Introduction

When people talk about global health, and the ethics thereof, they almost invariably mean global human health. This is not because it is impossible to have more expansive notions of global health that include other species. Instead it is because most people who are concerned about global health, like most of those who are concerned about local health, are either not concerned at all, or are much less concerned, with the health of other species. Thus global health ethics, although expanding the reach of health ethics geographically, has not extended moral concern to other species within that global space.

This is unfortunate for at least two reasons. First, there is good reason to think that not only humans but also some other animals, the sentient ones, are worthy of moral consideration. That is to say, they are the sorts of beings to which we have moral duties. I shall not argue for this conclusion here, in part because it has been defended extensively elsewhere, but also because overlooking animal welfare in the way that people generally do, poses a considerable threat to global human health. Thus, even those who fail to recognize the moral standing of non-human animals but do recognize the moral standing of humans should be more attentive to animal well-being on account of its instrumental value for human health.