ANIMAL RIGHTS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND WRONGS
by Dr. Michael W. Fox*
America has no law prohibiting the killing of dogs for food,
because most Americans do not regard dogs as food, though dogs are regularly consumed in parts of China, Korea and the Philippines. Likewise few Americans regard horses as food. But many people in countries like France,
Belgium and Japan eat horses. Export of American horse flesh to these foreign markets, and the killing of some 90,000 horses
in the U.S. every year, was prohibited in 2007 under the Horse Slaughter Protection Act. On the surface this meant that the
horse has won the right in America not to be treated as a consumable commodity. But should not all animals be accorded this
right? Those who have bonded with companion pigs, sheep, goats, calves, cows, oxen, rabbits, chickens, ducks and geese, and
even pet fish, that are slaughtered by the billion, might well call for a similar right for their own favored species. But
in spite of the best intentions of this Act, the consequences were horrendous for the horses, thousands being transported
across the border to be slaughtered and processed in Mexico.
Clearly the rights of animals, beyond our duty of humane care and
consideration, mandated under Federal and State animal protection and anti-cruelty laws, are arbitrarily determined as much
by human sentimentality, custom and religious tradition (with beef for high caste Hindus, and pork for Muslims and Jews, being
taboo), as by the profit motive. Animal rights advocates today challenge the logic and ethics of not according animals equal
rights, animals used as companions having infinitely more rights than animals used as commodities. This call for equal rights
means that all domesticated and captive wild animals should be kept under conditions appropriate to their natures, conducive
to their physical health and mental well being because their basic physiological and psychological needs are provided for.
The ethics of responsible care amounts to a humane covenant between the human and the non-human; and the duty of all who benefit
from animals in many ways to honor.
Those who profit financially from exploiting animals as commodities
dismiss animal rights as a vegetarian conspiracy, which it is not. Many echo the belief of veterinarian Dr. B. Taylor Bennet,
associate Vice Chancellor for Research Resources, University of Illinois, Chicago, Ill., that “animals have neither
legal nor moral rights because they cannot make a claim or be held responsible for their actions,” which is absurd because
neither can human infants, or brain damaged adults, yet they have rights.
The main political opposition to equal treatment and rights
for all animals comes from the commercial sector of those animal industries that see any change in the status quo as an economic
threat.
The social, economic, and legal ramifications of a growing
public acceptance of animals having rights, puts all those with vested interests in exploiting animals for
various purposes at odds with a rising consensus that is now questioning the belief that non-human beings can be
used as a means to satisfy exclusively human ends, rather than being an end in themselves with rights and entitlements.
Because more and more Americans care about the fate of
all institutionally exploited animals, those who continue to profit by them will be under increasing scrutiny. This rising
sentiment is perceived as such a threat to the status quo that the Bush administration has included under its National Homeland
Security Act, provision for the immediate arrest and incarceration of any animal or environmental rights activist as a terrorist
if caught interfering with any business activity that contributes to the good of the economy, like killing pigs and felling
forests, and thus to national security.
This kind of conflict is not new. There was a similar conflict,
not completely resolved worldwide today, over the exploitation of humans as slaves and chattel, and as a means to satisfy
the ends of those in power. The denial of personhood, of rights, of citizenship, goes back to the times of the Roman Empire,
where wives, children and slaves were non-persons, and had no rights. Western attitudes toward animals are profoundly influenced
by the world view of the Roman Republic that influenced early Greek philosophy and the rising Catholic Christian Empire; namely
animals were created for mans’ use. But utilitarianism is a slippery slope that can lead to the justification of animal
cruelty and suffering, and similar treatment of human beings ‘for the greater good’.
The denial of basic rights persists in the criminalization
of often-innocent persons under the totalitarian utilitarianism of modern day China, some 2,00-10,000 of whom are executed
every year, and who are now, according to BBC News (Oct 5th, 2006) the basis for a lucrative organ donor industry.
Similarly in India, the personhood of members of the lowest caste, long regarded as sub-human, continues to be denied. These
people, the dalits or untouchables, the late Mahatma Gandhi called the Harajans or ‘children of god’, yet opposed
the British colonial initiative to abolish the caste system that treated the dalits as non-persons on the grounds that it
would destroy Hinduism. The greater good would therefore be sacrificed in the abolition of the caste system.
Gandhi and his cohorts were as fearful of the economic
demise of their motherland if the caste system were to be replaced by an egalitarian and fully functional democracy throughout
India’s 60 million impoverished villages, as were the Greek, Roman, and subsequent American, European, and other slave-owners
of the past few centuries. Yet as history informs, the abolition of slavery, and of South
Africa’s apartheid did not result in economic ruin. On the contrary, human progress in ethics means progress
in the development of civilization and for the founding of a just, egalitarian society. To regard some people as non-persons,
or as being sub-human, is becoming something of the past as the sanctity and dignity of personhood is extended to all people.
The issue of racism raises a parallel concern that has been
termed speciesism, where, for reasons such as custom or sentimentality, some animals are treated preferentially over others
of the same or different species, and yet in essence are similar in terms of their sentience and capacity to suffer. Under
the democratic spirit of a rising civil society world wide, the divisiveness and injustices of racism, tribalism, caste/class-ism,
sexism, and other forms of discrimination are being more effectively addressed and eradicated. Our chauvinistic attitude toward
other animals, aptly termed speciesism, will eventually become a thing of the past as we give equal and fair consideration
to all species and individuals, human and non-human alike. One reason to do so is actually economic, because a healthy society
depends upon a healthy animal population, as it does upon a healthy environment.
In conclusion, animal rights is now on the social agenda of
civil society, and all who care more about the quality of life of fellow creatures than for their value as a means to exclusively
human ends are the harbingers of what I see as a Golden Age to come, where the Golden Rule ---of treating all living beings
as we would have them treat us---usurps the rule of gold.
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* The author is a veterinarian with doctoral degrees in Medicine and Ethology/Animal Behavior from the University
of London, England, and writes the nationally syndicated newspaper column Animal Doctor,
distributed by United Features, NY. Author of over 40 books, including the recent Bringing
Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society (State University of New York Press, Albany NY)
