During this class, many important issues have been discussed
in detail and brought to the attention of students who will hopefully be able
to impact how animals are thought of and treated in the future. These topics
ranged from the human animal bond to the media bias towards pit bulls to the
problems that arise from keeping exotic animals as pets. While all of these
topics were interesting to learn about, the topics that had the most impact for
me personally were animal ethics and the modern animal rights movement. These
two specific topics have always been important to me and it was enjoyable to
have the opportunity to learn about them in-depth.
Animal
ethics can be a tricky subject. It brings up many questions about the amount of
rights that nonhuman animals deserve compared to humans and in what ways they
are similar to and different from humans. A point that is brought up in the All Animals are Equal reading is that of
women gaining the right to vote. Women did not always have this right, but it
was eventually
determined that women are cognitively similar enough to men that
they should be granted the right to vote. However, a dog is not able to
understand the significance of voting and therefore should not be granted that
specific right. So, although it can definitely be argued that nonhuman animals
need more rights than they currently have, they do not need to have all of the
rights that humans do. There are three main animal ethical theories. The
indirect theory is the belief that animals are not sentient and can be used by
humans however we wish. This theory completely reduces animals to property and
only argues that we should not mindlessly harm animals because it will lead to
cruelty to other humans. The direct but unequal theory argues that nonhuman
animals deserve some moral standing, but not more than humans. This theory
states that it is wrong to harm animals for the animals’ own sake because they
are sentient beings, but they do not deserve more rights than humans. The moral
equality theory argues that animals and humans have equal moral standing. It
denies the special qualities that the other theories give to humans. There is
also the utilitarianism movement started by Peter Singer that focusses on the
“greatest good for the greatest number”. This movement focusses on interests
instead of individuals and takes into account the pleasure and suffering of
animals. However, nonhuman animals are not given equal treatment to humans
because although we both experience pleasure and suffering, we are different in
many ways as well. Singer believes that we should extend full moral status to
animals, but does not consider himself as supporting animal “rights”. The idea
of speciesism was coined by Richard Ryder and describes the idea that different
rights are assigned based on species. The truth is that as far as we know at
this moment, no nonhuman animals have exactly the same level of cognitive
ability as humans. Therefore, in my opinion, animals should be given some
rights and their pain and pleasure should definitely be taken into
consideration, but they do not require the full set of rights that humans are
given. This issue was impactful for me because it is important to me that all
animals used by humans in some way are treated as well as they can be given the
circumstances of how they are used.
The
modern animal rights movement was also a topic that was impactful for me to
learn about. Before I got to college, I always considered myself someone who
supported animal rights. However, now that I have more of an understanding of
what this movement entails, I would definitely say that I support animal
welfare over animal rights. Animal welfare is concerned with the treatment of
animals that are being used for human benefit. Animal rights involve concern
with the
use of animals by humans at all. The ASPCA, American Humane
Association, and HSUS are all animal welfare organizations. They make sure that
animals being used by humans are treated humanely. PETA is an animal rights
organization. They wish to abolish the use of animals by humans entirely,
including pet ownership. Towards the mid-1900s, people began to become
concerned with the treatment of animals by humans. A lot of it was still very
inhumane such as live vivisections being performed as experiments because some
people believed that animals could not feel pain. Towards this time, laws were
passed to ensure that slaughter was as humane as possible, that pets could not
be stolen for research and that research animals were treated well, and that
animals in danger of extinction were protected. In the 1980s, animal rights became a new
trend. It was more confrontational and attention grabbing than anything that
had been done to protect animals before. Meanwhile, the animal welfare movement
began to gain more credibility as scientists began to support it and provide
evidence to back up claims. The animal rights movement tended to focus on
getting as much attention as possible by staging protests (some of them
violent), and doing undercover investigations leading to “ag-gag laws” which
attempted to prevent those raising animals for food from being able to do their
jobs.
PETA was founded in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco and set the
standard for the investigative approach. In the Silver Springs Monkeys case of
1981, they revealed abuse and neglect to research animals, causing changes to
the Animal Welfare Act and gaining them national attention. Since then, PETA
has continued to do illegal undercover investigations and stage dramatic and
sometimes offensive protests and ads to further their cause of abolishing all
use of animals by humans. Some animal rights movements are less extreme, such
as the Animal Legal Defense Fund which focusses on making animals more than
property under the law. Others such as Compassion Over Killing wish to abolish
industrialized farming practices even though they have been shown to be safer
for the animals than free range farming. The Animal Liberation Front is another
animal rights movement which uses violent, direct action like breaking into
labs and setting animals free. They have been named a domestic terrorist group,
and many believe that they are associated with PETA. Overall, this subject was
impactful for me because learning about what the animal rights movement
actually is has caused me to reject the vast majority of what it stands for.
Ultimately,
the entirety of this course was extremely interesting and the information I’ve
learned will stick with me in years to come. These were just a couple of the
subjects we learned about that had the most impact on me personally.
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