Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Monday, September 19, 2011
TR, 9:50am
16 comments:
cesar pictac
said...
Do animals deserve rights? In some way, human beings and animals are similar, that’s why scientist is all the time comparing us with them. We are very similar, almost identical to animals, but the difference is that nature improved us in a way that we could become more intelligent and smarter than other species in the planet. Animals should not have the same rights as human beings, and the reason why, is because they would not know what to do with it, and they would not know what it means. Is true that we are almost similar, but not in the part of intelligence and reasoning. Every creature in this world should have the right of freedom and a place to live, which is obvious and we do not respect them. If the animals have the same rights as human beings have, the world would be a totally disaster, because, cities would never exist, because we would not be able to create them. We wouldn’t have the right to invade someone else space and we would have to live hided in the mountains and civilization would never developed. Today, we have corporations which test their products with all kind of animals, and even the scientists who use monkeys and rats to do their experiments. So if they have the same rights as us, that would never be possible, and all the discoveries and health products we have developed would be never created. The question: Do animals deserve rights? , is not specific, because it depends on what kind of rights do they deserve. Animals are not able to use some rights as: right to go to school, right to say what you want, right to vote… and what they should have are specific rights as: right to have a place to stay and right to be free so on. But even if they achieve those rights, that is going to be a big problem, because we are not going to be able to do experiments with animals, and it would be hard to find a substitute of animals in the experiments and the amount of discoveries are going to be diminished. Nature gave us the power to control some of the creatures in this planet, so we could improve, but the problem is that people abused of that power and we started using them as experiments to satisfy our “necessities”. Animals should have rights, but just the ones they are able to use and enjoy. The problem is that if that happens, the people would have to find a totally different way of achieving their different goals without using animals. We would have another way to find aliment, because it would be prohibited, and we all would have to learn how to survive without it, even when some people can do it, it does not indicate that everybody could do it.
A year ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a lecture from Gary Yourovsky regarding veganism at the Wolfson Campus. He is a very passionate and informed speaker when it comes to the rights that animals have or should have. Also, he did a phenomenal job repudiating the erroneous argument that “meat is good for us” and he brought awareness of the impact that meat eating societies are having globally from a food supply stand point. After the lecture I found myself compelled to at least try it and see if I would be able to commit to it. But even though I haven’t gone back to eating red meat and I avoid poultry as much as possible, I have had a hard time not eating fish, eggs and dairy products. What I have found to be my biggest challenge when it comes to not eating any animal products at all is trying to literally, re-wire my brain. I was raised in a very strong carnivore society and the message that I received as a kid was: “If you don’t eat protein (protein = meat), you will get sick and veggies are not real food.” The later has helped me become a more conscious person when it comes to choosing what I am going to eat. I believe that in order for change to have a possibility, three things need to happen: 1st- We need to become aware of the impact that animal products have on our body. 2nd We need to become aware of the impact it has on our global community. 3rd We need to become aware of the possible conditioning towards consuming animal products that we have from our upbringing. Here is Gary Yourovsky’s website http://www.adaptt.org/index.html
The answer to this question is no, but not in the way it seems. As usual, this rhetorical question is loaded with many planes of consideration. First, we should consider what is considered a “right”. The definition of a “right” in this context is a just claim to moral principle. Unfortunately, “rights” then are based on moral considerations, which is an abstract idea that is unique to human beings. Next let us consider what it is to “deserve”. In this context “deserve” means to be afforded a claim due to situation. The situation in this scenario would be sentience. The decision whether animals possess sentience is non-conclusive from person to person in a population, so we begin to see the difficulty of decision. So to this point, animals do not prove morals or sentience. It would be a mistake to draw our conclusion based on these bounds since it cannot be proven, thus we cannot conclude if animals deserve rights or not. But, since “animals” have been interacting in a consistent and predictable fashion for our short knowledge of history, the predator-prey model, we must prove more than what history dictates to form a conclusion to obtain consistency. Therefore the assumptions created for a conclusion that animals deserve rights is a larger fallibility than making a claim to history. That being said, animals do not “deserve rights”, which should not be regarded as whether we have free claim to take any action we please.
I believe that Animals’ Rights is a topic of discussion only in countries where animals are abused and used as subjects of experiments. There are many countries in the world that don’t conceive giving animals rights because they just see animals as a part of their everyday environment and life in general. I am surprised of how our society is becoming overtime afraid of many inoffensive animal species just for the simple fact that we are not used to interact with them. I would say that fear for the unknown is one of the facts that lead us to this position. However in a developed country like the U.S we do need laws protecting animals from being exploited. The reason of why I think so is because we experiment on animals for the sake of health improvement and many other fields. We use animals as a way of getting answers for our questions, most of the times not even realizing that we are harming living creatures, like we are. At the same time I totally support many of the researches done by this mean. Think just about the health benefits that those studies have brought us, from an average life expectancy of 40 years in the 19th century to an almost 80 years average nowadays. For the most part those big improvements have occurred thanks to many of the investigations that used animals as the mean for finding cures for viruses and maladies. -Armas, Randy-.
I agree that animals deserve rights just as the way humans do. Even though they do not speak english or any other language us humans could understand. Animals have their own language when meeting up with their own kind or other species. Many individuals have their likes and dislike about this topic, because if animals are not like human like form they should be harmful to us if we do not like animals period.
Beside all of the negativity animals are intelligent they have a variety of senses more than humans. Many people would just kill any animal that's living, because they are terrifyied. I believe that animals need greater protection from humans, and also in a desinated form to prevent abuse from occuring in the first place.
In my opinion, animal rights are a double standard. Looking at this topic at a predator’s standpoint I need meat to survive. Meat contains protein that is essential to my existence. Even though Indians choose not to eat meat, for moral issues, it doesn’t mean slaughtering a creature for survival is an unethical behavior. However, there is still a line drawn with animals. I believe our role as human beings is to respect the animal’s habitat and livelihood. We shouldn’t kill animals as a sport. If we are not killing animals as a means to consume and experimenting for beneficial causes, we shouldn’t be killing them at all. Another unethical behavior that’s unacceptable is allowing an animal to suffer. Factory farming is an example of this. Creatures that we are about to consume shouldn’t live in harsh conditions. I see no point for animals in factory farms to be tortured the way they do. I believe that the farm animals should at least live without suffering before they get picked for slaughter.
here is no doubt (for me at least) that animals deserve fair treatment. Being forced to live in suffocating cages, unable to move about or even lie down to sleep, is a form of torture. It is a cruel environment for creatures doomed to die in order to fulfill our wants and needs. However, their deaths play a necessary role in our lives. Humans are omnivores and need a balanced diet to have optimal health. The solution is simple (but not easy): moderation of meat products and more humane living conditions for farm animals. The real issue at hand here is then the question of animal rights. Are animals entitled to the same rights that we have? Do they deserve any rights at all?
Before answering the question as to whether animals deserve rights, we must first decide what qualities or conditions are needed to entitle a being (regardless of type or species) to “rights”. Most people would say human beings deserve rights because we are sentient creatures; we feel and are capable of reasoning. These traits allow us to 1) recognize the need for fair treatment among our species, 2) develop rules and regulations for which rights we are entitled to (e.g., no one has the “right” to kill or steal from others) 3) determine who has access to these rights (convicts/prisoners tend to have less rights than others) and 4) enforce laws that protect our rights and punish those individuals that break these laws.
Keeping the previous criteria in mind, we now have to decide if animals are capable of the same feeling and reasoning that we have. I won’t pretend to be an experiment on the matter or to even attempt to assume any facts. I don’t have the answers but I do believe we should take the steps to determine if animals are capable of even appreciating the rights some people hope to bestow upon them.
I eat meat with almost every type of meal I have through out the day, and I believe that animals should have some kind of rights. Animals aren’t too different from us , so why shouldn’t they have rights too? Animals can’t express pain and suffering like us because they don’t speak our language. Animals should have some kind of rights when it comes to being neglected in a family’s’ house. Most people say how can an animal have rights when we eat them? Humans don’t have to eat meat to stay alive and a perfect example is the people of India. Since I was a child I have always enjoyed eating meat and aware of what was being done to the animals, and to this day I still feel guilty. The one thing I want people to know is that we shouldn’t abuse animals because we have an advantage over them. We aren’t better than they are. If anything we are more like them.
I think animals should have certain rights about how they are treated since they cannot speak for themselves. No creature would like to die being tortured or from unwillingly being in an experiment. I think that we should only kill animals for food and not abuse the important source that they are supplying for us. Eating meat is an essential part of our food chain but we should not abuse it by making animals extinct and endangered. I think that we should have regulations on how the animals are raised and killed so they are not being abused and tortured. I also believe that killing animals should not be a recreational activity. Their lives are just as valuable as ours because they can supply food for starving people instead of just dying and rotting. I do not think that we should all become vegetarians but I do think that we need to treat the animals with respect and realize that they are ultimately giving up their lives for our satisfaction.
Do animals deserve rights? This is a difficult question since we already conceive of them as having no rights and do as we please with them anyway i.e. eating them,keeping them in zoos, or animal testing. Drawing a line at where those rights begin and end is very difficult to do. If you a pet a kitten it will pure if you poke it with a knife it will scream and try to fight you. Is this not a clear indication of an animals reaction to pain. Having seen videos of animals being tortured in the factory farm system one can clearly see that they are in pain and trying to escape it. Even if Mr. Reagan thinks that they are not in pain since they can not verbalize to us what is happening to them they are still trying to escape the pain inflicted. This line of thinking can be used to justify the torture or consumption of primitive peoples and as well babes since they do not communicate in a way that we can understand them. The major problem with this issue is how would they police such a thing and what do we consider humane to something we do not consider human? What would be the most humane way to kill an animal before you eat it? Perhaps if we looked at the issue from the standpoint of the animal it might gives us more insights into what they might be feeling. How big would you like your cage to be? if you get a chemical tested on you which would you prefer? How would you like to die before being cooked into someones dinner? If we afford animals rights we have to pick and choose which ones they get. The answer is more complicated then just yes or no since the problem is more complicated then just going vegan, shutting down the cosmetics market or boycotting zoos. Is it a violation of animal rights to put mouse traps up to keep them from nibbling the food in my house or fumigating to kill so called pests once they grow to large in number for my taste? As i stated in the begining where do we draw the line?
Every time I eat I always think about animals and how they make them suffer to become our everyday meal. I always think about these issues because I’ve seen in videos and other types of educational research how these poor creatures are horribly killed and torture. Animals are capable of feeling pain and suffering in many forms, any creature able to feel any form of pain should not be unreasonably subjected to it. That’s why I think they deserve the same right as we do to live. But honestly they are not humans, and should not be considered equal to humans. Humans require nutrients from animals to live healthily. Iron and protein are both provided in large quantities in meat, and are difficult to come by many other food groups. I'm not anti-meat, and I eat meat a lot. I don't have a problem with it, as long as the animals were killed painlessly. My conclusion is that there may be a difference between humans and animals, but just because we have power over them doesn't mean we can abuse it.
Christian Arias said... Do animals deserve rights? This question should not even be asked. Throughout the world humans take advantage of animals like if they were a piece of trash and mistreat them. People hurt animals as if they are not sensible creatures. This cruelty is unjust and not necessary. Why must some humans torture these wonderful creatures? I understand that we depend on a lot on animals to survive, but I highly disbelief that the cruelty is necessary. Although animals do not have a spoken language, they do communicate in their ways. For instance, dog communicate throw barking, howling, and sniffing one another’s butt. Clearly animals are sensible. Rousseau states: “It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former.” His argues that his “fellow creatures” have the right to be treated well, because they are rational creatures. I agree; animals are rational. They have the ability to survive. They have the natural instinct to find food. Animals, like humans are able to adapt to their environment in order to survive. So why mistreat and torture animals? Why make them suffer so long?
Animals cannot have the same rights as humans at least not all of the same rights. Animals deserve reasonable protection against abuse, they do not have legal "rights" in the same way humans do. Animal and human emotions are identical,intelligence the same, as animals do possess: common sense, compassion, empathy, reasoning, and wisdom. The only difference is physical features. The terrible side is that human beings are the ones that destroy, harm and kill for no good reason. But let’s be real Animals do not have rights. Do animals pay taxes, do animals have constitutional rights, and do they have voting rights? No they do not. Do they deserve humane and loving treatment? Of course. Just because we are not the same it doesnt mean we have to harm and kill them but animals and human will never have the same rights.
Do animals have rights? Of course, animals have rights too. Unfortunately, they cannot speak up as we humans can but they feel emotions just as well and display them in different manners. We have some similar characteristics and as scientist continue observing them we find out how much more similar we are in different ways. Atleast, there has been some limits imposed towards animal cruelty. It's terrible how they are exploited for amusement as well. Regrettably, I was raised in a carnivorous environment and it is difficult to cut out meat from my diet since I'm so accustomed to it. Honestly, sometimes I do try to consume less meat at times, but it is very difficult because when I'm about to eat and I see food my first thought isn't about the animal I am about to chow down but of how delicious it smells. I know that is horrible but unfortunately it is not constantly on my mind.
Animals don’t need laws but they do deserve to be respected as god’s creatures. We need to realize, that in today's society, animals deserve just as much freedom as humans have. Animals are in laboratories, today, because we are powerful enough to keep them there, not because they truly belong there. Once we have an animal caged and restrained, we suddenly gain an even greater feeling of superiority over the animal. With many of the experiments done today, animals are mistreated in every way shape and form. Usually, there is a lack of adequate food and water. Ventilation for the animals is minimal and many times cages are packed full with animals, leaving very little if any room to move around. On many occasions, the animal will die throughout the course of the experiment. Our containing the animals can be related to one's slavery of another human being. We may think that just because animals do not speak to us, that they do not possess feelings, but they are capable of feeling pain and suffering. Just like you and me animals have the right to live their life without exploitation, or unnecessary pain.
I agree with Kant’s idea that, "cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other humans is weakened." When we mistreat and degrade animals we lose a bit of our humanity. I would even go as far as to say that it is a reflection of our own moral code. Now does that mean that by eating animal meat we are degrading and mistreating animals? This is a subject I struggle with being that we are a carnivorous society and yes in fact we have been conditioned and socialized to view it as a normal practice. We use animals in experiments treated “with dignity”, we slaughter animals for food “with dignity”, again and again this term seems to reappear whenever animals are involved in some form of semi-questionable practice. Can it be that we use these sugar-coated terms to give ourselves and not the animals a self assurance or justification for our actions? I can’t help but think so. Why not just call it what it is? I can’t help but think every now and then and not as often as I should, that right before this animal was put to death, “with dignity” didn’t mean much to him/her. And while whether or not an animal should have rights is such a broad topic and a difficult one to answer, If we as human beings are thought of as the “superior beings” and as the ones with reasoning and higher intelligence. If we are to be responsible to care for the earth, then we should also be responsible to care for the creatures that live in it. What exactly are the implications involved with “responsibility”? What exactly does that encompass? I don’t presume to have the answers. But what I do know is that we are to look inside ourselves and examine our motives intentions. Animals deserve to be treated with dignity, I'm just not sure it's the kind where we strip them of life after the fact.
16 comments:
Do animals deserve rights?
In some way, human beings and animals are similar, that’s why scientist is all the time comparing us with them. We are very similar, almost identical to animals, but the difference is that nature improved us in a way that we could become more intelligent and smarter than other species in the planet.
Animals should not have the same rights as human beings, and the reason why, is because they would not know what to do with it, and they would not know what it means. Is true that we are almost similar, but not in the part of intelligence and reasoning. Every creature in this world should have the right of freedom and a place to live, which is obvious and we do not respect them.
If the animals have the same rights as human beings have, the world would be a totally disaster, because, cities would never exist, because we would not be able to create them. We wouldn’t have the right to invade someone else space and we would have to live hided in the mountains and civilization would never developed.
Today, we have corporations which test their products with all kind of animals, and even the scientists who use monkeys and rats to do their experiments. So if they have the same rights as us, that would never be possible, and all the discoveries and health products we have developed would be never created. The question: Do animals deserve rights? , is not specific, because it depends on what kind of rights do they deserve.
Animals are not able to use some rights as: right to go to school, right to say what you want, right to vote… and what they should have are specific rights as: right to have a place to stay and right to be free so on. But even if they achieve those rights, that is going to be a big problem, because we are not going to be able to do experiments with animals, and it would be hard to find a substitute of animals in the experiments and the amount of discoveries are going to be diminished.
Nature gave us the power to control some of the creatures in this planet, so we could improve, but the problem is that people abused of that power and we started using them as experiments to satisfy our “necessities”. Animals should have rights, but just the ones they are able to use and enjoy. The problem is that if that happens, the people would have to find a totally different way of achieving their different goals without using animals. We would have another way to find aliment, because it would be prohibited, and we all would have to learn how to survive without it, even when some people can do it, it does not indicate that everybody could do it.
A year ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a lecture from Gary Yourovsky regarding veganism at the Wolfson Campus. He is a very passionate and informed speaker when it comes to the rights that animals have or should have. Also, he did a phenomenal job repudiating the erroneous argument that “meat is good for us” and he brought awareness of the impact that meat eating societies are having globally from a food supply stand point.
After the lecture I found myself compelled to at least try it and see if I would be able to commit to it. But even though I haven’t gone back to eating red meat and I avoid poultry as much as possible, I have had a hard time not eating fish, eggs and dairy products.
What I have found to be my biggest challenge when it comes to not eating any animal products at all is trying to literally, re-wire my brain. I was raised in a very strong carnivore society and the message that I received as a kid was: “If you don’t eat protein (protein = meat), you will get sick and veggies are not real food.”
The later has helped me become a more conscious person when it comes to choosing what I am going to eat.
I believe that in order for change to have a possibility, three things need to happen:
1st- We need to become aware of the impact that animal products have on our body.
2nd We need to become aware of the impact it has on our global community.
3rd We need to become aware of the possible conditioning towards consuming animal products that we have from our upbringing.
Here is Gary Yourovsky’s website http://www.adaptt.org/index.html
Do animals deserve rights?
The answer to this question is no, but not in the way it seems. As usual, this rhetorical question is loaded with many planes of consideration. First, we should consider what is considered a “right”. The definition of a “right” in this context is a just claim to moral principle. Unfortunately, “rights” then are based on moral considerations, which is an abstract idea that is unique to human beings. Next let us consider what it is to “deserve”. In this context “deserve” means to be afforded a claim due to situation. The situation in this scenario would be sentience. The decision whether animals possess sentience is non-conclusive from person to person in a population, so we begin to see the difficulty of decision. So to this point, animals do not prove morals or sentience. It would be a mistake to draw our conclusion based on these bounds since it cannot be proven, thus we cannot conclude if animals deserve rights or not. But, since “animals” have been interacting in a consistent and predictable fashion for our short knowledge of history, the predator-prey model, we must prove more than what history dictates to form a conclusion to obtain consistency. Therefore the assumptions created for a conclusion that animals deserve rights is a larger fallibility than making a claim to history. That being said, animals do not “deserve rights”, which should not be regarded as whether we have free claim to take any action we please.
I believe that Animals’ Rights is a topic of discussion only in countries where animals are abused and used as subjects of experiments. There are many countries in the world that don’t conceive giving animals rights because they just see animals as a part of their everyday environment and life in general. I am surprised of how our society is becoming overtime afraid of many inoffensive animal species just for the simple fact that we are not used to interact with them. I would say that fear for the unknown is one of the facts that lead us to this position. However in a developed country like the U.S we do need laws protecting animals from being exploited. The reason of why I think so is because we experiment on animals for the sake of health improvement and many other fields. We use animals as a way of getting answers for our questions, most of the times not even realizing that we are harming living creatures, like we are. At the same time I totally support many of the researches done by this mean. Think just about the health benefits that those studies have brought us, from an average life expectancy of 40 years in the 19th century to an almost 80 years average nowadays. For the most part those big improvements have occurred thanks to many of the investigations that used animals as the mean for finding cures for viruses and maladies.
-Armas, Randy-.
Do animals deserve rights?
I agree that animals deserve rights just as the way humans do. Even though they do not speak english or any other language us humans could understand. Animals have their own language when meeting up with their own kind or other species. Many individuals have their likes and dislike about this topic, because if animals are not like human like form they should be harmful to us if we do not like animals period.
Beside all of the negativity animals are intelligent they have a variety of senses more than humans. Many people would just kill any animal that's living, because they are terrifyied. I believe that animals need greater protection from humans, and also in a desinated form to prevent abuse from occuring in the first place.
In my opinion, animal rights are a double standard. Looking at this topic at a predator’s standpoint I need meat to survive. Meat contains protein that is essential to my existence. Even though Indians choose not to eat meat, for moral issues, it doesn’t mean slaughtering a creature for survival is an unethical behavior. However, there is still a line drawn with animals. I believe our role as human beings is to respect the animal’s habitat and livelihood. We shouldn’t kill animals as a sport. If we are not killing animals as a means to consume and experimenting for beneficial causes, we shouldn’t be killing them at all. Another unethical behavior that’s unacceptable is allowing an animal to suffer. Factory farming is an example of this. Creatures that we are about to consume shouldn’t live in harsh conditions. I see no point for animals in factory farms to be tortured the way they do. I believe that the farm animals should at least live without suffering before they get picked for slaughter.
here is no doubt (for me at least) that animals deserve fair treatment. Being forced to live in suffocating cages, unable to move about or even lie down to sleep, is a form of torture. It is a cruel environment for creatures doomed to die in order to fulfill our wants and needs. However, their deaths play a necessary role in our lives. Humans are omnivores and need a balanced diet to have optimal health. The solution is simple (but not easy): moderation of meat products and more humane living conditions for farm animals. The real issue at hand here is then the question of animal rights. Are animals entitled to the same rights that we have? Do they deserve any rights at all?
Before answering the question as to whether animals deserve rights, we must first decide what qualities or conditions are needed to entitle a being (regardless of type or species) to “rights”. Most people would say human beings deserve rights because we are sentient creatures; we feel and are capable of reasoning. These traits allow us to 1) recognize the need for fair treatment among our species, 2) develop rules and regulations for which rights we are entitled to (e.g., no one has the “right” to kill or steal from others) 3) determine who has access to these rights (convicts/prisoners tend to have less rights than others) and 4) enforce laws that protect our rights and punish those individuals that break these laws.
Keeping the previous criteria in mind, we now have to decide if animals are capable of the same feeling and reasoning that we have. I won’t pretend to be an experiment on the matter or to even attempt to assume any facts. I don’t have the answers but I do believe we should take the steps to determine if animals are capable of even appreciating the rights some people hope to bestow upon them.
I eat meat with almost every type of meal I have through out the day, and I believe that animals should have some kind of rights. Animals aren’t too different from us , so why shouldn’t they have rights too? Animals can’t express pain and suffering like us because they don’t speak our language. Animals should have some kind of rights when it comes to being neglected in a family’s’ house. Most people say how can an animal have rights when we eat them? Humans don’t have to eat meat to stay alive and a perfect example is the people of India. Since I was a child I have always enjoyed eating meat and aware of what was being done to the animals, and to this day I still feel guilty. The one thing I want people to know is that we shouldn’t abuse animals because we have an advantage over them. We aren’t better than they are. If anything we are more like them.
I think animals should have certain rights about how they are treated since they cannot speak for themselves. No creature would like to die being tortured or from unwillingly being in an experiment. I think that we should only kill animals for food and not abuse the important source that they are supplying for us. Eating meat is an essential part of our food chain but we should not abuse it by making animals extinct and endangered. I think that we should have regulations on how the animals are raised and killed so they are not being abused and tortured. I also believe that killing animals should not be a recreational activity. Their lives are just as valuable as ours because they can supply food for starving people instead of just dying and rotting. I do not think that we should all become vegetarians but I do think that we need to treat the animals with respect and realize that they are ultimately giving up their lives for our satisfaction.
Do animals deserve rights? This is a difficult question since we already conceive of them as having no rights and do as we please with them anyway i.e. eating them,keeping them in zoos, or animal testing. Drawing a line at where those rights begin and end is very difficult to do. If you a pet a kitten it will pure if you poke it with a knife it will scream and try to fight you. Is this not a clear indication of an animals reaction to pain. Having seen videos of animals being tortured in the factory farm system one can clearly see that they are in pain and trying to escape it. Even if Mr. Reagan thinks that they are not in pain since they can not verbalize to us what is happening to them they are still trying to escape the pain inflicted. This line of thinking can be used to justify the torture or consumption of primitive peoples and as well babes since they do not communicate in a way that we can understand them. The major problem with this issue is how would they police such a thing and what do we consider humane to something we do not consider human? What would be the most humane way to kill an animal before you eat it? Perhaps if we looked at the issue from the standpoint of the animal it might gives us more insights into what they might be feeling. How big would you like your cage to be? if you get a chemical tested on you which would you prefer? How would you like to die before being cooked into someones dinner? If we afford animals rights we have to pick and choose which ones they get. The answer is more complicated then just yes or no since the problem is more complicated then just going vegan, shutting down the cosmetics market or boycotting zoos. Is it a violation of animal rights to put mouse traps up to keep them from nibbling the food in my house or fumigating to kill so called pests once they grow to large in number for my taste? As i stated in the begining where do we draw the line?
Every time I eat I always think about animals and how they make them suffer to become our everyday meal. I always think about these issues because I’ve seen in videos and other types of educational research how these poor creatures are horribly killed and torture. Animals are capable of feeling pain and suffering in many forms, any creature able to feel any form of pain should not be unreasonably subjected to it. That’s why I think they deserve the same right as we do to live. But honestly they are not humans, and should not be considered equal to humans. Humans require nutrients from animals to live healthily. Iron and protein are both provided in large quantities in meat, and are difficult to come by many other food groups. I'm not anti-meat, and I eat meat a lot. I don't have a problem with it, as long as the animals were killed painlessly. My conclusion is that there may be a difference between humans and animals, but just because we have power over them doesn't mean we can abuse it.
Christian Arias said...
Do animals deserve rights? This question should not even be asked. Throughout the world humans take advantage of animals like if they were a piece of trash and mistreat them. People hurt animals as if they are not sensible creatures. This cruelty is unjust and not necessary. Why must some humans torture these wonderful creatures? I understand that we depend on a lot on animals to survive, but I highly disbelief that the cruelty is necessary. Although animals do not have a spoken language, they do communicate in their ways. For instance, dog communicate throw barking, howling, and sniffing one another’s butt. Clearly animals are sensible. Rousseau states:
“It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former.”
His argues that his “fellow creatures” have the right to be treated well, because they are rational creatures. I agree; animals are rational. They have the ability to survive. They have the natural instinct to find food. Animals, like humans are able to adapt to their environment in order to survive. So why mistreat and torture animals? Why make them suffer so long?
Animals cannot have the same rights as humans at least not all of the same rights. Animals deserve reasonable protection against abuse, they do not have legal "rights" in the same way humans do. Animal and human emotions are identical,intelligence the same, as animals do possess: common sense, compassion, empathy, reasoning, and wisdom. The only difference is physical features. The terrible side is that human beings are the ones that destroy, harm and kill for no good reason. But let’s be real Animals do not have rights. Do animals pay taxes, do animals have constitutional rights, and do they have voting rights? No they do not. Do they deserve humane and loving treatment? Of course. Just because we are not the same it doesnt mean we have to harm and kill them but animals and human will never have the same rights.
Do animals have rights? Of course, animals have rights too. Unfortunately, they cannot speak up as we humans can but they feel emotions just as well and display them in different manners. We have some similar characteristics and as scientist continue observing them we find out how much more similar we are in different ways. Atleast, there has been some limits imposed towards animal cruelty. It's terrible how they are exploited for amusement as well.
Regrettably, I was raised in a carnivorous environment and it is difficult to cut out meat from my diet since I'm so accustomed to it. Honestly, sometimes I do try to consume less meat at times, but it is very difficult because when I'm about to eat and I see food my first thought isn't about the animal I am about to chow down but of how delicious it smells. I know that is horrible but unfortunately it is not constantly on my mind.
Animals don’t need laws but they do deserve to be respected as god’s creatures. We need to realize, that in today's society, animals deserve just as much freedom as humans have. Animals are in laboratories, today, because we are powerful enough to keep them there, not because they truly belong there. Once we have an animal caged and restrained, we suddenly gain an even greater feeling of superiority over the animal. With many of the experiments done today, animals are mistreated in every way shape and form. Usually, there is a lack of adequate food and water. Ventilation for the animals is minimal and many times cages are packed full with animals, leaving very little if any room to move around. On many occasions, the animal will die throughout the course of the experiment. Our containing the animals can be related to one's slavery of another human being. We may think that just because animals do not speak to us, that they do not possess feelings, but they are capable of feeling pain and suffering. Just like you and me animals have the right to live their life without exploitation, or unnecessary pain.
I agree with Kant’s idea that, "cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other humans is weakened." When we mistreat and degrade animals we lose a bit of our humanity. I would even go as far as to say that it is a reflection of our own moral code. Now does that mean that by eating animal meat we are degrading and mistreating animals? This is a subject I struggle with being that we are a carnivorous society and yes in fact we have been conditioned and socialized to view it as a normal practice. We use animals in experiments treated “with dignity”, we slaughter animals for food “with dignity”, again and again this term seems to reappear whenever animals are involved in some form of semi-questionable practice. Can it be that we use these sugar-coated terms to give ourselves and not the animals a self assurance or justification for our actions? I can’t help but think so. Why not just call it what it is? I can’t help but think every now and then and not as often as I should, that right before this animal was put to death, “with dignity” didn’t mean much to him/her. And while whether or not an animal should have rights is such a broad topic and a difficult one to answer, If we as human beings are thought of as the “superior beings” and as the ones with reasoning and higher intelligence. If we are to be responsible to care for the earth, then we should also be responsible to care for the creatures that live in it. What exactly are the implications involved with “responsibility”? What exactly does that encompass? I don’t presume to have the answers. But what I do know is that we are to look inside ourselves and examine our motives intentions. Animals deserve to be treated with dignity, I'm just not sure it's the kind where we strip them of life after the fact.
Post a Comment