Online Business Accounting

should animals have rights? yes!!-found on internet?

Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. Many of us bought our beloved "pets" at pet shops, had guinea pigs, and kept beautiful birds in cages. We wore wool and silk, ate McDonald's burgers, and fished. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights? In his book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer states that the basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. This is an important distinction when talking about animal rights. People often ask if animals should have rights, and quite simply, the answer is "Yes!" Animals surely deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the reforming utilitarian school of moral philosophy, stated that when deciding on a being's rights, "The question is not 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'" In that passage, Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for suffering is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or higher mathematics. All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same degree that humans do. They feel pain, pleasure, fear, frustration, loneliness, and motherly love. Whenever we consider doing something that would interfere with their needs, we are morally obligated to take them into account. Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth—a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans. We believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. Animal rights is not just a philosophy—it is a social movement that challenges society's traditional view that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human use. As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has said, "When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife." Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves. Whether it's based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally unacceptable. If you wouldn't eat a dog, why eat a pig? Dogs and pigs have the same capacity to feel pain, but it is prejudice based on species that allows us to think of one animal as a companion and the other as dinner.

Public Comments

1. religion, economic status, customs, even the environment we live in plays a role in our perception of animals and their rights. i eat meat, wear leather, and believe in testing on animals esp if it keeps us safe. that said i'm against torturing animals for no reason at all , like the way serial killers grow up. i may never eat meat if i saw an animal slaughtered in front of me, maybe just fish. i stayed away from research animals because i knew what they were expecting and hated it. as humans i believe it is our nature to keep each other comfortable and safe, we also have a duty to try and help animals live the way they were supposed to out in the wild, utilize what we need to live a normal life whether it is for clothing or for the future of research to save other peoples' lives. i'm alo against keeping pets unless the person who keeps it is willing to take good care of it , and that whoever brings harm against any soul whether on purpose or through negligence will pay a price and may go to hell for it. it is wore if it is a human being , but you still will suffer if it's an animal .
2. For some reason, it is not enough for some people to have only other people as friends and companions, so they have animals as pets or "semi-pets" (like a horse). This is perfectly normal, although there are only a very few animals that make for real pets or semi-pets. These domesticated animals have or develop personalities and can be trained to interact satisfactorily with human beings. It is normal to treat them as "almost human". Human beings were made either by nature or by a Higher Being to be omniverous - our dental structure and our digestive organs are designed to consume and benefit from both plant and animal sources of food. Therefore, we as a species are perfectly justified in eating meat from animals, be they fish, fowl, amphibian, reptile, or mammal. Naturally, these animals must be killed in order to become food sources for humans - or, for that matter, other animals. In nature, carnivorous and omniverous animals regularly kill other animals in order to survive, because they must. (We will never convince a lion to switch his eating habits and become a vegetarian.) Most, if not all, of the food animals will feel pain when attacked and killed, and will attempt to defend themselves against such attacks. This is natural. The problem arises when people project the qualities of pets and even human beings onto animals which are not pets or human beings, and give them human-like "rights". This makes about as much sense as giving trees the right not to be cut down. What we really need to put the focus on is avoiding cruelty to our food animals, mainly so that in our caring about the environment and its inhabitants, we can see ourselves as "good" people, humane people, considerate people, with regards to the animals we use for food. We have developed a conscience about cruelty to animals, and that is where the misplaced idea of animal rights comes from. Human beings are quite capable of separating our pets and near-pets from the animals we raise for food and other products, and it is foolish to project our feelings for our human friends, our pets, and our near-pets onto all animals in general. If we can treat these animals humanely while they're alive, and kill them as quickly and as painlessly as possible when the time comes, that is all that is necessary. If some people still can't get past this notion of animal rights and choose to be vegetarians, that's their choice. Just don't ask the majority of us to believe what you believe and follow in your footsteps for irrational reasons.