Was that a yes or a no I assure you I am not playing games This is quite an important point SlimVirgin did raise the issue of tautology and I addressed it by saying that we need to write about welfare in the context of non human animals You seem to think this is an impossible task since we are human I reject this idea We can write about many non human things Obviously our ability to know about the welfare of a dog for example is limited by the fact that we are not dogs but that does not change what animal welfare is