used to Mean - and Still Should

In ordinary moral language, “welfare” means protection, care, and thriving. We talk about child welfare as safeguarding children from neglect or abuse. Dog welfare means ensuring dogs are loved, healthy, and safe. No one hears “child welfare” and imagines a system that manages how gently we exploit them.

But when it comes to farmed animals, “welfare” undergoes a semantic drift. “Pig welfare” in agriculture means optimising productivity within exploitation: ensuring pigs grow well, suffer minimally, and die “humanely.” Welfare becomes a measure of managed suffering, not flourishing.

This is what linguists call ideological capture - when a morally rich term is stripped of its ethical content and repurposed to serve institutional interests. The public still hears “welfare” and thinks compassion. Industry uses it to mean efficiency.

Welfarism vs Rights: A False Divide?

In the animal rights movement, “welfarism” has become almost a dirty word. It’s often used to describe campaigns that seek to improve conditions within exploitative systems - bigger cages, cleaner slaughter, less pain. Tom Regan famously rejected this approach, arguing that animals are “subjects-of-a-life” with inherent value. For Regan, no amount of suffering reduction could justify use, exploitation, or killing.

But what if “welfare” itself could be reclaimed? What if the term could evolve to reflect not just how animals are treated, but whether they should be used at all?

This is where Andrew Knight’s work becomes crucial. In his Routledge Handbook of Animal Welfare (2023), Knight writes:

“Informed by recent advances in animal behavioural and cognitive science, new understanding … is leading to a fundamental reconsideration of the ways in which we use, and sometimes exploit, other animals.”

Knight doesn’t explicitly call for rights-based abolition, but his framing opens the door. He positions welfare not as refinement, but as ethical inquiry. He asks not just how we use animals, but whether we should.

Bridging Regan and Knight

Regan would likely reject the label “welfarism” even if reclaimed. But I think he would agree with the substance of Knight’s argument - that genuine concern for welfare entails rejecting exploitation and killing. In this sense, reclaiming “welfare” doesn’t dilute Regan’s critique. It operationalises it.

This reframing allows rights principles to re-enter mainstream science and policy through a familiar, less polarising vocabulary. It’s not a compromise - it’s a strategy.

Advocacy That Resonates

Reclaiming “welfare” also makes strategic sense. It speaks the public’s language. Most people already believe that welfare means protection. They care about dogs, cats, and children. They recoil at causing deliberate harm. They just haven’t extended that moral consistency to pigs, cows, or chickens.

By restoring the word’s original meaning, we can ask:

• If child welfare means protection from harm, why doesn’t pig welfare?

• If dog welfare means a life worth living, why does cow welfare end at the slaughterhouse door?

• If welfare means thriving, not just surviving, shouldn’t it apply to all sentient beings?

This isn’t activist jargon. It’s moral common sense.

A Word Worth Saving

The cancellation of the Winchester course was disappointing, but it clarified something: the word “welfare” is worth fighting for. It’s been misused, distorted, and weaponised by industries that profit from harm. But its moral core - protection, care, thriving - still resonates with the public.

Reclaiming “welfare” doesn’t mean abandoning rights. It means building a bridge. It means speaking plainly. And it means refusing to let the language of compassion be co-opted by the machinery of exploitation.

If we care about welfare, then we must care about freedom from harm - not just comfort within harm. Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is speak honestly, and take the word back.

To explore this subject in more depth, download my eBook, "Introduction to Veganism and Animal Rights"