animal rights essay hook

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

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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.

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What Is A Good Animal Rights Hook For An Persuasive Essay Example

• Pages: 2 (490 words)
• Published: May 23, 2018
• Type: Essay

The concept that we are all born with inherent rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is fundamental to our society, particularly to the ideas expressed in the United States Constitution. However, humanity thoughtlessly demeans this principle by denying that animals share these rights. Animals are just as entitled to the rights of living, avoiding pain, and pursuing happiness as humans are. Yet still we exploit and abuse them mercilessly, most often without a second thought.

Vivisection, or the use of animals in biomedical research, dissection, testing and education, deprives animals of their natural rights and is a great injustice.

I believe that this is completely unacceptable, and we should find more humane as well as more effective alternatives immediately. Despite the wide use o

f animal testing, the research obtained from it is not even of much help to us. The chemicals and medicines we test on animals reacts differently on every species.

In fact, it has been proven that no two species even metabolize any given drug in the same way. Results gained from animal testing can be incorrect and misleading.

In many cases, not only are the results wrong, but the opposite can be true for humans; a drug may cure a disease in lab animals but have an adverse effect when used in treating people for the same symptoms. Thus, such research is not only irrelevant when applied to humans, but can also be dangerous by providing a false sense of security.

Only the study of human patients will ultimately lead to valid research. Vivisection reduces sentient beings to the status of tools, to be used for the

benefit of others and disposed of. Animal testing is also incomprehensibly cruel, which cannot be justified by the results gained through its use, no matter how valuable.

Furthermore, the tests done on animals are seldom of any real benefit; results are almost characteristically useless or even misleading when applied to humans.

There is no excuse to perpetuate the cruelty we submit our animal subjects to. Continuing such experimentation has no point and is completely unnecessary. Unfortunately, many institutions which commit violations of animal rights appear to have no conscience or concern for their wrongdoings. It seems that the only option is to force them to stop their cruelty.

Legislation outlawing vivisection will be vital in solving this problem. Bills concerning animal research should be introduced to Congress as soon as possible.

This is the only way to ensure that this tragedy will be ended, or at least contained. In the meantime, individuals can also help this problem by reducing or eliminating actions that contribute to the exploitation and abuse of animals. By becoming informed, you can stop supporting animal testing by not purchasing products which are tested on animals.

Getting involved in local animal rights organizations and writing letters in protest to your congressmen is another way to contribute to the solution instead of the problem.

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Essay on Animals: How to Write a Persuasive Paper

• Shelter and Rescue Work
• spay and neuter

When writing a persuasive paper, your purpose is to convince your audience to agree with your idea or accept your recommendation for a course of action. If you’ve decided to write an essay on animals (either for a school assignment or for another purpose), here are the steps to follow.

1. Choose a topic

Some sample topics for an essay on animals include:

• Everyone should spay or neuter their pets .
• Adoption is the best option.
• Dogs should be treated as individuals, not discriminated against because of breed.
• Microchipping is important to keep pets with their families.

2. Research information on the topic

You can do research online and at the library, plus talk to experts in the field, to get more information. While reviewing the materials, look for interesting facts or tidbits that will hook your readers.

3. Create a flow chart 

4. write the thesis statement for your paper.

Now it's time to fill in the flow chart, first with your thesis statement. For example: "Everyone should spay or neuter their pets." This statement will go in the first box in your flow chart. The flow chart is a visual way to help you create an outline. An outline will help you organize the information in a logical order. Your finished product will have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

5. Write the reasons and supporting data

The body will contain the reasons and the supporting data listed on your flow chart. The body not only contains evidence to support your opinion but also addresses one or two opposing views. 

Be sure to include your counter-argument when stating the opposing view. For example, one opposing view to the above statement might be this: "Many people think that an animal who has been spayed or neutered will become lazy and fat." Your counter-argument could be this: "This is a misconception. The main reason pets become overweight is lack of exercise and overfeeding."

6. Note engaging facts

Keep the flow chart handy as you read through all the information you have gathered. In a separate place, write “Hooks and facts to grab the reader’s attention,” and as you review your material, jot down cool facts that you come across. For example: "Just one female cat and her offspring can produce an estimated 420,000 cats in only seven years."

7. Consider all angles

Be sure to address a wide variety of reasons to support your topic statement. For example: Think about pet overpopulation, overcrowded shelters, the costs to your city or town, the effects on pet health, and pet behavior. What would your audience find most important?

8. Expand each reason individually

Before writing your actual paper, keep your facts straight by writing each reason and the supporting evidence on separate sheets of paper or documents.

9. Write your essay

Write your first draft. Then, revise your outline and draft as needed until you have your final draft. If necessary, include a bibliography.

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How to Deal with Animal Right Essays: Quick & Simple Prompts

Table of Contents

Whether you’re a student at the Ethics, Biology, or Medicine department, you can receive an assignment to write animal right essays from time to time.

On the one hand, the task may seem simple and manageable at first glance. On the other hand, such essays (as any other type of academic work) require careful research, outlining, structuring, and writing in line with top academic standards. Thus, if you’re stuck on this task with no ideas in mind, read on to find valuable tips for this kind of essay.

Here we compiled valuable recommendations from our writing experts about:

• Finding an interesting, relevant topic.
• Composing an animal rights outline.
• Developing an effective animal rights thesis statement.
• Researching credible sources for animal right essays.
• Structuring your arguments.
• Effective editing and proofreading of the assignment.

Why It Is Important to Discuss Animal Rights

Whenever you approach writing about animal rights, this topic’s relevance always surfaces as a critical vantage point of your animal rights essays. It’s a commonly recognized fact that throughout history, humans have been too cruel toward animals, and they have ruined much of the authentic wildlife ecosystems in the process of industrialization and urbanization. As a result, numerous species lost their habitats and were urged to seek shelter elsewhere, thus altering other natural habitats by residing in places where they shouldn’t be.

Even in cities, where people and animals seem to have different lives, cruel treatment and abuse of human authority are evident.

First, pets are not always treated ethically and respectfully, mainly because of their legal status as human property.

Second, many pets are abandoned and flood the streets, where they are either killed by other street animals or are doomed to wandering the streets and surviving by eating trash and food remnants.

Third, corporate breeding animals for food (e.g., children farms and daily factories) is highly inhumane, involving cruel treatment of animals and their stay in awful conditions.

The situation with wildlife is not much better, with hunters and poachers killing wild animals for fun and entertainment. Fires and floods caused by human-made climate change also urge wild animals to seek shelter and food in human residences, which often ends in their killing or captivation.

Thus, as one can see, the problem of animal rights and human oppression of the planet’s fauna is pressing, with so many manifestations of unethical, inconsiderate, and cruel attitudes to all creatures, great and small.

Main Points to Elaborate on

Given the problems surrounding animal protection and rights today, you can approach the subject from numerous perspectives in your academic assignment:

• Legal rights of animals in your country or abroad. Comparison of legal policies towards wildlife and pet protection.
• Pet protection and a new legal status for pets.
• Legal and ethical standards for corporate farming.
• Legal and ethical standards for animal use with medical/experimental purposes.
• Wildlife protection and conservation.
• Protection of marine life from exploitative industrial practices.

How to Write Animal Rights Essay Introduction

All animal right essays should start with an impactful introduction so that your audience understands what you’re talking about, what you’re driving at, and what your key arguments are.

To achieve this goal, we recommend structuring an introduction as follows:

• First, discuss the broad context of the paper – animal rights in general, what kinds of rights they possess, and what abuses of those rights are observed globally.
• You may also boost the interest of your readers by citing some shocking stats or providing some anecdotal evidence. Anyway, this information should be relevant, pointing to the serious, pressing problem in the field of animal rights you have identified.
• Next, it’s vital to formulate the problem clearly and indicate how you will resolve/discuss it. It will be your thesis statement.

Following this structure, you’re sure to make a captivating intro that will urge your audience to read the paper until its end.

Animal Rights Essay Outline

To complete animal right essays quickly and effectively, you need to perform some pre-writing work. Composing an outline is always a helpful approach to organizing the basis for your writing process as you receive a roadmap for the further composition of your essay’s vital parts.

Here is a sample outline for a paper about pet rights and legal status. Still, you can successfully appropriate this outline for any other topic by following the instructions about each part’s content.

INTRODUCTION

Introduce your subject and give some background information. Underline the problem’s significance. State your key idea of the paper.

Pets are typically a part of the family in which they live, causing warm feelings and enjoying commitment from the people who invited them to their homes. Still, sadly, pets are considered property by law in 90% of countries, limiting the protection of cruelly treated and abandoned animals. Thus, a legal change is required to improve pet coverage by law and enable animal rights advocates to take measures against pet maltreatment.

BODY OF THE PAPER

Paragraph #1-3 – Indicate a topic sentence with each paragraph’s key idea. Support that key idea with some supporting data from credible sources. Offer your interpretation of the information in those external sources. Make a transition to the next paragraph and then to the conclusion.

Paragraph #1 – statistics on pet maltreatment. Animal abandonment and abuse.

Paragraph #2 – protective legislation. E.g., the UK Animal Welfare Act (2007), felony animal cruelty laws in the USA.

Paragraph #3 – animal rights advocacy organizations (e.g., ALDF). Actions they take to prevent and minimize pet maltreatment.

Summarize your arguments concisely and refer them back to the general argument. Clarify the arguments’ significance for the broader subject of your research. Again, stress the importance of dwelling on this subject theoretically and with practical steps.

Pet abuse is still commonplace because of the legal status of home animals as human property. Still, numerous laws and activist organizations work to change the situation. A broader legal change is required to change pets’ status and enhance their protection.

How to Write Animal Rights Thesis Statement

The thesis statement for animal right essays should be clear and concise, communicating your central message and purpose of the paper. The thesis should not be too long or too short. It should also incorporate the central arguments you’ll expand in the following sections of your text.

In this way, this statement will function as your readers’ roadmap leading them from one argument to another one and helping them follow your logic.

20 Animal Topics for Research Papers – Choose the Best Idea

Looking for some bulletproof animal topics for research papers? Here is a list you can use on all occasions to compose various academic works with ease.

• Is it realistic to protect all animal rights today?
• Is the animals’ right to no selective breeding compatible with the human needs?
• What is the best way to protect animals from the harmful impact of humans?
• Is hunting ethical on any grounds?
• Hunting and animal species extinction – a need for a more effective protective policy.
• Is experimentation on animals generally avoidable?
• How does the human-made climate change affect the well-being of fauna?
• Is pet euthanasia a reality?
• The impact of massive fishing on biodiversity and fish species survival.
• Increasing peopling of suburbs and the loss of animal habitat – a reverse side of people’s flight from the vices of urbanization.
• What is the impact of invasive species on the local wildlife? Discuss with examples.
• Cruel handling of corporately farmed animals.
• Is overbreeding of pets a pressing problem? What are the far-reaching consequences of overbreeding?
• Destroying predators – a step towards human safety or an ecological crime? Discuss the fundamental role of predators in local wildlife and the adverse effects of these species’ minimization.
• Are police and military dogs given similar rights upon retirement as people who served their motherland? Discuss more extensive coverage of police/military dog health and care services.
• What kinds of experiments on animals are unavoidable to save people’s lives? And what are senseless and cruel?
• Animal abuse in zoos – the reverse side of human entertainment and endangered species conservation.
• Is it ethical to use animals in hard manual/agricultural labor?
• What can people do to enhance animal rights protection?
• Is it ethical to consider animals human property? The need for a legal change of pet status as a vital contribution to the more humane treatment of home pets.

With these topics, you’re sure to beat all professors’ expectations and develop an attention-grabbing, exciting argument.

Need Professional Help?

Writing animal right essays is an exciting activity that can help you hone your writing skills and, at the same time, enhance your understanding of the topic. But what can you do if the task seems too complicated or you have too little time for composing several urgent papers?

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• Animal Rights Essays

Animal Rights Argumentative Essay

Animal rights have been a consistent subject of debate, with animal activists emphasizing the need to differentiate between animal rights and welfare. The government’s failure to lay down sufficient legislation to help in the protection of animals from human predation has made it difficult for several people to believe in animal rights. It is essential to note that animal rights do not concern putting animals over and above humans but instead on the rejection of speciesism and sentience. Humans utilize several ways to exploit animals, including hunting, fur, circuses, and animal products like eggs and meat. There is an urgent need to help in securing strategies that will free animals from human exploitation. Therefore, this paper seeks to analyze the reasons against animal exploitation and reinforce the probable methods to uphold animal rights.

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There is a general feeling that the use of animals for both scientific and medical research results yields significant improvement in living standards and medical advancements. Thus, it is sensible for many to agree over the use of animals to test how healthy or harmful a newly discovered medicine is before giving it to the human species for consumption (Lin n.p). However, such tests and exposure to chemicals often result in the killing of thousands of animals for courses that in some instances turn unhelpful (Garner 21). Therefore, animals’ mere use for sciences’ sake is unacceptable since the animals’ suffering vastly outweighs the satisfaction of human curiosity (Lin n.p). It is thus unnecessary to justify animal exploitation on immoral grounds.

Animals cannot think and make rational decisions concerning what should take place in their lives. However, the determination of rights should not be based on intelligence grounds. Otherwise, conducting intelligence tests would be necessary for all humans for them to enjoy certain fundamental rights. Exploiting animals based on their inability to think and reason is unreasonable (Lin n.p). This form of reasoning would mean that babies with no intelligence and mentally challenged humans would have no rights.

Preservation of animal rights and dignity is an appreciation for their life since it develops significant status. Individuals who hold contrary arguments on animal rights protection tend to believe that human life is more critical than animal life (Lin n.p). Therefore, destroying animal life to preserve human life is justifiable. This is an ineffective criterion to determine the importance of having rights since such are usually subjective, and individuals often have selfish personal interests (Garner 9). Interestingly, an individual may find their home-bred animals more important than a stranger in the neighborhood with this scope. It should not allow the individual to kill or misuse animals just for the sake of prioritizing and ranking the importance.

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In conclusion, the concept that animals should have the ability to move freely without human interference and exploitation affirms the need for animal protection. With the ability to experience emotions, fear, pain, and happiness, the argument that the absence of cognitive abilities makes animals lesser than humans is baseless. Besides, arguments in favor of the protection of animals and giving more rights to animals does not mean putting them at the same level as humans, but attempts to show the value that animals have as a human source of food and labor objects. Therefore, upholding animals’ inherent value is critical for maintaining animals’ rights and ensuring the maintenance of a balanced and organized ecosystem where there is a significant minimization of human predation on animals.

Works Cited

• Garner, Robert, ed. Animal rights: The changing debate . Springer, 2016.
• Lin, Doris. What Are Animals Rights? 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-are-animal-rights-127600

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Argumentative essay topics about animals, rachel r.n..

• September 10, 2022
• Essay Topics and Ideas

Looking for a good argumentative essay topic about animals? You’re in luck! We’ve put together a list of 20 topics that will get you started.

Argumentative essay topics about animals can be divided into three categories: animal rights, animal welfare, and animal testing. Each one of these topics could be argued from multiple perspectives.

Animal rights is the belief that animals should have the same basic rights as humans, including the right to life and liberty. Animal welfare is the view that animals should be treated humanely and with compassion, and that their well-being should be given consideration. Animal testing is the use of animals in scientific experiments to further our understanding of health and disease.

All three of these topics are controversial , which makes them perfect for an argumentative essay. So without further ado, here are 20 argumentative essay topics about animals!

What You'll Learn

Thirty Argumentative Essay Topics about Animals

1. Zoos are inhumane and should be banned. 2. Animal testing is cruel and should be outlawed. 3. Pets should not be allowed in public places. 4. Service animals should be exempt from laws banning animals in public places. 5. Hunter education should be mandatory for all hunters. 6. Trapping should be banned because it’s inhumane. 7. Fur coats should be banned because of the cruelty involved in obtaining the fur. 8. The exotic animal trade should be banned because it’s cruel and often results in the animal’s death. 9. Animal hoarders should be required to get help for their mental health issues and have their animals seized. 10. It should be illegal to breed dogs for physical characteristics that cause them health problems.

11. Puppy mills should be outlawed because of the inhumane conditions the animals are kept in. 12. Animal fighting should be banned because it’s cruel and often results in the animal’s death. 13. The use of animals in entertainment should be banned because it’s cruel. 14. Factory farming should be banned because of the inhumane conditions the animals are kept in. 15. Animals should not be kept in zoos because it’s cruel and they’re often not able to live a natural life. 16. It should be illegal to hunt animals for sport because it’s cruel and often results in the animal’s death. 17. The use of animals for research should be banned because it’s cruel and often results in the animal’s death. 18. It should be illegal to buy or sell ivory because it contributes to the poaching of elephants. 19. It should be illegal to buy or sell endangered animal parts because it contributes to the decline of those species. 20. The ownership of exotic animals should be banned because it’s cruel and often results in the animal’s death

Twenty Argumentative Essay Topics on Animals to Write About

1. Is it morally wrong to keep animals in captivity? 2. Should the hunting of animals be banned? 3. Is it cruel to declaw cats? 4. Should there be a ban on bullfighting? 5. How does the animal welfare movement impact the lives of animals? 6. Is it morally wrong to eat meat? 7. Should more be done to protect endangered species? 8. What is the impact of zoos on animals? 9. How do humans benefit from keeping animals in zoos? 10. Are factory farms cruel to animals? 11. What is the impact of animal testing on human health? 12. Should the use of fur be banned? 13. What are the benefits of having a pet? 14. How does animal agriculture impact the environment? 15. What is the relationship between humans and animals? 16. How does our treatment of animals reflect our values as a society? 17. Do we have a responsibility to care for all animals, or just those that are cute and cuddly? 18. How can we make sure that all animals are treated humanely? 19. What are some ways that people mist

Animal topics for research papers

There are many different animal topics that you can choose to write about for your research paper. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Animal testing: Is it necessary? 2. The pros and cons of zoos 3. Are exotic animals good or bad pets? 4. The link between animal abuse and domestic violence 5. How do we define “humane” treatment of animals? 6. Should there be more regulations on the breeding of animals? 7. The impact of climate change on wildlife 8. How humans can coexist with dangerous animals 9. The ethical debate surrounding the consumption of animal products 10. Are there alternatives to using animals for research purposes?

Animal topics for essay

There are many different animal topics that you can choose to write about for your essay . Here are some ideas to get you started:

-The pros and cons of keeping animals in captivity -The ethical considerations of animal testing -The impact of human activity on endangered species -The complex social hierarchies of animal societies -The fascinating world of animal communication -The incredible adaptability of animals to changing environments-The unique and important role of animals in ecosystem

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A terrified cow looks through an opening from the inside of a transport truck arriving at a Dutch slaughterhouse. Credit: Dario Endara / We Animals Media

Open dialogue is an important tool for moving discourse forward and gaining a better understanding of the issues we face in our time. In the spirit of open dialogue, the following is my response to the essay Animal Rights and the Challenge of Activism .

In the essay, the author describes the different tactics used by animal rights activists to persuade non-vegans. She emphasizes the importance of free speech, open inquiry, and debate, in particular the importance of non-vegans’ ability to challenge vegans. But in doing so, she also unwittingly exposes how her own rhetoric might influence people in such a way that might undermine the animal rights movement. My response isn’t an attempt at a ‘take-down’ of the author, but instead it is a way to show how important language is in animal rights activism and how even those of us with the best intentions can fall into these traps.

The ‘Pick Me Vegan’

The author opens her essay with the dated joke, “How do you know someone is vegan…” — well, we all know the punch line. She pokes fun at the stereotype of the annoying vegan, but then spends the rest of the essay reassuring the reader that she is actually not like one of those pushy vegans she jokes about from the outset. But in an effort to make herself appear more palatable to non-vegans, the author may actually be undermining the animal rights movement altogether.

She calls PETA’s ‘The Holocaust on Your Plate’ campaign off-putting and even “damaging for the movement.” She writes that, “[a]nimal rights activists displaying the injustices of slaughterhouses in public often seems to have the opposite effect, putting people off the cause,” despite absolute lack of evidence suggesting this to be true (and ignoring all of the anecdotes of people who went vegan overnight because they viewed animal agriculture footage).

Further on she writes that she believes the main challenge facing the animal rights movement is its associated baggage of identity. She writes, “no one wants to be identified with the militant vegan.” But by using the same language that non-vegans use to dismiss veganism, she legitimizes and reinforces these stereotypes. She concedes that there is such a thing as a ‘militant vegan’ and that being one is undesirable and off-putting. Additionally, how one might define a ‘militant vegan’ depends entirely on one’s own subjective perspective. Everyone will have their own definition–and some may be more charitable with their definition than others. This term is unhelpful and only perpetuates the stereotype of the pushy vegan that the author clearly seeks to avoid as a label for herself.

By reinforcing these stereotypes, she’s giving non-vegans permission to continue their support of cruelty without the added guilt.

Some might describe the above tactics as ones that are associated with the ‘Pick Me Vegan.’

Like the ‘ Pick Me Girl ’, the ‘Pick Me Vegan’ downplays his or her own beliefs as a way to separate themselves from those other ‘annoying vegans’ and reassure you that they are not like them. They are apologetic and passive, and they assert that “veganism is a personal choice.” The notion of something being a ‘personal choice’ is commonly espoused by cultural relativists. But this stance is what is truly doing a disservice to the animals. Any action stops being a personal choice when there is a victim involved. In this case, the victims are the animals. And when you have ‘Pick Me Vegan’ celebrities and influencers spout the same language, this language becomes more normalized and widely accepted. This rhetoric makes it more challenging for those who actually seek change and makes the unapologetic vegan appear more radical and unhinged than they are. It reaffirms animal consumption as the default behavior and veganism as an anomaly.

‘Pick Me’s’ tend to state that we should not ‘shove our views down people’s throats’ though it should be noted that food brands do this every single day in various ways. In the United States, fast food advertisements are the most viewed food/beverage ads by children . At the end of 2018, Olive Garden had the most ads among related food brands on TV in the U.S. followed closely by Domino’s Pizza and Longhorn Steakhouse. Domino’s spends the most on advertising above all other restaurants, followed by McDonalds, Subway and Taco Bell. Nestle spends billions on advertising annually in the United States alone. Coca-Cola spends the most on advertising among beverage brands.

These companies spend billions of dollars to coax us to fill our bodies with poison, but they are never told to ‘stop forcing their views on others.’ For companies, it’s simply called advertising. For individuals, it’s called ‘forcing your views.’ Ordinary people who reveal uncomfortable truths are seen as scapegoats and labeled ‘militant.’ There is immense social pressure to downplay the truth in order to make others feel less bad about their choices that impact others.

The Pick Me Vegan’s main goal is not to be a voice for the voiceless but rather to seek the approval of non-vegans. And failing to be consistent with their convictions may actually be less effective than the PETA campaign that the author deemed as being “harmful for the movement.” She sees harsh truths as being ‘harmful’ when the real harm on display here is the mass scale murder of animals at the hands of humans every single day in every corner of the world.

Further on, the author writes that the ability of non-vegans to engage vegans in open discourse is itself a key component to affecting change in the animal rights movement. She writes, “If people weren’t able to criticize vegans and challenge their arguments, nothing would change.” But in doing so she is still toeing the line, catering to non-vegans at the expense of the movement, seeking to score social points and stay on non-vegans ‘good side’ rather than truthfully exposing the realities of animal exploitation.

A critical component to changing minds is the language vegans use, not the criticisms that come from non-vegans.

It’s tempting to be a ‘Pick Me’ with any issue. I’m certainly sympathetic; I used to be like this on a number of issues. Many of us adopt this approach so we won’t offend or make anyone feel uncomfortable. We avoid direct confrontation because we think our relationships will be better off. But in doing so, we betray the causes we otherwise support. In this case, we are betraying the animals who need us to be a voice for them. How can you take anyone seriously when they spend more time apologizing for their beliefs than standing strong in them?

Animal Welfare vs Animal Rights-Based Approach

The essay culminates in this moment when the author uses welfare-based language that confirms her position as a reductionist vegan.

She writes, “For this movement, the intended change is pretty clear, a reduction in the suffering and exploitation of animals [emphasis mine].”

In this sentence it is clear that her focus is on reducing suffering. In other words, she has a welfare-based approach to animal rights activism, not a rights-based or liberationist approach. This is an important distinction that may be unimportant to non-vegans, but it does impact the messaging of the animal rights movement, as can clearly be seen in this essay. The two approaches are commonly disputed among activists, so to conflate everyone as ‘reductionist’ is patently wrong. Anonymous for the Voiceless , Animal Liberation Front , and Direct Action Everywhere are just a few groups that are abolitionist in their approach, not reductionist. Anonymous for the Voiceless clearly states this on their homepage: “We hold an abolitionist stance against all forms of non-human animal exploitation and promote a clear and direct animal rights message [emphasis mine].”

Animal welfarists only seek to reduce suffering, not eliminate it altogether. And this stance is what I believe is actually preventing vegans from moving forward and affecting change.

The reductionist approach does not carry the same sense of urgency or conviction. This approach is what drives campaigns like Meatless Mondays or 30-Day Vegan Challenges. It’s what drives a consumer to buy the plant-based nuggets instead of the chicken nuggets once in a while, but it doesn’t actually change minds in the long-term. Food consumption trends reflect this.

While going plant-based has never been easier, animal consumption continues to increase all around the world. Companies that sell mock meat products and plant-based junk food appeal to the flexitarian–but having more options does not mean that more people will go vegan as is evident in the top plant-based companies’ revenue numbers. Sales of meat alternatives have been steadily dropping. The five biggest North American meat alternative producers saw a combined 4% dip in sales in 2021 . Field Roast recently announced that it would be converting its plant-based factory into a meat producing space because it wasn’t making enough sales from its plant-based selections (or at least as much as it had hoped). This further proves that plant-based companies only care about the bottom line, no matter how virtuous they may appear. Flexitarianism does not decrease overall animal consumption, but overall elimination does.

Advocating for reductionism is an easy way to appear virtuous, and plant-based companies profit off of this virtue. Replace ‘vegan’ with any other social justice cause and suddenly the reductionist approach sounds horrifying.

By contrast, a rights-based approach asserts that all living beings have their own inherent value. This position takes into account the animal’s life before they have even reached the point of suffering. This approach encompasses all living non-human animals at every single point in their life — not just in the moments they are suffering. A rights-based approach does not make any concessions–it does not settle with reducing animal exploitation, but rather the elimination of animal exploitation.

Additionally, the author believes that “being annoyed and angry at non-vegans does little for the animals.” But self-righteous anger is one of the most important tools we have in activism. It allows us to stand in our conviction and take action and it can be an incredibly powerful catalyst to propel change. Activism cannot be done in passivity or by being polite. The Pick Me vegan tries to cushion the truth for others, but they are doing a great disservice to the animals who need us to share these harsh truths.

Based on where one stands, these two approaches may manifest very differently in the activism that is carried out, and even in the way we talk about these issues, as demonstrated in the author’s own essay.

Unsurprisingly, the author also references Alex O’Connor, also known as ‘Cosmic Skeptic’, a (former) vegan YouTube personality who has recently announced he’s no longer vegan for nebulous health reasons he has yet to disclose (and based on what we can surmise from his timeline, he hasn’t been vegan for a while). Alex was the quintessential Pick Me Vegan–a wordsmith who over-intellectualized every single issue under the guise of rationality to the point where he forgot about who matters most: the animals.

Never Apologize for Fighting Against Suffering 

Because the animal rights movement provides a ‘voice for the voiceless’, that voice must be strong, assertive, and unapologetic. As such, the rhetoric we use is so important to persuade, take action, and give a voice to those who need it the most: the animals. The animal rights movement isn’t about making anyone feel comfortable or about helping others feel better about their consumption of cruelty, it’s about exposing the realities of living in a world that exploits animals for food, clothing, entertainment, sport, and everything in between. In revealing these truths we must accept that we are going to make others feel slightly uncomfortable if for a moment. Otherwise we’re not providing a voice to the voiceless–we’re just amplifying the silence.

Animal Rights with Wayne Hsiung and Dušan Pajović

Panelists: Wayne Hsiung, Dušan Pajović Moderator: Rozali Telbis

Description:  Discussion on how animal rights are a free speech issue as well as a core concern for the Left.

Wayne Hsiung is an American attorney and environmental and animal rights activist. He is co-founder of the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and most currently The Simple Heart Initiative dedicated to animal rescue. Wayne has a long history of non-violent direct action in support of his activist convictions.

Dušan Pajović is a Montenegrin activist and author. He is the Campaigns Coordinator and a member of the Coordinating Collective of the pan-European leftist organization DiEM25. Previously, Dušan led DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe campaign. In 2021, Wayne wrote this article:  Why we need to liberate animals as part of the Green New Deal.

Rozali Telbis writes about society, technology, culture, propaganda, and more. She is a regular contributor to Plebity and Nevermore. To get the latest updates on her work, subscribe to her mailing list at Growing up Alienated.

 Free speech and the left conference 2023 |  Jun 3, 2023

Canada’s censorship bill becomes law

After years of contentious debates, Bill C-11, Canada’s Online Streaming Act has become law.

As we’ve written here ( Senate Passes Controversial Internet Censorship Bill ) and here ( Canada’s Plans to Regulate the Internet ), this bill poses many dangers for Canadian users and creators alike.

 Rozali Telbis |  May 4, 2023

Update: Senate Passes Controversial Internet Censorship Bill

On February 2, 2023, the Senate passed Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, with 43 senators voting ‘yea,’ and 15 voting ‘nay.’

The Senate proposed dozens of amendments to the bill, including highlighting the promotion of Indigenous languages and Black content creators; proposing an age verification system to restrict access to certain content; requiring the CRTC to be more flexible on determining what is deemed ‘Canadian enough’; and requiring the CRTC to focus on commercial content only.

 Rozali Telbis |  Feb 7, 2023

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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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Animal Rights Essay

This IELTS  animal rights essay  discusses the exploitation of animals by humans.

People who believe in animal rights think that they should not be treated cruelly, for example in experiments or for sport.

'To exploit' means to benefit from something in an unfair way. Take a look at the question:

A growing number of people feel that animals should not be exploited by people and that they should have the same rights as humans, while others argue that humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Discussing 'Two Opinions'

Animals should not be exploited by people and they should have the same rights as humans. Humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

In this essay you are being given two opposing opinions to discuss.

This is the first opinion:

• Animals should not be exploited by people and they should have the same rights as humans.

This is the second opinion:

• Humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

In this type of essay, you must look at both sides. In other words you need to discuss the arguments FOR animal rights and AGAINST .

You must also ensure you give YOUR opinion.

Organising the Essay

One way to organize an essay like this is to consider both opinions, then give your opinion in a final paragraph ( see this example ) or dedicate a whole final paragraph to your opinion ( see this example ).

Another way to write an essay like this is to also make one of the 'for' or 'against' opinions your opinion as well.

Look at the model animal rights essay below. The second body paragraph discusses the first opinion, but the topic sentence makes it clear that this paragraph is also representing the writers opinion as well:

However, I do not believe these arguments stand up to scrutiny.

This now means that in two body paragraphs you have covered all three parts of the question from the animal rights essay:

1. First opinion 2. Second opinion 3. Your opinion

The advantage of doing it this way rather than having a separate paragraph is that you do not need to come up with new ideas for a new paragraph.

If you have a separate paragraph with your opinion you may find you cannot think of any new ideas or you may end up repeating the same things as in your previous paragraphs.

IELTS Writing Example

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

Animal Rights Essay - Model Answer

Animals have always been used by humans in some form to satisfy their needs. However, while some people believe that animals should be treated in the same way humans are and have similar rights, others think that it is more important to use them as we desire for food and medical research. 

With regard to the exploitation of animals, people believe it is acceptable for several reasons. Firstly, they think that humans are the most important beings on the planet, and everything must be done to ensure human survival. If this means experimenting on animals so that we can fight and find cures for diseases, then this takes priority over animal suffering. Furthermore, it is believed by some that animals do not feel pain or loss as humans do, so if we have to kill animals for food or other uses, then this is morally acceptable.

However, I do not believe these arguments stand up to scrutiny. To begin, it has been shown on numerous occasions by secret filming in laboratories via animal rights groups that animals feel as much pain as humans do, and they suffer when they are kept in cages for long periods. In addition, a substantial amount of animal research is done for cosmetics, not to find cures for diseases, so this is unnecessary. Finally, it has also been proven that humans can get all the nutrients and vitamins that they need from green vegetables and fruit. Therefore, again, having to kill animals for food is not an adequate argument.

To sum up, although some people argue killing animals for research and food is ethical, I would argue there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that this is not the case, and, therefore, steps must be taken to improve the rights of animals.

(Words 290) 

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More Discuss Two Opinion Essays:

Sources for Stories Essay: Should parents read to their children?

This sources for stories essay asks for your opinion on the best way for children to get stories. Is it from parents reading to them or other ways?

Extraterrestrial Life Essay: Should we look for life on other planets?

This extraterrestrial life essay is an IELTS opinion essay where you have to discuss both sides of an issue then give your own opinion.

Diet and Health Essay: Who is responsible for diet and health?

Diet and Health Essay for IELTS: This model examines the extent to which individuals or governments should be responsible for health. Read a model answer and useful comments about the essay which will help you to improve your IELTS Score.

Childcare Essay: Should family or carers look after young children?

Childcare Essay: In the essay you have to discuss two sides of an argument. The first is that it is better if pre-school children are looked after at home with relatives such as grandparents. The second opinion is that children should be looked after at childcare centres.

IELTS Writing Example: What are the aims of a university education?

IELTS writing example essays. This is an essay on the aims of university education. In this essay, two opposing opinions need to be discussed. It is important to understand how to answer this type of question in the IELTS exam.

Child Development Essay: What factors influence a child's development?

Child Development Essay for IELTS. The essay is about the factors that affect the way that children develop. It provides you with a model answer and comments on the response to help you know how to improve your band score.

IELTS Essays: What is the best way to reduce crime?

IELTS essays online with comments by an IELTS instructor - A writing sample on the topic of reducing crime.

Donating Money to Charity Essay: Where should the money go?

Donating Money to Charity Essay: IELTS model answer to an essay on the topic of giving locally or to national and international charities.

IELTS Essay Becoming Independent

This IELTS essay discussed whether people are becoming more independent than they were in the past. This is a question that has come up a few times in the test. This is discussion type essay as you have to discuss both sides of an argument and come to a conclusion.

Zoo Essay: Are zoos cruel or do they protect animals?

This is a recent zoo essay question from the IELTS test (June 2018). Essay about zoos have come up a few times in the IELTS test so it's worth studying same sample questions and sample essays about the topic.

Formal and Informal Education Essay: What age should it start?

This formal and informal education essay is about whether it is best for children to begin their formal education at school when they are 7 rather than much younger.

Influence of Scientists or Politicians Essay

Influence of Scientists or Politicians Essay- Model answer for IELTS. Who has had the most influence on our world? In this essay you have to discuss both sides.

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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.

Animal rights are a crucial part of a just society. By protecting animal rights, we also protect our environment and ourselves. It’s our duty to ensure that animals live free from harm and exploitation. We must respect all life forms and their rights.

Also check:

• Speech on Animal Rights

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.

In conclusion, animals have a right to live free from pain and suffering. It’s our duty to respect these rights and protect animals. After all, a world where all living beings are treated with kindness and respect is a better world for everyone.

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

There are two main types of animal rights. The first type is called ‘animal welfare’. This means that people should make sure animals are treated well. They should have good food, a nice place to live, and should not be hurt or made to suffer.

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

There are many groups that fight for animal rights. These groups work to change laws, to stop people from hurting animals, and to educate people about how to treat animals better. Some of these groups are big and well-known, like PETA and the Humane Society. Others are smaller and work in just one area or on one issue.

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:

• Essay on Animal Exploitation
• Essay on Animals Also Have Feelings
• Essay on Animals Used For Entertainment

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105 Animal Testing Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Looking for interesting animal testing topics to research and write about? This field is truly controversial and worth studying!

• 🌶️ Titles: Catchy & Creative
• 🐶 Essay: How to Write
• 🏆 Best Essay Examples
• 📌 Good Topics to Research
• 🎯 Most Interesting Topics to Write about

❓ Animal Testing Research Questions

In your animal testing essay, you might want to explore the historical or legal perspective, focus on the issue of animal rights, or discuss the advantages or disadvantages of animal testing in medicine, pharmacology, or cosmetic industry. We’ve gathered the most creative and catchy animal testing titles and added top animal testing essay examples. There are also useful tips on making and outline, formulating a thesis, and creating a hook sentence for your animal testing essay.

🌶️ Animal Testing Titles: Catchy & Creative

• What would life be like without animal testing?
• Animal testing: the cruelest experiments.
• AWA: why does not it protect all animals?
• What if animals experimented on humans?
• In the skin of a guinea pig: a narrative essay.
• Opposing animal testing: success stories.
• Animal-tested products: should they be destroyed?
• What have we gained from experiments on animals?
• Animal testing and cancer research: past and present.

🐶 Animal Testing Essay: How to Write

Animal testing has been an acute problem for a long time. Scientists and pharmaceutical firms use this approach to test cosmetics, foods, and other products people use daily.

Essays on animal testing are important because they highlight the significance of the problem. Writing outstanding animal testing essays requires extensive research and dedication.

We have prepared some do’s and don’ts for your excellent essay. But first, you should select a topic for your paper. Here are the examples of animal testing essay topics you can choose from:

• The question of animal intelligence from the perspective of animal testing
• Animal testing should (not) be banned
• How animal testing affects endangered species
• The history and consequences of animal testing
• The controversy associated with animal testing
• Animal Bill of Rights: Pros and cons
• Is animal testing necessary?

Remember that these animal testing essay titles are just the ideas for your paper. You are free to select other relevant titles and topics for discussion, too. Once you have selected the problem for your essay, you can start working on the paper. Here are some do’s of writing about animal testing:

• Do extensive preliminary research on the issue you have selected. You should be aware of all the problems associated with your questions, its causes, and consequences. Ask your professor about the sources you can use. Avoid relying on Wikipedia and personal blogs as your primary sources of information.
• Develop a well-organized outline and think of how you will structure your paper. Think of the main animal testing essay points and decide how you can present them in the paper. Remember to include introductory and concluding sections along with several body paragraphs.
• Start your paper with a hooking sentence. An animal testing essay hook should grab the reader’s attention. You can present an interesting question or statistics in this sentence.
• Include a well-defined thesis statement at the end of the introductory section.
• Your reader should understand the issue you are discussing. Explain what animal testing is, provide arguments for your position, and support them with evidence from your research.
• Discuss alternative perspectives on the issue if you are working on a persuasive essay. At the same time, you need to show that your opinion is more reliable than the opposing ones.
• Remember that your paper should not be offensive. Even if you criticize animal testing, stick to the formal language and provide evidence of why this practice is harmful.

There are some important points you should avoid while working on your paper. Here are some important don’ts to remember:

• Avoid making claims if you cannot reference them. Support your arguments with evidence from the literature or credible online sources even if you are writing an opinion piece. References will help the reader to understand that your viewpoint is reliable.
• Do not go over or below the word limit. Stick to your professor’s instructions.
• Avoid copying the essays you will find online. Your paper should be plagiarism-free.
• Avoid making crucial grammatical mistakes. Pay attention to the word choice and sentence structures. Check the paper several times before sending it for approval. If you are not sure whether your grammar is correct, ask a friend to look through the paper for you.

Do not forget to look at some of our free samples that will help you with your paper!

Animal Testing Hook Sentence

Your animal testing essay should start with a hook – an opening statement aiming to grab your reader’s attention. A good idea might be to use an impressive fact or statistics connected to experiments on animals:

• More than 100 million animals are killed in US laboratories each year.
• Animal Welfare Act (AWA) does not cover 99% animals used in experiments: according to it, rats, birds, reptiles, and fish are not animals.
• More than 50% adults in the US are against animal testing.

🏆 Best Animal Testing Essay Examples

• Animal Testing: Should Animal Testing Be Allowed? — Argumentative Essay It is crucial to agree that animal testing might be unethical phenomenon as argued by some groups; nonetheless, it should continue following its merits and contributions to the humankind in the realms of drug investigations […]
• Should Animals Be Used in Medical Research? It is therefore possible to use animals while testing the dangers and the toxicity of new drugs and by so doing; it is possible to protect human beings from the dangers that can emanate from […]
• Cosmetic Testing on Animals The surface of the skin or near the eyes of such animals is meant to simulate that of the average human and, as such, is one of easiest methods of determining whether are particular type […]
• The Debate on Animal Testing The purpose of this paper is to define animal testing within a historical context, establish ethical and legal issues surrounding the acts, discuss animal liberation movements, arguments in support and against the act of animal […]
• Animal Testing and Environmental Protection While the proponents of animal use in research argued that the sacrifice of animals’ lives is crucial for advancing the sphere of medicine, the argument this essay will defend relates to the availability of modern […]
• Animal Testing in Medicine and Industry Animal testing is the inescapable reality of medicine and industry. However, between human suffering and animal suffering, the former is more important.
• Preclinical Testing on Animals The authors argue that despite the recent decline in the level of quality and transparency of preclinical trials, the scientific communities should always rely on animal testing before moving to human subjects and the subsequent […]
• Using Animals in Medical Research and Experiments While discussing the use of animals in medical research according to the consequentialist perspective, it is important to state that humans’ preferences cannot be counted higher to cause animals’ suffering; humans and animals’ preferences need […]
• Animal Testing: History and Arguments Nevertheless, that law was more focused on the welfare of animals in laboratories rather than on the prohibition of animal testing.
• Laboratory Experiments on Animals: Argument Against In some cases, the animals are not given any painkillers because their application may alter the effect of the medication which is investigated.
• Animal Testing From Medical and Ethical Viewpoints Striving to discover and explain the peculiarities of body functioning, already ancient Greeks and Romans resorted to vivisecting pigs; the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment era witnessed animal testing becoming the leading trend and a […]
• Negative Impacts of Animal Testing To alter these inhumane laws, we should organize a social movement aiming at the reconsideration of the role of animals in research and improvement of their positions.
• Animal Testing: Long and Unpretty History Nevertheless, that law was more focused on the welfare of animals in laboratories rather than on the prohibition of animal testing.
• Animal Testing as an Unnecessary and Atrocious Practice Such acts of violence could be partially excused by the necessity to test medications that are developed to save human lives however, this kind of testing is even more inhumane as it is ineffective in […]
• Animal Experiments and Inhuman Treatment Although the results of such a laboratory may bring answers to many questions in medicine, genetics, and other vital spheres, it is frequently a case that the treatment of such animals is inhumane and cruel. […]
• Animal Testing for Scientific Research Despite the fact that the present-day science makes no secret of the use of animals for research purposes, not many people know what deprivation, pain, and misery those animals have to experience in laboratories.
• Animal Testing and Ethics I believe it is also difficult to develop efficient legislation on the matter as people have different views on animal research and the line between ethical and unethical is blurred in this area.
• Animal Testing: History and Ethics Moreover, in the twelfth century, another Arabic physician, Avenzoar dissected animals and established animal testing experiment in testing surgical processes prior to their application to man. Trevan in 1927 to evaluate the effectiveness of digitalis […]
• Animal Testing Effects on Psychological Investigation In this context, ethical considerations remain a central theme in psychological research.”Ethics in research refers to the application of moral rules and professional codes of conduct to the collection, analysis, reporting, and publication of information […]
• Genetic Modification and Testing: Ethical Considerations It is done on a molecular level by synthesizing DNA, generating sequences and then inserting the received product into the organism which will be the carrier of the outcome. Another possibility is that the time […]
• Animal Testing: Why It Is Still Being Used The major reason for such “devotion” to animal testing can be explained by the fact that alternative sources of testing are insufficient and too inaccurate to replace conventional way of testing.
• Effects of Animal Testing and Alternatives Another challenge to the proponents of animal testing is related to dosage and the time line for a study. Animal rights values rebuff the notion that animals should have an importance to human beings in […]
• Ethics Problems in Animal Experimentation In spite of the fact that it is possible to find the arguments to support the idea of using animals in experiments, animal experimentation cannot be discussed as the ethical procedure because animals have the […]
• Animal Testing: Ethical Dilemmas in Business This means that both humans and animals have rights that need to be respected, and that is what brings about the many dilemmas that are experienced in this field.
• Should animals be used for scientific research? Therefore, considering the benefits that have been accrued from research activities due to use of animals in scientific research, I support that animals should be used in scientific research.
• Use of Animals in Research Testing: Ethical Justifications Involved The present paper argues that it is ethically justified to use animals in research settings if the goals of the research process are noble and oriented towards the advancement of human life.
• Ethical Problems in Animal Experimentation The banning of companies from testing on animals will force the manufacturers to use conventional methods to test their drugs and products.
• Utilitarianism for Animals: Testing and Experimentation There are alternatives in testing drugs such as tissue culture of human cells and hence this is bound to be more accurate in the findings.
• Use of Animals in Biological Testing Thus, these veterinarians have realized that the results that are realized from the animal research are very crucial in the improvement of the health of human being as well as that of animals.
• Medical Research on Animals Should be Forbidden by Law Vaccines and treatment regimes for various diseases that previously led to the death of humans were all discovered through research on animals.
• Experimentation on Animals However, critics of experimenting with animals argue that animals are subjected to a lot of pain and suffering in the course of coming up with scientific breakthroughs which in the long run may prove futile.
• Psychoactive Drug Testing on Animals The alterations in behavioral traits of animals due to psychoactive drugs are primarily attributed to the changes in the brain functions or inhibition of certain brain components in animals which ultimately translates to changes in […]
• Negative Impacts of Animal Testing In many instances it can be proofed that drugs have been banned from the market after extensive research on animal testing and consuming a lot of cash, because of the dire effects that they cause […]

📌 Good Animal Testing Topics to Research

• Monkeys Don’t Like Wearing Makeup: Animal Testing In The Cosmetics Industry
• Animal Testing – Should Animal Experimentation Be Permitted
• Essay Animal Testing and In Vitro Testing as a Replacement
• Animal Testing : A Better Knowledge Of Human Body
• The Importance Of Animal Testing For Evaluating Consumer Safety
• The Issues on Animal Testing and the Alternative Procedures to Avoid the Use of the Inhuman Experimentation
• An Alternative to the Harsh and Unnecessary Practices of Animal Testing for Products, Drugs, Chemicals and Other Research
• The Unethical Use of Animals and the Need to Ban Animal Testing for Medical Research Purposes in the United States
• An Argument in Favor of Animal Testing for the Purpose of Clinical Research
• An Argument Against Animal Testing and the Banning of the Practice in the United States
• The Debate About the Ethics of Animal Testing and Its Effects on Us
• An Argument in Favor of Animal Testing as Beneficial to Human Health Research
• Animal Testing and the Reasons Why It Should Be Illegal
• The Principles of the Animal Testing From the Human Perspective
• The Ethical Issues on the Practice of Animal Testing to Test Cosmetics and Drugs
• Stopping Animal Testing and Vivisection by Passing a Bill against Animal Cruelty

🎯 Most Interesting Animal Testing Topics to Write about

• An Argument Against Animal Testing of Consumer Products and Drugs
• The Consequences and Unethical Practice of Animal Testing for Medical Training and Experiments
• How Do The Contributions Of Animal Testing To Global Medical
• Ways To Improve Animal Welfare After Premising The Animal Testing
• Animal Testing – Necessary or Barbaric and Wrong?
• Animal Testing And Its Impact On The Environment
• Animal Testing and Its Contribution to the Advancement of Medicine
• Cosmetics and Animal Testing: The Cause of Death and Mistreatment
• Animal Testing And People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals
• Animal Rights Activists and the Controversial Issue of Animal Testing
• A History and the Types of Animal Testing in the Medical Area
• Argumentation on Medical Benefits of Animal Testing
• An Analysis of the Concept of Animal Testing Which Lowers the Standard of Human Life
• Is The Humane Society International Gave For Animal Testing
• A Discussion of Whether Animal Testing Is Good for Mankind or Violation of Rights
• The Ethics Of Animal Testing For Vaccine Development And Potential Alternatives
• The Good and Bad of Human Testing and Animal Testing
• What Should the Government Do About Animal Testing?
• Why Does Animal Testing Lower Our Standard of Living?
• Should Animals Be Used in Research?
• Why Should Animal Testing Be Accepted in the World?
• How Does Technology Impact Animal Testing?
• Why Should Animal Testing Be Illegal?
• Should Animal Testing Remain Legal?
• Why Should Animal Testing Be Banned?
• Can the Animal Testing Done to Find Cures for Diseases Be Humane?
• Does Animal Testing Really Work?
• Why Can’t Alternatives Like Computers Replace Research Animals?
• Should Animal Testing Continue to Test Cures for Human Diseases?
• How Does Animal Testing Effect Medicine?
• Should Animal Testing Continue or Be Stopped?
• What Are Advantages and Disadvantages of Animal Testing?
• Why Can Animal Testing Save Our Lives?
• Is Stem Cell Research Beginning of the End of Animal Testing?
• Do Beauty Products Suffer From Negative Publicity if They Conduct Trials on Animals?
• Should Medicine Trials Be Conducted?
• Can Results of Animal Testing Be Generalized to Adults?
• What Are the Origin and History of Animal Testing?
• Why Are Animals Needed to Screen Consumer Products for Safety When Products Tested by Alternative Methods, Are Available?
• How Much Does an Animal Suffer Due to Testing?
• What Is the Effectiveness of Animal Rights Groups in Stopping Animal Testing?
• How Do We Learn From Biomedical Research Using Animals?
• Who Cares for Animals in Research?
• How Do Laboratory Animal Science Professionals Feel About Their Work?
• Why Are There Increasing Numbers of Mice, Rats, and Fish Used in Research?
• How Can We Be Sure Lost or Stolen Pets Are Not Used in Research?
• Why Do Clinical Trials in Humans Require Prior Animal Testing?
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How Far Should We Carry the Logic of the Animal-Rights Movement?

By Kelefa Sanneh

One morning, in February of this year, Zahid Badroodien, who oversees the Committee on Water and Sanitation in Cape Town, South Africa, posted on X that he had been alerted to “a sewage smell blanketing parts of the city.” He assured residents that inspectors had been dispatched to wastewater-treatment facilities, but half an hour later he announced that a different culprit had been identified: a ship in the harbor that was transporting cattle—nineteen thousand in all—from Brazil to Iraq, with a brief layover in town to replenish their feed. On board, conditions were “awful,” according to a veterinary consultant who conducted an inspection. A single cow discovered in such a state might have become a cause célèbre, but it was harder to rally around nineteen thousand of them. Within a day, the cows were back at sea, where virtually no one could know, or smell, their plight.

There is a name for the cruel, and correspondingly clandestine, process by which many animals become meat: “factory farming,” a term that is usually wielded as an insult, especially since the publication, in 1975, of “Animal Liberation,” an incendiary book by the philosopher Peter Singer. “In general, we are ignorant of the abuse of living creatures that lies behind the food we eat,” Singer wrote, and he wanted to destroy both this ignorance and the industry behind the abuse. He halfway succeeded. “Animal Liberation” helped bring new militancy to a cause formerly associated with decorous humane societies and peaceable hippies. The book also helped inspire the Animal Liberation Front, a group devoted to direct action against farms and labs that abused animals. And it turned Singer into one of the most prominent philosophers in the world, especially among non-philosophers.

The movement against cruelty to animals is broadly popular, at least in theory—lots of people are bothered by the way livestock live and die, although not bothered enough to stop eating them. But Singer is a polarizing figure, known for his willingness to follow his logic to conclusions that some might find bizarre, or evil. Rejecting what he calls “speciesism,” Singer has argued that we ought to treat creatures according to their cognitive capacities; by this logic, he concedes, a “chimpanzee, dog, or pig” might demonstrate “a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility.” Directly and indirectly, “Animal Liberation” has inspired generations of people who would never endorse many of the claims made by the person who wrote it, and it sometimes seems that Singer’s support for animal liberation is viewed today as the least objectionable thing about him.

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In “ Animal Liberation Now ” (HarperCollins), a revised version of his book, Singer considers all that has and hasn’t changed since 1975. “The media no longer ridicules animal rights activists; mostly, it takes them seriously,” he writes. He is curious about the prospect of lab-grown meat, and attentive to research indicating that a scallop is more sentient than an oyster, and therefore less edible, at least for someone with his commitments. He also seems slightly astonished that more people have not joined him in opposing the “tyranny” of speciesism. “There are now more animals suffering in laboratories and factory farms than ever before,” he writes, but he remains hopeful that one day people will attend to this suffering.

Martha Nussbaum, a fellow-philosopher, is one of many who admire Singer’s animal advocacy without fully endorsing his program. In “ Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility ” (Simon & Schuster), Nussbaum praises Singer as a “sophisticated” thinker while suggesting that it is wise to consider not just the suffering of animals but how best to help them live the kinds of lives they seem to want to live. Most of her proposals reflect a left-liberal world view: she has great faith in the ability of experts and government officials, working together, to better regulate our treatment of animals. And yet the movement to protect animals need not be a partisan cause. This, anyway, is the position of Matthew Scully, a Republican speechwriter who has spent decades arguing that conservatives ought to care more about the lives and deaths of animals. He made his case in “ Dominion ,” from 2002, which is one of the most bracing books on the topic since “Animal Liberation,” partly because it pushes so hard against Singer’s approach. Scully refines his argument in “ Fear Factories ” (Arezzo), a new collection of essays that urges both right- and left-leaning readers to reconsider their assumptions. One of them, from 2013, excoriates the “cheap nature worship” of contemporary environmentalists, who have, Scully says, been too distracted by climate concerns to pay attention to the slaughter of elephants. “It’s all carbon, all the time,” he writes, “and for all of the movement’s alarmism on other fronts, somehow the end days of the earth’s largest land animal have gone practically unremarked.”

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Debates about animals tend to be less about how to treat them and more about how much we should care when they are mistreated. (Nearly everyone can probably agree that, in an ideal world, nineteen thousand cattle would not be crowded onto a ship so fetid that it can’t come near land without alarming the authorities.) Historically, advocacy for animals often failed because the cause was judged unserious. This perception began to change in the late nineteenth century, thanks to a handful of activists, many of whom were also involved in other causes: abolition, child protection, temperance. A century later, animal welfare and temperance were joined again in the punk offshoot known as hardcore, in which a number of leading musicians embraced a “straight edge” ethos that was anti-drug and, relatedly, anti-meat. (Ian MacKaye, the musician credited with coining the term, has said that he viewed eschewing meat as a “logical extension” of straight edge.) It was through hardcore that I encountered and, for a few years, adopted the vegan diet, equally inspired by both the cause and the culture that surrounded it, or maybe unequally inspired. We are a self-obsessed species, and indeed self-obsession is part of what distinguishes us from other species; we are more different from, say, chimpanzees than chimpanzees are from orangutans. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that so many animal-centric movements spend so much time thinking and talking about humans instead.

Many religious traditions take killing an animal to be a grave act, though not necessarily a gravely wrong one. One of the first verses in the Bible is a vegan commandment: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” But, after the flood, God told Noah, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you,” balancing this permissive standard with a stern caveat: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”

The idea of principled and thoroughgoing veganism seems to have arrived more recently, at least in the West. In England, in 1714, a Dutch-born writer named Bernard Mandeville published an odd and excellent book called “The Fable of the Bees,” which opened with an apian allegory in verse form about laissez-faire government, but also contained several essays, including one that framed meat eating as a moral evil. “I have often thought, if it was not for this Tyranny which Custom usurps over us, that Men of any tolerable Good-nature could never be reconcil’d to the killing of so many Animals for their daily Food, as long as the bountiful Earth so plentifully provides them with Varieties of vegetable Dainties,” Mandeville wrote. “I question whether ever any body so much as killed a Chicken without Reluctancy the first time.” When Jeremy Bentham’s “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals of Legislation” was first printed, in 1780, he included an extraordinary footnote that proposed a kind of beastly revolution. “The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny,” Bentham wrote. “The question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ?” By the nineteenth century, animal-welfare groups were growing in England, and in 1848 the satirical magazine Punch noted the emergence of a “great Vegetarian movement,” imagining a kind of meatless mania. “There are vegetarian missionaries going about the country inculcating the doctrine of peas and potatoes,” the magazine reported, adding that “a silver medal will be awarded to the vegetarian who will dispose of one hundred heads of celery with the utmost celerity.”

In a new history titled “ Our Kindred Creatures ” (Knopf), Bill Wasik, a journalist, and Monica Murphy, a veterinarian and a writer, show how this movement took root in America. They compare the “rise of animal-welfare consciousness,” in the late nineteenth century, to the rapid growth in support of same-sex marriage, during the twenty-tens, but they decline to simplify what turns out to be a sprawling and rather diffuse story of complicated advocates and mixed messages. An astonishingly confident and well-connected activist named Henry Bergh founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866, and during the next year he pushed New York City to make it illegal to “neglect, maliciously kill, maim, wound, injure, torture or cruelly beat” any animal. (Bergh also bemoaned the influence of immigrants with a taste for bullfighting and other “barbarous” practices; formed a complicated alliance with P. T. Barnum , the circus master; and emerged as a leading critic of vaccination, which he viewed as an affront to humans and animals alike.) In Massachusetts, a local chapter of the A.S.P.C.A. launched a publication with a name that was meant as a tribute, though it now sounds like an insult: Our Dumb Animals. They were, of course, “dumb” in the original sense of the word; the magazine pledged to “speak for those that cannot speak for themselves.” An activist named Caroline Earle White, who came from a family of abolitionists, called in 1887 for a total ban on medical experiments involving animals—an unpopular cause, but one that was, she maintained, no more far-fetched than “the abolition of Negro slavery” had recently been.

Despite these decades of foment, the publication of “Animal Liberation,” roughly a century later, came as a shock. In fearsomely logical prose, Singer argued not just that we ought to treat animals better but that we had no right to treat them any differently than we treat one another. His radical repudiation of speciesism, defined as “a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species,” forced readers to reconsider a range of practices that they had learned to regard as normal. The power of the idea lay in its simplicity, which left Singer free to devote much of the book to considering the practical implications: the intentional horrors of animal-research laboratories, and the unintentional—or perhaps just unnecessary—horrors of factory farming, in which animals are often crammed together in miserable conditions and subjected to painful operations such as “de-beaking,” to prevent chickens from pecking one another to death, and “tail-docking,” to prevent overstressed and understimulated pigs from gnawing one another’s tails into bloody stumps.

Singer followed the chapter on factory farming with one about how to become a vegetarian, and he included, at the end, a list of recipes, which probably introduced more than a few Western readers to a form of “bean curd, sometimes called bean cake, or tofu .” In “Animal Liberation Now,” the recipes have been updated, with more variety and no more cheese. Singer has become what he calls a “flexible vegan” (he has said that he sometimes eats eggs, provided they have been taken from free-range hens), but he doesn’t seem inclined to worry much about either the purity or the deliciousness of his diet. “Frying the tofu is optional,” he tells readers, in the new recipe section, adding that “it tastes better, but I don’t like to consume too much oil, so sometimes I do it, and sometimes not.” Generations of readers probably learned to loathe McDonald’s from reading Singer, but he himself is too practical-minded to hold a grudge, and so in February he startled some of his fans by praising the company, on X. “Let’s give credit where it is due: @McDonald’s have reached their goal of sourcing 100% their U.S. egg supply from cage-free hens, as they pledged they would,” he wrote. “It’s not nearly enough, but it’s a step forward on a long march.”

Singer acknowledges his debt to Bentham, whose question is at the heart of much of Singer’s work: “Can they suffer ?” But, as a consequentialist, he realizes that his book will likely do more good if it offends fewer people, and so he deëmphasizes his suggestion that infanticide might sometimes be justified, though he doesn’t retract it. He has excised his claim that there “seem to be certain measurable differences between both races and sexes,” and that “we do not yet know how much of these differences is really due to the genetic endowments of the different races and sexes.” Singer’s point, in 1975, was that these differences, whether between sexes or races or species, do not justify discrimination. Still, he believes that some differences do matter, especially differences in sentience, because sentience is what enables suffering, and suffering is what we ought to want to prevent.

In many ways, this is a generous approach, one that asks us to search everywhere for mistreatment, and redress any that we find. Bentham and Singer’s alertness to cruelty, when their contemporaries were happy to ignore it, is part of what can make them seem like visionaries today. But the focus on sentience and suffering can also seem pitiless. Singer’s approach leaves no room for speciesism, which means it leaves no room for the idea that every human is valuable because of his humanity—no room for what Christians call grace, the sense that all people have something precious and perhaps sacred in common. Singer puts every living creature on the same scale, each with its own chance to earn, through sentience, the right not to be mistreated. This means that humanity is on the scale, too, and so perhaps are individual humans, all of us liable to be judged on precisely how sentient we are.

Singer, to his credit, is motivated by a desire to solve big problems, but this means that the small lives of animals don’t figure much in his book. Nussbaum, by contrast, views a wide spectrum of creatures with both affection and awe; they seem “wonderful” to her, as to so many of us, and she thinks we should pay more attention to that intuition. (The book is dedicated to her daughter, Rachel, who worked as an attorney for an animal-welfare group, and died in 2019.) “Wonder suggests to us that animals matter directly, for their own sake—not because of some similarity they have to ourselves,” she writes. What she opposes is not speciesism but its cousin, anthropocentrism, a world view that puts humans at the center, and values animals only to the extent that we decide that “they are (almost) like us.” To her, Singer’s view, with its focus on suffering, misses much of what makes animal life meaningful—meaningful, that is, to the animals themselves. Nussbaum is known for developing, with the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, a framework called the capabilities approach, which focusses on insuring that all people have the ability to thrive. Now she wants to adapt that approach to account for the different ways that nonhuman animals, too, “strive for flourishing,” and are frequently blocked. “We are all animals,” she writes, “thrown into this world together, striving to get the things we need, and often thwarted in the attempt.” Nussbaum is horrified by factory farming, deeply moved by the plight of whales, and cautiously optimistic about the future prospects of pets, which she refers to as “companion animals,” to remind us that they exist not merely to please their so-called owners but to flourish in their own ways.

What does flourishing entail? For humans, Nussbaum has developed a list of entitlements, which may seem suspiciously well matched to the interests of a humanities professor. (The list includes the ability to experience and produce “literary” and other works but not, explicitly, the ability to trade goods.) As for animals, the entitlements will depend on both the species and the individual. She suggests that we heed “experts who have lived closely with a certain type of animal and studied those animals over long periods of time”; working across national borders, those experts could help us draft “a legally enforceable constitution” for every kind of animal. Dolphins, for instance, would be granted the right to roam, to socialize, and to have as much or as little contact with humans as they choose. She holds that, because animals generally “seek maturity as a central goal,” killing the young is probably harder to justify than killing the old. And she writes that virtually all creatures under human control should be guaranteed “at least one or two chances at sex and reproduction.” This means that companion animals might permissibly be spayed or neutered, but only after they have had a chance to find some companionship for themselves.

But why care about the flourishing only of animals, and not of a coral reef, or an ocean, or a forest? Singer’s suffering test provides one answer. Nussbaum’s answer is complicated, and the more she explains it the closer she draws to the anthropocentrism she says she opposes. In one passage, she points out that a cat can be said to engage in the “active pursuit of ends.” Elsewhere, she notes that a plant “lacks the sort of situational flexibility that makes us conclude that fish are sentient creatures,” adding that “a plant is basically a cluster entity, a they , rather than an it .” It is not that the distinctions she makes are indefensible. On the contrary, they are eminently defensible, because they reflect the things (activity, flexibility, sentience, individuality) that we humans tend to value in one another, and therefore in the world around us. It is hard to imagine a more anthropocentric view than one that surveys the natural landscape and sees creditable strivers, surrounded by less consequential organisms and entities that don’t measure up in the striving department.

Speciesism is easier to renounce than it is to abandon, because most of us share a sense that human beings have rights and responsibilities that set us apart. “To speak of ‘animal rights’ is, in the end, as absurd as to speak of ‘animal duties,’ ” Matthew Scully wrote in National Review in 1993. He wanted to assure his readers that they could object to cruelty without endorsing any weird metaphysical claims. By the time he published “Dominion,” he was working as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush , for whom he helped coin the phrase “axis of evil,” and he was already rethinking his skepticism of “animal rights.” Observing that people seemed to have little trouble extending compassion for the weakest in their midst, at least in theory, Scully wondered why animals should be offered less. He defended pets, both the concept and the term. He remembered reading Singer’s book as a teen-ager and then scrutinizing his own beloved dog. “Try as I might, I could not discern in his furry face any desire at all for liberation,” Scully wrote. Indeed, he encouraged his readers to visit a factory farm, if they could, and consider the idea that the cattle confined there were “morally indistinguishable” from the animals they loved at home.

Scully took his title from the Book of Genesis , in which, shortly before His vegan commandment, God grants man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Scully wrote not necessarily as a Christian (in one early interview, he mentioned that he had never been a regular churchgoer) but as a thinker who took the Bible seriously, and who was sure that Biblical “dominion” meant taking gentle care of the natural world, rather than simply dominating it or, worse, emulating its cruellest attributes. Unlike Nussbaum, who endeavors to figure out what we are each striving for, Scully accepted the mysteriousness of life, suggesting that God made all creatures to “serve some purpose beyond our full knowing.” What he wanted for animals was not justice but mercy—a kind of gift, freely given by humans to animals. “There is no such thing as a right to mercy, not for the animals and not even for us,” he wrote.

This is a poignant formulation, but one that does not easily lend itself to a program of social reform. And so “Fear Factories” chronicles how, in the years since “Dominion,” Scully has grown increasingly comfortable advocating for the “rights” of animals, as a way of insisting that how they are often treated is wrong, in ways that demand government intervention. In 1868, the editors of Our Dumb Animals boasted that their board included “Roman Catholics and Protestants, Democrats and Republicans, License men and Prohibitory men.” Scully, by contrast, has found allies virtually nowhere: few politicians in either party seem eager to crack down on so-called “canned” hunting—in which the quarry has essentially no chance to escape—or to tighten regulations on hog farming. When, in 2000, he told the strategist Karl Rove that the Republican Party’s platform might add a line about animal cruelty, Rove’s response did not rise even to the level of noncommittal. “Hey, man, at least you’re thinking outside the box,” Rove apparently said. “I like that!” And though Scully defends his having worked with Governor Sarah Palin , who backed a government-supported program of aerial wolf hunting, he admits, “The pile of moose and deer antlers on the campaign plane, gifts bestowed on the candidate at every rural stop, did get to be a little much.”

Scully, in fact, has something important in common with Palin: like many of his fellow-Republicans, and vanishingly few animal-rights activists, he is firmly opposed to abortion. This sets him apart from Nussbaum, who has argued that “access to abortion” is an essential component of “human dignity.” And it sets him farther apart still from Singer, who has questioned whether even newborn infants have “an inherent right to life.” Scully can’t help but see parallels between factory farming and abortion. “Both industries are blunt, practical solutions to hard moral problems that the people who advocate them have despaired of dealing with in some gentler way,” he writes. “I have never heard a single compelling argument for why the unborn must die or why the animals must suffer.” Of course, there is a powerful movement in America to ban abortion, and no similarly robust effort to ban meat. When the pro-life and the animal-rights causes seem to be, in many ways, natural allies, why do they continue to belong to such separate worlds? It is certainly possible to oppose abortion while also opposing, on feminist or prudential grounds, efforts to force all pregnant women to give birth. But it’s strange that the people most concerned about the fate of human blastocysts take little interest in the fate of cattle or chimpanzees, and that the people who think carefully about the nervous systems of crabs take little interest in the nervous system of a human fetus. Often, the overlap occurs strictly at the level of rhetoric. “Voice of the Voiceless,” the title of a 1992 compilation of mainly vegan straight-edge bands which raised money for the Animal Liberation Front, is also a phrase used by pro-life advocates, who are equally convinced that they are expanding the circle of human compassion.

There is something unsettling about the animal-rights argument, which is partly a matter of scale: the dizzying numbers involved can make it hard to know where to start, or stop. The use and abuse of animals is tightly woven into our world, which is why people who think seriously about it so often end up calling for broad changes that might seem unwise or even indefensible—at least, at first. My own years of veganism ended gradually, as my social surroundings changed, and I found myself wanting to be less of an outlier. I returned to cheese, and then fish, and then meat, having convinced myself that killing an animal is not necessarily an act of cruelty. I’m not eager to be at the leading edge of the vegan revolution, which may yet succeed, but neither would I wish to be at the tail end of the meat-eating resistance. And I am sympathetic to the frustration of advocates who can’t figure out why, nearly half a century after “Animal Liberation,” cattle are still sailing the world knee-deep in shit. A weekend with the work of Singer, Nussbaum, or Scully will likely make your next trip to the supermarket significantly more uncomfortable, and probably that’s as it should be. But these advocates also, in different ways, remind us that important causes have a way of redrawing ideological lines, turning some of our opponents into allies, and some allies into opponents. It is not easy to think carefully and consistently about what we do to animals. If the people who try often end up endorsing proposals that make us recoil, this may say as much about us as about them. ♦

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Animal Rights Persuasive Essay Sample, with Outline

Published by gudwriter on November 23, 2017 November 23, 2017

Animal Rights Essay

Animals have a right to be free of human use and exploitation. They have an inherent worth and moral rights that should be respected. To have the best grades on such kind of essays, essay writing services for MBA will write them for you.

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Animal Rights Essay Outline

Introduction.

Thesis: People should consider giving animals the same rights as human beings because they deserve it.

Paragraph 1:

Animals should be granted the same rights as humans first because just like humans, they have the capacity to suffer.

• They feel motherly love, loneliness, frustration, fear, and pleasure depending on the situation they find themselves in.
• It should be the moral obligation of humans to take this fact into account whenever they consider undertaking actions that would interfere with the needs of animals.

Paragraph 2:

Human beings should also consider that animals have an inherent worth which in itself is completely separate from the usefulness of animals to humans.

• Being living beings capable of moving, all animals have the right to life and therefore have every right not to be subjected to any kinds of pain.
• It is wrong on the part of humans to presume that the sole reason for the existence of nonhuman animals is for them to be used by humans.

Paragraph 3:

Another consideration that humans should make is that their infringement of animal rights is based on prejudice that they can easily put an end to.

• Only prejudice pushes a person into denying another person the rights that they expect to have for themselves.
• Prejudice is morally unacceptable whether it is based on species, sexual orientation, gender, or race.

Paragraph 4:

There is no any morally relevant difference between human beings and non-human animals.

• If humans are entitled to their rights, it is only fair that animals too are allowed to enjoy their own rights.
• It makes no sense when human animals are granted their rights but non-human ones are denied theirs.

Paragraph 5:

Animals have a culture to preserve and thus killing or caging them amounts to an erosion of this culture.

• All species suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
• Not justifiable to subject another species to an experience one would not wish for themselves.

Paragraph 6:

It is the belief of some people that because animals are not humans, they should not have the same rights as humans.

• However, it should be noted that adult mammals and human animals have no morally relevant difference between them.
• They are both animals and they deserve to be treated the same.

It is true that animals are not human beings and that is not up for debate. However, they deserve to have the rights granted to humans because they suffer like humans. They have an inherent worth given that they are animals like humans save for the difference in their species.

Animals Should Have the Same Rights as Humans

Human beings continue to go to zoos and circuses, wearing leather, and eating meat; activities all of which involve either caging or killing of animals. Animals are also kept as pets by humans and this involves the selling of animals and constructing cages for them so they may not escape. Noteworthy, all these actions have to do with the infringement of animal rights in one way or another. It is however interesting that humans never consider the impacts that these actions have on animals presumably because animals, to them, have no rights. This disregard for animal rights has even attracted court cases some of which sought to have animals viewed as persons just as humans. People should consider giving animals the same rights as human beings because they deserve it.

At the same time Gudwriter’s also provides essay on argumentative essay on animal rights with examples.

Animals should be granted the same rights as humans first because just like humans, they have the capacity to suffer. They feel motherly love, loneliness, frustration, fear, and pleasure depending on the situation they find themselves in. As such, it should be the moral obligation of human beings to take this fact into account whenever they consider undertaking actions that would interfere with the needs of animals. As pointed out by Bennett-Jones (2015), “Factors to consider would include the degree of an animal’s autonomy, sensitivity to pain, level of sentience, self-awareness and ability to hold preferences.” It is well deserving for animals to lead their lives free from being exploited or being subjected to sufferings. As a matter of fact, when deciding on the rights of any being, the question should be whether they can suffer and not whether they can talk or reason.

Human beings should also consider that animals have an inherent worth which in itself is completely separate from their usefulness to humans. Being living beings capable of moving, all animals have the right to life and therefore have every right not to be subjected to any kind of pain. In this regard, it is wrong on the part of human beings to presume that the sole reason for the existence of nonhuman animals is for them to be used by humans. Animals attach immense value to their lives just like humans do, and rightly so. This is why they will always try to evade danger either by defending themselves or running away from sources of danger ( Smith, 2012 ). It is also why they go about looking for food to fend for themselves and their young ones, much like humans.

Further, there is no any morally relevant difference between human beings and non-human animals. If humans are entitled to their rights, it is only fair that animals too are allowed to enjoy their own rights. It makes no sense when human animals are granted their rights but non-human ones are denied theirs. Moreover, being ‘subject-of-a-life,’ both the human and non-human animal species have many attributes in common. They are for instance alive to the fact that they live (“Animal Rights,” 2014). There is thus no justification whatsoever why animals should be denied the rights they deserve. This point leaves human beings with no valid reason to continue trampling upon the rights of non-human animals.

Another consideration that humans should make is that their infringement of animal rights is based on prejudice that they can easily put an end to. As it is, only prejudice pushes a person into denying another person the rights that they expect to have for themselves. As noted by Smith (2012), prejudice is morally unacceptable whether it is based on species, sexual orientation, gender, or race. If humans would not eat a dog for instance, why should they eat goats? The capacity to feel pain is inherent in both dogs and goats. However, out of prejudice, humans consider one as food and the other as a companion.

Further, animals have a culture to preserve and thus killing or caging them amounts to an erosion of this culture. Just like humans, “Elephants that have witnessed the slaughter of their parents by poaching or culling and lost the support of their extended family group exhibit the same erratic and often detached behaviors…” (Siebert, 2014). Their fate resembles that of orphans of war who after losing their families and witnessing the destruction of their villages, remain to wallow in miser. In other words, all species suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Why subject another species to an experience you would not wish for yourself?

It is the belief of some people that because animals are not humans, they should not have the same rights as humans. However, as already seen, adult mammals and human animals have no morally relevant difference between them ( Cavalieri, 2003 ). They are both animals and they deserve to be treated the same. No matter how humanely animals may be treated, killing, confining, breeding, buying, and selling them invade into their rights. It is unjust to subject one species to sufferance while fighting for the rights of another species yet morally; they both deserve respect and freedom. It is thus dishonest to assume that humans can do whatever they like with animals.

It is true that animals are not human beings and that is not up for debate. However, they deserve to have the rights granted to humans because they suffer like humans. They have an inherent worth given that they are animals like humans save for the difference in their species. They have the will to organize their life according to their culture which is unfortunately interfered with by humans. It amounts to prejudice to subject them to untold sufferings in the name of being turned into food or being kept in cages for whatever purposes. In this respect, it is high time humans considered championing for animals to have the same rights as humans.

Animal Rights. (2014). In BBC . Retrieved July 10, 2020 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/rights/rights_1.shtml

Bennett-Jones, O. (2015). Should animals be given human rights? . BBC News . Retrieved 22 November 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-32854504

Cavalieri, P. (2003). The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights . Cary, NC: Oxford University Press, USA.

Siebert, C. (2014). Should Animals Have The Same Rights As People? . Popular Science . Retrieved 22 November 2017, from https://www.popsci.com/should-animals-same-rights-people

Smith, W. J. (2012). A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement . New York City, NY: Encounter Books.

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Project Pawsitivity

A Sitting For a Cause Blog Featuring All Things Pet-Related

Subway Strays: The Dogs of Moscow’s Metro

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the stray dogs in Moscow have a surprisingly well-documented history which animal behaviorists have been paying close attention to for several decades. During the Soviet period in Russia the packs of wild (or stray) dogs in were regulated. Only the clever canines who learned to stay in isolation were able to survive. Usually, these dogs would remain on the outskirts of the city hunting in wild packs, as the living in the city was dangerous and food scarce.  After the fall of the Soviet Union quality of life in Russia began to slowly improve and with it more street vendors and food collecting in busy neighborhoods. This began to bring some the stray dogs out of the suburbs into the city.

Today, there are nearly 35,000 stray dogs that call Moscow home. Out of these 35,000 stray dogs there are about 500 that have taken to living underground. Out of these dogs, there are a few that have started thinking outside the box and inside the boxcar. They have begun the slow move underground to stay out of the cold (Russian winters reach an average of -5 degrees every day). Many of the Russian commuters embraced the dog’s underground migration by petting them or giving them food.

Though these claims may seem like the made up type of internet misinformation that we have learned to be skeptical of these days, it is actually sourced to a Russian biologist by the name of  Dr. Andrey Poyarkov , a highly regarded scientist in his field of study. As it turns out Poyarkov has been studying these dogs for the last thirty years and told news sources back in 2010 that he suspected a small fraction of these underground dogs had actually learned to use the subway in order to beg for food in bustling urban areas where food is more plentiful.

Andrei Neuronov , an animal behaviorist, says much like you train your dogs at home to respond to verbal commands like “sit” or “stay,” the Moscow metro dogs are using audio cues from the subway stops they have learned. The dogs memorize the names of the stops to navigate the subway systems in order to take them to heavily populated places during the day and get food.  Then, they return to their more secluded corners of the suburbs at night where they are less likely to be bothered by people.  Here is a story ABC did back in 2011, talking about this very thing.

Do you have any information on how to help these dogs?  Please share and comment below.