Animal Rights Final Research Paper Essays

Animal Rights Final Research Paper Essays Animal Rights Final Research Paper Essay Animal Rights Final Research Paper Essay Animal Rights Final Research Paper Franco Pacheco ENGL-135 Prof. Gurin DeVry University December 13, 2012 Animal rights The idea of animal rights is not new. Through the 18th and 19th Century philosophers like Rousseau, Kant, Bentham, and Schopenhauer have produced different arguments in favor of the treatment of animals. Animal rights is the idea that nonhuman animals are entitled to the possession of their own lives and that they should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. All animals are equal in the sense that they all can sense pain and suffering however as far as treating them like humans, I do not think so. Humans have been eating meat for as long as we have been on this earth and there is nothing wrong with that. That does not mean people enjoy killing them for pleasure, their lives are taking for our survival. Eating meat is not wrong as long as we are conscious of their contribution to humankind over the years, providing us with transportation, food, clothing, and companionship. Torturing and killing animals for pleasure is wrong, however, eating their meat moderately for survival is not. By the beginning of the 18th century, writers began to discuss animal feelings of pain and suffering, vivisection, and the cruel treatment of animals raised and slaughtered for food. All animals have the same capacity for suffering, but how we see them differs and that determines what we will tolerate happening to them. Most people are not capable of killing what they eat with their own hands but if is cooked and served; there are no thoughts of how or where it came from. Over 9 billion chickens, pigs, cattle, turkeys, sheep, goats, ducks, and geese are bred, raised, and killed for food annually in America. Today, the breeding of farm animals is dominated by industrialized facilities that maximize profits by treating them as production units and forgetting that they can also feel pain as human do. The abuse of farm animals in factory farms, for example, did not see an influx until the early 19th century, when small family farms and traditional ranching of livestock started to cave under the pressure of larger institutional farming practices. As factory farms became the norm, so, unfortunately did the systematic and prolonged abuse of animals raised for human consumption. Most animals in these facilities are forced to endure physical and psychological abuse for months if not years on end, deprived of the ability to perform behaviors inherent to their species, and housed in overcrowded facilities with insufficient food, water, and natural light. Most are given steroids to enhance growth, and antibiotics to fend off illnesses that are likely to occur in such unsanitary conditions. Their eventual slaughter is often performed in a manner as inhumane as the condition in which they are forced to exist until that day. There are many people working for the improvement of the ways in which animals that are raised for food are handled and slaughtered; most notable is Temple Grandin. She is one of the leading authorities on the design of animal handling facilities, specializing in the humane handling of animals at the point of slaughter in the meat industry. She is credited with having â€Å"done more to improve welfare for animals at the point of slaughter than any human alive. † According to data extrapolated from U. S. Department of Agriculture reports that nearly 10. billion land animals were raised and killed for food in the United States in 2010. This is a 1. 7% rise from the 2009 totals, larger than the 0. 9% increase in US population, meaning that animals killed per-capita increased slightly. Based on January-August 2011 USDA slaughter numbers, it is projected that the number of land animals killed in 2011 will increase an additional 1% from 2010 numbers, rising to approximately 10,266 million animals. Fortunately, due to increased feed prices and sinking domestic demand, Bloomberg. om is speculating that there may be a 5% drop in animals raised for food in 2012! While the number of aquatic animals killed each year is not reported, meticulous calculations by researcher Noam Mohr estimate the number of finfishes killed each year for US consumption to be 13,027 million, and the number of shellfishes to be 40,455 million, resulting in a combined 53,481 million (over 53 billion) aquatic animals who died for American consumption in 2010. Becoming a vegetarian overnight will not stop the purposeful harm done to animals at the hands of human beings. Consequently, I agree that there is a lot that has gone very wrong with most of our meat production, but we are omnivores, and arguing that we are not is not going to get us anywhere. It may be possible to live without meat, but considering that all animals will eventually die, will be a sin not to eat them before other animals do. We feel bad of the killing of the animals we eat, but not bad enough to stop eating them completely. People have their own reasons for becoming vegan and not everyone is concern about the animal’s welfare. Becoming vegan will not stop animal abuse; people are still going to do what they want to do, especially if it involves animal cruelty. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) can do all they can, but you cannot right all the wrongs in the world. The most prominent of the abolitionists is Gary Francione, professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. He argues that focusing on animal welfare may actually worsen the position of animals, because it entrenches the view of them as property, and makes the public more comfortable about using them. I actually hate the way animals are treated and could not find a better way of killing them without making it go through torture. However, I am not switching to become vegan, just because a group of people considers it cruelty. I still love meat, but I treat animals with respect and morality because they are providing the protein my body needs for survival. It is not admissible to cause animal’s unnecessary pain and suffering. I do not believe in the unethical treatment of animals, however I do believe in the ethical use of them. Confinement production of livestock and poultry has generated a major conflict between the meats, dairy, poultry industries, and reformist welfare and abolitionists animal rights group. They condemn and oppose factory farming because they view intensive production as inhumane, being carried out under unnatural conditions and causing suffering for the animal and poultry. Over the past 50 years, animal agriculture has increased from small family farms to large corporate factory farming systems. In these factory-farming systems, their main concern is increasing the profits margins at all costs and the process has devastating consequences for the animals. Farmed animals lead a life of misery from the moment they are born to when they are slaughtered. Every day, everywhere across the globe, millions of these animals are mishandled, kept in confinement, mutilated as part of routine husbandry practices, and deprived of their basic physical and behavioral needs. In September of 1994, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) designated the National Farm Animals Awareness Week (Guither, pg. 1). They criticized the cruelty of the confinement housing of such animals and they asked consumers to â€Å"shop with compassion. † Bernard E. Rollin an American philosopher and currently a professor of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University urges the food animal producers and animal industry â€Å"not to resist and combat the new ethic f or animals , for they will not win, but rather to appropriate it into their production systems with the help of research that acknowledges and respects the patent truth that animals can both suffer and be happy†(Guither, pg. 9). In the last two decades hundreds of thousands Americans have fight animal rights as part of a new, powerful and controversial social movement. All animal liberationists believe that the individual interests of non-human animals deserve recognition and protection, but the movement can be split into two broad camps. Animal rights advocates, or rights liberationists, believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them; for example, the work of Philosophers Tom Regan and Peter Singer. They do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds (Utilitarianism in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number) that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy (Isacat, 2008). Dr. David Nibert is a Professor of Sociology at the Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. He teaches Animals Society, Global Change, Social Stratification, Minority Groups, and Law and Society. He is the author of Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Rowman/Littlefield). He conducted a survey among residents of Clark County, Ohio and found that support for animal rights is significantly related to seven of the eleven variables, suggesting the existence of an important link between ones disposition toward human and nonhuman animals. Five hundred and one residents of Clark County, Ohio, aged eighteen and older, responded to a telephone survey conducted April 16-18, 1993. This survey was designed to examine respondent’s opinions on several social issues. One of the questions was, Some people say that animals have rights that people should respect. Would you agree or disagree? They were also asked eleven questions adapted from the General Social Survey (Wood, 1990). Here are the results of the Nibert’s survey: â€Å"Of the 501 respondents, 246 (49. 1 %) were male and 255 (50. 9%) were female. 81 1 (20. 8%) were less than 30 years of age, 208 (41. 6%) were between 30 and 49 years old, and 184 (36. 8%) were over 50. 76 (15. 2%) had not graduated from high school, 277 (55. 3%) were high school graduates and 143 (29. %) were college graduates. The sample was predominantly white (461 or 92%) and married (334 or 66. 7%). In response to the animal rights question, 373 respondents (74. 5%) agreed, 84 (16. 8%) disagreed, 37 (7. 4%) were undecided and 7 (1. 4%) refused. For purposes of convenience, the respondents who agreed that animals have rights will be referred to as animal rights supporters. Examination of demographic variables reveals that age, sex, place of residence and religion were significantly related to support for animal rights. Younger people were more likely to support animal rights than older people, women more than men, and city residents more than those living in more rural areas of the county (Nibert 1994). † To summarize, Animal rights are a matter of personal choice. Every individual has a right to decide how he or she wants to treat others, including other species. Animals have been around on the earth for as long as humans have, if not longer. They play an important role in todays society whether or not we choose to admit it. To say that animals have rights is only to end the discussion before it starts. Animals will be animals and they will eat one another for the need of survival: that is a natural phenomenon. We can reduce some suffering by eliminating certain practices in certain areas, but this will not solve the problem. As explained above, we cannot humanely raise nine billion animals. Going vegan is the only solution. Also, keep in mind that some meat, eggs and dairy products are misleadingly marketed as humane but offer only marginal improvements over traditional factory farming. These animals are not raised humanely if they are in larger cages, or are taken out of cages only to live in overcrowded barns. And humane slaughter is an oxymoron. References Cavalieri, Paola. (2001) the animal question, why nonhuman animals deserve human rights. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Grillo, Alexander, (August 15, 2012), Five Reasons Why Meat-Eating Cannot Be Considered a ‘Personal Choice’ Free from Harm, Food and Psychology http://freefromharm. org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/ Guither, Harold D. (1998) Animal rights, History and scope of a radical social movement. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press Issitt, Micah Newton, Heather (2011), p2-2, 1p Animals Deserve the Same Rights as Humans. http://search. ebscohost. com. proxy. devry. edu/login. aspx? direct=truedb=pwhAN=26608510site=pov-live Rich, Alex Wagner Geraldine (2011), p1-1, 1p Points of View: Animal Rights: An Overview. http://search. ebscohost. com. proxy. devry. edu/login. aspx? direct=truedb=pwhAN=22827052site=pov-live Thompson, Michael (2012) Why We Have Ethical Obligations to Animals: Animal Welfare and the Common Good more http://wpunj. academia. du/MichaelThompson/Papers/392701/Why_We_Have_Ethical_Obligations_to_Animals_Animal_Welfare_and_the_Common_Good April 12, 2011. American Humane Association hails ‘yes’ vote on humane standards for poultry in Washington americanhumane. org/animals/animal-welfare-news/american-humane-association-hails-yes-vote. html Report: Number of Animals Killed In US Increases in 2010 http://farmusa. org/statistics11. html Animal Rights and Human Social Issues David A. Nib ert, Wittenberg University (1994) animalsandsociety. org/assets/library/283_s222. pdf