CETA
The Centre for Animal Ethics - CETA, formerly the Animal Welfare Ethics Committee, is an independent body of DIVAS, set up on 20 July 2009.
CETA's aims are:
the protection of the dignity, integrity and welfare of animals involved in clinical and zoo-technical activities, teaching, research;
the promotion of a culture of respect for animals;
the promotion of a correct man-animal-environment relationship.
CETA operates with advisory and propositional functions only.
HOW WE WORK - CETA is based on the assumption that knowledge, respect and application of the laws on animal protection and related human rights are the "default dimension" for the Faculty. Respect for the laws in force in this field represents not only the line of due behaviour, but also the minimum essential behaviour of the entire community of researchers, students and more generally of the staff. The new roles of the ethical debate within universities do not end with respect for legality, but rather begin with it, if ethics has the function of proposing proactive attitudes, looking at the regulatory framework that regulates research and teaching as a dynamic reality and contributing together with it to providing the means for the concretisation of behaviour.
Having said that, CETA proposes to identify a pathway that starts from legal obligations (level 1: respect for legality), moves forward in adopting the indications of non-binding regulatory documents and widely shared principles of research ethics (level 2: consolidated ethics). It then works on a third level, that of discussion and development of behaviours and principles that go beyond what already exists and is more or less shared, and look to the future to promote increasingly attentive ethical behaviour (level 3: proactive ethics).