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Do animals have rights?

Animals have played a role in human society since civilization began. At first, animals were hunted for food, and their skins and bones were used for clothing, shelter and tools. Later, animals were domesticated and used as beasts of burden, for food and clothing, and eventually for many other purposes. Today most of us accept the idea that people — farmers, pet owners, animal breeders, zoo keepers and research scientists — may use animals but are obliged to treat them decently. The US even has anti-cruelty laws to ensure the humane treatment of animals.

However, some people think that we should change the relationship between humans and animals. They do not accept the notion that it is appropriate for humans to interfere with the lives of animals. This is the guiding philosophy behind what is called the \"animal rights movement.\" Those who accept this view in its entirety reject all human use of animals, whether for food or clothing, as pets or companions, to race or ride for sport, or in medical research and product safety testing. In 1975, Australian philosopher Peter Singer wrote a book called Animal Liberation in which he argued that humans should not use animals. Singer’s ideas are based on utilitarianism, one of many philosophies developed in the 17th and 18th centuries to help people decide what is right and wrong without invoking the Bible or other moral authorities. Utilitarians say we should judge actions strictly upon their consequences. That is, an action is good if it will provide the greatest benefit to the largest number of individuals. Singer took this notion further and said that when we calculate consequences, we must take into account the interests not only of human beings but also of animals that can experience pain and pleasure. If we fail to consider these animals’ interests, or if we give human beings special consideration, we are guilty of \"speciesism.\". He usually concludes that the cost to the animals outweighs the benefit to others.

Another animal rights view was put forth by American philosopher Tom Regan in a 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights. Regan holds that people as well as many animals are entitled to certain rights simply because they have a basic understanding of the world and some sense of what they want from life. Regan’s version of this rights-based philosophy says that most mammals older than one year qualify for basic rights, e.g., the right to live without human interference. Regan argues that it is wrong to deprive animals of their rights or for humans to use animals to serve their own needs and interests.

Singer, Regan, and others have used explanations of animal rights to win agreement with their belief that human beings should not use animals. However, this is a radical notion, given all the ways that human beings are dependent upon animals for life and livelihood. A more common-sense approach is to recognize that there are compelling reasons to use animals for medical research and other purposes, and at the same time to affirm our obligation to treat animals with compassion.

WHY ANIMALS HAVE NO RIGHT

\"A right, properly understood, is a claim, or potential claim, that one party may exercise against another. The target against whom such a claim may be registered can be a single person, a group, a community, or (perhaps) all humankind. The content of rights claims also varies greatly: repayment of loans,

nondiscrimination by employers, noninterference by the state, and so on. To comprehend any genuine right fully, therefore, we must know who holds the right, against whom it is held, and to what it is a right.

Alternative sources of rights add complexity. Some rights are grounded in constitution and law (e.g., the right of an accused to trial by jury); some rights are moral but give no legal claims (e.g., my right to your keeping the promise you gave me); and some rights (e.g., against theft or assault) are rooted both in morals and in law.

The differing targets, contents, and sources of rights, and their

inevitable conflict, together weave a tangled web. Notwithstanding all such complications, this much is clear about rights in general: they are in every case claims, or potential claims, within a community of moral agents. Rights arise, and can be intelligibly defended, only among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one another. Whatever else rights may be, therefore, they are necessarily human; their possessors are persons, human beings. [p.865]

The attributes of human beings from which this moral capability arises have been described variously by philosophers, both

ancient and modern: the inner consciousness of a free will (Saint Augustine); the grasp, by human reason, of the binding character of moral law (Saint Thomas); the self-conscious participation of human beings in an objective ethical order (Hegel); human membership in an organic moral community (Bradley); the

development of the human self through the consciousness of other moral selves (Mead); and the underivative, intuitive cognition of the rightness of an action (Prichard). Most influential has been Immanuel Kant's emphasis on the universal human possession of a uniquely moral will and the autonomy its use entails. Humans confront choices that are purely moral; humans -- but certainly not dogs or mice -- lay down moral laws, for others and for themselves. Human beings are self-legislative, morally auto-nomous [sic]. [p.865-866]

Animals (that is, nonhuman animals, the ordinary sense of that word) lack this capacity for free moral judgment. They are not beings of a kind capable of exercising or responding to moral claims. Animals therefore have no rights, and they can have none. This is the core of the argument about the alleged rights of animals. The holders of rights must have the capacity to

comprehend rules of duty, governing all including themselves. In applying such rules, the holders of rights must recognize

possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just. Only in a community of beings capable of

self-restricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be correctly invoked.

Humans have such moral capabilities. They are in this sense self-legislative, are members of communities governed by moral rules, and do possess rights. Animals do not have such moral capacities. They are not morally self-legislative, cannot possibly be members of a truly moral community, and therefore cannot possess rights. In conducting research on animal subjects, therefore, we do not violate their rights, because they have none to violate.

To animate life, even in its simplest forms, we give a certain natural reverence. But the possession of rights presupposes a moral status not attained by the vast majority of living things. We must not infer, therefore, that a live being has, simply in being alive, a \"right\" to its life. The assertion that all animals, only because they are alive and have interests, also possess the \"right to life\" is an abuse of that phrase, and wholly without warrant.

It does not follow from this, however, that we are morally free to do anything we please to animals. Certainly not. In our dealings with animals, as in our dealings with other human

beings, we have obligations that do not arise from claims against us based on rights. Rights entail obligations, but many of the things one ought to do are in no way tied to another's

entitlement. Rights and obligations are not reciprocals of one another, and it is a serious mistake to suppose that they are.

.... Plainly, the grounds of our obligations to humans and to animals are manifold and cannot be formulated simply. Some hold that there is a general obligation to do no gratuitous harm to

sentient creatures (the principle of nonmaleficence); some hold that there is a general obligation to do good to sentient creatures when that is reasonably within one's power (the

principle of beneficence). In our dealings with animals, few will deny that we are at least obliged to act humanely -- that is, to treat them with the decency and concern that we owe, as sensitive human beings, to other sentient creatures. To treat animals humanely, however, is not to treat them as humans or as the holders of rights.

A common objection, which deserves a response, may be paraphrased as follows:

\"If having rights requires being able to make moral claims, to grasp and apply moral laws, then many humans -- the

brain-damaged, the comatose, the senile -- who plainly lack those capacities must be without rights. But that is absurd. This proves [the critic concludes] that rights do not depend on the presence of moral capacities.\"

This objection fails; it mistakenly treats an essential feature of humanity as though it were a screen for sorting humans. The capacity for moral judgment that distinguishes humans from animals is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one. Persons who are unable, because of some disability, to perform the full moral

functions natural to human beings are certainly not for that reason ejected from the moral community. The issue is one of kind. Humans are of such a kind that they may be the subject of experiments only with their voluntary consent. The choices they make freely must be respected. Animals are of such a kind that it is impossible for them, in principle, to give or withhold voluntary consent or to make a moral choice. What humans retain when disabled, animals have never had.

A second objection, also often made, may be paraphrased as follows:

\"Capacities will not succeed in distinguishing humans from the other animals. Animals also reason; animals also communicate with one another; animals also care passionately for their young; animals also exhibit desires and preferences. Features of moral relevance - rationality, interdependence, and love -- are not exhibited uniquely by human beings. Therefore [this critic concludes], there can be no solid moral distinction between

humans and other animals.\"

This criticism misses the central point. lt is not the ability to communicate or to reason, or dependence on one another, or care for the young, or the exhibition of preference, or any such

behavior that marks the critical divide. Analogies between human families and those of monkeys, or between human communities and those of wolves, and the like, are entirely beside the

point. Patterns of conduct are not at issue. Animals do indeed exhibit remarkable behavior at times. Conditioning, fear, instinct, and intelligence all contribute to species

survival. Membership in a community of moral agents nevertheless remains impossible for them. Actors subject to moral judgment must be capable of grasping the generality of an ethical premise in a practical syllogism. Humans act immorally often enough, but only they -- never wolves or monkeys -- can discern, by applying some moral rule to the facts of a case, that a given act ought or ought not to be performed. The moral restraints imposed by humans on themselves are thus highly abstract and are often in conflict with the self-interest of the agent. Communal behavior among animals, even when most intelligent and most endearing, does not approach autonomous morality in this fundamental sense. [p.866-867]

Genuinely moral acts have an internal as well as an external dimension. Thus, in law, an act can be criminal only when the guilty deed, the actus reus, is done with a guilty mind, mens rea. No animal can ever commit a crime; bringing animals to

criminal trial is the mark of primitive ignorance. The claims of moral right are similarly inapplicable to them. Does a lion have a right to eat a baby zebra? Does a baby zebra have a right not to be eaten? Such questions, mistakenly invoking the concept of right where it does not belong, do not make good sense. Those who condemn biomedical research because it violates \"animal rights\" commit the same blunder.\"

EATING MEAT IS NATURAL

Animal rights activists often make the claim that humans do not

\"require animal protein to meet our nutritional needs\". While this is true, it is not a dietary choice recommended by North American health authorities.

According to the USDA 1995 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (the

Canada Food Guide was not at hand), the recommended diet is one \"with most of the calories from grain products, vegetables, fruits, lowfat milk products, lean meats, fish, poultry, and dry beans [and] fewer calories from fats and sweets.\"

As for vegetarian diets, the Guidelines state: \"Most vegetarians eat milk products and eggs, and as a group, these lacto-ovo-vegetarians enjoy excellent health... You can get enough protein from a vegetarian diet as long as the variety and amounts of foods consumed are adequate. Meat, fish, and poultry are major contributors of iron, zinc, and B vitamins in most American diets, and vegetarians should pay special attention to these nutrients.\"

As for vegan diets, the Guidelines, in part, state: \"Vegans eat only food of plant origin. Because animal products are the only food sources of vitamin B12, vegans must supplement their diets with a source of this vitamin.\"

While lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets rely on animal by-products to be complete, vegan diets rely on artificial dietary supplements and are by definition incomplete and unnatural.

Anthropologists and human paleontologists have found that modern Homo sapiens, despite our advanced technology and civilization, are not significantly different either physiologically or psychologically from our Paleolithic ancestors. In their groundbreaking 1988 book \"The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet & Exercise and a Design for Living\Paleolithic diet which consisted of a wide variety of vegetables, fruit, and wild game (which is very lean meat) to recommend a modern diet similar to the American Dietary Guidelines.

Eaton et al. also claimed that, while adult vegans \"can be basically healthy... there is some evidence that children raised exclusively on such diets have slowed growth and development. To propose humans as basically vegetarian in nature, however, is clearly unjustifed. Meat

is, and has always been, a major constituent of the human diet.\"

Humans have evolved for the past two million years as omnivorous hunters/gatherers and have as much right to eat meat as any other

predator on this planet. However, unlike other modern predators, many of whom often begin eating their prey while it is still alive and conscious, we treat our prey far more humanely.

Instead of trying to rewrite or deny our evolutionary and dietary

heritage, it would make more sense to adopt an animal welfare approach that advocates the humane use of our animal food sources rather than an animal \"rights\" position which ultimately seeks no use of and no contact with animals (including pets).

Jim Powlesland July, 1996

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S. Boyd Eaton, M.D., M. Shostak, and M. Konner, M.D., Ph.D. 1988. \"The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet & Exercise and a Design for Living\". Harper & Row, New York.