The Study Of Animal Rights Essay Research

The Study Of Animal Rights Essay, Research Paper

Animals and man have shared this planet since humans first appeared on earth. Animals have provided transportation, food, clothing, shelter, companionship and entertainment through the ages. Therefore, it is our duty to treat animals with respect, care and kindness and not cause them undue suffering, because they have, in many ways, made it possible for man to survive on earth. However, because normal adult humans have superior mental abilities in the hierarchical scale in nature, animals have fewer rights than humans. Consequently, it is our responsibility to support and maintain the animal kingdom (to the best of our ability); therefore helping to preserve them as fellow members or our community of life on earth.

There are many differing opinions in the Animal Rights Community. For example, how are animal rights different from the rights of humans. Do we have a right to use animals for our benefit. Do we have a right to use animals for experimentation. Do all animals have equal rights. Do they suffer more at our hands than they would in their natural habitat. These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this paper, and they will be presented fairly.

Tom Regan thinks our treatment of animals is wrong and we are guilty of violating their rights. He is committed to several goals: .total dissolution of use of animals in science, the dissolution of commercial animal agriculture, and total elimination of commercial sport hunting and trapping..

He maintains that our whole system is skewed because we view animals as our resource. We think traditional farming agriculture is acceptable but factory farming is not.a toxicity test on animals for cosmetics is wrong, but medical research for cancer is acceptable. Regan does not understand this reasoning because he feels not even a rat or mouse should be used for research. Animals should be viewed as experiencing subjects of life with inherent value of their own. We are guilty of speciesism and have been inhumane and evil to creatures that are powerless. He contends that any change requires a change in our heads and hearts.

It would seem that Regan wrote this essay because he feels there has been a blatant cruelty and disregard for animals. He does not mention however, that all species use each other as resources.that is the way of nature. He seems to be denying or ignoring that natural phenomenon. Everything and everyone is a resource in one way or

another. Humans and animals are hosts for many insects, parasites and microscopic organisms, which are part of nature.s food chain.

As founder of the Animal Rights Liberation, utilitarian Peter Singer agrees with Regan.s opinion that we are guilty of speciesism. He defines .speciesism. as .a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one.s own species.. He informs the reader that he owes this term to Richard Ryder.

In his essay .All Animals are Equal., Singer laments the fact that the majority of humans take an active part in, or allow their taxes to pay for the sacrificing species in order to promote their self-interests. To believe that only human life is sacrosanct is wrong, in his view, and another example of speciesism. He believes we must allow beings, human or animal, which are similar in all relevant aspects, to have a similar right to live. A membership in our own species cannot be a morally relevant position.

Singer does modify his position by stating that all lives are not of equal worth. The life of a self-aware human being, capable of complex acts of communication, is more valuable than a being without these qualities. However, he concludes that if a decision has to be made to save a human life over that of an animal, the choice should be made on the characteristics of that being, not on the basis of species.

James Rachels sees a major problem in the way we eat and what we do with food, as well as the suffering of animals raised and slaughtered for food.

The huge amount of grain that is used to feed cattle is a major concern to Rachels. He quotes a conversion ratio of grain used for cattle of 21-1. In other words, we use 21 pounds of protein to get back one pound of meat. He does not argue against consuming fish, because we do not feed them food that we would consume. He argues that if we just reduced the amount of meat we produce, it would release sufficient grain to feed much of the world.s hungry. Vegetarianism would be a viable solution to the problem.

The killing of animals for .sport. is deplorable to Rachels, and he also believes the animals butchered for our consumption are killed by inhumane methods. Rachels, with his utilitarian philosophy, states his case effectively, with strong arguments for vegetarianism. However, he, like Singer, seems to feel that animals should not suffer at the hands of humans. They do not consider that the animal kingdom does not worry about pain when one animal is devouring another. Pain is a part of life in our world and neither animals nor humans are immune from pain and suffering.

.Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy of interposition of a deity. More humble and I think truer is to consider him created from animals.. This statement, which some consider controversial and undermining traditional thinking, opens James Rachels book, Cre