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I Accept Show Purposes. Halting the widespread use of animals would also eliminate the systematic cruelty and denial of choice that animal industries perpetuate. The physical and psychological pain endured by animals in places like factory farms has reached a point many consider to be unacceptable , to say the least. Animals are mutilated by humans in several different ways, including castrations, dehorning, and cutting off various body parts, usually without the use of anesthetic.
As their name suggests, concentrated animal feeding operations CAFOs pack vast numbers of animals in cramped conditions, often forcing animals to perpetually stand in their own waste. Many species—including chickens, cows, and pigs—never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse. Recognizing animal rights would necessitate stopping this mistreatment for good. Most arguments against animal rights can be traced back to money, because animal exploitation is big business.
Factory farming for animal products is a multi-billion-dollar industry. A lesser-known, yet also massive, industry is that which supplies animals for laboratories. Big industrial producers of animals and animal products have enough political clout to influence legislation—including passing laws making it illegal to document farm conditions—and to benefit from government subsidies.
Many people depend upon animal exploitation for work. On factory farms, relatively small numbers of people can manage vast herds or flocks of animals, thanks to mechanization and other intensive farming techniques. Unfortunately, jobs in industrial meatpacking facilities are also known to be some of the most dangerous in the US.
Smaller farmers coming from multi-generational farming families more directly depend upon using animals to make a living and tend to follow welfare standards more judiciously. However, smaller farms have been decreasing in number, due to the proliferation of factory farms against which they often cannot compete.
Although people may lose money or jobs in the transition to animal alternatives, new jobs can be created in the alternative protein sector and other plant-based industries. Scientists believe that the world is undergoing a mass extinction event, driven by human activity.
Since , an estimated species of vertebrates have gone extinct, although the number could be much higher. Species such as the northern hairy-nosed wombat, the Javan rhino, and the tamaraw buffalo are under critical threat of extinction, with some populations numbering less than individuals each. A study conducted in predicts that one-fifth of all species would be threatened with extinction by the middle of the century.
As human beings were above animals in this hierarchy they were entitled to use animals in any way they wanted. We may find it difficult to formulate a human right of tormenting beasts in terms which would not equally imply an angelic right of tormenting men.
This argument is no longer regarded as useful, because the idea of the soul is very controversial and unclear, even among religious people. Furthermore it is not possible to establish the existence of the soul human or animal in a valid experimental way. This also makes it difficult to argue, as some theologians have done, that animals should have rights because they do have souls. Some argue that since animals don't behave in a moral way they don't deserve moral treatment from other beings.
Animals, it's argued, usually behave selfishly, and look after their own interests, while human beings will often help other people, even if doing so is to their own disadvantage. Not all scientists agree: Jane Goodall, an expert on chimpanzees has reported that they sometimes show truly altruistic behaviour. Another reason for thinking that animals don't behave morally is that even the most enthusiastic supporters of animal rights only argue that animals have rights against human beings, not against other animals.
May they [animals] be hunted? To this the answer is no, not by humans; but presumably their rights are not infringed if they are hunted by animals other than human beings. And here the real difficulties start. If all animals had a right to freedom to live their lives without molestation, then someone would have to protect them from one another.
But this is absurd Why this might be relevant to the question of whether animals should have rights becomes clearer if you rephrase it in terms of duties or obligations instead of rights and ask - why should human beings have obligations towards animals, if animals don't have obligations to other animals or to human beings?
Animal and human rights boil down to one fundamental right: the right to be treated with respect as an individual with inherent value.
Animals with rights must be treated as ends in themselves; they should not be treated by others as means to achieve their ends. Particular species only get relevant and useful rights - so animals don't get all the rights that human beings get. For example: animals don't want or get the right to vote. Two methods can be used to determine the best course of action when there is no alternative to violating the rights of some individual or group:.
This definition of harm benefits people over animals because human beings have far more desires that they want to satisfy than do non-human animals.
This resolves many of the traditional problems of humans versus animals in favour of humanity, because the human being under consideration would suffer far more harm than the non-human animal. But be careful: this method of choosing alternative courses of action is not utilitarian, it doesn't necessarily lead to choosing the course of action that produces the greatest overall happiness.
The phrase 'marginal people' or 'marginal human beings' is unpleasant. We use it here only because if you read the literature of animal rights you will encounter it often, and it's important to know what it means. We do not intend to denigrate the status or worth of any human being by using it here The problem with the line of thought in the section above that it takes rights away from many human beings as well as from non-human animals.
This is because some human beings babies, senile people, people with some severe mental defects and people in a coma don't have the capacity for free moral judgement either, and by this argument they wouldn't have any rights. Some philosophers are prepared to argue that in fact such 'marginal human beings' don't have rights, but most people find that conclusion repellent.
But this is not an argument; it's a statement that human beings have rights and non-human animals don't, which is pure speciesism , and hardly persuasive.
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