Parzuchowski, KimberlyLundquist, CarolineJohnson, Ryan2024-06-252024-06-25https://hdl.handle.net/1794/29587Single page poster“Relief” is a poem about anthropocentric moral policy, and a critical reflection on animal welfare designed to provoke questions about why humanity uses non-human species the way we do. The purpose of the poem is not to shame or apply guilt, but to encourage asking ourselves the difficult questions like; Are humans more important than other species? If so, how does that importance give us the right to deem non-human species unworthy of human-like consideration? “Relief” is a poem of accountability that addresses the root of these questions. To write this poem I researched the extent of non-human abuse both in scientific research and in industrial animal farms, and what I found is heart wrenching. I found that there is a trend in how researchers and industrialists justify these abuses, which were primarily focused on levels of sentience and consciousness of non-human species in comparison to the “superior” variation of sentience and consciousness of humans. I don’t believe that humanity should use our own sentience or consciousness as a justification for any kind of abuse. If we don’t examine our anthropocentric scientific and moral beliefs humanity will continue to abuse non-human species, or as it has in the past, use the same justifications to abuse our own kind under a similar premise. I designed “Relief” to force us to examine this difficult to discuss problem, and hopefully force us to think deeper on our reasons for how we treat things that are not us.Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USPoetryethicscritical reflectionanimal welfarePhilosophy