Professionals working with animals or in environmental governance often face decisions for which scientific evidence, professional guidance and the law are necessary – but they are not sufficient. Should treatment continue when benefits are uncertain? When is an animal experiment ethically justified? When may wildlife intervention, translocation or lethal control be proportionate? Who needs to decide, who to act?

Starting in September 2027, the ED-Pro CAS program will offer three specialisation options:

1. Ethics in Animal Experimentation
2. Ethics in Veterinary Practice
3. Ethics in Wildlife Management and Conservation Practice

Objectives

This CAS Ethical Decision-Making for Professionals (ED-Pro) provides a rigorous, repeatable method for navigating such cases. The programme combines applied ethics, animal cognition, welfare evidence, and basics in animal and environmental ethics. These will be studied by combining professional casework and structured discussions with ethical and scientific theory and tools for decision-making. You will learn to identify what is ethically at stake, assess evidence and uncertainty, compare realistic options, make a justified recommendation and communicate it to people who may disagree.

Target audience

This CAS is designed for professionals who work with animals or in environmental governance and practice. You may be advising an animal’s owner, contributing to the review of a research project, overseeing animal care or deciding how to respond to a wildlife management problem in a nature reserve. If your work involves competing responsibilities and difficult choices, the programme will help you examine those choices and explain your reasoning.

Responsibles and speakers

Direction

• Wallimann-Helmer Ivo, Prof. Dr.