a professor writes

[Guest guest]

Do animals have moral rights?

by Professor Gary Francione

New Scientist, Pg 24.

October 8, 2005

 

The magazine takes letters at:

http://www.newscientist.com/contactperson.ns?recipient=lett

 

Do animals have moral rights? What kind of legal status should we

afford them? This debate has become hugely confused. Some animal

rights campaigners maintain that we should allow animals the same

rights enjoyed by humans. That is, of course, absurd. There are many

human rights that simply have no application to non-humans.

 

I would like to propose something a little different: that a sensible

and coherent theory of animal rights should focus on just one right

for animals. That is the right not to be treated as the property of

humans.

 

Let me explain why this makes sense. At present, animals are

commodities that we own in the same way that we own automobiles or

furniture. Like these inanimate forms of property, animals have only

the value that we choose to give them. Any moral or other interest an

animal has represents an economic cost that we can choose to ignore.

 

We have laws that supposedly regulate our treatment of our animal

property, and prohibit the infliction of "unnecessary" suffering.

These laws require that we balance the interests of humans and

animals in order to ensure that animals are treated "humanely". It

is, however, a fallacy to suppose that we can balance human

interests, which are protected by claims of right in general and of a

right to own property in particular, against the interests of animals

which, as property, exist only as a means to the ends of humans. The

animal in question is always a "pet" or a "laboratory animal" or a

"game animal" or a "food animal" or a "circus animal" or some other

form of animal property that exists solely for our use. We prohibit

animal suffering only when it has no economic benefit. The balance is

unbalanced from the outset.

 

There are parallels here with the institution of human slavery. While

we tolerate varying degrees of human exploitation, we no longer

regard it as legitimate to treat anyone, irrespective of their

particular characteristics, as the property of others. In a world

deeply divided on many moral issues, one of the few norms steadfastly

endorsed by the international community is the prohibition of human

slavery. Some forms of slavery are worse than others, yet we prohibit

all of them - however "humane" - because they more or less allow the

fundamental interests of slaves to be ignored if it provides a

benefit to slave owners. We recognise all humans as having a basic

right not to be treated as the property of others.

 

Is there a morally sound reason not to extend this single right - the

right not to be treated as property - to animals? Or to ask the

question another way, why do we deem it acceptable to eat animals,

hunt them, confine and display them in circuses and zoos, use them in

experiments or rodeos, or otherwise treat them in ways in which we

would never think it appropriate to treat any human irrespective of

how "humane" we were being?

 

The response that animals lack some special characteristic that is

possessed solely by humans not only flies in the face of the theory

of evolution, but is completely irrelevant to whether it is morally

permissible to treat non-humans as commodities - just as differences

among humans would not serve to justify treating some as slaves. Also

of no use is the response that it is acceptable for humans to exploit

non-humans because it is "traditional" or "natural" to do so. This

merely states a conclusion and does not constitute an argument.

 

The bottom line is that we cannot justify human domination of

non-humans except by appeal to religious superstition focused on the

supposed spiritual superiority of humans. Our "conflicts" with

animals are mostly of our own doing. We bring billions of sentient

animals into the world in order to kill them for reasons that are

often trivial. We then seek to understand the nature of our moral

obligations to these animals. But by bringing these animals into

existence for reasons that we would never consider appropriate for

humans, we have already decided that animals are outside the scope of

our moral community altogether.

 

Accepting that animals have this one right does not entail letting

cows, chickens, pigs and dogs run free in the streets. We have

brought these animals into existence and they depend on us for their

survival. We should care for those currently in existence, but we

should stop causing more to come into being to serve as our

resources. We would thereby eliminate any supposed conflicts we have

with animals. We may still have conflicts with wild animals, and we

would have to address hard questions about how to apply equal

consideration to humans and animals in those circumstances.

 

Recognising animal rights really means accepting that we have a duty

not to treat sentient non-humans as resources. The interesting

question is not whether the cow should be able to sue the farmer for

cruel treatment, but why the cow is there in the first place.

 

Gary Francione is professor of law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach

Distinguished Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University

School of Law, New Jersey

 

 

 

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

 

- Elie Wiesel