A very familiar and influential criticism of contractualist moral theories is that they are somehow deficient when it comes to dealing with beings such as animals (who cannot be part of the contractual agreement).  One form of this criticism is the claim that contractualism is unable to deliver a satisfactory account of our duties towards animals.  In the first part of my talk I will resist this claim and suggest a generic contractualist response to the challenge.  In the second part of my talk, I turn to the Deliberative Contractualism advanced by Nicholas Southwood.  I reject Southwood’s own treatment of the challenge, but I argue that his theory is particularly well suited to incorporating my generic contractualist response.