Handle with care: The relational matrix of veterinary medicine
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Mainstream animal ethics has been preoccupied with arguing that animals have moral status. This has reduced the scope of relevant ethical concerns in our dealings with animals and operates mainly as an external critique of human–animal practices. Here, I draw on care-ethicist Frits de Lange’s ‘relational matrix’, developed in the context of human–human care professions, to broaden our scope. The relational matrix is built up of two axes that cross each other in the middle. The vertical axis represents symmetrical versus vertical asymmetrical relations, while the horizontal axis represents informal versus formal relations. This results in four different types of relations and associated ethical discourses: (1) symmetrical, informal relationships represent friendship relations; (2) asymmetrical, informal relationships represent relations of solicitude; (3) asymmetrical, formal relations refer to relations of professional expertise; and (4) horizontal, formal relations refer to relations of obligation. I consider the relational matrix of veterinary medicine. In the relational matrix of veterinary medicine, animals are encountered as patients on which veterinarians ‘exercise’ their expertise, but in the context of solicitude with the needy animal. To some extent (under Dutch law) there is symmetry in the veterinarian–animal patient relationship in so far animals have a right to veterinary care under emergency circumstances and veterinarians have a corresponding duty to provide this care. Whether we can talk of friendship, implying symmetry, at the face-to-face level of the human–animal encounter in veterinary practice, proves to be the hardest question to answer. A focus on friendship and recognition is warranted to connect the personal with the impersonal in discourse on the institutional access of animals to veterinary care and beyond.
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