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They can think, feel pain, love. isn’t it time animals had rights.

Martha Nussbaum lays out ethical, legal case in new book

Martha Nussbaum

Excerpted from “Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility” by Martha C. Nussbaum, M.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’75

Animals are in trouble all over the world. Our world is dominated by humans everywhere: on land, in the seas, and in the air. No non-human animal escapes human domination. Much of the time, that domination inflicts wrongful injury on animals: whether through the barbarous cruelties of the factory meat industry, through poaching and game hunting, through habitat destruction, through pollution of the air and the seas, or through neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love.

In a way, this problem is age-old. Both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions have deplored human cruelty to animals for around two millennia. The Hindu emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 bce), a convert to Buddhism, wrote about his efforts to give up meat and to forgo all practices that harmed animals. In Greece the Platonist philosophers Plutarch (46–119 ce) and Porphyry (c. 234–305 ce) wrote detailed treatises deploring human cruelty to animals, describing their keen intelligence and their capacity for social life, and urging humans to change their diet and their way of life. But by and large these voices have fallen on deaf ears, even in the supposedly moral realm of the philosophers, and most humans have continued to treat most animals like objects, whose suffering does not matter — although they sometimes make an exception for companion animals. Meanwhile, countless animals have suffered cruelty, deprivation, and neglect.

Because the reach of human cruelty has expanded, so too has the involvement of virtually all people in it. Even people who do not consume meat produced by the factory farming industry are likely to have used single-use plastic items, to use fossil fuels mined beneath the ocean and polluting the air, to dwell in areas in which elephants and bears once roamed, or to live in high-rise buildings that spell death for migratory birds. The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation. Pinning guilt is less important than accepting the fact that humanity as a whole has a collective duty to face and solve these problems.

So far, I have not spoken of the extinction of animal species, because this is a book about loss and deprivation suffered by individual creatures, each of whom matters. Species as such do not suffer loss. However, extinction never takes place without massive suffering of individual creatures: the hunger of a polar bear, starving on an ice floe, unable to cross the sea to hunt; the sadness of an orphan elephant, deprived of care and community as the species dwindles rapidly; the mass extinctions of song-bird species as a result of unbreathable air, a horrible death. When human practices hound species toward extinction, member animals always suffer greatly and live squashed and thwarted lives. Besides, the species themselves matter for creating diverse ecosystems in which animals can live well.

Extinctions would take place even without human intervention. Even in such cases we might have reasons to intervene to stop them, because of the importance of biodiversity. But scientists agree that today’s extinctions are between one thousand and ten thousand times higher than the natural extinction rate. (Our uncertainty is huge, because we are very ignorant of how many species there actually are, particularly where fish and insects are concerned.) Worldwide, approximately one-quarter of the world’s mammals and over 40 percent of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. These include several species of bear, the Asian elephant (endangered), the African elephant (threatened), the tiger, six species of whale, the gray wolf, and so many more. All in all, more than 370 animal species are either endangered or threatened, using the criteria of the US Endangered Species Act, not including birds, and a separate list of similar length for birds. Asian songbirds are virtually extinct in the wild, on account of the lucrative trade in these luxury items. And many other species of birds have recently become extinct. Meanwhile, the international treaty called CITES that is supposed to protect birds (and many other creatures) is toothless and unenforced. The story of this book is not that story of mass extinction, but the sufferings of individual creatures that take place against this background of human indifference to biodiversity.

“The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation.”

There is a further reason why the ethical evasion of the past must end now. Today we know far more about animal lives than we did even 50 years ago. We know much too much for the glib excuses of the past to be offered without shame. Porphyry and Plutarch (and Aristotle before them) knew a lot about animal intelligence and sensitivity. But somehow humans find ways of “forgetting” what the science of the past has plainly revealed, and for many centuries most people, including most philosophers, thought animals were “brute beasts,” automata without a subjective sense of the world, without emotions, without society, and perhaps even without the feeling of pain.

Recent decades, however, have seen an explosion of high-level research covering all areas of the animal world. We now know more not only about animals long closely studied — primates and companion animals — but also about animals who are difficult to study — marine mammals, whales, fish, birds, reptiles, and cephalopods.

We know — not just by observation, but by carefully designed experimental work — that all vertebrates and many invertebrates feel pain subjectively, and have, more generally, a subjectively felt view of the world: the world looks like something to them. We know that all of these animals experience at least some emotions (fear being the most ubiquitous), and that many experience emotions like compassion and grief that involve more complex “takes” on a situation. We know that animals as different as dolphins and crows can solve complicated problems and learn to use tools to solve them. We know that animals have complex forms of social organization and social behavior. More recently, we have been learning that these social groups are not simply places where a rote inherited repertory is acted out, but places of complicated social learning. Species as different as whales, dogs, and many types of birds clearly transmit key parts of the species’ repertoire to their young socially, not just genetically.

What are the implications of this research for ethics? Huge, clearly. We can no longer draw the usual line between our own species and “the beasts,” a line meant to distinguish intelligence, emotion, and sentience from the dense life of a “brute beast.” Nor can we even draw a line between a group of animals we already recognize as sort of “like us” — apes, elephants, whales, dogs — and others who are supposed to be unintelligent. Intelligence takes multiple and fascinating forms in the real world, and birds, evolving by a very different path from humans, have converged on many similar abilities. Even an invertebrate such as the octopus has surprising capacities for intelligent perception: an octopus can recognize individual humans, and can solve complex problems, guiding one of its arms through a maze to obtain food using only its eyes. Once we recognize all this we can hardly be unchanged in our ethical thinking. To put a “brute beast” in a cage seems no more wrong than putting a rock in a terrarium. But that is not what we are doing. We are deforming the existence of intelligent and complexly sentient forms of life. Each of these animals strives for a flourishing life, and each has abilities, social and individual, that equip it to negotiate a decent life in a world that gives animals difficult challenges. What humans are doing is to thwart this striving — and this seems wrong.

But even though the time has come to recognize our ethical responsibility to the other animals, we have few intellectual tools to effect meaningful change. The third reason why we must confront what we are doing to animals now, today, is that we have built a world in which two of humanity’s best tools for progress, law and political theory, have, so far, no or little help to offer us. Law — both domestic and international — has quite a lot to say about the lives of companion animals, but very little to say about any other animals. Nor do animals in most nations have what lawyers call “standing”: that is, the status to bring a legal claim if they are wronged. Of course, animals cannot themselves bring a legal claim, but neither can most humans, including children, people with cognitive disabilities — and, to tell the truth, almost everybody, since people have little knowledge of the law. All of us need a lawyer to press our claims. But all the humans I have mentioned — including people with lifelong cognitive disabilities — count, and can bring a legal claim, assisted by an able advocate. The way we have designed the world’s legal systems, animals do not have this simple privilege. They do not count.

Law is built by humans using the theories they have. When those theories were racist, laws were racist. When theories of sex and gender excluded women, so too did law. And there is no denying that most political thought by humans the world over has been human-centered, excluding animals. Even the theories that purport to offer help in the struggle against abuse are deeply defective, built on an inadequate picture of animal lives and animal striving. As a philosopher and political theorist who is also deeply immersed in law and law teaching, I hope to change things with this book.

Copyright © 2022 by Martha Nussbaum. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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animal rights , moral or legal entitlements attributed to nonhuman animals, usually because of the complexity of their cognitive , emotional, and social lives or their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure. Historically, different views of the scope of animal rights have reflected philosophical and legal developments, scientific conceptions of animal and human nature , and religious and ethical conceptions of the proper relationship between animals and human beings. Since the beginning of the modern animal rights movement , which was initiated by philosophers in the 1970s, animal rights has been a popular topic of discussion within the academic study of applied ethics , or the application of normative ethical theories to practical problems.

The proper treatment of animals is a very old question in the West. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers debated the place of animals in human morality . The Pythagoreans (6th–4th century bce ) and the Neoplatonists (3rd–6th century ce ) urged respect for animals’ interests, primarily because they believed in the transmigration of souls between human and animal bodies. In his biological writings, Aristotle (384–322 bce ) repeatedly suggested that animals lived for their own sake, but his claim in the Politics that nature made all animals for the sake of humans was unfortunately destined to become his most influential statement on the subject.

Aristotle, and later the Stoics , believed the world was populated by an infinity of beings arranged hierarchically according to their complexity and perfection, from the barely living to the merely sentient , the rational, and the wholly spiritual. In this Great Chain of Being , as it came to be known, all forms of life were represented as existing for the sake of those forms higher in the chain. Among corporeal beings, humans, by dint of their rationality, occupied the highest position. The Great Chain of Being became one of the most persistent and powerful, if utterly erroneous , ways of conceiving the universe, dominating scientific, philosophical, and religious thinking until the middle of the 19th century.

The Stoics , insisting on the irrationality of all nonhuman animals, regarded them as slaves and accordingly treated them as contemptible and beneath notice. Aggressively advocated by St. Augustine (354–430), these Stoic ideas became embedded in Christian theology. They were absorbed wholesale into Roman law—as reflected in the treatises and codifications of Gaius (fl. 130–180) and Justinian (483–565)—taken up by the legal glossators of Europe in the 11th century, and eventually pressed into English (and, much later, American) common law . Meanwhile, arguments that urged respect for the interests of animals nearly disappeared, and animal welfare remained a relative backwater of philosophical inquiry and legal regulation until the final decades of the 20th century.

In the 3rd or 4th century ce , the Roman jurist Hermogenianus wrote, “Hominum causa omne jus constitum” (“All law was established for men’s sake”). Repeating the phrase, P.A. Fitzgerald’s 1966 treatise Salmond on Jurisprudence declared, “The law is made for men and allows no fellowship or bonds of obligation between them and the lower animals.” The most important consequence of this view is that animals have long been categorized as “legal things,” not as “legal persons.” Whereas legal persons have rights of their own, legal things do not. They exist in the law solely as the objects of the rights of legal persons—e.g., as things over which legal persons may exercise property rights . This status, however, often affords animals the indirect protection of laws intended to preserve social morality or the rights of animal owners, such as criminal anticruelty statutes or civil statutes that permit owners to obtain compensation for damages inflicted on their animals. Indeed, this sort of law presently defines the field of “animal law,” which is much broader than animal rights because it encompasses all law that addresses the interests of nonhuman animals—or, more commonly, the interests of the people who own them.

A legal thing can become a legal person; this happened whenever human slaves were freed. The former legal thing then possesses his own legal rights and remedies. Parallels have frequently been drawn between the legal status of animals and that of human slaves . “The truly striking fact about slavery,” the American historian David Brion Davis has written, is the

antiquity and almost universal acceptance of the concept of the slave as a human being who is legally owned, used, sold, or otherwise disposed of as if he or she were a domestic animal. This parallel persisted in the similarity of naming slaves, branding them, and even pricing them according to their equivalent in cows , camels , pigs , and chickens .

The American jurist Roscoe Pound wrote that in ancient Rome a slave “was a thing, and as such, like animals could be the object of rights of property,” and the British historian of Roman law Barry Nicholas has pointed out that in Rome “the slave was a thing…he himself had no rights: he was merely an object of rights, like an animal.”

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, humanitarian reformers in Britain and the United States campaigned on behalf of the weak and defenseless, protesting against child labour , debtor’s prisons, abusive punishment in public schools, and, inevitably, the cruel treatment of animals. In 1800 the most renowned abolitionist of the period, William Wilberforce , supported a bill to abolish bull- and bearbaiting, which was defeated in the House of Commons . In 1809 Baron Erskine , former lord chancellor of England, who had long been troubled by cruelty to animals , introduced a bill to prohibit cruelty to all domestic animals. Erskine declared that the bill was intended to “consecrate, perhaps, in all nations, and in all ages, that just and eternal principle which binds the whole living world in one harmonious chain, under the dominion of enlightened man, the lord and governor of all.” Although the bill passed the House of Lords , it failed in the House of Commons. Then, in 1821, a bill “to prevent cruel and improper treatment of Cattle” was introduced in the House of Commons, sponsored by Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton and championed by Irish member of Parliament Richard Martin. The version enacted in 1822, known as Martin’s Act, made it a crime to treat a handful of domesticated animals—cattle, oxen, horses, and sheep—cruelly or to inflict unnecessary suffering upon them. However, it did not protect the general welfare of even these animals, much less give them legal rights, and the worst punishment available for any breach was a modest fine. Similar statutes were enacted in all the states of the United States, where there now exists a patchwork of anticruelty and animal-welfare laws. Most states today make at least some abuses of animals a felony . Laws such as the federal Animal Welfare Act (1966), for example, regulate what humans may do to animals in agriculture, biomedical research, entertainment, and other areas. But neither Martin’s Act nor many subsequent animal-protection statutes altered the traditional legal status of animals as legal things.

This situation changed in 2008, when the Spanish national parliament adopted resolutions urging the government to grant orangutans , chimpanzees , and gorillas some statutory rights previously afforded only to humans. The resolutions also called for banning the use of apes in performances, harmful research, and trading as well as in other practices that involve profiting from the animals. Although zoos would still be allowed to hold apes, they would be required to provide them with “optimal” living conditions.

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What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?

A few years ago, activists walked into a factory farm in Utah and walked out with two piglets. State prosecutors argued that this was a crime. That they were correct was obvious: The pigs were the property of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the country. The defendants had videoed themselves committing the crime; the F.B.I. later found the piglets in Colorado, in an animal sanctuary.

The activists said they had completed a “rescue,” but Smithfield had good reason to claim it hadn’t treated the pigs illegally. Unlike domestic favorites like dogs, which are protected from being eaten, Utah’s pigs are legally classified as “livestock”; they’re future products, and Smithfield could treat them accordingly. Namely, it could slaughter the pigs, but it could also treat a pig’s life—and its temporary desire for food, space, and medical help—as an inconvenience, to be handled in whatever conditions were deemed sufficient.

In their video, the activists surveyed those conditions . At the facility—a concentrated animal-feeding operation, or CAFO —pregnant pigs were confined to gestation crates, metal enclosures so small that the sows could barely lie down. (Smithfield had promised to stop using these crates, but evidently had not.) Other pigs were in farrowing crates, where they had enough room to lie down but not enough to turn their bodies around. When the activists approached one sow, they found dead piglets rotting beneath her. Nearby, they found two injured piglets, whom they decided to take. One couldn’t walk because of a foot infection; the other’s face was covered in blood. According to Smithfield, which denied mistreating animals, the piglets were each worth about forty-two dollars, but both had diarrhea and other signs of illness. This meant they were unlikely to survive, and that their bodies would be discarded, just as millions of farm animals are discarded each year.

During the trial, the activists reiterated that, yes, they entered Smithfield’s property and, yes, they took the pigs. And then, last October, the jury found them not guilty. In a column for the Times , one of the activists—Wayne Hsiung, the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere—described talking to one of the jurors, who said that it was hard to convict the activists of theft, given that the sick piglets had no value for Smithfield. But another factor was the activists’ appeal to conscience. In his closing statement, Hsiung, a lawyer who represented himself, argued that an acquittal would model a new, more compassionate world. He had broken the law, yes—but the law, the jury seemed to agree, might be wrong.

A lot has changed in our relationship with animals since 1975, when the philosopher Peter Singer wrote “ Animal Liberation ,” the book that sparked the animal-rights movement. Gestation crates, like the ones in Utah, are restricted in the European Union, and California prohibits companies that use them from selling in stores, a case that the pork industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court—and lost. In a 2019 Johns Hopkins survey, more than forty per cent of respondents wanted to ban new CAFO s. In Iowa, which is the No. 1 pork-producing state, my local grocery store has a full Vegan section. “Vegan” is also a shopping filter on Sephora, and most of the cool-girl brands are vegan, anyway. Wearing fur is embarrassing.

And yet Singer’s latest book, “ Animal Liberation Now ,” a rewrite of his 1975 classic, is less a celebratory volume than a tragic one—tragic because it is very similar to the original in refrain, which is that, big-picture-wise, the state of animal life is terrible. “The core argument I was putting forward,” Singer writes, “seemed so irrefutable, so undeniably right, that I thought everyone who read it would surely be convinced by it.” Apparently not. By some estimates, scientists in the U.S. currently use roughly fifteen million animals for research, including mice, rats, cats, dogs, birds, and nonhuman primates. As in the seventies, much of this research tries to model psychological ailments, despite scientists’ having written for decades that more research is needed to figure out whether animals—and which kind of animals—provide a useful analogue for mental illness in humans. When Singer was first writing, a leading researcher created psychopathic monkeys by raising them in isolation, impregnating them with what he called a “rape rack,” and studying how the mothers bashed their infants’ heads into the ground. In 2019, researchers were still putting animals through “prolonged stress”—trapping them in deep water, restraining them for long periods while subjecting them to the odor of a predator—to see if their subsequent behavior evidenced P.T.S.D. (They wrote that more research was needed.) Meanwhile, factory farms, which were newish in 1975, have swept the globe. Just four per cent of Americans are vegetarian, and each year about eighty-three billion animals are killed for food.

It’s for these animals, Singer writes, “and for all the others who will, unless there is a sudden and radical change, suffer and die,” that he writes this new edition. But Singer’s hopes are by now tempered. One obvious problem is that, in the past fifty years, the legal standing of animals has barely changed. The Utah case was unusual not just because of the verdict but because referendums on farm-animal welfare seldom occur at all. In many states, lawmakers, often pressured by agribusiness, have tried to make it a serious crime to enter a factory farm’s property. The activists in Utah hoped they could win converts at trial; they gambled correctly, but, had they been wrong, they could have gone to prison. As in 1975, it remains impossible to simply petition the justice system to notice that pigs are suffering. All animals are property, and property can’t take its owner to court.

Philosophers have debated the standing of animals for centuries. Pythagoras supposedly didn’t eat them, perhaps because he believed they had souls. Their demotion to “things” owes partly to thinkers like Aristotle, who called animals “brute beasts” who exist “for the sake of man,” and to Christianity, which, like Stoicism before it, awarded unique dignity to humans. We had souls; animals did not. Since then, various secular thinkers have given this idea a new name—“inherent value,” “intrinsic dignity”—in order to explain why it is O.K. to eat a pig but not a baby. For Singer, these phrases are a “last resort,” a way to clumsily distinguish humans from nonhuman animals. Some argue that our ability to tell right from wrong, or to perceive ourselves, sets us apart—but not all humans can do these things, and some animals seem to do them better. Good law doesn’t withhold justice from humans who are elderly or infirm, or those who are cognitively disabled. As a utilitarian, Singer cites the founder of that tradition, the eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that justice and equality have nothing to do with a creature’s ability to reason, or with any of its abilities at all, but with the fact that it can suffer. Most animals suffer. Why, then, do we not give them moral consideration?

Singer’s answer is “speciesism,” or “bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species.” Like racism and sexism, speciesism denies equal consideration in order to maintain a status quo that is convenient for the oppressors. As Lawrence Wright has written in this magazine , courts, when considering the confinement of elephants and chimpanzees, have conceded that such animals evince many of the qualities that give humans legal standing, but have declined to follow through on the implications of this fact. The reason for that is obvious. If animals deserved the same consideration as humans, then we would find ourselves in a world in which billions of persons were living awful, almost unimaginably horrible lives. In which case, we might have to do something about it.

Equal consideration does not mean equal treatment. As a utilitarian, Singer’s aim is to minimize the suffering in the world and maximize the pleasure in it, a principle that invites, and often demands, choices. This is why Singer does not object to killing mosquitos (if done quickly), or to using animals for scientific research that would dramatically relieve suffering, or to eating meat if doing so would save your life. What he would not agree with, though, is making those choices on the basis of perceived intelligence or emotion. In a decision about whether to eat chicken or pork, it is not better to choose chicken simply because pigs seem smarter. The fleeting pleasure of eating any chicken is trounced by its suffering in industrial farms, where it was likely force-fed, electrocuted, and perhaps even boiled alive.

Still, Singer’s emphasis on suffering is cause for concern to Martha Nussbaum , whose new book, “ Justice for Animals ,” is an attempt to settle on the ideal philosophical template for animal rights. Whereas Singer’s argument is emphatically emotion-free—empathy, in his view, is not just immaterial but often actively misleading—Nussbaum is interested in emotions, or at least in animals’ inner lives and desires. She considers several theories of animal rights, including Singer’s, before arguing that we should adopt her “capabilities approach,” which builds on a framework developed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, and holds that all creatures should be given the “opportunity to flourish.” For decades, Nussbaum has adjusted her list of what this entails for humans, which includes “being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length,” “being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves,” and having “bodily integrity”—namely, freedom from violence and “choice in matters of reproduction.” In “Justice for Animals,” she outlines some conditions for nonhuman flourishing: a natural life span, social relationships, freedom of movement, bodily integrity, and play and stimulation. Eventually, she writes, we would have a refined list for each species, so that we could insure flourishing “in the form of life characteristic to the creature.”

In imagining this better world, Nussbaum is guided by three emotions: wonder, anger, and compassion. She wants us to look anew at animals such as chickens or pigs, which don’t flatter us, as gorillas might, with their resemblance to us. What pigs do, and like to do, is root around in the dirt; lacquer themselves in mud to keep cool; build comfy nests in which to shelter their babies; and communicate with one another in social groups. They also seek out belly rubs from human caregivers. In a just world, Nussbaum writes, we would wonder at a pig’s mysterious life, show compassion for her desire to exist on her own terms, and get angry when corporations get in her way.

Some of Nussbaum’s positions are more actionable, policy-wise, than others. For example, she supports legal standing for animals, which raises an obvious question: How would a pig articulate her desires to a lawyer? Nussbaum notes that a solution already exists in fiduciary law: in the event that a person, like a toddler or disabled adult, cannot communicate their decisions or make sound ones, a representative is appointed to understand that person’s interests and advocate for them. Just as organizations exist to help certain people advance their interests, organizations could represent categories of animals. In Nussbaum’s future world, such a group could take Smithfield Foods to court.

Perhaps Nussbaum’s boldest position is that wild animals should also be represented by fiduciaries, and indeed be assured, by humans, the same flourishing as any other creature. If this seems like an overreach, a quixotic attempt to control a world that is better off without our meddling, Nussbaum says, first, to be realistic: there is no such thing as a truly wild animal, given the extent of human influence on Earth. (If a whale is found dead with a brick of plastic in its stomach, how “wild” was it?) Second, in Nussbaum’s view, if nature is thoughtless—and Nussbaum thinks it is—then perhaps what happens in “the wild” is not always for the best. No injustice can be ignored. If we aspire to a world in which no sentient creature can harm another’s “bodily integrity,” or impede one from exploring and fulfilling one’s capabilities, then it is not “the destiny of antelopes to be torn apart by predators.”

Here, Nussbaum’s world is getting harder to imagine. Animal-rights writing tends to elide the issue of wild-animal suffering for obvious reasons—namely, the scarcity of solutions. Singer covers the issue only briefly, and mostly to say that it’s worth researching the merit of different interventions, such as vaccination campaigns. Nussbaum, for her part, is unclear about how we would protect wild antelopes without impeding the flourishing of their predators—or without impeding the flourishing of antelopes, by increasing their numbers and not their resources. In 2006, when she previously discussed the subject, she acknowledged that perhaps “part of what it is to flourish, for a creature, is to settle certain very important matters on its own.” In her new book, she has not entirely discarded that perspective: intervention, she writes, could result in “disaster on a large scale.” But the point is to “press this question all the time,” and to ask whether our hands-off approach is less noble than it is self-justifying—a way of protecting ourselves from following our ideals to their natural, messy, inconvenient ends.

The enduring challenge for any activist is both to dream of almost-unimaginable justice and to make the case to nonbelievers that your dreams are practical. The problem is particularly acute in animal-rights activism. Ending wild-animal suffering is laughably hard (our efforts at ending human suffering don’t exactly recommend us to the task); obviously, so is changing the landscape of factory farms, or Singer wouldn’t be reissuing his book. In 2014, the British sociologist Richard Twine suggested that the vegan isn’t unlike the feminist of yore, in that both come across as killjoys whose “resistance against routinized norms of commodification and violence” repels those who prefer the comforts of the status quo. Wayne Hsiung, the Direct Action Everywhere activist, was only recently released from jail, after being sentenced for duck and chicken rescues in California. On his blog, he wrote that one reason the prosecution succeeded was that, unlike in Utah, he and his colleagues were cast as “weird extremists.”

It’s easy to construct a straw-man vegan, one oblivious to his own stridency, privilege, or hypocrisy. Isn’t he driving deforestation with all his vegetables? (No, Singer replies, as the vast majority of soybeans are fed to farm animals.) Isn’t he ignoring food deserts or the price tag on vegan substitutes, which puts them out of the reach of poor families? (Nussbaum acknowledges that cost can be an issue, but argues that it only emphasizes the need for resourced people to eat as humanely as they can, given that the costs of a more ethical diet “will not come down until it is chosen by many.”) Anyone pointing out moral culpability will provoke, in both others and themselves, a certain defensiveness. Nussbaum spends a lot of time discussing her uneasiness with her choice to eat fish for nutritional reasons. (She argues that fish likely have no sense of the future, a claim that even she seems unsure about.) Singer is eager to intervene here, emphasizing that animal-rights activism should pursue the diminishment of suffering, not the achievement of sainthood. “We are more likely to persuade others to share our attitude if we temper our ideals with common sense than if we strive for the kind of purity that is more appropriate to a religious dietary law than to an ethical and political movement,” he writes. Veganism is a boycott, and, while boycotts are more effective the more you commit to them, what makes them truly effective is persuading others to join them.

Strangely, where Singer and Nussbaum might agree is that defining the proper basis for the rights of animals is less important, at least in the short term, than getting people not to harm them, for any reason at all. Those reasons might have nothing to do with the animals themselves. Perhaps you decide not to eat animals because you care about people: because you care that the water where you live, if it’s anything like where I live, is too full of CAFO by-products to confidently drink. Perhaps you care about the workers in enormous slaughterhouses, where the pay is low and the costs to the laborer high. Perhaps you believe in a God, and believe that this God would expect better of people than to eat animals raised and killed in darkness. Or perhaps someone you love happens to love pigs, or to love the idea that the world could be gentler or more just, and you love the way they see the future enough to help them realize it. Nussbaum, after all, became interested in animal rights because she loved a person, her late daughter, an attorney who championed legislation to protect whales and other wild animals until her death, in 2019. Nussbaum’s book is dedicated to her—and also, now, to the whales. ♦

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Animal Rights Essay: Topics, Outline, & Writing Tips

• 🐇 Animal Rights Essay: the Basics
• 💡 Animal Rights Essay Topics
• 📑 Outlining Your Essay
• ✍️ Sample Essay (200 Words)

🔗 References

🐇 animal rights essay: what is it about.

Animal rights supporters advocate for the idea that animals should have the same freedom to live as they wish, just as humans do. They should not be exploited or used in meat , fur, and other production. At long last, we should distinguish animals from inanimate objects and resources like coal, timber, or oil.

Interdisciplinary research has shown that animals are emotional and sensitive, just like we are.

Their array of emotions includes joy, happiness, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, anger, love, compassion, respect, disgust, despair, and even grief.

However, animal rights legislation does not extend human rights to animals. It establishes their right to have their fundamental needs and interests respected while people decide how to treat them. This right changes the status of animals from being property to being legal entities.

The statement may sound strange until we recall that churches , banks, and universities are also legal entities. Their interests are legally protected by law. Then why do we disregard the feelings of animals , which are not inanimate institutions? Several federal laws protect them from human interference.

But the following statements are only some of the rules that could one day protect animal rights in full:

• Animals should not be killed by hunting.
• Animals’ habitats should allow them to live in freedom.
• Animals should not be bred for sale or any other purpose.
• Animals should not be used for food by industries or households.

Most arguments against the adoption of similar laws are linked to money concerns. Animal exploitation has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry. The lives of many private farmers depend on meat production, and most people prefer not to change the comfortable status quo.

Animal Rights Argumentative Essay

An animal rights argumentative essay should tackle a problematic issue that people have widely discussed. While choosing ideas for the assignment, opt for the most debatable topics.

Here is a brief list of argumentative essay prompts on animal rights:

• The pros and cons of animal rights.
• Can humanity exist without meat production?
• Do animals have souls?
• Should society become vegan to protect animal rights?

As you see, these questions could raise controversy between interlocutors. Your purpose is to take a side and give several arguments in its support. Then you’ll have to state a counterargument to your opinion and explain why it is incorrect.

Animal Rights Persuasive Essay

An animal rights persuasive essay should clearly state your opinion on the topic without analyzing different points of view. Still, the purpose of your article is to persuade the reader that your position is not only reasonable but the only correct one. For this purpose, select topics relating to your opinion or formulated in questionary form.

For example:

• What is your idea about wearing fur?
• Do you think people would ever ban animal exploitation?
• Is having pets a harmful practice?
• Animal factories hinder the development of civilization .

💡 53 Animal Rights Essay Topics

• Animal rights have been suppressed for ages because people disregard their mental abilities .
• Cosmetic and medical animal testing .
• Laws preventing unnecessary suffering of animals mean that there is some necessary suffering.
• Red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs experiment.
• Do you believe animals should have legal rights?
• Genetically modified animals and implications.
• Why is animal welfare important?
• Neutering animals to prevent overpopulation: Pros and cons.
• Animal testing: Arguments for and against.
• What is our impact on marine life?
• Some animals cannot stay wild.
• Animal testing for medical purposes .
• We are not the ones to choose which species to preserve.
• Pavlov’s dog experiment .
• Keeping dogs chained outdoors is animal neglect.
• The use of animals for research .
• Animal dissection as a learning tool: Alternatives?
• More people beat their pets than we think.
• Duties to non-human animals.
• If we do not control the population of some animals, they will control ours.
• Animals in entertainment: Not entertaining at all.
• Animals in research, education, and teaching.
• Which non-animal production endangers the species?
• Is animal testing really needed?
• Why do some people think that buying a new pet is cheaper than paying for medical treatment of the old one?
• Animal experiments: benefits, ethics, and defenders.
• Can people still be carnivorous if they stop eating animals?
• Animal testing role.
• Marine aquariums and zoos are animal prisons.
• Animal experimentation: justification arguments .
• What would happen if we replace animals in circuses with people, keeping the same living conditions?
• The ethics of animal use in scientific research .
• Animal sports: Relics of the past.
• Animal testing ban: counterargument and rebuttal .
• Denial to purchase animal-tested cosmetics will not change anything.
• Animal research, its ineffectiveness and amorality.
• Animal rights protection based on their intellect level: It tells a lot about humanity.
• Debates of using animals in scientific analysis .
• How can we ban tests on rats and kill them in our homes at the same time?
• Animal testing in experiments .
• What is the level of tissue engineering development in leather and meat production?
• Equal consideration of interests to non-human animals .
• Animals should not have to be our servants.
• Zoos as an example of humans’ immorality.
• We should feed wild animals to help them survive.
• Animal testing in biomedical research.
• Abolitionism: The right not to be owned.
• Do you support the Prima facie rights theory?
• Psychologist perspective on research involving animal and human subjects.
• Ecofeminism: What is the link between animals’ and women’s rights?
• No philosophy could rationalize cruelty against animals.
• Qualities that humans and animals share.
• Ancient Buddhist societies and vegetarianism: A research paper.

Need more ideas? You are welcome to use our free research topic generator !

📑 Animal Rights Essay Outline

An animal rights essay should be constructed as a standard 5-paragraph essay (if not required otherwise in the assignment). The three following sections provide a comprehensive outline.

Animal Rights Essay: Introduction

An introduction consists of:

• Background information,
• A thesis statement .

In other words, here you need to explain why you decided to write about the given topic and which position you will take. The background part should comprise a couple of sentences highlighting the topicality of the issue. The thesis statement expresses your plans in the essay.

For example: In this essay, I will explain why animal-based production harms the ecology.

Animal Rights Essay: Main Body

The main body is a place for you to argue your position . One paragraph equals one argument. In informative essays, replace argumentation with facts.

Start each section with a topical sentence consisting of a general truth. Then give some explanation and more specific points. By the way, at the end of this article, you’ll find a bonus! It is a priceless selection of statistics and facts about animal rights.

Animal Rights Essay: Conclusion

A conclusion restates your central ideas and thesis statement. Approach it as a summary of your essay, avoid providing new facts or arguments.

✍️ Animal Rights Essay Example (200 Words)

Why is animal welfare important? The term “animal welfare” evokes the pictures of happy cows from a milk advertisement. But the reality has nothing to do with these bright videos. Humane treatment of animals is a relative concept. This essay explains why animal welfare is important, despite that it does not prevent farms from killing or confining animals.

The best way to approach animal welfare is by thinking of it as a temporary measure. We all agree that the current state of the economy does not allow humanity to abandon animal-based production. Moreover, such quick decisions could make farm animals suffer even more. But ensuring the minimum possible pain is the best solution as of the moment.

The current legislation on animal welfare is far from perfect. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 prevents cruelty against animals in labs and zoos. Meanwhile, the majority of suffering animals do not fall under its purview. For example, it says nothing about the vivisection of rats and mice for educational and research purposes, although the procedure is extremely painful for the creature. Neither does it protect farm animals.

Unfortunately, the principles of animal welfare leave too much room for interpretation. Animals should be free from fear and stress, but how can we measure that? They should be allowed to engage in natural behaviors, but no confined space would let them do so. Thus, the legislation is imprecise.

The problem of animal welfare is almost unresolvable because it is a temporary measure to prevent any suffering of domesticated animals. It has its drawbacks but allows us to ensure at least some comfort for those we unjustifiably use for food. They have the same right to live on this planet as we do, and animal farming will be stopped one day.

📊 Bonus: Statistics & Facts for Your Animal Rights Essay Introduction

Improve the quality of your essay on animal rights by working in the following statistics and facts about animals.

• According to USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service , about 4.6 billion animals — including hogs, sheep, cattle, chickens, ducks, lambs, and turkey — were killed and used for food in the United States last year (2015).
• People in the U.S. kill over 100 million animals for laboratory experiments every year, according to PETA .
• More than 40 million animals are killed for fur worldwide every year. About 30 million animals are raised and killed on fur farms, and nearly 10 million wild animals are hunted and killed for the same reasons — for their valuable fur.
• According to a report by In Defense of Animals , hunters kill more than 200 million animals in the United States yearly.
• The Humane Society of the United States notes that a huge number of cats and dogs — between 3 and 4 million each year — are killed in the country’s animal shelters. Sadly, this number does not include dogs or cats killed in animal cruelty cases.
• According to the ASPCA , about 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters in the United States yearly. Of this number, 3.9 Mil of dogs, and 3.4 Mil of cats.
• About 2.7 million animals are euthanized in shelters every year (1.4 million cats and 1.2 million dogs).
• About 2.7 million shelter animals are adopted every year (1.3 million cats and 1.4 million dogs).
• In total, there are approximately 70-80 million dogs and 74-96 million cats living as pets in the United States.
• It’s impossible to determine the exact number of stray cats and dogs living in the United States, but the number of cats is estimated to be up to 70 million.
• Many stray cats and dogs were once family pets — but they were not kept securely indoors or provided with proper identification.

Each essay on animals rights makes humanity closer to a better and more civilized world. Please share any thoughts and experience in creating such texts in the comments below. And if you would like to hear how your essay would sound in someone’s mind, use our Text-To-Speech tool .

• Why Animal Rights? | PETA
• Animal Rights – Encyclopedia Britannica
• Animal ethics: Animal rights – BBC
• Animal Health and Welfare – National Agricultural Library
• The Top 10 Animal Rights Issues – Treehugger
• Animal welfare – European Commission

Research Paper Analysis: How to Analyze a Research Article + Example

Film analysis: example, format, and outline + topics & prompts.

The Top 10 Animal Rights Issues

• University of Southern California

• Ohio Wesleyan University
• Brandeis University
• Northeastern University
• Animal Rights
• Endangered Species

Here is a list of the top animal rights issues being discussed, based on the effects on animals and the numbers of animals and people involved. It's all due to the human population, which is over 7.7 billion people and growing.

Human Overpopulation

Human overpopulation is the No. 1 threat to wild and domestic animals worldwide. Whatever humans do to use, abuse, kill, or displace animals is magnified by the number of people on the planet, which is over 7.7 billion as of March 2021. While developing nations are experiencing greater population growth , those in developing nations generally consume more meat, and consequently have a greater impact.

Property Status of Animals

Hero Images/Getty Images

Every animal use and abuse stems from their treatment as human property , to be used for human purposes no matter how trivial. From a practical standpoint, changing the property status of animals would benefit pets and their human guardians. We could start by referring to domestic animals living with us as "companion animals" instead of pets and referring to people caring for them as "guardians," not owners. Most dog and cat guardians refer to them as their "fur children" and consider them members of the family.

With millions of cats and dogs killed in shelters every year, nearly all activists agree that people should spay and neuter their pets. Some activists oppose keeping pets, but no one wants to take your dog from you. A very small number of activists oppose sterilization because they believe it infringes on the animal's right to be free from human intervention.

Enrique Díaz/7cero/Getty Images

Veganism is more than a diet. It's about abstaining from all animal use and animal products, whether it's meat, milk, leather, wool, or silk. People who follow a plant-based diet may be doing it for ethical or nutritional reasons, while those who adopt a vegan diet for nutritional reasons might not abstain from buying or wearing leather or even fur. They aren't vegan because they love animals, but because they want to live a healthier lifestyle.

Factory Farming

PeopleImages/Getty Images 

Although factory farming involves many cruel practices, it isn't just those practices that are objectionable. The use of animals and animal products for food is antithetical to animal rights .

Fish and Fishing

Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images

Many people have a hard time understanding objections to eating fish, but fish do feel pain . Also, overfishing threatens the survival of those that make up the marine ecosystem, in addition to the species targeted by commercial fisheries. So  fish farms are not the answer.

'Humane' Meat

Allan Baxter/Getty Images

While some animal protection organizations promote "humane" meat , others believe that the term is an oxymoron. Each side argues that its position helps animals.

Animal Experimentation

Isarapab Chumruksa/EyeEm/Getty Images

Some animal advocates argue that the results of experiments on animals are invalid when applied to humans, but regardless of whether the data helps humans, performing experiments on them violates their rights. Don't expect the ​ Animal Welfare Act to protect them; many species used in experiments are not covered under the AWA .

Johner Images/Getty Images

Animal rights activists oppose any killing of an animal for meat, whether it's done in a slaughterhouse or a forest, but there are arguments specifically against hunting that are important to ​understand.

Alexandra C. Ribeiro/EyeEm/Getty Images

Whether captured in a trap, raised on a fur farm or bludgeoned to death on an ice floe, animals suffer and die for fur. Although fur coats have fallen out of fashion, fur trim is still widely available and sometimes isn't even labeled as real fur.

Animals in Entertainment

andreroseta/Getty Images

Greyhound racing, horse racing, rodeos, marine mammals on display, and animals used in movies and television are treated as chattel. Where there is exploitation for money, the potential for abuse is a constant problem. To achieve the behavior necessary to appear in movies or commercials, animals are often mistreated into submission. In other instances, the fact that they are not allowed to follow their natural behavior can result in catastrophic consequences, as was the case with Travis the chimp.

How You Can Help

 BluIz60/Getty Images

Trying to understand and take on "animal rights" as a whole can be daunting. Many issues concerning animal rights are fluid and evolutionary, with legislative changes occurring every day at the state and federal level.  For example, Grey2KUSA Worldwide announced on May 13, 2016, that Arizona became the 40th state to ​ ban greyhound racing . If you want to help, choose an issue or a few issues about which you are passionate and find other activists who share your concerns.

• Animal Rights Versus Animal Welfare
• Responses to Top Arguments Against Animal Rights
• Why Animal Rights Activists Are Against the AKC
• What is the LD50 or Lethal Dose 50 Test?
• Animal Rights and the Ethics of Testing
• What's Wrong with Eating Pork?
• Animal Cruelty in Circuses
• Why Is Veal Considered Inhumane?
• The Argument for Animal Rights
• What Are Animal Rights?
• Why Animal Rights Activists Oppose Foie Gras
• Arguments About Animal Rights
• How Animal Rights Activists View Zoos Keeping Endangered Species
• Basic Tenets of Animal Rights
• What's the Difference Between a Zoo and a Sanctuary?
• Is It Time to Say Goodbye to the Circus?

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Animal Rights Arguments Example

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Animal Rights Movement: Understanding When and Why It Started

Introduction

The animal rights movement has progressed with time, reflecting our growing knowledge of animals’ needs and changing attitudes toward their treatment. What can animal advocates learn from looking back at how the animal rights movement came to be? In this article, we’ll explore the concept of animal rights and the history of the animal rights movement, delving into its early days, goals, challenges, and evolution in the modern era.

Do Animals Have Rights?

The belief that nonhuman animals have intrinsic value and the right to be treated with respect and compassion has existed in some form for millennia. For example, the Indian principle of ahiṃsā , which preaches nonviolence toward all living beings, dates back to the 9th century BCE and is observed in religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism to this day. Throughout history, however, humans have generally regarded animals as commodities with no inherent rights. One of the first prominent figures to discuss animals’ moral value, 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, promoted a particularly callous view of animals. He argued that animals lacked a mind and could not feel pain, justifying cruel acts such as live vivisection. This sentiment fortunately lost favor as humans’ understanding of animal cognition, emotions, and sentience deepened.

Why Are Animal Rights Important?

Animals are sentient beings capable of experiencing pain, suffering, and joy. Respecting their rights to not be harmed, captured, taken away from their habitat, abused, confined, or killed for human purposes is in line with moral principles such as empathy, compassion, and ethical conduct. By securing animal rights, we can greatly minimize the amount of pain and suffering in the world. Acknowledging animal rights also benefits humans. For example, improving the living conditions of animals on farms decreases the likelihood of disease transmission to humans. Similarly, reducing meat consumption can help curb the impact of climate change and preserve ecosystems.

When Did the Animal Rights Movement Start?

The modern-day animal rights movement traces back to the Industrial Revolution, when rapid industrialization and urbanization spurred massive changes across Europe and North America. Along with other industries, traditional farming practices were replaced by large-scale, profit-driven factory farms and slaughterhouses. The dangerous, unsanitary, and traumatic working conditions in these meat industry facilities were famously depicted in Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle . People began to question the treatment of workers and animals in this new industrial era, leading to the first organized animal advocacy efforts.

Who Started the First Animal Rights Movement?

Several people played a role in the development of the animal rights movement, although a few individuals are often credited with starting it. One of these individuals is Richard Martin, an Irish politician who passed one of the first farmed animal welfare laws (the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act) in 1822 and founded the first animal welfare charity (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in 1824. Another prominent figure of the early animal rights movement is Henry Stephens Salt, an English writer and social reformer who argued in favor of animal rights in his 1892 book Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress.

What Are the Goals of the Animal Rights Movement?

The goals of the animal rights movement have evolved over time, with early efforts more focused on soliciting compassion for animals and modern efforts more focused on reducing animal consumption or securing legal protection. Today, the end goal of the animal rights movement is to abolish all human activities that cause animal suffering, including factory farming, animal experimentation, and habitat destruction. Animal rights advocates focus on various causes and use different approaches to achieve this goal. Our Menu of Interventions presents a range of these strategies and their potential positive outcomes for animals.

What Laws Protect Animal Rights?

Animal rights laws vary significantly among countries, states, and jurisdictions. Although most countries still do not recognize animal rights or sentience, several have implemented laws to protect certain species against cruelty and neglect. Laws range from basic anti-cruelty protections to more nuanced regulations designed to address animal treatment in specific contexts. Companion animals tend to receive greater protection than farmed and wild animals, as industries routinely challenge new and existing legislation.

Was the Animal Rights Movement Successful?

Although there have been considerable advancements in animal welfare, the animal rights movement still faces challenges. Legal and societal shifts have resulted in better protections against animal cruelty and exploitation, but enforcement remains weak, welfare considerations for farmed animals are lacking, and few countries officially recognize animal sentience in law. Nevertheless, the movement has made significant progress by banning certain cruel practices, improving living conditions for animals, and shifting public opinion.

What Did the Animal Rights Movement Accomplish?

The animal rights movement has accomplished several significant changes and advancements over the years, although the extent of these accomplishments varies by species and region. Some notable accomplishments of the animal rights movement include:

• Raising public awareness about the treatment of animals in various industries, such as factory farming, entertainment, and research
• Influencing the creation and enforcement of laws and regulations aimed at protecting animals, covering areas such as animal cruelty, animal testing, and wildlife conservation
• Improving conditions for farmed animals in some regions, with some companies and farms adopting more humane practices, larger enclosures, and better living conditions for animals
• Addressing issues like poaching, illegal wildlife trade, and the use of animals in entertainment
• Pressuring companies to adopt more ethical and sustainable sources in their supply chains

The growth of the animal rights movement has also resulted in increased collaboration with other causes, such as environmental protection, social justice, labor rights, and human health. This approach addresses the broader context in which animal suffering occurs and builds alliances for more effective advocacy.

When Did Effective Animal Advocacy Emerge?

Effective animal advocacy (EAA) emerged during the early days of Effective Altruism (EA), a movement that uses evidence and reason to identify the most effecient and impactful ways to do good. EA gained prominence in the 21st century and quickly spread to philanthropic spaces, including the animal rights movement. The first group solely dedicated to effective animal advocacy, Effective Animal Activism, was founded in 2012 as an intern project of 80,000 Hours —a U.K.-based organization that guides individuals toward high-impact careers. Effective Animal Activism sought to improve animal welfare as much as possible, despite the lack of evidence-based guidance on the most effective ways to do so.

Growth of Effective Animal Advocacy

Effective Animal Activism’s earliest efforts consisted of evaluating animal charities, expanding the effective animal advocacy community, and providing career advice to aspiring animal advocates. In 2013, the group merged with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and revised its mission to finding and promoting highly effective opportunities to help animals, soon rebranding as Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE). Charity evaluations became ACE’s core, and we remained the most prominent organization in EAA for years. Through introspection and the growth of EAA, we realized the limitations of our approach in directing funds to smaller groups in underrepresented regions. To address this gap, we introduced the Movement Grants Program.

How Did Effective Animal Advocacy Impact the Animal Rights Movement?

Effective animal advocacy has influenced the animal rights movement by popularizing data-driven approaches with measurable impact, leading to more strategic and cost-effective advocacy efforts. Despite its positive impacts, EAA has also been criticized for its quantitative focus, lack of diversity, prioritization methods, and association with the EA movement. As a prominent figure in the EAA space, ACE carefully considers these critiques and continually reassesses our approach to ensure we support the entire animal rights movement as best we can.

From ancient principles of nonviolence to modern legal debates, the animal rights movement is larger and more relevant than ever before. While many challenges lie ahead, the movement’s forward progress is undeniable. Will you help us advance it even further?

ACE is dedicated to maximizing the impact of every donation we receive. By becoming an ACE monthly donor, you can make the most of your desire to help animals and provide us with a stable foundation to plan and execute long-term projects that drive meaningful change for animals. Together, we can work toward a world where animal rights are valued and respected.

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About Selena Darlim

Selena joined ACE in September 2021. She is a longtime animal advocate with several years’ experience writing for nonprofits and media organizations. She holds a self-designed bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Conservation and Animal Advocacy, and she strives to continually expand her knowledge of human and nonhuman advocacy movements.

At the risk of appearing to lack humility, the concept of Effective Animal Advocacy started earlier, with the launch of Faunalytics (then called the Humane Research Council) in 2000. We may have not used the same terminology, but we had a similar sense of cause prioritization and a clear focus on evaluation and effectiveness for both individual groups and the movement. This is a part of our movement’s history that I think is often overlooked by EAAs.

Hi Che. Thank you for reading this article and providing additional background around the movement. We update our pages periodically, and we’ll make sure to take this into account in our next revision.

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Turning the Tide on Animal Suffering

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

In 1971, a half-dozen graduate students at Oxford University held what was perhaps the first protest of the modern animal rights movement. They insisted that respecting animals was a moral imperative.

And the world changed.

No, not right away. But one of those students, a young Australian philosopher named Peter Singer, turned his ideas into a transformative 1975 book, “Animal Liberation,” that was initially mocked for overreach. “The animal movement was still widely seen as crackpot,” Singer recalls.

Yet to anyone who thinks that ideas are irrelevant in a practical age, think again. His arguments stirred a slow-motion revolution that has changed the way we treat other animals.

Singer has just issued a new edition of the book, updated and titled “Animal Liberation Now.” It’s a monument to the remarkable spread of the ideas he articulated in 1975. At least nine states and the European Union now ban veal crates, hen cages or tight stalls for sows. The top supermarket chains in America have agreed to sell only cage-free eggs by 2026, and McDonald’s has done the same.

A court in Argentina accepted that habeas corpus rights apply to a chimpanzee. Israel and California have banned the sale of fur coats. Pope Francis has suggested that animals go to Heaven and that the Virgin Mary “grieves for the sufferings” of mistreated livestock.

How times have changed. When Mary Wollstonecraft advocated for the rights of women in 1792, that seemed to some so ridiculous that a satirist mocked her by calling for the rights of animals as well. Now it’s unquestioned (at least in the abstract) that rights extend to people of all races and religions, including women, and in some cases to animals as well. When voters face referendums on animal rights, they often approve them by large margins.

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Animal Rights: The Simple Idea That Sparked a Movement

Animal rights is a revolutionary idea and social movement that requires humans to reexamine their relationship with animals, especially animals used for food.

Explainer • Policy • Reflections

Words by Hemi Kim

There are many awkward conversations you might have at family or work meetings as the singular vegan . It’s possible to find yourself carefully describing your food choices, aware that you are on the edge of disassembling a joyous bulgogi dish into the painful experiences that were required to produce it. Talking about issues related to animal rights can be emotionally difficult especially when eating with and cooking for others is a love language; rejecting family and friends’ cooking can be hurtful. 

Yet animal advocates have managed to tap into common, shared values, successfully encouraging more and more people to reexamine what living their values really looks like, especially values of respect, empathy, imagination, cooperation, adaptability, and compassion for all living beings. 

Do Animals Have Rights?

In the United States, many animals are defined as property and do not have rights in the same sense that humans have rights. At least 13 nations have symbolically acknowledged the dignity and personhood of nonhuman animals or the need to show compassion towards them as something other than objects in their constitutions . (These are Brazil, Germany, India, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, the Iroquois Nations, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, the People’s Republic of China, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia.) Yet such acknowledgments remain largely lip service—the animals in these thirteen nations are still treated similarly, both culturally and legally, to the animals in any other country. 

Nevertheless, animal studies researchers such as Maneesha Deckha often see potential in the “shift in legal standing of nonhumans that constitutional recognition can precipitate.”

One advocacy approach seeks to translate the moral rights of animals into practical change by expanding how the law views animals: from property to personhood . Legal status as a person is something that U.S. courts have given to corporations, ships, and “entities of nature,” according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund , and it has been conferred on individual great apes outside the United States. Read more about the nuances of how advocates are trying to improve the status and legal protections of animals here .

What Are Animal Rights?   

Animal rights form part of a way of thinking about nonhuman animals as off-limits for human exploitation. People that espouse this way of thinking try to direct their own and others’ behaviors away from eating, dressing, conducting scientific experiments, and being entertained in ways that involve harm to nonhuman animals. 

Animal rights is also a broad term describing animal advocacy , and the social movement focused on improving the lives of nonhuman animals. Yet the term “animal rights activist” can be alienating , which may be why groups prefer to use the terms “animal protection” or “animal advocates.” 

When Did the Animal Rights Movement Begin in the U.S.?   

The modern animal rights movement in the United States saw a major milestone in the 1970s with the publication of Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation,” in which he argued that it was ethically important that nonhuman animals feel pain, and that this fact demanded far more equal treatment of nonhuman animals and humans. He also popularized the term “ speciesism ” to describe what happens when nonhuman animals are not given the same consideration as humans. Other thinkers, writers, and activist groups have also notably furthered and developed the fabric of the animal rights movement, both before and since Singer’s book, including Tom Regan and PETA.

Singer’s text itself reportedly sits on the shoulders of at least one British author who lived about a century prior. And for many centuries European travelers to India have learned about, and been attracted to, the concept of ahimsa and care for animals. Ahimsa , documented as early as the eighth century B.C. in Indian religious texts—Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist—affirms nonviolence and the alleviation of the suffering of all beings.

From the perspectives of scholars such as Cree writer Billy Ray Belcourt, and vegan theorists such as Aph and Syl Ko, the modern divide between animals and humans works in tandem with the imposition of white supremacy: on Indigenous people whose land was stolen by settler-colonists and who were targets of genocide, and on Black and Brown people who were and often continue to be treated as less than human.

Thus the animal protection movement in the United States is limited by the legacies and habits of thought of settler colonialism and other oppressions, and the history of the movement is whitewashed—something that people are now trying to undo. Belcourt, for example, argued in a 2020 article that people concerned with living ethically must challenge the white supremacy underpinning many efforts to expand the rights of nonhuman animals, and instead look to Indigenous traditions that see “animals as kin who co-produce a way of life that engenders care rather than and contra to suffering.”

What’s the Difference Between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights?   

The terms “animal welfare” and “animal rights” are similar, but animal rights is a broader idea than animal welfare. Animal welfare refers to the responsibility of humans to treat nonhuman animals well and directly care for their health, but without challenging the overall circumstances that animals find themselves in or the ways they are used in society. 

For example, an animal welfare advocate may be vigilant about how animals such as bears and apes are treated in the movie industry when they are working on a set. An animal rights proponent may instead call for an end to the use of animals in films altogether. 

Another example of animal welfare is when people campaign for better treatment of young chickens before they are slaughtered. Though groups that campaign for animal welfare may also support goals that are compatible with animal rights, for example when promoting the consumption of plant-based foods.

What Are Some Examples of Animal Rights?

Animal rights supporters tend to be concerned that people use animals as a means to an end, typically without the animals’ assent to participate in an activity. In addition to the examples below, common areas of concern for animal rights include clothing, makeup, scientific experimentation, sports, and wildlife.

Animal Agriculture

Hogs are not just the source material for a good slow roast, crispy bacon, and pork belly. The pork industry also disassembles pigs for their parts to be used as ingredients in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other scientific endeavors. People who support animal rights tend to oppose all farming of livestock and fish. The fictional film “Okja” is often cited as an animal rights story dealing with these issues—one that is sympathetic to animals sent to slaughter. 

Entertainment

Circuses, zoos, and aquariums have been the subject of animal rights campaigns and popular documentaries, such as “Blackfish” , that have resulted in changes to how the entertainment industry markets animal-based entertainment.

Companionship and Working Animals

People concerned with animal rights might be more concerned with the potential for conscripting an animal into an unhealthy situation that exploits their labor than they would be about the benefits to humans of emotional support animals or land-mine-sniffing rats. 

Animal Rights Arguments: Pros and Cons   

The arguments of critics and supporters of animal protection can seem as diverse as the number of people who express an opinion. Below are some common reasons why people may feel pulled toward or away from animal rights causes.

Arguments in Favor of Animal Rights

In “Aphro-ism” , Syl and Aph Ko promote a view of animal rights within Black Veganism that sees animal rights as essential to ending racism. They write sensitively about the topic in a way that acknowledges how white supremacy has animalized Black people. They also draw a line from the oppression of nonhuman animals to white supremacy and convincingly argue that being antiracist is essential to animal liberation.

People allied with animal rights might also include Coast Salish activists in the Block Corporate Salmon campaign, who identify themselves as Salmon People and oppose the introduction of genetically modified fish to the local wildlife environment.

Arguments Against Animal Rights

People who oppose animal rights might see animals as property, and inferior to humans. They might argue that eating meat is a natural feature of the food chain, or that nonhuman animals exist for the benefit of humans . 

Sometimes, deciding to disregard animal rights is a matter of practicality. For example, using life-saving products that were created with scientific research that relied on experimentation on nonhuman animals, as is the case with vaccines and pharmaceutical medicines. 

As animal advocate, Christopher Soul Eubanks wrote in March 2021, “To Black people and non-vegans of all races, the animal rights movement can appear as an affluent far-left group who ignore the systemic oppression they have benefited from while using that affluence to advocate for nonhumans.” Indeed, roughly 9 out of 10 people working for farmed animal protection organizations are white. In a more racially equitable world, that number would be closer to 6 in the United States. 

Colonialist harms brought about by animal rights and vegan activism can be investigated: it’s something people of the global majority and others have begun.

Why Are Animal Rights Important?   

“Being labeled less-than-human” is a condition that most people experience, one that Black and other oppressed peoples live daily, according to Aph Ko in a chapter of “Aphro-Ism.” Ko also writes in a later chapter that “‘[a]nimal’ is a category that we shove certain bodies into when we want to justify violence against them, which is why animal liberation should concern all who are minoritized, because at any moment you can become an ‘animal’ and be considered disposable.” 

For Ko, being a critical thinker is more important than believing popular, yet false, narratives about oneself and nonhuman animals. This desire to re-evaluate what one thinks is a launching point for Afrofuturist possibilities, or Black-centered creativity , a philosophical wellspring for Black veganism. You can read more about Black veganism here , here , and here .

Animal rights, then, is an opportunity to constantly ask tough questions. And asking questions creates spaces within which vulnerable communities can flourish. For antiracist humane educator Dana McPhall , the following questions guide her work:

“So what would it look like to imagine a world where I’m not defined by the racial and gender constructs imposed upon me? Where people racialized as white are no longer invested in whiteness? Where the lives of nonhuman animals are no longer circumscribed within the social construct “animal?” Where huge swaths of our planet are not considered disposable, along with the people and wildlife who inhabit them?”

What Are the Consequences of Animal Rights?

Results of animal rights activism include the increasing popularity of vegan food products, a ban on selling fur in California, and state bans on using most animals in circuses. Keeping up with Sentient Media is one way to see these types of stories as they proliferate.

Ending Suffering Wherever It Persists

Nonhuman animals’ rights are not so much a question of legality or illegality, especially as laws tend to treat them as property. They are rather a way of thinking about what is morally right in a given cultural context. Avoiding the suffering of animals and respecting their right to exist are basic tenets of animal protection. As a way of thinking and being in community with others, animal rights can be an invitation for learning and imagining. Animal advocates of all races can dismantle white supremacy and undo “isms” by re-centering the experiences of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and other previously “less-than-human” people.

Independent Journalism Needs You

Hemi is a writer and educator.

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Essay on Animal Rights

Students are often asked to write an essay on Animal Rights in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Animal Rights

Understanding animal rights.

Animal rights mean animals should be free from human harm, abuse, or use for personal gains. It’s the belief that animals deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. This concept is based on the idea that animals have feelings and interests just like humans.

Importance of Animal Rights

Animal rights are important because animals are living beings. They feel pain, experience emotions, and want to live a life free from harm. By respecting animal rights, we show our respect for all life forms. We also help maintain balance in nature.

Threats to Animal Rights

Animals face many threats. These include hunting, habitat loss, and cruel treatment in farms or circuses. Many animals are also used for scientific experiments. These practices cause pain and suffering to animals. They are clear violations of animal rights.

Steps to Protect Animal Rights

We can protect animal rights in many ways. We can adopt pets instead of buying them. We can avoid products tested on animals. We can also support organizations that work for animal rights. Teaching others about animal rights is another effective way to help.

Also check:

250 Words Essay on Animal Rights

What are animal rights.

Animal rights mean that animals deserve to live free from suffering, pain, and exploitation. This idea is based on the belief that animals have feelings too. They can feel joy, sadness, and pain just like us humans. So, they should be treated with kindness and respect.

Why are Animal Rights Important?

Animal rights are important for many reasons. Firstly, animals are living beings, not objects. They should not be used for our selfish needs like food, clothing, or entertainment. Secondly, respecting animal rights helps us become better humans. It teaches us values like compassion, empathy, and respect for all life. Lastly, animals play a crucial role in our ecosystem. If we harm them, it can disturb the balance of nature.

How can we Protect Animal Rights?

Protecting animal rights is not hard. We can start by being kind to animals. We should not hurt them or make them suffer. We can also stop using products that are tested on animals. Many companies test their products on animals, causing them pain and suffering. By refusing to buy such products, we can stand up for animal rights.

Role of Laws in Protecting Animal Rights

Many countries have laws to protect animal rights. These laws make it illegal to harm animals or use them in cruel ways. But, these laws are not always followed. So, it’s important for us to raise our voice against animal cruelty. We can report cases of animal abuse to the authorities and demand strict action.

500 Words Essay on Animal Rights

Animal rights mean that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration—what’s best for them. Regardless of how useful they are to humans, or how cute they are, they should be treated with respect. They should not be hurt or treated badly. Some people think animals should have the same rights as humans, while others believe they should have different rights.

Animal rights are important because animals are living beings. They can feel pain, they can suffer, and they have a will to live. Just like humans, they have feelings and emotions. They deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. Animal rights also help people. When we treat animals well, we also learn to treat people well.

Types of Animal Rights

The second type is ‘animal liberation’. This means that animals should be free and not used by humans at all. People who believe in animal liberation think that animals should not be kept in zoos or farms, used for testing, or used for entertainment.

Animal Rights and Laws

Many countries have laws to protect animals. These laws say that people cannot hurt animals or make them suffer. They also say that animals should be treated with respect. But, not all countries have these laws, and in many places, these laws are not followed.

Animal Rights Movements

What can we do.

There are many ways we can help animals and support animal rights. We can adopt pets instead of buying them. We can choose not to go to places that use animals for entertainment, like circuses and zoos. We can eat less meat or no meat at all. And, we can tell others about why animal rights are important.

In conclusion, animal rights are about respecting and caring for animals. They are about understanding that animals have feelings and deserve to be treated well. By supporting animal rights, we are not just helping animals, we are also making the world a better place for all living beings.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Introduction: What Are Animal Rights?

• Published: November 2005
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This introductory chapter explores the concept of animal rights. It shows the range of possible positions concerning the animal rights issue and explores what issues, of theory or fact, separate reasonable people. The chapter claims that in at least some sense, almost everyone believes in animal rights, and that the real question is about what the phrase ‘animal rights’ actually means. It discusses the provisions of some state laws concerning animal rights, and the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. The introduction also explains the objectives of this book, which are to bring some new clarity to the animal rights debate, and to chart some new directions for both practice and theory.

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Articles on Animal rights

Displaying 1 - 20 of 73 articles.

The Paris Olympics horse-whipping scandal shows the dangers of ‘Disneyfication’ in horse sports

Susan Hopkins , University of Southern Queensland

Our beef with ‘Big Meat’: the power perpetuating Australia’s live export trade is at play elsewhere

Katherine Sievert , Deakin University and Christine Parker , The University of Melbourne

Is seeing believing? Not really, so animal welfare campaigns should take a different approach

Pablo P. Castello , Queen's University, Ontario

London’s runaway horses remind us that animals are workers too

Helen Wadham , Manchester Metropolitan University ; Carlos Monterrubio , Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico , and Kate Dashper , Leeds Beckett University

Friday essay: from political bees to talking pigs – how ancient thinkers saw the human-animal  divide

Julia Kindt , University of Sydney

5 ways to make Christmas lunch more ethical this year

Rebecca Reynolds , UNSW Sydney

How the world might look if animals had legal rights

Steve Cooke , University of Leicester

Memes about animal resistance are everywhere — here’s why you shouldn’t laugh off rebellious orcas and sea otters too quickly

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond , University of California, San Diego

Peter Singer’s fresh take on Animal Liberation – a book that changed the world, but not enough

Simon Coghlan , The University of Melbourne

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ urges us to defend real animals

Kendra Coulter , Western University

A horse died on the set of The Rings of Power: more needs to be done to ensure the welfare of horses used in entertainment

Karen Luke , CQUniversity Australia

How Indigenous philosophies can improve the way Canadians treat animals

Courtney Graham , University of Guelph

What is ethical animal research? A scientist and veterinarian explain

Lana Ruvolo Grasser , National Institutes of Health and Rachelle Stammen , Emory University

Talking things out: How institutional transparency could improve animal research

Michael W. Brunt , University of Guelph

Why ‘mercy’ killing wild animals is so controversial

Ellen Deelen , Utrecht University and Franck Meijboom , Utrecht University

From AIs to an unhappy elephant, the legal question of who is a person is approaching a reckoning

Joshua Jowitt , Newcastle University

Bias, politics and protests: how human laws constrain and sometimes liberate animals

Siobhan O'Sullivan , UNSW Sydney

The war in Ukraine is powerfully magnifying our love for animals

Kendra Coulter , Brock University

Cow documentary shows the need for fundamental legal rights for animals

Joe Wills , University of Leicester

Pet theft: criminalisation isn’t the animal welfare boon the government promises

Iyan Offor , Birmingham City University

Related Topics

• Animal cruelty
• Animal ethics
• Animal welfare

Top contributors

Professor, Management and Organizational Studies, Huron University College and Coordinator of Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership, Western University

Senior Lecturer in Digital Ethics, Centre for AI and Digital Ethics, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

Associate professor, UNSW Sydney

Lecturer in Criminology, Edith Cowan University

Professor of Bioethics in the Center for Human Values, Princeton University

Professor of Organization and Business Ethics, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Postdoctoral Researcher in Mitochondrial Biology and Metabolism, University of Padua

Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Exeter

Associate Professor of Communication, Georgia State University

Senior research fellow, University of Stirling

PhD in urban planning, The University of Melbourne

Adjunct Professor of Law, Rutgers University - Newark

Veterinarian, University of Sydney

Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Science Engagement, University of East Anglia

Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Oregon

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Arguments for Animal Rights Research Paper

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Introduction

Arguments for animal rights, conclusion and recommendations, works cited.

For a long time, many human societies have viewed animals as sources of food, labor, and clothing. This view (partly) stems from religious influences, which define people’s perceptions of animal rights. For example, Christian teachings show that God gave man the power to control all animals (on land and in the sea). Therefore, many Christian societies know that human beings are superior to animals.

Philosophers, such as Aristotle, also supported the above-mentioned religious arguments by ranking animals in the lowest cadre of living things (Taylor 36). Although the Greek philosopher explored the differences and similarities between both species, he said animals were a “lower-stature” species (compared to human beings) because they could not reason, think, or have beliefs, as people do (Taylor 36). These ancient perceptions of animals largely explain the background of animal rights debates. They also explain how different societies treat animals today.

Relative to how people treat animals, Singera (13) says, in 2001, North American farmers raised and killed about 17 billion land animals for human consumption. Scientists in America and Europe killed another 100 million animals for experimental purposes (Singera 13). People killed about 30 million more land animals for their fur (Singera 13).

Most of these animals lived and died in morally repugnant circumstances. Such “inhuman” treatments continue unabated because many societies believe animals do not have any rights. This paper seeks to change this narrative by focusing on pets and arguing for their rights. Although it explores critics’ arguments too, it shows that, like human beings, pets are emotional creatures and not property items, as many people would like to believe. Therefore, it is immoral to mistreat them.

Pets can feel Emotion and Pain as People do

Singera (1) is widely considered as the greatest pioneer of animal rights. He said human beings do not have a special status above other animals. For him, the degree that both species experience when feeling pleasure or pain is the only difference between animals and human beings. Since both groups have a threshold of pain, Singera (1) does not understand why people do not protect animals the same way they protect their offspring. Here, Singera (1) strives to eliminate the differences between animals and human beings to advance animal rights.

Linker (9) supports this view by saying, “Once the dividing line between humans and animals disappears, it is hard to uphold any fundamental ethical distinction between them.” Steve Wise, an American Law Professor (cited in Linker 9), similarly advances the above argument by using a different justification for supporting animal rights. Instead of using shared pain and pleasure to show the similarities between people and animals, he strives to elevate animals to human status. For example, he criticizes people who view animals as property because he believes animals could reason as human beings do.

For example, he says Chimpanzees have this ability (Linker 9). He uses this argument to say their reasoning ability makes them more valuable than other types of property. Therefore, he believes animals share the same dignity as people do. Referring to Wise’s argument, Linker (12) says, “if he can demonstrate that certain higher animals possess the same intrinsic dignity that human beings do, the law within liberal democracies will be obliged to recognize that such animals are persons possessing at least some fundamental, inviolable rights.”

The above arguments show no significant differences between people and animals. In terms of shared emotion and pain, Singerb (11) says scientists infer almost all human physiological pain manifestations on other species. He particularly draws our attention to animals that are close to us – mammals and birds. He says, “Their behavioral signs include writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping, or other forms of calling, attempts to avoid the source of pain, appearance of fear at the prospect of its repetition, and so on” (Singerb 11).

Indeed, like how human beings behave (when they feel pain) animals show the same physiological symptoms of pain, such as dilated pupils, increased pulse rates, and increased blood pressure. To explain this commonality, Grandin (141) says both species have similar nervous systems. In line with this argument, Singerb (11) emphasizes that the nervous systems of animals evolved the same way the nervous systems of human beings did. Their ability to feel pain is part of their survival tactics because they use it to avoid injury and death.

Grandin (141) says animals also experience fear, the same way human beings do. Certainly, although fear is subjective, it causes significant stress to animals. This is why advocates of animal rights say they need environmental enrichments to prevent them from developing irregular developmental patterns, such as EEG patterns (Grandin 141). Relative to this argument, Grandin (141) says people’s nervous systems do not differ with that of higher animals. For example, scientific evidence shows that the nervous systems of chimpanzees, dogs, and cows are like that of human beings (Grandin 141).

The genome project also supports the same finding by showing that people’s gene make-up is like a mouse’s gene makeup (Grandin 141). Relative to this fact, Grandin (141) says mammals have more than 30% of their genes designed to serve nervous system functions. These similarities explain why some animals adopt human-like behaviors, such as self-medication. For example, studies have shown that rats self-medicate when they suffer from arthritis (Grandin 141). Besides these behavioral similarities, animals are as social as human beings are (Grandin 142).

Although some people may not support these facts, scientific evidence suggests that most animals perceive pain the same way human beings do. Governments have used this evidence to protect animal rights in many parts of the world. For example, three separate government committees (on animal welfare), in the UK, affirm that most animals feel pain (Singerb 13). However, Grandin (140) says we need more research to explain the extent that these animals experience the pain.

Animals are not Property

Taylor (36) says until the early 1900s, many people saw animals as worthless creatures. In fact, many societies could not accord a “property status” to them because of spite (Taylor 36). Therefore, the law permitted people to steal and kill animals without any consequences. The abolition approach has strived to change people’s perception of animals (as property).

It says that focusing on animal welfare distracts people from eliminating property rights on animal ownership (Grandin 140). Instead, the theory proposes a moral and legal paradigm shift, which strives to differentiate animals from other types of property (Grandin 140). To do so, the abolitionist approach encourages people to perceive animals as sentient creatures (having subjective awareness).

Proponents of this view say they do not need human-like rationalities to receive better treatment from people (Grandin 140). Therefore, since they are creatures that experience pain, they should belong to the moral community. This view differs with the animal rights view, which (only) supports the better treatment of human-like animals, such as apes, because their DNA make-up is more like human beings than other animals. As such, they say all animals are the same (Grandin 140). They also oppose treating animals as human property (merely) because they do not fit our conventional perceptions of property (Taylor 36).

Grandin (140) takes a more practical approach in elaborating the above point by comparing an animal and a screwdriver. He says that although many societies perceive them as property, they are different. To elaborate this point, he uses the US legal system and culture by highlighting how the law allows American citizens to sell, profit, and “eat” their property (among other utilities) (Grandin 140). Although property holders could do the above things, the law restricts them from committing the same acts on animals (the same restrictions do not apply to other properties).

For example, law enforcement officials could arrest a person for using a screwdriver to puncture a cow’s eye. However, they would not penalize the offender for using a hammer to deform a screwdriver. Based on this understanding, the status of animals has slowly changed, in America, because the law now recognizes animal rights. For example, all 50 states have introduced anti-cruelty laws that protect animals from mistreatment (Grimm 3). These laws allow judges to impose fines of up to $125,000, or a jail term of ten years on offenders (Grimm 4).

Similarly, many existing legislations support animal rights (such as the Federal Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, which requires rescue services to save animals, as they would rescue a human being) (Grimm 3). This trend has equally seen many judges treat dogs as people (some judges even allow dogs to have lawyers).

Consequently, some animals have received damages from the judges (Grimm 3). Other types of “property” do not receive the same status. Using the above examples, Grandin (140) supports the views of animal rights advocates who say animals need rights because they feel pain (a goat can feel pain, but a screwdriver cannot).

It is Immoral to Mistreat Animals

Although many researchers have used different criteria to explain the differences between man and animals, few have bothered to explain man’s higher reasoning that allows them to act ethically. Indeed, unlike many animals, human beings can understand the differences between right and wrong. Based on this higher level of reasoning, people can understand that it is wrong to mistreat animals because they do not have rights.

This argument stems from the immoral and heinous acts that some people do to animals and people alike. Here, it is irrelevant to distinguish between animals and human beings because inflicting pain on another animal is wrong (human beings are animals too). People who do so diminish the moral authority that human beings have on other species.

The utilitarian view condemns how people treat and use animals. This theory says people should evaluate the net use of animals (to human beings) and adopt strategies that lead to the overall net satisfaction of animal and human interests (Singerb 14). Relative to this view, the utilitarian view urges people to “act in such a way as to maximize the expected satisfaction of interests in the world, equally considered” (Singerb 14).

When we apply this theory to animal treatment, it encourages people to imagine themselves in conditions that the animals live and, afterwards, take the best course of action. Using a welfare approach, the theory argues that all people should treat animals in a “humane” way and avoid inflicting unnecessary pain on them. In line with this argument, Singera (1) says it is important for people to take animal rights seriously because species-bias (the justification that most people use to mistreat animals) is like racism and other social practices that many societies dislike.

He also believes that most people who oppose animal rights do so because they rely on invariable animal defects, like their lack of language skills, or advanced cognitive skills, to mistreat animals (Singerb 14). On the other side, the same people do not perceive mentally incapacitated human beings (who cannot talk or profess the same advanced cognitive skills as other people do) as animals. Based on this analysis, Francione (3) says species-bias is the only justification that most people use to exploit animals. However, this reasoning is unjust.

Arguments Against

Many people have used the utilitarian view to support animal rights. However, this view has significant weaknesses that undermine its applicability to animal rights. For example, proponents of these rights say animals have feelings, the way human beings do (Singerb 14). However, Nordin (2) questions the criterion that such people use to measure these feelings (no one has ever been a dog or a cat).

Stated differently, people have used physiological variations in a dog’s behavior to advance the view that they experience pain or emotion, but how do people know how much pain it is feeling? For example, is it correct to assume that a whimpering dog experiences the same pain as a human baby crying? Similarly, it is difficult to draw the same inferences about a dog’s pain to a whale, frog, or another animal. Therefore, many critics question whether animals could express the same emotions as grief, melancholy, and a deep interest in life, as human beings do.

Machan (1) is among groups of researchers who do not understand why animals should have the same rights as people do. Particularly, they say it is a mistake for the government to entrench animal rights in law. For example, they believe that those people who support animal rights should persuade other people to join their cause, as opposed to forcing them to do so, legally (Machan 1).

Stated differently, Machan (2) says if advocates of animal rights do not support killing animals for their fur, they should persuade people to stop buying coats, or other animal products, and not ban the use of the animal product. Again, this argument stems from the belief that no animal enjoys the same basic rights as people do. As shown above, Machan (3) believes that all people should start perceiving this matter as an ethical issue, as opposed to a legal issue. He says people can empathize with the pain that other people feel, but animals cannot.

Therefore, he opposes the views of animal rights advocates, such as Singerb (14). He argues that if animals could empathize with the pain of other animals, people should hold them to the same accountability standards as human beings do (Machan 3). For example, animals should punish other animals for killing and maiming their kind.

Since this suggestion is impractical, Machan (3) says animal advocates have misguided views. However, he defines this issue as a philosophical one (category mistake) because advocates of animal rights strive to impose their hopes and dreams on animals, using human perceptions about life. Overall, although these arguments largely describe the views of many animal right critics, they do not legitimize the inhumane treatment of animals.

The abolitionist and utilitarian views are sympathetic to animal causes. They differ from classical animal welfare views, which do not have a high regard for the creatures, or their rights. Nonetheless, this paper shows that all animals should have the same rights as human beings do because they experience, pain, fear, and emotions. Similarly, animals are not like other types of property because they are human-like. Based on these arguments alone, it is immoral to mistreat animals and cause unnecessary pain to them.

Proponents of animal rights advance the above views. However, their thoughts are not theories of animal rights; instead, they are moral judgments of human actions on animals. Such ideas come from the consequences of what we perceive as right or wrong. For example, if a person violated the right of a person, or an animal, because it produced more good than bad, the law should not punish him. Based on the findings of this research, the “good” includes giving animals the same rights as people do.

Francione, Gary. Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism: Relative Normative Guidance. September. 2003. PDF file.

Grandin, Temple. Animals Are Not Things: A View on Animal Welfare Based on Neurological, Complexity . 2014. PDF file.

Grimm, David. Should Pets Have the Same Legal Rights as People? 2014.

Linker, Damon. No, Animals Don’t Have Rights . 2014.

Machan, Tibor. Animals Do Not Have Rights . 2014.

Nordin, Ingemar. Animals Don’t Have Rights: A Philosophical Study . 2001. PDF file.

Singera, Peter. In Defense of Animals , Malded, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Print.

Singerb, Peter. Animal Liberation , New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002. Print.

Taylor, Angus. Animals and Ethics , New York, NY: Broadview Press, 2009. Print.

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Softlogic Holdings’ Rs. 3 b Rights Issue undersubscribed by Rs. 954 m

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Softlogic Holdings PLC’s Rs. 3 billion worth Rights Issue had been undersubscribed by Rs. 954 million. The company had a Rights Issue of 298,135,802 shares at Rs. 10 each and 178,881,481 Warrants (three warrants for every five rights shares subscribed) on offer. When the issue closed early September, total shares subscribed for amounted to 202.7 million worth Rs. 2.02 billion, whereas the full offer was for 298.13 million shares worth Rs. 2.98 billion. It closed with 95.42 million shares worth Rs. 954 million undersubscribed. Warrants issued were 57.25 million less than originally envisaged. Acceptance based on entitlement was 93.26 million shares worth Rs. 932.6 million, whilst the issue saw 109.45 million additional shares applied for worth Rs. 1.09 billion, making a total of Rs. 2.02 billion.

Softlogic major shareholders, Chairman Ashok Pathirage and Sameen Ceylon Holdings Ltd., subscribed to their full entitlement by investing Rs. 2.02 billion of total fresh capital raised through the Rights with warrants issue of Rs. 2.98 billion constituting 67.86% of the total issue. The Rights cum Warrants issue was part of Softlogic’s plans to raise Rs. 10 billion in order to infuse fresh capital to increase the total capital base of the company for working capital requirements and to enable the company to settle debts.