Animal rights

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Animal rights is the viewpoint that animals have rights and are worthy of ethical consideration in how humans interact with them.

Overview

Animal rights is the concept that animals, accepting they are sentient and capable of valuing their own life, should be entitled to possess their own flesh, and therefore are deserving of rights to protect their autonomy. The animal rights view rejects the concept that animals are commodities or property that exist to serve humans. The concept is often confused with animal welfare, which is the philosophy that takes animal suffering into account.

The animal rights philosophy does not necessarily maintain that human and non-human animals are equal. For example, animal rightists do not call for voting rights for chickens. However, animal rightists do believe that because animals are capable of valuing their own life, regardless of whether humans have use for animals or not, then they should be afforded the right to possess their own flesh. This means that, according to a rights view, any human or human institution that commoditizes animals for food, entertainment, clothing, scientific testing, or any other purpose infringes upon the rights of the animal to possess its own being; and thus the property status of animals, which is used to maintain the use of animals for human ends, is unethical because it ignores the rights of animals.

Animal rights in law

Generally speaking, no legislation recognizes animal rights. Animals are not granted the same rights as human beings and corporations. However, animals are protected under the law in many jurisdictions. There are criminal laws against cruelty to animals, laws that regulate the keeping of animals in cities and on farms, transit of animals internationally, as well as quarantine and inspection provisions. These laws are designed to protect animals from unnecessary physical harm and to regulate the use of animals as food. In the common law it is possible to create a charitable trust and have the trust empowered to see to the care of a particular animal after the death of the benefactor of the trust. Some wealthy individuals without children create such trusts in their will. Trusts of this kind can be upheld by the courts if properly drafted and the testator was of sound mind. There are also many movements to give animals greater rights and protection under national and international law. In Britain a new draft animal welfare law (published on July 14 2004) is being examined in Parliament. The law, if passed, will introduce a duty of care, whereby a keeper of an animal would commit an offence if he or she failed to take reasonable steps to ensure the animal’s welfare. This concept of making the animal keeper have a duty to the animal is equivalent to granting the kept animal a right to proper welfare. The draft bill is supported by an RSPCA campaign.

Animal rights in philosophy

The concept of animal rights was the subject of an influential book - Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress - by English social reformer Henry Salt in 1892. A year earlier, Salt had formed the Humanitarian League; its objectives included the banning of hunting as a sport.

Among the most famous philosophical proponents of animal rights are the philosophers Peter Singer and Tom Regan, who hold views that have much in common, but with different philosophical justifications (see below). Activists Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns, Ingrid Newkirk of PETA, and Gary Francione of the Rutgers Universty Animal-Law Clinic, have each also presented fully-fledged political/personal philosophies of animal rights.

Although Singer is said to be one of the ideological founders of today's animal rights movement, his philosophical approach to an animal's moral status is not based on the concept of rights, but on the principle of equal consideration of interests. His book, Animal Liberation, argues that humans grant moral consideration to other humans not on the basis of intelligence (in the instance of children, or the mentally disabled), on ability to moralize (criminals and the insane), or on any other attribute that is inherently human, but rather on their ability to experience suffering. As animals also experience suffering, he argues, excluding animals from such consideration is a form of discrimination known as 'speciesism' - a term first coined by the British psychologist Richard D. Ryder.

Tom Regan (The Case for Animal Rights), on the other side, claims that non-human animals that are so-called "subjects-of-a-life" are bearers of rights like humans, although not necessarily of the same degree. This means that animals in this class have "inherent value" as individuals, and cannot merely be considered as means for an end. This is also called a "direct duty" view on the moral status of non-human animals. According to Regan we should abolish the breeding of animals for food, animal experimentation and commercial hunting.

These two figures serve to illustrate the main differences within the animal rights movement. While Singer is primarily concerned with improving treatment of animals and accepts that, at least in some hypothetical scenarios, animals could be legitimately used for further (human or non-human) ends, Regan relies on the strict "Kantian" idea that animals are persons and ought never to be sacrificed as mere means. Yet, despite these theoretical discrepancies, both Singer and Regan mostly agree about what to do in practice: for instance, they both concur in that the adoption of a vegan diet and the abolition of nearly all forms of animal experimentation are ethically mandatory.

Gary Francione's work (Animals, Property, and the Law, et.al.) is based on the premise that the main obstacle towards a society where animal rights are recognized is the legal status of animals as property. Francione claims that there presently is no proper animal rights movement in the United States, but only an animal-welfarist movement, and that any such movement which does not advocate the abolishment of the property status of animals is misguided, logically inconsistent and doomed never to achieve its stated goal of improving the condition of animals. Francione says that a society which regards dogs and cats as family members yet kills cows, chickens, pigs, etc. for food exhibits "moral schizophrenia".

Animal rights in practice

While many animal rights groups exist only to lobby for animal rights, publicise animal rights transgressions and care for animals, there is a growing number of animal rights activists that use direct action methods. This typically involves the removal of animals from facilities that use them or the damage of property at such facilities in the hopes of causing financial harm. A comparatively tiny, yet notable, number of incidents have involved violence or the threat of violence toward animal experimenters or others involved in the use of animals (although no one has ever been killed in an animal rights action).

Due to the negative publicity caused by direct action (the FBI has announced that it considers the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front the number one terrorist groups native to the United States), many animal rights organisations denounce its use in advancing the animal rights cause. All above-ground animal rights groups, as well as the Animal Liberation Front, denounce the use of violence against people. However some radical animal right activists in the UK actively engage in harassment of family homes of individual workers of research facilities, related businesses and individual shareholders.

See also

Quotes

  • "We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form." -- William Ralph Inge (1860 - 1954)

Further reading

  • Francione, Gary (1995), Animals, Property and the Law, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  • Regan, Tom (1984), The Case for Animal Rights, New York: Routledge.
  • Singer, Peter (1990), Animal Liberation, second edition, New York: Avon Books.

Animal rights in philosophy and law

Animal rights organizations

Animal rights Online Community

Animal rights directories

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