EDUCATION
What Are Animal Rights?
As perfectly defined by the Humane League, “animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice. In many countries, human rights are enshrined to protect certain freedoms, such as the right to expression, freedom from torture, and access to democracy. Of course, these choices are constrained depending on social locations like race, class, and gender, but generally speaking, human rights safeguard the basic tenets of what makes human lives worth living. Animal rights aim to do something similar, only for non-human animals.”
Animal rights advocates, then, oppose animal exploitation and the use of animals for any reason. This includes for food, labor, entertainment, cosmetic testing, clothing, among the many other ways in which animals are used in modern society. The goal is to end the use of animals by humans, thereby ending the exploitation of animals.
When Did the Animal Rights Movement Begin?
Concern for animal suffering is not new. Since some of the most notable philosophers (Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Immanuel Kant, and Mohandas Gandhi to name a few) have been quoted in expressing concern for animal suffering, we know that the philosophical origins of animal rights date back centuries. It is estimated that people choosing to avoid animal products can be traced back over 2,000 years. Ancient Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, for example, promote benevolence among all species and a vegetarian diet for ethical reasons. The modern animal rights movement is thought to have begun in the 1970s with the 1975 publication of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement, which has since become one of the movement’s foundational readings. Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher and utilitarian, argues that “there can be no reason—except the selfish desire to preserve the privileges of the exploiting group—for refusing to extend the basic principle of equality of consideration to members of other species” (Singer, 24).
The key consideration is whether an animal is sentient - in essence, whether an animal can suffer pain or experience pleasure. Singer quotes the founder of modern utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, in writing, “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” The argument then becomes as follows: Because animals can suffer, we have a moral obligation to minimize or avoid causing such suffering, just as we have an obligation to minimize or avoid causing the suffering of other humans. To deny this would be speciesist. Singer writes, “Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case” (39).
American philosopher Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights, is said to represent the other major current of philosophical thought regarding the moral rights of animals. While Singer argues that the interests of humans and the interests of animals should be given equal consideration, Regan argues that some animals, mainly those that possess the same advanced cognitive abilities as humans, have basic moral rights. Regan argues that by virtue of these abilities, these animals have inherent value and are, in his words, “the subject of a life.”
The Animal Rights Movement, has since gained impressive momentum. Concern for animals has undoubtably grown, resulting in changes in what people eat, wear, and buy. And where there is demand, there will be supply. Meatless and/or plant-based options are becoming available at most fast food restaurants, major fashion brands are ditching fur (under pressure from organizations like PETA), car companies are now offering vegan leather interiors, and state laws are beginning to protect animals. These positive changes signal a growing global appetite for more-sustainable alternatives to animal products.
What’s the Difference Between Animal Rights & Animal Welfare?
As defined by The Humane League, “Animal rights philosophy is based on the idea that animals should not be used by people for any reason, and that animal rights should protect their interests the way human rights protect people. Animal welfare, on the other hand, is a set of practices designed to govern the treatment of animals who are being dominated by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment.”
Animal rights philosophy, then, holds that that non-human animals should be free to live as they wish, without being used, exploited, or otherwise interfered with by humans. At the heart of animal rights is autonomy - or choice. Since animals do not choose to be dominated by humans, the use of animals for human benefit is exploitative. Animal rights philosophy challenges the inaccurate, yet long-held assumption that animals are unthinking, unfeeling beings without souls. Rene Descartes, a 17th century western philosopher, popularized the idea that animals did not have souls and were therefore incapable of rational thought and consciousness, including the capacity to feel pain and experience pleasure. In his view, it was not wrong to physically hurt animals because they could not feel it, despite their cries indicating otherwise. Many scientists agreed with Descartes because, unlike adult human beings, animals can’t tell us that they are conscious. They can’t tell us in words anyway. Neil Levy, Head of Neuroethics at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, writes, “Lots of human beings can’t tell us that they’re conscious – infants, and people who are paralysed, for instance. There is little temptation to think that the ability to feel pain is lost along with the ability to tell other people about it. For another thing, pain behaviour seems at least as good an expression of pain as does language - and harder to fake” (Levy, 2012). Science increasingly shows that animals have all been found to possess more cognitive complexity, emotions, and overall sophistication than has long been believed.
Before the 19th century, animals were mostly regarded as things, meaning human use of animals didn’t matter - morally or legally. In the 19th century, however, the animal welfare theory emerged. A prominent figure in this paradigm shift was Jeremy Bentham, philosopher and founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham wrote, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? (Bentham, 148). Bentham argued that we can no longer ignore the suffering of animals based on their species, but he didn’t advocate that we stop using animals altogether. Anna E. Charlton, adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University and the co-founder of the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic, writes:
“Bentham maintained that we actually do animals a favour by killing them, as long as we do so in a relatively painless manner… In other words, the cow does not care that we kill and eat her; she cares only about how we treat and kill her, and her only interest is not to suffer…And that is precisely what most of us believe today. Killing animals is not the problem. The problem is making them suffer. If we provide a reasonably pleasant life and a relatively painless death, we have done nothing wrong” (Charlton, 2017).
As defined by World Animal Protection, “Animal welfare refers to an animal’s quality of life and how well an animal is coping with their environment. Animal welfare organizations fight for animals to have positive physical and social experiences in their lives.” Animal welfare was once measured by 5 freedoms (freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease; freedom to express normal and natural behavior (e.g. accommodating for a chicken’s instinct to roost); and freedom from fear and distress) but is now measured by 5 domains (nutrition, environment, health, behavior, and mental state). Animal welfare organizations often take no position on the ethics of animal use. World Animal Protection’s Social Media Manager states, “We recognize the importance that human-animal relationships have in cultures and economies around the world. We are focused on asking people to make changes to their interactions with animals to better those animals’ lives. Our priorities lie both in the wellbeing of animals and humans.” What does this look like in practice? Let’s look at their campaign, Raise Pigs Right:
“We aim to improve the lives of 175 million pigs every year by alleviating the most intense suffering inflicted in the production system through close confinement and barren environments. We’re targeting some of the largest pork producing markets across the world with a focus on China, Thailand, Brazil, and the US. We're asking producers to stop using equipment which confines mother pigs so tightly in cages that they can’t turn around. This confinement in a cage no bigger than the average refrigerator leads to weakened muscles and a lifetime of mental suffering. We're also asking for an end to barren environments where pigs cannot live as natural pigs would.”
Animal welfare advocates believe that farmed animals can be treated with respect in both life and in death. But is there a respectful way to kill an animal that does not want to die? As Charlton says, “To say that a sentient being – any sentient being – is not harmed by death is decidedly odd.” Sentient beings, which are those that have the capacity to have feelings, have an interest in remaining alive. Death harms every sentient being. Charlton writes:
“To say that a sentient being is not harmed by death denies that the being has the very interest that sentience serves to perpetuate. It would be analogous to saying that a being with eyes does not have an interest in continuing to see or is not harmed by being made blind. Animals in traps will chew their paws or limbs off and thereby inflict excruciating suffering on themselves in order to continue to live” (Charlton, 2017).
To think that animals do not have an interest in remaining alive or that they do not have an interest in having positive experiences, or even to say that they are not conscious beings with souls and the ability to think and feel and are therefore not harmed by death, is a fantasy. Being killed, however painlessly, is not in the interest of any animal. Animal welfare, then, doesn’t work because changing the conditions under which animals are killed does not address the root cause: the exploitation of animals.
HOWEVER, as Sentient Media states, “When it comes to animal welfare, there is such a thing as improving conditions. These improvements should be cheered as steps in the right direction but should never be considered the end goal.” Granting animals in captivity larger cages does not save them from the inevitable reality of their suffering and ultimate death. But change takes time and requires a shift in mentality. Animal welfare organizations begin conversations about the inhumane treatment of animals and work to make changes to improve the lives of animals in captivity while they are still alive. Animal welfare advocates do not often claim to view positive changes in the right direction to be the end goal. They, instead, meet people where they are and hope to expand their ideas of compassionate to include animals.
It’s also important to acknowledge that animals have been used by humans for a very, very long time. Human connection to animals is said to have begun when humans became competitive hunters with the development of tools and weapons starting around 2.6 million years ago. Green News states:
“We invented the equipment, learned how to track and kill, and eventually took in animals who also knew how to hunt like wolves and other canines. Others, like goats, cows and horses, provided milk, fur or wool used to make clothing or other items and, finally, hides and meat. Humans living in arid regions domesticated hardy camels as reliable mounts and cargo-carriers that could survive long periods without water…Domesticating plants and animals gave humans a revolutionary new control over their food sources. Domestication enabled humans to switch from foraging, hunting, and gathering to agriculture and triggered a shift from a nomadic or migratory lifestyle to settled living patterns…The animal connection gave a selective advantage to humans who had better abilities to observe, to draw conclusions, to communicate, and to make a new sort of living tool.”
From horses for transportation to dogs as companions and everything in between, humans have used animals for their own purposes for a very long time. But while the human use of animals many years ago was mainly used for survival, that time has come and gone. The use of animals is no longer needed for survival. Where humans used horses for transportation, now there are cars, trains, buses, bikes, etc. Where humans used animals for protection, now there are police departments (which unfortunately often fail us). Where humans needed to hunt to survive, there are now supermarkets with extensive selections of food. Times have definitely changed. And still, the use of animals for human desires (we can no longer say for human “needs”) continues on an even larger scale than ever before. Read on to the Deceptive Marketing section to learn more about why and how the use of animals continues at such a large scale.
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It can be argued that animal welfare, then, exists because it needs to. Major change isn’t going to happen overnight.
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As Sentient Media has stated, “Animal welfare advocates work to improve the lives of animals in captivity. And while many would love to see a world where animals aren’t used as products and tools, they know that it isn’t the reality right now. Like with any movement and cause, there will always be a wide spectrum of beliefs and interpretations by the people fighting for the cause.” It is more effective to work together in rejecting animal exploitation than it is to exist as two, separate and opposing groups. While the only true humane situation would be to abolish the practice of animal exploitation in the first place and grant animals the rights they deserve, this isn’t something that can be accomplished easily. It’s important to disconnect from the ways in which humans have historically used animals for their own desires. And even small steps are steps in the right direction.
Are Animals Sentient Beings?
Although definitions vary, the idea that sentience is the ability to have both positive and negative experiences seems to be widely accepted. Sentience can also mean having the ability to perceive and/or feel. It’s also been said that “sentient creatures have the ability to receive information from their environment and to feel and react to that information, whether they show fear, happiness or indifference” (PBN Academy.) With this definition, an animal expressing fear, joy, or any other emotion corresponding to a change in their environment, such as an elephant expressing grief over a relative that’s passed, is a sentient being. But a plant, which does not react to changes in its environment, is not a sentient being. To be a sentient being, then, means to “have a central nervous system and the capacity to perceive an environment and think through reactions.” The central nervous system is responsible for the control of our thought processes, movement, sensations, thoughts, speech and memory. Animals are capable of observing their environments, perceiving potential threats, and reacting accordingly. This means animals can feel fear. Similarly, they can perceive positive experiences, such as seeing their loved ones, and as a reaction to those experiences, feel joy.
Today, it is generally accepted that animals are sentient beings since they, like us, have central nervous systems and therefore have the ability to have both negative and positive experiences. Many of us have non-human animals right in our homes and can observe their behaviors and emotions directly. We can hear dogs bark in response to a change in their environment. We can see their excitement when we get home. We know that they feel joy and comfort when we pet them. We can teach them to associate certain actions to certain words (sit, paw, outside) and therefore know that they’re using their memory skills to file away this information. We know that, all things considered, they aren’t so different from us.
And despite scientists believing otherwise before the 19th century, scientists no longer dispute animal sentience. That doesn’t mean, however, that people can’t choose to ignore this inconvenient fact. If people ignore the fact that non-human animals have feelings and experience fear in the same ways we do, the process of slaughtering them for food may not seem so normal anymore.
With this, we cannot justify the slaughter of animals on the basis that they feel any less than we do. Animals have been scientifically proven to be conscious, sentient beings.
How Are Animals Exploited?
Billions of animals are killed every year by humans. Each year in the U.S., it is estimated that more than 55 billion land animals are killed for food. Over 100 million animals are tormented, confined, and eventually killed in laboratories for scientific experiments. Over 100 million more animals are raised and killed for their fur. Millions more are tortured in the entertainment industry and hunted for sport.
Take a look at the 2022 U.S. Animal Kill Clock here.
These practices continue in large part because of the lack of knowledge concerning the horror behind our food, our clothing, our accessories, and our entertainment.
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Food
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Clothing
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Experimentation
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Entertainment
What is Speciesism?
As defined by Peter Singer in Animal Liberation, “speciesism is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.”
Singer argues, “Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case” (39).
We know that nonhuman animals are sentient beings with the ability to feel pain and experience pleasure. We also know that animals have an interest in remaining alive. With this, we cannot justify the slaughter of animals on the basis that they feel any less than we do or that they are not harmed by death as long they are killed “humanely.” Ignoring these facts to maintain the domination of animals by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment, is speciesist. We have no right to deny animals their natural right to life.
The right to life does not run parallel to only our own species.
Is Humane Slaughter Possible?
Slaughter can never be truly humane. Animals are sentient beings with the ability to have both positive and negative experiences. Death is always harmful to an animal’s welfare because it deprives an animal of any future positive experiences. While people can try to find more “humane” ways, which is to say less harmful ways, to transport and slaughter animals, no outcome that results in death can ever possibly be humane. Animals have a natural drive to live. They do not wish to have their lives ended prematurely.
What is actually meant by the word “humane” anyway? The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) describes humane slaughter as an animal being “either killed instantly or rendered insensible until death ensues, without pain, suffering or distress.” The American Veterinary Medical Association Guidelines describe humane slaughter as “minimizing (and, where possible, eliminating) anxiety, pain, and distress associated with terminating the lives of animals.”
“Humane” slaughter advocates, then, search for ways to make the deaths of animals less painful but maintain full intentions of taking their lives. This raises an important question: Why don’t we believe animals to have the same right to life as we do? If we all generally agree that animals are in fact sentient beings with the ability to feel, why do we continue slaughtering animals by the billions annually for our own purposes? This question can only be answered by one word: SPECIESISM. Peter Singer writes:
“The only position that is irredeemably speciesist is the one that tries to make the boundary of the right to life run exactly parallel to the boundary of our own species…To avoid speciesism we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life - and mere membership in our own biological species cannot be a morally relevant criterion for this right” (19).
Any improvements that can possibly be made for the lives of imprisoned animals will always be “in danger of erosion.” Without addressing the root cause - the widespread sanctioning of the ruthless exploitation of animals for human purposes - we will not get any closer to the abolition of exploitation, which we often claim to reject.
Learn More
We can always become more informed. Check out these sources for more information about Animal Rights and the ways in which we can become not only more compassionate people who make more compassionate choices, but also people who are well educated about the food, clothing, and entertainment we consume.
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It’s important to recognize which industries we are supporting and thereby what beliefs and actions we are perpetuating. After all, what we permit, we promote.
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Matthew C. Halteman, Eating As Care of Creation — Read here.
Lori Gruen, Ethics and Animals: An Introduction — Buy here.
Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights — Buy here.
Brittany Michelson, Voices for Animal Liberation: Inspirational Accounts by Animal Rights Activists — Buy here.
Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy ― and Why They Matter — Buy here.
Karen Dawn, Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals — Buy here.