Discussion of The Issue of Animal Rights and Cruelty to Animals

The treatment of animals is something that can evoke an emotional reaction in a lot of people. However, a lot of us as a society have managed the ability of turning a blind eye to the treatment of animals. For some, it's similar to consciously smoking cigarettes and knowing the consequences of doing such and ignoring them anyway. People eat the meat and go to the circus performances but ignore the articles and facts about the gross misconduct occurring there. Why are monkeys or cows different than your dog or cat.

There is an abundant amount of research coming out about how truly complex animals are. Hinduism Today published an article about how some animals “live in their own societies, mourn the loss of another” and can even build a fortress to protect themselves from predators; researchers are discovering traits thought only distinguishable to humans in a variety of species of animals.

However, for a long time, animal rights has been a controversial topic, with significant research backing how animals are able to process emotion and feel pain. People have gone to the extremes protesting for animals to have rights in the US judicial system as ‘nonhuman’ so they can have bodily liberty and moral decency. Organizations like the Nonhuman Rights Project are actively working to change the common law status of certain animals.

However, animals have also been used for important things like medical research and food production, and for reasons like these, humans have an incentive to put their own needs first. Take medicine for example; without the use of animals in research many lifesaving medications and treatments would not exist. Ed Owen a freelance political consultant and author of “Dangers of Cuddly Extremism”, has a daughter who is three that suffers from cystic fibrosis. A disease that was once incredibly difficult to survive past childhood now has an average life expectancy of 30 with a lot living longer because of all the medicine and treatments made possible using animal research.

Despite animal research and its significance being strongly supported by scientific opinion, activists claim it as flawed and uncertain. The British Union Against Vivisection claims “we believe that animal experiments are unreliable and are potentially delaying medical progress by focusing research attention and funds on a fundamentally flawed methodology”. If you look at the results however, animal research has brought about many lifesaving treatments and living bodies are extremely complex organisms, so currently there is no more suitable alternative to testing on animals. However; there are many people who claim to have better alternatives, one being Norman Baker a Liberal Democrat MP and the party's spokesman on animal welfare. He believes “such as the use of computer modeling or cell cultures, and even using human volunteers, would be a far more effective way to pursue medical research”.

While some want alternatives from animals in research, and some scientists even refuse to work on animals, others believe in the power of informing the general public. Stefan Treue, a researcher who experiments on animals, believes that once people visit his laboratory and see what happens with their own eyes, he says that something like 98% can accept the fact that this is a pivotal part in the advancement of biomedical science. This may be caused by the public’s lack of information. Currently there is a divide between the people doing the research and the public. This is no easy topic to talk about with roughly a hundred million animals being killed worldwide for this cause.

According to a poll done by Nature.com, the researchers are hesitant about talking about the issue with the public, because of the fear of contrasting opinions or being lashed out at. Some activists have gone to the extreme of setting university buildings on fire, assaulting researchers and relatives, and even desecrating graves. About one-quarter of researchers say their institutions offered help or coaching in how to address the public about their work. On top of the fear of addressing the public, they also have to live in constant fear of the activists. In the last fourteen years both the United Kingdom and the United States have had to enact laws to combat the actions of the activists soon dubbed eco-terrorists.

While there are not yet suitable alternatives in the medical field for animals, there are in food. With big fast food restaurants offering alternatives ranging from veggie burgers to even plant-based chicken from KFC, there are more alternatives appearing in even fast food chains. The direction current meat packing plants and dairy farms are going will destroy our earth. Livestock production is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution with the amount of meat consumption high worldwide.

We are single handedly killing biodiversity with how animals are bred and slaughtered. It has gotten to the point where society has one big “Cognitive dissonance” toward the treatment of animals that are not considered ‘pets.’ It is easy to look at a steak or hamburger and not consider the animal that was murdered, or how they were literally born to die. We disassociate ourselves and can push the reality of the situation to the back of our minds. However, when it comes to domesticated pets like cats or dogs, they are held in high regard. No one wants to see their pet suffer; some may even go as far as to refer to their pet as their child and some mourn the loss of a pet deeply. So why is it so hard to see certain domesticated animals in pain, but when it’s a farm animal all people need to hear is, “Don't worry, there's no abuse happening here. This is all part of routine”.

‘That routine’ is where animals are killed in mass amounts, and often force fed, impregnated or castrated without sedation for pain. Cows milked until their body physically cannot take it, pigs crammed together in tight quarters, hens are debeaked with no regard to the pain they feel, is systematic cruelty inflicted on animals. Non-domesticated animals are forced to live in captivity for human entertainment or gain.

How we treat the animals we eat or get products to eat from are extremely important. Society has reaped multiple consequences of improper meat handling. In food production one major hazard is bushmeat, that is how a lot of diseases that originated in animals got transferred to humans. He Zhengming, the Vice Secretary General of the China Experimental Animals Society, believes that eating bushmeat and inhumane breeding will bring about dangerous outcomes. It is already reported that at least 100 kinds of diseases that affect humans originated in animals. Bird flu, a disease passed to humans from animals, has caused disaster in 16 countries and regions, with hundreds of deaths worldwide.

While we as consumers can turn a blind eye to the effects of livestock production and the cruelty to the animals itself, apparently so can the workers inside the plants doing the work. Psychologist and author Dr. Melanie Joy interviewed several workers in the meat packing plants to ask how they can handle a job like this. One response was about how they do not think of the animal as an individual because “they’d really rather not know it”. As a society we have turned a blind eye to these animals, letting them be born to suffer.

There are mass amounts of cruelty inflicted on all types of animals daily for human benefit. In 2013, a Massachusetts newspaper reported of frightening noises coming from a nearby dairy farm. Local people describing the noises ‘spooky’ and ‘scary’ were frightened enough to call the police. Upon investigation the officers found it was female cows at the dairy farm, described as to be ‘wailing through the night’ because their newborn cows were immediately taken to be slaughtered after birth. After the police released a statement, saying “We’ve been informed that the cows are not in distress and the noises are a normal part of farming practices”. While the separation may be proper practice, in no way does that make it humane. There are laws to protect domesticated animals from cruelty like dogfighting and cockfighting, while non-domesticated animals are forced to suffer.

Most of the laws made to benefit the animals, take the hunting laws and regulations as example, were made to truly benefit the general population. Society benefits from the preservation of that animal because they play an integral role in maintaining the ecosystem. Over time, laws were enacted to protect the animal’s welfare in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. They use a concept called ‘The Five Freedoms,’ which was taken from the Farm Animal Welfare Council in the United Kingdom. It is a basis for how to treat any captive animal, wild or domesticated. To sum it up, the five freedoms are: constant access to fresh water and food, a comfortable area to live, freedom from inhumane living conditions, veterinarian care, the ability to live their life and express their unique abilities, and a safe environment to live with no psychological suffering.

We can agree, based from the research, that animals are extremely complex and have a mental capacity to survive and protect their own. Monkeys have been shown to be extremely intelligent on multiple occasions, while some have even become actors and been in space. Yet they are still killed for irrelevant things like trophy hunting. Octopuses when held in captivity have been known to be notorious escape artists and are even able to use things around them as tools. However, in some countries they’re served as a dish while still alive.

Demanding animal rights is a difficult thing because giving them the moral decency of a humane and happy life costs us. Animals are used in a plethora of ways for human gain, so are we willing to give that up? With animal research for medical purposes we have been able to survive past dates predetermined by a disease and even eradicate diseases. So, if we were forced to act in the benefit of the animals’ best interest, what would that mean for how we live our lives now. Are fur coats and hamburgers made from cows fattened by farmers more important than the welfare of these animals? Despite the benefits humans get from animals, how would animal rights really work if society cannot manage to acknowledge others human beings as equals or respect the variety of different religions or cultures. With animals being used in a plethora of different ways to benefit humans, is society willing to give that up?