The ethics of remedial animal enhancement: what can we learn from other (dis)enhancement debates?

In the Anthropocene, many non-human animals face anthropogenic challenges. Farmed animals suffer as a result of (intensive) rearing conditions, while in the wild animals have difficulty adapting to human-induced pressures such as climate change and invasive species. Biotechnologies such as gene editing could be applied to improve or add capacities that would enable animals to cope with such challenges, in the interest of those animals themselves (or their offspring). This paper argues that such ‘remedial animal enhancements’ deserve a special ethical debate, although such a debate can draw some arguments and perspectives from other (dis)enhancement debates.