#animal-ethics

#animal-ethics

Your pet dog or cat might soon be a chubby little munchkin no more. Welcome to the burgeoning era of - we swear we're not making this up - "ozempets," in which your servile critters might shed some extra pounds by taking animal-focused diabetes and weight loss drugs similar to Ozempic and Wegovy. It hasn't quite happened yet, but it's seemingly about to. As the New York Times reports, a San Francisco based biopharmaceutical firm called Okava Pharmaceuticals is expected to announce the first pilot study of using these drugs, which are known as GLP-1 agonists, on obese cats.

You notice an ant struggling in a puddle of water. Their legs thrash as they fight to stay afloat. You could walk past, or you could take a moment to tip a leaf or a twig into the puddle, giving them a chance to climb out. The choice may feel trivial. And yet this small encounter, which resembles the 'drowning child' case from Peter Singer's essay 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality' (1972), raises big questions.

Now more than ever, we must recognize that animals do matter. They are more than symbols of geographic and political divides. They deserve more out of life than to be casualties in our own failed efforts to coexist with one another, much less the natural world. Their worth is not a function of how "human" they look or act. And just as we appreciate individuality in people, so too must we value it in other animals.