Animal Rights
The opinions regarding animals and their rights greatly vary. To some, animals have no rights and are merely a form of property that exists only to fulfill human needs. To others, they are creatures that can be used or owned by people, but which also have feelings and are not to be subjected to needless suffering or pain. (Some would say that people with this belief are animal welfare, as opposed to animal rights, advocates.) Finally, there are those who believe that at least certain animals, such as those with sophisticated levels of intelligence and emotions (including nonhuman primates such as monkeys and chimpanzees), are not property at all nor meant to be utilized by man in any way. Such people believe that these animals are entitled to fundamental moral and legal rights that are currently accorded only to humans.
The animal rights movement includes many different organizations. In the United States alone, more than 100 groups are interested in the welfare of animals, and the focus of their activities and their tactics vary widely. For example, the Humane Society uses public education to promote responsible pet ownership, eliminate pain and cruelty in hunting and animal research, and advance similar causes. In contrast, the Animal Liberation Front commits illegal acts such as break-ins, the destruction of property, and the releasing of animals in its efforts to end all forms of what it considers to be animal exploitation.
Opponents to the animal rights movement also vary. Some see it as a group of do-gooders who are interfering with their right to treat or use their property as they wish. Others believe that the movement (or at least a part of it) consists of extremists who threaten the economic, political, and religious institutions in our country. Virtually every other country has one or more anticruelty statutes that prohibits the mistreatment of animals, but the provisions and effectiveness of those laws vary greatly. Many nations also have organizations that are interested in protecting the welfare of animals. Aside from the United States, the animal rights movement is most active in Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
Historical Groundwork
Humans have long used animals for a variety of purposes. For hundreds of thousands of years, people have hunted for food and clothing. Between 10,000 and 18,000 years ago, humans began to domesticate animals such as dogs, goats, sheep, and chickens as beasts of burden and as food. For at least 2,500 years, animals have been used in circuses and other forms of entertainment. In the second century C.E., the Greek scientist Galen conducted some of the first medical experiments on living animals.
Antiquity.
The ancient Greeks believed that nonhuman creatures were created by the gods to be used however people wished. According to the Bible,God gave man dominion “over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the Earth and over every creeping things that creeps on the Earth” (Gen. 9.1–3). This statement reflects the understanding of the ancient Israelites of how the world began, of why humankind hunted and domesticated the animals for food and clothing, and of how God provided for the human race which He made in His image. These same principles were in the laws of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which then evolved into or influenced the laws of the various western European countries including England’s common law) and those nations in the New World that were settled by western Europeans. For hundreds of years, no act committed upon an animal was prohibited, no matter how cruel or unnecessary.
New ideas.
The concept that animals have rights is relatively new. The first animal-protection law in western civilization was adopted in 1641 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This law made it illegal to “exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man’s use.” However, the rest of the western world continued as before. Indeed,during most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many experiments were conducted using living animals. This was largely because of the new idea that scientific conclusions had to be based on observable facts and because the dissection of human bodies and the use of living people in medical experiments were illegal. This meant that scientists had to experiment with animals to learn more about physiology and anatomy. There were no controls on how these experiments were conducted, but there were few qualms because most believed that animals had no souls and, thus, felt no pain.
Ironically, these very experiments proved that animals do experience pain. By the end of the eighteenth century, many argued that animal abuse contributed to a person’s cruelty. Others said that the mistreatment of animals was a misuse of a gift from God. In 1789, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham became the first to say that animals have rights. According to Bentham, animals suffer pain just as humans and thus deserve the same freedom from pain.
Modern Movements
Slowly, most people came to accept Bentham’s idea. Maine adopted the first modern anticruelty law in the United States in 1821, and every other state eventually enacted similar legislation. To encourage the police to enforce these laws, private organizations such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) were created throughout the last third of the nineteenth century. In addition, since World War II, a number of federal animal-rights laws have been adopted. These laws regulate animal experimentation and the treatment of animals by medical research facilities, slaughterhouses, and circuses, as well as people such as animal dealers who use animals as a source of livelihood.
Protection of animals.
Many groups concerned with the treatment and welfare of animals still believe in the superiority of humans and the right to use other living creatures to meet human needs. However, in 1975, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer argued that animals are entitled to live free from the infliction of pain and suffering, whether from animal experimentation, the raising of animals for food, or other causes.
Eight years later, the American philosopher Thomas Regan argued that every individual animal has an inherent value and thus has moral rights that should not be violated even if to do so benefits society. The ideas of both Singer and Regan provide the basis for those who argue that animals have rights that must be observed and protected as opposed to those who believe that it is all right to use animals so long as it is done without cruelty.
State and Federal Statutes
The provisions of anticruelty statutes vary state to state. In addition, the effectiveness of these laws depends to a large degree on whether one believes animals are property and whether there should be limits on how to use animals to meet human needs. Many of these laws were written about 100 years ago and have rarely been amended. Some are only a few paragraphs long. Most statutes contain broad exemptions that usually include agricultural practices (e.g., dehorning, castration, docking, and limiting feed) as well as hunting and scientific experiments.
Even when an anticruelty law does not have exemptions, the courts have often created them by ruling that the statutes do not prohibit the infliction of pain, suffering, or death so long as it is not outside the traditionally accepted use of animals. In addition, while some laws define “animals” as all living creatures other than man, some laws apply only to warm-blooded vertebrate animals. Others list specific animals or types of animals that the provisions do or do not protect.
In a few states, persons are guilty of violating the anticruelty statutes if they are criminally or unreasonably negligent in their treatment of an animal.Most states, however, require that the defendant have some form of intent before a conviction can be obtained. For instance, if a jurisdiction requires willful intent, then the prosecutor must prove not only that the defendant acted intentionally and voluntarily, but also that the defendant acted without just cause or reason. In one case in North Carolina, two dog trainers were found not guilty of violating the local anticruelty law when they beat a dog and submersed its head under water because they did it to teach the animal not to dig holes.
In most states, violations of anticruelty laws are considered as summary offenses, which only involve a fine, or as misdemeanors with penalties that do not exceed a year in jail and a fine. Some states have recently made the violation of these laws a felony, but it is not yet known if this will make any substantial difference in the obedience to, or the enforcement of, the statutes. Most police and prosecutors are not very concerned about crimes against animals and are reluctant to spend the time or the money to make arrests or to take the cases to court. As a result, the enforcement of the anticruelty laws is frequently left to such organizations as the Humane Society and the ASPCA.
Animals and science.
Since World War II, the number of scientific experiments involving animals has increased dramatically. Although the number of animals used in these experiments is just a small percentage of the millions killed every year for the benefit of humans for food and other reasons such as clothing and the use of animal fats, oils, bones, and other byproducts in the manufacture of commercial goods), much of the recent focus of the animal rights movement has been on attempts to prohibit experimentation on live animals.
In addition to the state anticruelty statutes, animal experimentation is governed by the federal Animal Welfare Act which was enacted in 1966 and substantially amended in 1985. This law and its accompanying administrative regulations prohibit the use of animals in a scientific experiment if a nonanimal alternative is readily available. Scientists are also required to keep an animal’s pain to a minimum, and to consider alternatives to any procedure that causes pain or distress. However, the law does not apply to rats or mice, the animals used most often in experiments, nor does it limit the type of experiments that may be conducted.
In the last decade of the 20th century, groups such as the Animal Liberation Front have used illegal means to fight what they believe is animal exploitation. In response, many states have adopted laws that specifically target these activities. The federal government has also enacted the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (1992). This law makes it a crime to cross a state border with the intent to physically disrupt zoos, aquariums, or similar public attractions, as well as to physically disrupt commercial or academic facilities that use animals for food production, research, or testing. SEE ALSO Animal Testing; Bioethics.
