animal rights essay

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Animal Rights Essay

This IELTS  animal rights essay  discusses the exploitation of animals by humans.

People who believe in animal rights think that they should not be treated cruelly, for example in experiments or for sport.

'To exploit' means to benefit from something in an unfair way. Take a look at the question:

A growing number of people feel that animals should not be exploited by people and that they should have the same rights as humans, while others argue that humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Discussing 'Two Opinions'

Animals should not be exploited by people and they should have the same rights as humans. Humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

In this essay you are being given two opposing opinions to discuss.

This is the first opinion:

• Animals should not be exploited by people and they should have the same rights as humans.

This is the second opinion:

• Humans must employ animals to satisfy their various needs, including uses for food and research.

In this type of essay, you must look at both sides. In other words you need to discuss the arguments FOR animal rights and AGAINST .

You must also ensure you give YOUR opinion.

Organising the Essay

One way to organize an essay like this is to consider both opinions, then give your opinion in a final paragraph ( see this example ) or dedicate a whole final paragraph to your opinion ( see this example ).

Another way to write an essay like this is to also make one of the 'for' or 'against' opinions your opinion as well.

Look at the model animal rights essay below. The second body paragraph discusses the first opinion, but the topic sentence makes it clear that this paragraph is also representing the writers opinion as well:

However, I do not believe these arguments stand up to scrutiny.

This now means that in two body paragraphs you have covered all three parts of the question from the animal rights essay:

1. First opinion 2. Second opinion 3. Your opinion

The advantage of doing it this way rather than having a separate paragraph is that you do not need to come up with new ideas for a new paragraph.

If you have a separate paragraph with your opinion you may find you cannot think of any new ideas or you may end up repeating the same things as in your previous paragraphs.

IELTS Writing Example

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

Animal Rights Essay - Model Answer

Animals have always been used by humans in some form to satisfy their needs. However, while some people believe that animals should be treated in the same way humans are and have similar rights, others think that it is more important to use them as we desire for food and medical research. 

With regard to the exploitation of animals, people believe it is acceptable for several reasons. Firstly, they think that humans are the most important beings on the planet, and everything must be done to ensure human survival. If this means experimenting on animals so that we can fight and find cures for diseases, then this takes priority over animal suffering. Furthermore, it is believed by some that animals do not feel pain or loss as humans do, so if we have to kill animals for food or other uses, then this is morally acceptable.

However, I do not believe these arguments stand up to scrutiny. To begin, it has been shown on numerous occasions by secret filming in laboratories via animal rights groups that animals feel as much pain as humans do, and they suffer when they are kept in cages for long periods. In addition, a substantial amount of animal research is done for cosmetics, not to find cures for diseases, so this is unnecessary. Finally, it has also been proven that humans can get all the nutrients and vitamins that they need from green vegetables and fruit. Therefore, again, having to kill animals for food is not an adequate argument.

To sum up, although some people argue killing animals for research and food is ethical, I would argue there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that this is not the case, and, therefore, steps must be taken to improve the rights of animals.

(Words 290) 

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• Introduction

Philosophical background

Animals and the law.

• The modern animal rights movement

• What are the basic functional systems of animals?

animal rights

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Business LibreTexts - Animal Rights
• Official Site of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
• animal rights - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• animal rights - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Trusted Britannica articles, summarized using artificial intelligence, to provide a quicker and simpler reading experience. This is a beta feature. Please verify important information in our full article.

This summary was created from our Britannica article using AI. Please verify important information in our full article.

animal rights , moral or legal entitlements attributed to nonhuman animals, usually because of the complexity of their cognitive , emotional, and social lives or their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure. Historically, different views of the scope of animal rights have reflected philosophical and legal developments, scientific conceptions of animal and human nature , and religious and ethical conceptions of the proper relationship between animals and human beings. Since the beginning of the modern animal rights movement , which was initiated by philosophers in the 1970s, animal rights has been a popular topic of discussion within the academic study of applied ethics , or the application of normative ethical theories to practical problems.

The proper treatment of animals is a very old question in the West. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers debated the place of animals in human morality . The Pythagoreans (6th–4th century bce ) and the Neoplatonists (3rd–6th century ce ) urged respect for animals’ interests, primarily because they believed in the transmigration of souls between human and animal bodies. In his biological writings, Aristotle (384–322 bce ) repeatedly suggested that animals lived for their own sake, but his claim in the Politics that nature made all animals for the sake of humans was unfortunately destined to become his most influential statement on the subject.

Aristotle, and later the Stoics , believed the world was populated by an infinity of beings arranged hierarchically according to their complexity and perfection, from the barely living to the merely sentient , the rational, and the wholly spiritual. In this Great Chain of Being , as it came to be known, all forms of life were represented as existing for the sake of those forms higher in the chain. Among corporeal beings, humans, by dint of their rationality, occupied the highest position. The Great Chain of Being became one of the most persistent and powerful, if utterly erroneous , ways of conceiving the universe, dominating scientific, philosophical, and religious thinking until the middle of the 19th century.

The Stoics , insisting on the irrationality of all nonhuman animals, regarded them as slaves and accordingly treated them as contemptible and beneath notice. Aggressively advocated by St. Augustine (354–430), these Stoic ideas became embedded in Christian theology. They were absorbed wholesale into Roman law—as reflected in the treatises and codifications of Gaius (fl. 130–180) and Justinian (483–565)—taken up by the legal glossators of Europe in the 11th century, and eventually pressed into English (and, much later, American) common law . Meanwhile, arguments that urged respect for the interests of animals nearly disappeared, and animal welfare remained a relative backwater of philosophical inquiry and legal regulation until the final decades of the 20th century.

In the 3rd or 4th century ce , the Roman jurist Hermogenianus wrote, “Hominum causa omne jus constitum” (“All law was established for men’s sake”). Repeating the phrase, P.A. Fitzgerald’s 1966 treatise Salmond on Jurisprudence declared, “The law is made for men and allows no fellowship or bonds of obligation between them and the lower animals.” The most important consequence of this view is that animals have long been categorized as “legal things,” not as “legal persons.” Whereas legal persons have rights of their own, legal things do not. They exist in the law solely as the objects of the rights of legal persons—e.g., as things over which legal persons may exercise property rights . This status, however, often affords animals the indirect protection of laws intended to preserve social morality or the rights of animal owners, such as criminal anticruelty statutes or civil statutes that permit owners to obtain compensation for damages inflicted on their animals. Indeed, this sort of law presently defines the field of “animal law,” which is much broader than animal rights because it encompasses all law that addresses the interests of nonhuman animals—or, more commonly, the interests of the people who own them.

A legal thing can become a legal person; this happened whenever human slaves were freed. The former legal thing then possesses his own legal rights and remedies. Parallels have frequently been drawn between the legal status of animals and that of human slaves . “The truly striking fact about slavery,” the American historian David Brion Davis has written, is the

antiquity and almost universal acceptance of the concept of the slave as a human being who is legally owned, used, sold, or otherwise disposed of as if he or she were a domestic animal. This parallel persisted in the similarity of naming slaves, branding them, and even pricing them according to their equivalent in cows , camels , pigs , and chickens .

The American jurist Roscoe Pound wrote that in ancient Rome a slave “was a thing, and as such, like animals could be the object of rights of property,” and the British historian of Roman law Barry Nicholas has pointed out that in Rome “the slave was a thing…he himself had no rights: he was merely an object of rights, like an animal.”

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, humanitarian reformers in Britain and the United States campaigned on behalf of the weak and defenseless, protesting against child labour , debtor’s prisons, abusive punishment in public schools, and, inevitably, the cruel treatment of animals. In 1800 the most renowned abolitionist of the period, William Wilberforce , supported a bill to abolish bull- and bearbaiting, which was defeated in the House of Commons . In 1809 Baron Erskine , former lord chancellor of England, who had long been troubled by cruelty to animals , introduced a bill to prohibit cruelty to all domestic animals. Erskine declared that the bill was intended to “consecrate, perhaps, in all nations, and in all ages, that just and eternal principle which binds the whole living world in one harmonious chain, under the dominion of enlightened man, the lord and governor of all.” Although the bill passed the House of Lords , it failed in the House of Commons. Then, in 1821, a bill “to prevent cruel and improper treatment of Cattle” was introduced in the House of Commons, sponsored by Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton and championed by Irish member of Parliament Richard Martin. The version enacted in 1822, known as Martin’s Act, made it a crime to treat a handful of domesticated animals—cattle, oxen, horses, and sheep—cruelly or to inflict unnecessary suffering upon them. However, it did not protect the general welfare of even these animals, much less give them legal rights, and the worst punishment available for any breach was a modest fine. Similar statutes were enacted in all the states of the United States, where there now exists a patchwork of anticruelty and animal-welfare laws. Most states today make at least some abuses of animals a felony . Laws such as the federal Animal Welfare Act (1966), for example, regulate what humans may do to animals in agriculture, biomedical research, entertainment, and other areas. But neither Martin’s Act nor many subsequent animal-protection statutes altered the traditional legal status of animals as legal things.

This situation changed in 2008, when the Spanish national parliament adopted resolutions urging the government to grant orangutans , chimpanzees , and gorillas some statutory rights previously afforded only to humans. The resolutions also called for banning the use of apes in performances, harmful research, and trading as well as in other practices that involve profiting from the animals. Although zoos would still be allowed to hold apes, they would be required to provide them with “optimal” living conditions.

Animal Rights Essay: Topics, Outline, & Writing Tips

• 🐇 Animal Rights Essay: the Basics
• 💡 Animal Rights Essay Topics
• 📑 Outlining Your Essay
• ✍️ Sample Essay (200 Words)

🔗 References

🐇 animal rights essay: what is it about.

Animal rights supporters advocate for the idea that animals should have the same freedom to live as they wish, just as humans do. They should not be exploited or used in meat , fur, and other production. At long last, we should distinguish animals from inanimate objects and resources like coal, timber, or oil.

Interdisciplinary research has shown that animals are emotional and sensitive, just like we are.

Their array of emotions includes joy, happiness, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, anger, love, compassion, respect, disgust, despair, and even grief.

However, animal rights legislation does not extend human rights to animals. It establishes their right to have their fundamental needs and interests respected while people decide how to treat them. This right changes the status of animals from being property to being legal entities.

The statement may sound strange until we recall that churches , banks, and universities are also legal entities. Their interests are legally protected by law. Then why do we disregard the feelings of animals , which are not inanimate institutions? Several federal laws protect them from human interference.

But the following statements are only some of the rules that could one day protect animal rights in full:

• Animals should not be killed by hunting.
• Animals’ habitats should allow them to live in freedom.
• Animals should not be bred for sale or any other purpose.
• Animals should not be used for food by industries or households.

Most arguments against the adoption of similar laws are linked to money concerns. Animal exploitation has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry. The lives of many private farmers depend on meat production, and most people prefer not to change the comfortable status quo.

Animal Rights Argumentative Essay

An animal rights argumentative essay should tackle a problematic issue that people have widely discussed. While choosing ideas for the assignment, opt for the most debatable topics.

Here is a brief list of argumentative essay prompts on animal rights:

• The pros and cons of animal rights.
• Can humanity exist without meat production?
• Do animals have souls?
• Should society become vegan to protect animal rights?

As you see, these questions could raise controversy between interlocutors. Your purpose is to take a side and give several arguments in its support. Then you’ll have to state a counterargument to your opinion and explain why it is incorrect.

Animal Rights Persuasive Essay

An animal rights persuasive essay should clearly state your opinion on the topic without analyzing different points of view. Still, the purpose of your article is to persuade the reader that your position is not only reasonable but the only correct one. For this purpose, select topics relating to your opinion or formulated in questionary form.

For example:

• What is your idea about wearing fur?
• Do you think people would ever ban animal exploitation?
• Is having pets a harmful practice?
• Animal factories hinder the development of civilization .

💡 53 Animal Rights Essay Topics

• Animal rights have been suppressed for ages because people disregard their mental abilities .
• Cosmetic and medical animal testing .
• Laws preventing unnecessary suffering of animals mean that there is some necessary suffering.
• Red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs experiment.
• Do you believe animals should have legal rights?
• Genetically modified animals and implications.
• Why is animal welfare important?
• Neutering animals to prevent overpopulation: Pros and cons.
• Animal testing: Arguments for and against.
• What is our impact on marine life?
• Some animals cannot stay wild.
• Animal testing for medical purposes .
• We are not the ones to choose which species to preserve.
• Pavlov’s dog experiment .
• Keeping dogs chained outdoors is animal neglect.
• The use of animals for research .
• Animal dissection as a learning tool: Alternatives?
• More people beat their pets than we think.
• Duties to non-human animals.
• If we do not control the population of some animals, they will control ours.
• Animals in entertainment: Not entertaining at all.
• Animals in research, education, and teaching.
• Which non-animal production endangers the species?
• Is animal testing really needed?
• Why do some people think that buying a new pet is cheaper than paying for medical treatment of the old one?
• Animal experiments: benefits, ethics, and defenders.
• Can people still be carnivorous if they stop eating animals?
• Animal testing role.
• Marine aquariums and zoos are animal prisons.
• Animal experimentation: justification arguments .
• What would happen if we replace animals in circuses with people, keeping the same living conditions?
• The ethics of animal use in scientific research .
• Animal sports: Relics of the past.
• Animal testing ban: counterargument and rebuttal .
• Denial to purchase animal-tested cosmetics will not change anything.
• Animal research, its ineffectiveness and amorality.
• Animal rights protection based on their intellect level: It tells a lot about humanity.
• Debates of using animals in scientific analysis .
• How can we ban tests on rats and kill them in our homes at the same time?
• Animal testing in experiments .
• What is the level of tissue engineering development in leather and meat production?
• Equal consideration of interests to non-human animals .
• Animals should not have to be our servants.
• Zoos as an example of humans’ immorality.
• We should feed wild animals to help them survive.
• Animal testing in biomedical research.
• Abolitionism: The right not to be owned.
• Do you support the Prima facie rights theory?
• Psychologist perspective on research involving animal and human subjects.
• Ecofeminism: What is the link between animals’ and women’s rights?
• No philosophy could rationalize cruelty against animals.
• Qualities that humans and animals share.
• Ancient Buddhist societies and vegetarianism: A research paper.

Need more ideas? You are welcome to use our free research topic generator !

📑 Animal Rights Essay Outline

An animal rights essay should be constructed as a standard 5-paragraph essay (if not required otherwise in the assignment). The three following sections provide a comprehensive outline.

Animal Rights Essay: Introduction

An introduction consists of:

• Background information,
• A thesis statement .

In other words, here you need to explain why you decided to write about the given topic and which position you will take. The background part should comprise a couple of sentences highlighting the topicality of the issue. The thesis statement expresses your plans in the essay.

For example: In this essay, I will explain why animal-based production harms the ecology.

Animal Rights Essay: Main Body

The main body is a place for you to argue your position . One paragraph equals one argument. In informative essays, replace argumentation with facts.

Start each section with a topical sentence consisting of a general truth. Then give some explanation and more specific points. By the way, at the end of this article, you’ll find a bonus! It is a priceless selection of statistics and facts about animal rights.

Animal Rights Essay: Conclusion

A conclusion restates your central ideas and thesis statement. Approach it as a summary of your essay, avoid providing new facts or arguments.

✍️ Animal Rights Essay Example (200 Words)

Why is animal welfare important? The term “animal welfare” evokes the pictures of happy cows from a milk advertisement. But the reality has nothing to do with these bright videos. Humane treatment of animals is a relative concept. This essay explains why animal welfare is important, despite that it does not prevent farms from killing or confining animals.

The best way to approach animal welfare is by thinking of it as a temporary measure. We all agree that the current state of the economy does not allow humanity to abandon animal-based production. Moreover, such quick decisions could make farm animals suffer even more. But ensuring the minimum possible pain is the best solution as of the moment.

The current legislation on animal welfare is far from perfect. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 prevents cruelty against animals in labs and zoos. Meanwhile, the majority of suffering animals do not fall under its purview. For example, it says nothing about the vivisection of rats and mice for educational and research purposes, although the procedure is extremely painful for the creature. Neither does it protect farm animals.

Unfortunately, the principles of animal welfare leave too much room for interpretation. Animals should be free from fear and stress, but how can we measure that? They should be allowed to engage in natural behaviors, but no confined space would let them do so. Thus, the legislation is imprecise.

The problem of animal welfare is almost unresolvable because it is a temporary measure to prevent any suffering of domesticated animals. It has its drawbacks but allows us to ensure at least some comfort for those we unjustifiably use for food. They have the same right to live on this planet as we do, and animal farming will be stopped one day.

📊 Bonus: Statistics & Facts for Your Animal Rights Essay Introduction

Improve the quality of your essay on animal rights by working in the following statistics and facts about animals.

• According to USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service , about 4.6 billion animals — including hogs, sheep, cattle, chickens, ducks, lambs, and turkey — were killed and used for food in the United States last year (2015).
• People in the U.S. kill over 100 million animals for laboratory experiments every year, according to PETA .
• More than 40 million animals are killed for fur worldwide every year. About 30 million animals are raised and killed on fur farms, and nearly 10 million wild animals are hunted and killed for the same reasons — for their valuable fur.
• According to a report by In Defense of Animals , hunters kill more than 200 million animals in the United States yearly.
• The Humane Society of the United States notes that a huge number of cats and dogs — between 3 and 4 million each year — are killed in the country’s animal shelters. Sadly, this number does not include dogs or cats killed in animal cruelty cases.
• According to the ASPCA , about 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters in the United States yearly. Of this number, 3.9 Mil of dogs, and 3.4 Mil of cats.
• About 2.7 million animals are euthanized in shelters every year (1.4 million cats and 1.2 million dogs).
• About 2.7 million shelter animals are adopted every year (1.3 million cats and 1.4 million dogs).
• In total, there are approximately 70-80 million dogs and 74-96 million cats living as pets in the United States.
• It’s impossible to determine the exact number of stray cats and dogs living in the United States, but the number of cats is estimated to be up to 70 million.
• Many stray cats and dogs were once family pets — but they were not kept securely indoors or provided with proper identification.

Each essay on animals rights makes humanity closer to a better and more civilized world. Please share any thoughts and experience in creating such texts in the comments below. And if you would like to hear how your essay would sound in someone’s mind, use our Text-To-Speech tool .

• Why Animal Rights? | PETA
• Animal Rights – Encyclopedia Britannica
• Animal ethics: Animal rights – BBC
• Animal Health and Welfare – National Agricultural Library
• The Top 10 Animal Rights Issues – Treehugger
• Animal welfare – European Commission

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Martha Nussbaum lays out ethical, legal case in new book

Martha Nussbaum

Excerpted from “Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility” by Martha C. Nussbaum, M.A. ’71, Ph.D. ’75

Animals are in trouble all over the world. Our world is dominated by humans everywhere: on land, in the seas, and in the air. No non-human animal escapes human domination. Much of the time, that domination inflicts wrongful injury on animals: whether through the barbarous cruelties of the factory meat industry, through poaching and game hunting, through habitat destruction, through pollution of the air and the seas, or through neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love.

In a way, this problem is age-old. Both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions have deplored human cruelty to animals for around two millennia. The Hindu emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 bce), a convert to Buddhism, wrote about his efforts to give up meat and to forgo all practices that harmed animals. In Greece the Platonist philosophers Plutarch (46–119 ce) and Porphyry (c. 234–305 ce) wrote detailed treatises deploring human cruelty to animals, describing their keen intelligence and their capacity for social life, and urging humans to change their diet and their way of life. But by and large these voices have fallen on deaf ears, even in the supposedly moral realm of the philosophers, and most humans have continued to treat most animals like objects, whose suffering does not matter — although they sometimes make an exception for companion animals. Meanwhile, countless animals have suffered cruelty, deprivation, and neglect.

Because the reach of human cruelty has expanded, so too has the involvement of virtually all people in it. Even people who do not consume meat produced by the factory farming industry are likely to have used single-use plastic items, to use fossil fuels mined beneath the ocean and polluting the air, to dwell in areas in which elephants and bears once roamed, or to live in high-rise buildings that spell death for migratory birds. The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation. Pinning guilt is less important than accepting the fact that humanity as a whole has a collective duty to face and solve these problems.

So far, I have not spoken of the extinction of animal species, because this is a book about loss and deprivation suffered by individual creatures, each of whom matters. Species as such do not suffer loss. However, extinction never takes place without massive suffering of individual creatures: the hunger of a polar bear, starving on an ice floe, unable to cross the sea to hunt; the sadness of an orphan elephant, deprived of care and community as the species dwindles rapidly; the mass extinctions of song-bird species as a result of unbreathable air, a horrible death. When human practices hound species toward extinction, member animals always suffer greatly and live squashed and thwarted lives. Besides, the species themselves matter for creating diverse ecosystems in which animals can live well.

Extinctions would take place even without human intervention. Even in such cases we might have reasons to intervene to stop them, because of the importance of biodiversity. But scientists agree that today’s extinctions are between one thousand and ten thousand times higher than the natural extinction rate. (Our uncertainty is huge, because we are very ignorant of how many species there actually are, particularly where fish and insects are concerned.) Worldwide, approximately one-quarter of the world’s mammals and over 40 percent of amphibians are currently threatened with extinction. These include several species of bear, the Asian elephant (endangered), the African elephant (threatened), the tiger, six species of whale, the gray wolf, and so many more. All in all, more than 370 animal species are either endangered or threatened, using the criteria of the US Endangered Species Act, not including birds, and a separate list of similar length for birds. Asian songbirds are virtually extinct in the wild, on account of the lucrative trade in these luxury items. And many other species of birds have recently become extinct. Meanwhile, the international treaty called CITES that is supposed to protect birds (and many other creatures) is toothless and unenforced. The story of this book is not that story of mass extinction, but the sufferings of individual creatures that take place against this background of human indifference to biodiversity.

“The extent of our own implication in practices that harm animals should make every person with a conscience consider what we can all do to change this situation.”

There is a further reason why the ethical evasion of the past must end now. Today we know far more about animal lives than we did even 50 years ago. We know much too much for the glib excuses of the past to be offered without shame. Porphyry and Plutarch (and Aristotle before them) knew a lot about animal intelligence and sensitivity. But somehow humans find ways of “forgetting” what the science of the past has plainly revealed, and for many centuries most people, including most philosophers, thought animals were “brute beasts,” automata without a subjective sense of the world, without emotions, without society, and perhaps even without the feeling of pain.

Recent decades, however, have seen an explosion of high-level research covering all areas of the animal world. We now know more not only about animals long closely studied — primates and companion animals — but also about animals who are difficult to study — marine mammals, whales, fish, birds, reptiles, and cephalopods.

We know — not just by observation, but by carefully designed experimental work — that all vertebrates and many invertebrates feel pain subjectively, and have, more generally, a subjectively felt view of the world: the world looks like something to them. We know that all of these animals experience at least some emotions (fear being the most ubiquitous), and that many experience emotions like compassion and grief that involve more complex “takes” on a situation. We know that animals as different as dolphins and crows can solve complicated problems and learn to use tools to solve them. We know that animals have complex forms of social organization and social behavior. More recently, we have been learning that these social groups are not simply places where a rote inherited repertory is acted out, but places of complicated social learning. Species as different as whales, dogs, and many types of birds clearly transmit key parts of the species’ repertoire to their young socially, not just genetically.

What are the implications of this research for ethics? Huge, clearly. We can no longer draw the usual line between our own species and “the beasts,” a line meant to distinguish intelligence, emotion, and sentience from the dense life of a “brute beast.” Nor can we even draw a line between a group of animals we already recognize as sort of “like us” — apes, elephants, whales, dogs — and others who are supposed to be unintelligent. Intelligence takes multiple and fascinating forms in the real world, and birds, evolving by a very different path from humans, have converged on many similar abilities. Even an invertebrate such as the octopus has surprising capacities for intelligent perception: an octopus can recognize individual humans, and can solve complex problems, guiding one of its arms through a maze to obtain food using only its eyes. Once we recognize all this we can hardly be unchanged in our ethical thinking. To put a “brute beast” in a cage seems no more wrong than putting a rock in a terrarium. But that is not what we are doing. We are deforming the existence of intelligent and complexly sentient forms of life. Each of these animals strives for a flourishing life, and each has abilities, social and individual, that equip it to negotiate a decent life in a world that gives animals difficult challenges. What humans are doing is to thwart this striving — and this seems wrong.

But even though the time has come to recognize our ethical responsibility to the other animals, we have few intellectual tools to effect meaningful change. The third reason why we must confront what we are doing to animals now, today, is that we have built a world in which two of humanity’s best tools for progress, law and political theory, have, so far, no or little help to offer us. Law — both domestic and international — has quite a lot to say about the lives of companion animals, but very little to say about any other animals. Nor do animals in most nations have what lawyers call “standing”: that is, the status to bring a legal claim if they are wronged. Of course, animals cannot themselves bring a legal claim, but neither can most humans, including children, people with cognitive disabilities — and, to tell the truth, almost everybody, since people have little knowledge of the law. All of us need a lawyer to press our claims. But all the humans I have mentioned — including people with lifelong cognitive disabilities — count, and can bring a legal claim, assisted by an able advocate. The way we have designed the world’s legal systems, animals do not have this simple privilege. They do not count.

Law is built by humans using the theories they have. When those theories were racist, laws were racist. When theories of sex and gender excluded women, so too did law. And there is no denying that most political thought by humans the world over has been human-centered, excluding animals. Even the theories that purport to offer help in the struggle against abuse are deeply defective, built on an inadequate picture of animal lives and animal striving. As a philosopher and political theorist who is also deeply immersed in law and law teaching, I hope to change things with this book.

Copyright © 2022 by Martha Nussbaum. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?

By Elizabeth Barber

A few years ago, activists walked into a factory farm in Utah and walked out with two piglets. State prosecutors argued that this was a crime. That they were correct was obvious: The pigs were the property of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the country. The defendants had videoed themselves committing the crime; the F.B.I. later found the piglets in Colorado, in an animal sanctuary.

The activists said they had completed a “rescue,” but Smithfield had good reason to claim it hadn’t treated the pigs illegally. Unlike domestic favorites like dogs, which are protected from being eaten, Utah’s pigs are legally classified as “livestock”; they’re future products, and Smithfield could treat them accordingly. Namely, it could slaughter the pigs, but it could also treat a pig’s life—and its temporary desire for food, space, and medical help—as an inconvenience, to be handled in whatever conditions were deemed sufficient.

In their video, the activists surveyed those conditions . At the facility—a concentrated animal-feeding operation, or CAFO —pregnant pigs were confined to gestation crates, metal enclosures so small that the sows could barely lie down. (Smithfield had promised to stop using these crates, but evidently had not.) Other pigs were in farrowing crates, where they had enough room to lie down but not enough to turn their bodies around. When the activists approached one sow, they found dead piglets rotting beneath her. Nearby, they found two injured piglets, whom they decided to take. One couldn’t walk because of a foot infection; the other’s face was covered in blood. According to Smithfield, which denied mistreating animals, the piglets were each worth about forty-two dollars, but both had diarrhea and other signs of illness. This meant they were unlikely to survive, and that their bodies would be discarded, just as millions of farm animals are discarded each year.

During the trial, the activists reiterated that, yes, they entered Smithfield’s property and, yes, they took the pigs. And then, last October, the jury found them not guilty. In a column for the Times , one of the activists—Wayne Hsiung, the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere—described talking to one of the jurors, who said that it was hard to convict the activists of theft, given that the sick piglets had no value for Smithfield. But another factor was the activists’ appeal to conscience. In his closing statement, Hsiung, a lawyer who represented himself, argued that an acquittal would model a new, more compassionate world. He had broken the law, yes—but the law, the jury seemed to agree, might be wrong.

A lot has changed in our relationship with animals since 1975, when the philosopher Peter Singer wrote “ Animal Liberation ,” the book that sparked the animal-rights movement. Gestation crates, like the ones in Utah, are restricted in the European Union, and California prohibits companies that use them from selling in stores, a case that the pork industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court—and lost. In a 2019 Johns Hopkins survey, more than forty per cent of respondents wanted to ban new CAFO s. In Iowa, which is the No. 1 pork-producing state, my local grocery store has a full Vegan section. “Vegan” is also a shopping filter on Sephora, and most of the cool-girl brands are vegan, anyway. Wearing fur is embarrassing.

And yet Singer’s latest book, “ Animal Liberation Now ,” a rewrite of his 1975 classic, is less a celebratory volume than a tragic one—tragic because it is very similar to the original in refrain, which is that, big-picture-wise, the state of animal life is terrible. “The core argument I was putting forward,” Singer writes, “seemed so irrefutable, so undeniably right, that I thought everyone who read it would surely be convinced by it.” Apparently not. By some estimates, scientists in the U.S. currently use roughly fifteen million animals for research, including mice, rats, cats, dogs, birds, and nonhuman primates. As in the seventies, much of this research tries to model psychological ailments, despite scientists’ having written for decades that more research is needed to figure out whether animals—and which kind of animals—provide a useful analogue for mental illness in humans. When Singer was first writing, a leading researcher created psychopathic monkeys by raising them in isolation, impregnating them with what he called a “rape rack,” and studying how the mothers bashed their infants’ heads into the ground. In 2019, researchers were still putting animals through “prolonged stress”—trapping them in deep water, restraining them for long periods while subjecting them to the odor of a predator—to see if their subsequent behavior evidenced P.T.S.D. (They wrote that more research was needed.) Meanwhile, factory farms, which were newish in 1975, have swept the globe. Just four per cent of Americans are vegetarian, and each year about eighty-three billion animals are killed for food.

It’s for these animals, Singer writes, “and for all the others who will, unless there is a sudden and radical change, suffer and die,” that he writes this new edition. But Singer’s hopes are by now tempered. One obvious problem is that, in the past fifty years, the legal standing of animals has barely changed. The Utah case was unusual not just because of the verdict but because referendums on farm-animal welfare seldom occur at all. In many states, lawmakers, often pressured by agribusiness, have tried to make it a serious crime to enter a factory farm’s property. The activists in Utah hoped they could win converts at trial; they gambled correctly, but, had they been wrong, they could have gone to prison. As in 1975, it remains impossible to simply petition the justice system to notice that pigs are suffering. All animals are property, and property can’t take its owner to court.

Philosophers have debated the standing of animals for centuries. Pythagoras supposedly didn’t eat them, perhaps because he believed they had souls. Their demotion to “things” owes partly to thinkers like Aristotle, who called animals “brute beasts” who exist “for the sake of man,” and to Christianity, which, like Stoicism before it, awarded unique dignity to humans. We had souls; animals did not. Since then, various secular thinkers have given this idea a new name—“inherent value,” “intrinsic dignity”—in order to explain why it is O.K. to eat a pig but not a baby. For Singer, these phrases are a “last resort,” a way to clumsily distinguish humans from nonhuman animals. Some argue that our ability to tell right from wrong, or to perceive ourselves, sets us apart—but not all humans can do these things, and some animals seem to do them better. Good law doesn’t withhold justice from humans who are elderly or infirm, or those who are cognitively disabled. As a utilitarian, Singer cites the founder of that tradition, the eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that justice and equality have nothing to do with a creature’s ability to reason, or with any of its abilities at all, but with the fact that it can suffer. Most animals suffer. Why, then, do we not give them moral consideration?

Singer’s answer is “speciesism,” or “bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species.” Like racism and sexism, speciesism denies equal consideration in order to maintain a status quo that is convenient for the oppressors. As Lawrence Wright has written in this magazine , courts, when considering the confinement of elephants and chimpanzees, have conceded that such animals evince many of the qualities that give humans legal standing, but have declined to follow through on the implications of this fact. The reason for that is obvious. If animals deserved the same consideration as humans, then we would find ourselves in a world in which billions of persons were living awful, almost unimaginably horrible lives. In which case, we might have to do something about it.

Equal consideration does not mean equal treatment. As a utilitarian, Singer’s aim is to minimize the suffering in the world and maximize the pleasure in it, a principle that invites, and often demands, choices. This is why Singer does not object to killing mosquitos (if done quickly), or to using animals for scientific research that would dramatically relieve suffering, or to eating meat if doing so would save your life. What he would not agree with, though, is making those choices on the basis of perceived intelligence or emotion. In a decision about whether to eat chicken or pork, it is not better to choose chicken simply because pigs seem smarter. The fleeting pleasure of eating any chicken is trounced by its suffering in industrial farms, where it was likely force-fed, electrocuted, and perhaps even boiled alive.

Still, Singer’s emphasis on suffering is cause for concern to Martha Nussbaum , whose new book, “ Justice for Animals ,” is an attempt to settle on the ideal philosophical template for animal rights. Whereas Singer’s argument is emphatically emotion-free—empathy, in his view, is not just immaterial but often actively misleading—Nussbaum is interested in emotions, or at least in animals’ inner lives and desires. She considers several theories of animal rights, including Singer’s, before arguing that we should adopt her “capabilities approach,” which builds on a framework developed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, and holds that all creatures should be given the “opportunity to flourish.” For decades, Nussbaum has adjusted her list of what this entails for humans, which includes “being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length,” “being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves,” and having “bodily integrity”—namely, freedom from violence and “choice in matters of reproduction.” In “Justice for Animals,” she outlines some conditions for nonhuman flourishing: a natural life span, social relationships, freedom of movement, bodily integrity, and play and stimulation. Eventually, she writes, we would have a refined list for each species, so that we could insure flourishing “in the form of life characteristic to the creature.”

In imagining this better world, Nussbaum is guided by three emotions: wonder, anger, and compassion. She wants us to look anew at animals such as chickens or pigs, which don’t flatter us, as gorillas might, with their resemblance to us. What pigs do, and like to do, is root around in the dirt; lacquer themselves in mud to keep cool; build comfy nests in which to shelter their babies; and communicate with one another in social groups. They also seek out belly rubs from human caregivers. In a just world, Nussbaum writes, we would wonder at a pig’s mysterious life, show compassion for her desire to exist on her own terms, and get angry when corporations get in her way.

Some of Nussbaum’s positions are more actionable, policy-wise, than others. For example, she supports legal standing for animals, which raises an obvious question: How would a pig articulate her desires to a lawyer? Nussbaum notes that a solution already exists in fiduciary law: in the event that a person, like a toddler or disabled adult, cannot communicate their decisions or make sound ones, a representative is appointed to understand that person’s interests and advocate for them. Just as organizations exist to help certain people advance their interests, organizations could represent categories of animals. In Nussbaum’s future world, such a group could take Smithfield Foods to court.

Perhaps Nussbaum’s boldest position is that wild animals should also be represented by fiduciaries, and indeed be assured, by humans, the same flourishing as any other creature. If this seems like an overreach, a quixotic attempt to control a world that is better off without our meddling, Nussbaum says, first, to be realistic: there is no such thing as a truly wild animal, given the extent of human influence on Earth. (If a whale is found dead with a brick of plastic in its stomach, how “wild” was it?) Second, in Nussbaum’s view, if nature is thoughtless—and Nussbaum thinks it is—then perhaps what happens in “the wild” is not always for the best. No injustice can be ignored. If we aspire to a world in which no sentient creature can harm another’s “bodily integrity,” or impede one from exploring and fulfilling one’s capabilities, then it is not “the destiny of antelopes to be torn apart by predators.”

Here, Nussbaum’s world is getting harder to imagine. Animal-rights writing tends to elide the issue of wild-animal suffering for obvious reasons—namely, the scarcity of solutions. Singer covers the issue only briefly, and mostly to say that it’s worth researching the merit of different interventions, such as vaccination campaigns. Nussbaum, for her part, is unclear about how we would protect wild antelopes without impeding the flourishing of their predators—or without impeding the flourishing of antelopes, by increasing their numbers and not their resources. In 2006, when she previously discussed the subject, she acknowledged that perhaps “part of what it is to flourish, for a creature, is to settle certain very important matters on its own.” In her new book, she has not entirely discarded that perspective: intervention, she writes, could result in “disaster on a large scale.” But the point is to “press this question all the time,” and to ask whether our hands-off approach is less noble than it is self-justifying—a way of protecting ourselves from following our ideals to their natural, messy, inconvenient ends.

The enduring challenge for any activist is both to dream of almost-unimaginable justice and to make the case to nonbelievers that your dreams are practical. The problem is particularly acute in animal-rights activism. Ending wild-animal suffering is laughably hard (our efforts at ending human suffering don’t exactly recommend us to the task); obviously, so is changing the landscape of factory farms, or Singer wouldn’t be reissuing his book. In 2014, the British sociologist Richard Twine suggested that the vegan isn’t unlike the feminist of yore, in that both come across as killjoys whose “resistance against routinized norms of commodification and violence” repels those who prefer the comforts of the status quo. Wayne Hsiung, the Direct Action Everywhere activist, was only recently released from jail, after being sentenced for duck and chicken rescues in California. On his blog, he wrote that one reason the prosecution succeeded was that, unlike in Utah, he and his colleagues were cast as “weird extremists.”

It’s easy to construct a straw-man vegan, one oblivious to his own stridency, privilege, or hypocrisy. Isn’t he driving deforestation with all his vegetables? (No, Singer replies, as the vast majority of soybeans are fed to farm animals.) Isn’t he ignoring food deserts or the price tag on vegan substitutes, which puts them out of the reach of poor families? (Nussbaum acknowledges that cost can be an issue, but argues that it only emphasizes the need for resourced people to eat as humanely as they can, given that the costs of a more ethical diet “will not come down until it is chosen by many.”) Anyone pointing out moral culpability will provoke, in both others and themselves, a certain defensiveness. Nussbaum spends a lot of time discussing her uneasiness with her choice to eat fish for nutritional reasons. (She argues that fish likely have no sense of the future, a claim that even she seems unsure about.) Singer is eager to intervene here, emphasizing that animal-rights activism should pursue the diminishment of suffering, not the achievement of sainthood. “We are more likely to persuade others to share our attitude if we temper our ideals with common sense than if we strive for the kind of purity that is more appropriate to a religious dietary law than to an ethical and political movement,” he writes. Veganism is a boycott, and, while boycotts are more effective the more you commit to them, what makes them truly effective is persuading others to join them.

Strangely, where Singer and Nussbaum might agree is that defining the proper basis for the rights of animals is less important, at least in the short term, than getting people not to harm them, for any reason at all. Those reasons might have nothing to do with the animals themselves. Perhaps you decide not to eat animals because you care about people: because you care that the water where you live, if it’s anything like where I live, is too full of CAFO by-products to confidently drink. Perhaps you care about the workers in enormous slaughterhouses, where the pay is low and the costs to the laborer high. Perhaps you believe in a God, and believe that this God would expect better of people than to eat animals raised and killed in darkness. Or perhaps someone you love happens to love pigs, or to love the idea that the world could be gentler or more just, and you love the way they see the future enough to help them realize it. Nussbaum, after all, became interested in animal rights because she loved a person, her late daughter, an attorney who championed legislation to protect whales and other wild animals until her death, in 2019. Nussbaum’s book is dedicated to her—and also, now, to the whales. ♦

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By Elizabeth Kolbert

By Evan Osnos

Animal Rights Essay Examples and Topics

The importance of animal rights, should animals be used in research: argumentative essay, zoos: advantages and disadvantages, animal cruelty, its causes and impacts.

• Words: 3201

An Ethical Analysis of Animal Rights

• Words: 2309

Nonhuman Animals in Moral Equality Theories

• Words: 1981

Cosmetic Testing on Animals

• Words: 3097

The Use of Animals in Entertainment

• Words: 1385

Animal Cloning Benefits and Controversies

• Words: 2733

Plastic Surgery In Pets. Case Studies in Ethical Choice

Sociology of film “planet of the apes”, wearing clothes made of animal fur, animal welfare vs. rights: compare and contrast, animal rights and the importance of their protection, testing makeup products on rabbits.

• Words: 1031

Animal Identification: Benefits and Concerns

The problem of the whale hunting, ethical question on producing eggs from caged chicken, boycotting circuses overview.

• Words: 2250

Tom Reagan’s Speech: A Case for Animal Rights

“down on the factory farm” by peter singer, animal rights: definition, goals, the future.

• Words: 1300

Negative Impacts of Animal Testing

Moral status of animals: vegetarianism and veganism.

• Words: 1121

Animal Rights Protection in the United States

• Words: 2807

The Animal Rights and Welfare Debates

• Words: 2124

“Animal Rights, Human Wrongs” by Tom Regan

Experimentation on animals.

• Words: 1509

Adopting a Pet for a Balanced Life

Defining and enforcing laws against animal abuse, discussion: using hemp in animal nutrition.

• Words: 1139

The Animal Rights Debate and PETA

Animal well-being and meat consumption, forever guardians: ensuring lifelong horse welfare, animal experimentation: key aspects, the harm that zoos do to animals, social and behavioral science: animals in society, happy cows case: people for the ethical treatment of animals, the society for the prevention of cruelty to kitties.

• Words: 1176

Animal Testing in Medicine and Industry

Animal sentience: impact on animal welfare movement, people for the ethical treatment of animals in the kfc case, applying kant’s moral theory to animal research, the ethics of farm animal biotechnology from an anthropological perspective, preclinical testing on animals, discussion: boiling lobsters alive.

• Words: 1266

The Future for Zoos and Aquariums Bibliography

• Words: 1116

Ethics of Using Animals in Biological Research

Circus as the central place of animal rights violation, fight for animal rights in modern realities.

• Words: 1489

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Negative Effects

In vitro vs. animal research evidence levels, animal extinction: causes and effects.

• Words: 1126

Animal Rights and Ethics of Duty

• Words: 1120

Program for Addressing and Prevention of Animal Cruelty

Using animals in medical research and experiments, ban of foie gras production: past, present and future.

• Words: 1682

The Ban of Foie Gras and Force Feeding in Birds

• Words: 1485

Saving the North America Grizzly Bears

• Words: 1104

Puppy Mills: Are You Supporting Puppy Bedlams?

• Words: 1760

The Scam of Flying Pets

Human and animal rights on board, immunization of the wildlife population against rabies, reinforce training on a horse, animal ethics from the buddhist perspective, laboratory experiments on animals: argument against, animal rights in whistler, british columbia: a case study of 100 slaughtered sledge dogs, fur coat as a controversial fashion garment, interview about controversial garments, jonathan safran foer ‘eating animals’ book.

• Words: 1170

The Problem of Euthanasia in Animal Shelters

• Words: 1917

Animal Rights Movement: Global Impact on Businesses and Their Marketing

• Words: 1412

Animal Testing From Medical and Ethical Viewpoints

• Words: 1210

Standards for Confining Farm Animals

“an animal’s place” by michael pollan: review, animals in scientific research: ethical guidelines, is animal research necessary to save lives.

• Words: 2101

Is the Sport of Calf Roping Humane?

• Words: 1303

Animal Cruelty: Inside the Dog Fighting

• Words: 1123

Equal Rights for All Animals

Consumer attitudes towards animal welfare.

• Words: 2230

Animal Product Manufacture and Control

• Words: 1117

In Defense of Speciesism

• Words: 1505

Animal Testing: Long and Unpretty History

• Words: 2781

The Vancouver Principles of Animal Rights Protection

Companion animals as property of humans.

• Words: 3857

Agricultural Products vs. Animal Rights Dilemma

Animal abuse registry justification, moral status of animals at factory farming, wildlife in art, science and public attitudes.

• Words: 1439

Canadian Animal Welfare and Role in the Charity

• Words: 1638

Animal Testing as an Unnecessary and Atrocious Practice

• Words: 1130

Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Killer whales: captivity or free.

• Words: 2497

Marketing Research: Animal Shelters in the USA

Good life and death for humans and other animals, animal testing and environmental protection.

• Words: 1646

Animal Experiments and Inhuman Treatment

Animal testing for scientific research, food production and animals suffering.

• Words: 1689

Animal Testing and Ethics

Should great apes be granted legal right.

• Words: 1372

“You Have the Right to Remain Silent”: Animal Rights vs. the Need for Natural Products

• Words: 1725

Animal Rights: A Practical Approach

• Words: 1172

Organizations Campaigning Against the Use of Animals in Research

‘animal rights’ activists and racism.

• Words: 1421

Do Non-Human Animals Have Rights?

Animal liberation vs. environmentalism.

• Words: 1748

Do Animals Possess Moral Rights?

Ethics problems in animal experimentation, animal testing: ethical dilemmas in business.

• Words: 4158

Definition of Animal Rights and Its Problems

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Should animals be used for scientific research?

Ethical problems of the animal abuse, the debate about animal rights, use of animals in research testing: ethical justifications involved.

Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

• Kristen Stilt
• See full issue

The fields of animal law and environmental law have an uneasy relationship. At a basic level, they are intertwined by the fundamental observation that animals, human and nonhuman, exist in the environment. Environmental law is generally concerned with animals at the level of species (and specifically endangered or threatened species), whereas animal law is concerned with all animals, regardless of particular characteristics. The issue of wild horses in the western United States illustrates this tension. Some environmentalists view the horses as “feral pests” that damage the fragile ecosystem and compete with wildlife — and privately owned cattle — for resources. 1 They argue that the horses should be gathered through helicopter-led “roundups” and euthanized or sold. 2 Animal protection advocates argue that these roundups are cruel and note that the millions of cattle also grazing on these lands are far more damaging to the environment than the horses. 3 They insist that these wild horses should not be killed — the life of each individual animal matters and should be protected. 4

Environmental law is the older and more established field of law. There are many ways to measure this, such as at the constitutional level, which shows environmental law’s seniority and success. Most constitutions address the environment, and the typical phrasing is anthropocentric: a human right to a healthy environment as seen, for example, in article 42 of the Constitution of Kenya: “Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment . . . .” 5 Newer trends adopt ecocentric or biocentric approaches and grant rights to nature (or its component parts, such as a river) at the constitutional or legislative level or through judicial decisions. 6

In contrast to environmental rights, it is only a fairly recent phenomenon that assigns “constitutional significance to the experiences of individual nonhuman animals.” 7 Animals are protected in just a handful of constitutions with no clear adoption trend: Switzerland (1973), 8 India (1976), 9 Brazil (1988), 10 Slovenia (1991), 11 Germany (2002), 12 Luxembourg (2007), 13 Austria (2013), 14 Egypt (2014), 15 and Russia (2020). 16 ) (Russ.), translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, 2020) . The year accompanying each country listed above indicates when the provision was added to an existing constitution or when a new constitution with the provision was adopted. These provisions use terms such as the “welfare” of animals, 17 the “dignity” of animals, 18 animal “protection,” 19 “compassion” toward animals, 20 and animal “cruelty” 21 — all of which follow a general animal welfare approach. In contrast to the environmental context, none of the provisions uses the term “rights.” 22

In this Essay, I show how developments and achievements in the field of environmental rights and specifically rights of nature can be instructive, intellectually and practically, to the cause of animal protection and animal rights. 23 That instruction includes not only positive examples but also notes of caution, where animal law may face different and more formidable challenges. The Essay first assesses the role that a human right to a healthy environment has played in the development of environmental rights and rights of nature, and then it discusses the relevance of this experience for animal rights. In Part II, it turns to how rights of nature have been interpreted and applied in several prominent court decisions and suggests insights that animal rights can take from this jurisprudence. Given the brevity of Forum essays, I cannot be comprehensive. Rather, I chart out the range of my arguments and support them with some notable examples, with the intention to treat this topic more fully in a future work.

I. A Human Right to a Healthy Environment, A Human Right to Animal Protection

The anthropocentric formulation of a human right to a healthy environment initially may not seem like a helpful framing for the cause of animal rights, but it is actually very instructive. “Rights of Nature” have roots in two sources. First, these rights emerged from a recent recognition that current environmental law, including the human right to a healthy environment, has failed to address the global ecological crisis and notably climate change. 24 Second, indigenous traditions and jurisprudence “that have always treated humans as part of nature, rather than distinct from it,” have long provided a rights of nature framework and approach. 25 The widespread acceptance of a human right to a healthy environment served as part of the foundation for the development of a stronger rights of nature approach, which synergistically connected with indigenous approaches to nature.

In an animal context, an analogous formulation would be a human right to animal protection, a right of humans to have all animals adequately protected. This may sound like awkward phrasing, but such an approach does closely match how, in general, legal systems currently treat animals. 26 That is, animal interests are protected to the extent that humans want them to be and benefit from those protections and limitations.

An anthropocentric approach to animal protection along these lines is likely politically more acceptable than an animal rights–based approach. If it were widely adopted, however, it could serve merely to entrench the status quo in animal law. Alternatively, a human right to animal protection could offer the possibility of far more robust protection than currently exists under animal welfare laws. Because different humans will have different ideas about what the protection of animals should involve, a human right could allow more protective views to be recognized. It could also provide an intermediate step to animal rights, laying a foundation for future expansion. More needs to be known about the evolution from the right to a healthy environment to rights of nature, and how animal rights might be able to follow a similar path.

II. Rights of Nature, Rights of Animals

Ecocentric or biocentric approaches that lodge a right in nature or its component parts also may be promising for the development of legally recognized animal rights. Rights of nature are not widespread, but they have potential for growth and impact. At the constitutional level, Ecuador was the first to recognize the rights of nature. Article 71 begins: “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.” 27 Bolivia adopted this approach through the Law on the Rights of Mother Earth (2010); 28 the enumerated rights are the rights to life, diversity of life, water, clean air, equilibrium, restoration, and pollution-free living. 29 Other countries have recognized the right in judicial opinions. 30

A. Animals as Part of Nature

At the most fundamental level, if nature has rights, and if nature includes animals, then rights-based claims could be made on behalf of animals using existing rights of nature doctrine and strategy. A 2008 case from the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil, known as the Wild Parrot case, illustrates this possibility. 31 The case involved an individual who had kept a single wild animal, a blue-fronted parrot, in custody for more than two decades and in inadequate living conditions. 32 This parrot was considered a wild species; this no doubt facilitated the connection to nature, but the court engaged in language that stretched beyond concern for a wild species. The court cited article 225 of the constitution as evidence for Brazil’s “ecological approach.” 33 Article 225 is an anthropocentric human right to an “ecologically balanced environment,” not a rights of nature provision, and the constitutional framing of animal protection comes through an environmental, “fauna and . . . flora” framework. 34 What is remarkable is that the court took this limited language as a starting point to reach a discussion of rights of nature and recognition of sentient beings in general.

The court called for a rethinking of the “Kantian, anthropocentric and individualistic concept of human dignity.” 35 Dignity should be reformulated to recognize “an intrinsic value conferred to non-human sensitive beings, whose moral status would be recognized and would share with the human beings the same moral community.” 36 The treatment of animals “must be based no longer on human dignity or human compassion, but on the very dignity inherent in the existence of nonhuman animals.” 37 The court brought together two strands of jurisprudence: the protection of animals in the German and Swiss Constitutions 38 and the rights of nature language in the Ecuadorean Constitution and Bolivian Law on the Rights of Mother Earth. By doing so, it reached a language of rights: “This view of nature as an expression of life in its entirety enables the Constitutional Law and other areas of law to recognize the environment and non-human animals as beings of their own value, therefore deserving respect and care, so that the legal system grants them the ownership of rights and dignity.” 39 The court conceptually moved nonhuman animals out of the environmental constraints of article 225 to attain their own independent status, for which the court advocated both rights and dignity.

B. Nonhuman Rights

Even if the concept of nature is not currently understood to include individual animals, provisions recognizing the rights of nature still implicitly acknowledge that a nonhuman can have rights. This may seem obvious since corporations and other nonhuman entities are legal persons and have rights, but entities such as rivers or ecosystems traditionally have not been extended the same recognition by legal systems worldwide. Rivers have been treated as legal persons in some jurisdictions, notably in Bangladesh, 40 Colombia, 41 Ecuador, 42 India, 43 New Zealand, 44 and the United States. 45

One of the most significant cases involving river rights was decided by the Constitutional Court of Colombia in 2016 (the Atrato River Case). 46 The plaintiffs challenged the pollution and degradation that industrial and illegal mining and logging had caused to the Atrato River basin, the tributaries, and surrounding territories. 47 They showed that the Atrato banks were the ancestral home to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities such as themselves. 48 The river provided a subsistence means of living based on agriculture, hunting, fishing, and artisanal mining. 49 The plaintiffs asked the court to protect their fundamental rights to life, health, water, food security, a healthy environment, and the culture and territory of their ethnic communities. 50 They also asked the court to impose measures to address the crisis in the Atrato River basin resulting from the environmental pollution and degradation. 51

While the plaintiffs framed their claims as rights of the individuals living in the Atrato River basin, the court did not limit itself to a consideration of anthropocentric rights. For the court, the importance of nature “[was] established, of course, in reference to the humans that inhabit it and the need to count on a healthy environment to live a dignified life in conditions of well-being; but [nature’s importance was founded] also in connection with the other living organisms with whom the planet is shared, understood as entities deserving of protection in and of themselves .” 52 Nature was a subject of rights. 53

Thus, theoretically, the rights of nature may be violated even in the absence of any injury to humans. A decision from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights made this point clearly: “The Court consider[ed] it important to stress that, as an autonomous right, the right to a healthy environment, unlike other rights, protects the components of the environment, such as forests, rivers, and seas, as legal interests in themselves, even in the absence of the certainty or evidence of a risk to individuals.” 54

An excellent example of an approach that leads with the rights of nature is the Turag River case, decided by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in 2019. 55 Through time-sequenced photographs, a news article that the court relied on in its decision showed the encroachment on the Turag River due to “river-grabbers,” pollutants, and the failure to keep the river navigable through dredging. 56 Despite laws and many judicial decisions, encroachers walled off land in the river and deployed bulldozers and excavators to fill their newly claimed territory, expanding the reach of dry land at the river’s expense. 57 The same actions were taking place in other rivers in the capital of this “riverine country.” 58 The NGO Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh brought the case to eject all the illegal occupiers and stop landfilling and construction activities on the river’s territory. 59

The Turag River itself was at the center of the case from the outset. But the river for its own sake? The court echoed the language of the Daily Star article, speaking in terms of the Turag becoming a “dead river” 60 or facing “extinction” if the activity was not stopped. 61 The court also acknowledged that the occupation and pollution had caused a “major shortage of potable water, for which people are constantly facing health risks.” 62 And given the centrality of waterways to Bangladesh, “[d]estroying the rivers is . . . the same as our collective suicide.” 63 As a last resort to save the river, the court declared the Turag and indeed all rivers in the country legal persons. 64 It also ordered the removal of all unlawful pollution and construction and issued seventeen other wide-ranging orders. 65 The Turag River case and others show that rights can be lodged in a nonhuman, but in practice the human rights are also significant components.

C. Nonhuman Remedies and Enforcement

Finally, the remedies discussion in rights of nature cases demonstrates that there are adequate ways for humans to assess and implement the desires and needs of nonhuman entities. In what is known as the Deforestation Case, the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil held that in addition to the requirement to restore the damage caused to the environment, a defendant may also be required to pay monetary damages, or “pure ecological damage,” for “degrading nature in itself, an asset that is not and cannot be owned.” 66 Applied to the animal context, it could stand for the principle that wrongful treatment of an animal, for example, could require the payment of compensation without any particular showing of physical harm. The payment would presumably go into a trust established to support the needs of the animal or her ecosystem.

In the animal context, the idea that humans are capable of making such an assessment has been questioned. In Naruto v. Slater , 67 the Ninth Circuit took a generally irritated tone toward the organization that brought the case on behalf of Naruto, a crested macaque. 68 Concurring in part, Judge Smith stated: “But the interests of animals? We are really asking what another species desires. . . . We have millennia of experience understanding the interests and desires of humankind. That is not necessarily true of animals.” 69 If so — and without conceding the point — that is also not necessarily true of rivers, forests, or ecosystems, but courts that grant rights to nature routinely appoint guardianship bodies to make these determinations. 70

There is a limit to the analogy between nature and nonhuman animals that appears at the stage of remedies in some cases and goes to the heart of the comparison. For a river, the component of nature for which there is the most extensive case law, courts typically speak in terms of “rights that imply its protection, conservation, maintenance” and “restoration,” as in the Atrato River Case. 71 That court sought to have the conditions of the river improved so that the human communities could again make full use of the river for agriculture, hunting, fishing, and artisanal mining. The remedy raises a deeper question, one that the court did not ask: What is the intrinsic purpose of a river? The implication of rights of river judgments is not that a river simply seeks to be left alone. The purpose of a river in these decisions is to serve humans, through access to water, transportation, and the animals who live in them.

The rights that advocates seek for animals are far more robust and categorically reject that the inherent purpose of an animal is to serve human interests and uses. In the habeas corpus cases, the animals are in captivity, such as in a zoo or research facility. 72 The plaintiffs seek release of these animals to a setting in which they can live more natural lives, such as a sanctuary, given that these animals generally cannot be placed in a fully natural, wild environment. 73 While the presumption is that the transfer to better environments would aid in the protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration of these animals, the point was not that the animals will look and feel better for any kind of human benefit. The remedy of habeas corpus seeks to release the animals from a human environment so that they could be, to the extent possible, left alone to be animals.

This difference in the issue of remedies and their enforcement may be significant and may project back onto the fundamental question of whether humans will recognize animal rights at all. Rights of nature call for some major changes in the way that humans live in the world, as seen in the above cases. Viewed from the remedy angle, the rights of animals are an even greater challenge to the behavior of humans. Rights of animals impact fundamental questions such as what humans eat and drink, what they wear, and what kinds of entertainment they engage in, to name just a few. A judge may seek to avoid remedies that would alter human behavior in dramatic ways, and the mere possibility of these remedies may also work to undermine the cause of action itself. 74

Rights of nature approaches are instructive to the cause of animal rights, intellectually and practically. They do not offer a model to be copied wholesale, but instead call for careful study of the parallels and points of disconnection, of the commonalities and the conflicts, with the potential for significant results.

* Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty Director, Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program. I thank Sam Bookman, Doug Kysar, Justin Marceau, Kathy Meyer, and Steve Wise for insightful comments on this Essay. I thank the editors of the Harvard Law Review for their thoughtful engagement and editorial assistance. Andy Stawasz, J.D. ’21, provided outstanding research assistance. I also thank the translators who assisted with translations of the cases cited in the Essay: Cibele Maria Melendez Texeira Bandeira and Harvard Law School S.J.D. candidates Beatriz Botero Arcila, Sannoy Das, and Nicolás Parra-Herrera.

^ Karin Brulliard, The Battle over Wild Horses , WASH. POST (Sept. 18, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/09/18/wild-horses-have-long-kicked-up-controversy-now-foes-say-they-have-solution [ https://perma.cc/L9BW-GJP7 ].

^ The constitution of Kenya , 2010, art. 42, in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline , 2010) .

^ James R. May & Erin Daly, Global Environmental Constitutionalism 255–56 (2015). A biocentric approach places humans on the same level as all living beings, whereas an ecocentric approach considers all that is in the natural world — living beings and nonliving entities — to all be equally valued. Int’l Rivers et al., Rights of Rivers 10 (2020), https://3waryu2g9363hdvii1ci666p-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/86/2020/09/Right-of-Rivers-Report-V3-Digital-compressed.pdf [ https://perma.cc/JLG7-4QD5 ].

^ Jessica Eisen & Kristen Stilt, Protection and Status of Animals , in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law ¶ 1 (Rainer Grote, Frauke Lachenmann & Rüdiger Wolfrum eds., 2016), Oxford Constitutional Law (article updated Dec. 2016).

^ Id . ¶¶ 26–35.

^ Id . ¶¶ 11–17.

^ Id . ¶¶ 36–38.

^ Id . ¶¶ 39–41.

^ Id . ¶¶ 18–25.

^ Id . ¶¶ 47–56.

^ Id . ¶¶ 42–46.

^ Id . ¶¶ 63–65.

^ See Konstitutsiia Rossiĭskoĭ Federatsii [Konst. RF] [Constitution] art. 114(1)(e 5

^ Eisen & Stilt, supra note 7, ¶ 45.

^ Id . ¶ 31.

^ Id . ¶ 23.

^ Id . ¶ 12.

^ Id . ¶ 36.

^ Id . ¶ 69.

^ The desire for more rights is not an unqualified positive, as some have argued. While an important question, this Essay does not engage in that debate.

^ Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 6.

^ Id . In the animal law context, more research is needed on the alignment of beliefs in indigenous communities with animal rights approaches — a partnership that has been important in the contemporary rights of nature movement. Due to issues such as whaling and seal hunting, this alignment has proven difficult, but with thoughtful engagement, it is within reach. See generally Maneesha Deckha, Unsettling Anthropocentric Legal Systems: Reconciliation, Indigenous Laws, and Animal Personhood , 41 J. Intercultural Stud . 77 (2020).

^ There is a long line of thinking in animal protection that preventing cruelty to animals is also beneficial for humans. One strand of this thinking focuses on a connection between violence against animals and violence against humans, referred to as the “link” theory. For a discussion and critique of this theory, see Justin Marceau , Beyond Cages 193–250 (2019).

^ Constitución de la República del Ecuador [Constitution] 2008 , art. 71, translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, Jefri Jay Ruchti, ed., Maria Del Carmen Gress & J.J. Ruchti, trans., 2018 ) .

^ Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra [Law of the Rights of Mother Earth], Ley 071 (2010) ( Bol .) .

^ See Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 15–49.

^ S.T.J., No. 1.797.175/SP, Relator: Ministro OG Fernandes, 21.03.2019, Revista Eletrônica da Jurisprudência [R.S.T.J.], 13.05.2019 (Braz.), https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/revista/documento/mediado/?componente=ITA&sequencial=1806039&num_registro=201800312300&data=20190513&peticao_numero=-1&formato=PDF [ https://perma.cc/TZ76-P4E3 ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Wild Parrot Case].

^ Id . at 2–3.

^ Id . at 9.

^ Constitução Federal [C.F.] [Constitution] art. 225 (Braz.), translated in World Constitutions Illustrated ( HeinOnline, Jefri Jay Ruchi, ed., Keith S. Rosenn, trans., 2020) .

^ Wild Parrot Case, supra note 31, at 10.

^ Id . at 12.

^ See Eisen & Stilt, supra note 7, ¶¶ 22–24, 28–29.

^ Wild Parrot Case, supra note 31, at 14.

^ See Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 47.

^ See id . at 23.

^ See id . at 33.

^ See id . at 44.

^ See id . at 17.

^ See id . at 39. In India, the decisions have been stayed by the Supreme Court. Id . at 46. In the U.S. context, Native American tribal jurisdictions have led the way in recognizing rights of nature. The Navajo Nation Code Annotated, tit. I, § 205 (2014), states that “[a]ll creation, from Mother Earth and Father Sky to the animals, those who live in water, those who fly and plant life have their own laws and have rights and freedoms to exist.” The publication of Christopher D. Stone’s Should Trees Have Standing? — Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects , 45 S. Cal. L. Rev . 450 (1972), was influential for Justice Douglas, dissenting in Sierra Club v. Morton , 405 U.S. 727, 741–42 (1972) (“Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.”). Recently, some local governments in the United States have attempted to declare that natural communities and ecosystems have rights. For a discussion of these efforts, see David R. Boyd, The Rights of Nature 109–30 (2017).

^ Corte Constitucional [C.C.] [Constitutional Court], noviembre 10, 2016, Sentencia T-622/16 (Colom.), https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2016/t-622-16.htm [ https://perma.cc/CP7X-3NCJ ], translated in Center for Social Justice Studies v. Presidency of the Republic, Judgment T-622/16, Constitutional Court of Colombia (Nov. 10, 2016), The Atrato River Case , Dignity Rts. Project , http://files.harmonywithnatureun.org/uploads/upload838.pdf [ https://perma.cc/SF8R-W8EC ] [hereinafter Atrato River Case].

^ Id . § I.2.1.

^ Id . § I.1.

^ Id . § I.2.10.

^ Id . § IV.9.27.

^ Id . § IV.9.31.

^ The Environment and Human Rights (Arts. 4(1) and 5(1) in Relation to Arts. 1(1) and 2 American Convention on Human Rights), Advisory Opinion OC-23/17, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) No. 23, ¶ 62 (Nov. 15, 2017), https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/opiniones/seriea_23_ing.pdf [ https://perma.cc/W3HZ-LPX9 ].

^ Bangladesh Supreme Court, High Court Division, Writ Petition No. 13898/2016 (2019) (official translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library) [hereinafter Turag River Case].

^ See id . at 3; Tawfique Ali, Time to Declare Turag Dead , Daily Star (Nov. 6, 2016), https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/time-declare-turag-dead-1310182 [ https://perma.cc/R5NL-WA6M ].

^ See Ali, supra note 56.

^ See Turag River Case, supra note 55, at 3.

^ Id . at 4.

^ Id . at 54.

^ Id . at 449.

^ Id . at 449–50.

^ S.T.J., No. 1.145.083/MG, Relator: Ministro Heman Benjamin, 27.09.2011, Revista Eletrônica da Jurisprudência [R.S.T.J.], 04.09.2012, 10 (Braz.), https://processo.stj.jus.br/processo/revista/documento/mediado/?componente=ITA&sequencial=975073&num_registro=200901152629&data=20120904&formato=PDF [ https://perma.cc/FW7S-C6Q8 ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library).

^ 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018).

^ Id . at 420.

^ Id . at 432 (Smith, J., concurring in part).

^ Int’l Rivers et al ., supra note 6, at 8.

^ Atrato River Case, supra note 46, § IV.9.32.

^ See, e.g ., Cámara del Fuero Contencioso Administrativo y Tributario [CABA] [Chamber of Appeals in Contentious Administrative and Tax Matters], Buenos Aires, sala 1, 14/06/2016, “Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los Derechos de los Animales y Otros c. GCBA s/ Amparo,” (Arg.), 3, https://www.animallaw.info/sites/default/files/1%20%E2%80%9CASOCIACIO%CC%81N%20DE%20FUNCIONARIOS%20Y%20ABOGADOS%20POR%20LOS%20DERECHOS%20DE%20LOS%20ANIMALES%20Y%20OTROS%20C%3A%20GCBA%20S%3A%20AMPARO%E2%80%9D%20.pdf [ https://perma.cc/7LD3-XCDG ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library); Corte Constitucional [C.C.] [Constitutional Court], enero 23, 2020, Sentencia SU-016/20 (§§ I.1 to .3) (Colom.), https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/comunicados/Comunicado%20No.%2003%20del%2023%20de%20enero%20de%202020.pdf [ https://perma.cc/9EX8-UCYL ] (translation on file with the Harvard Law School Library). For an overview of habeas corpus cases brought in the United States on behalf of nonhuman animals, see Challenging the Legal Thinghood of Autonomous Nonhuman Animals , Nonhuman Rts. Project , https://www.nonhumanrights.org/litigation [ https://perma.cc/69P9-UU7M ].

^ CABA, 14/06/2016, “Asociación de Funcionarios y Abogados por los Derechos de los Animales y Otros c. GCBA s/ Amparo,” 2, 14; C.C., enero 23, 2020, Sentencia SU-016/20 (§§ I.1 to .3).

^ I thank Doug Kysar for the point that this also works in reverse; a judge in a jurisdiction with weak enforcement might be willing to go further with a finding of animal rights, knowing that the implications are unlikely to be seen as a practical matter.

• Environmental Law

March 20, 2021

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The Moral Rights of Animals

Mylan Engel Jr. and Gary Lynn Comstock (eds.), The Moral Rights of Animals , Lexington, 2016, 296pp., $100.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781498531900.

Reviewed by Dan Hooley, University of Toronto

The attitudes of philosophers on our obligations to other animals and the view that other animals possess certain moral rights have shifted considerably in the last 40 years and a great deal of credit for this shift is owed to Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights and subsequent work. This excellent anthology grew out of a 2011 workshop held in Regan's honor and is dedicated to him. It features fourteen essays all of which intersect with Regan's views in some way. The authors largely defend the view that other animals have moral rights and those who don't hold that we have significant obligations to other animals. The essays succeed at exploring, critiquing, and expanding upon Regan's work in a way that is both rigorous and detailed, while accessible to those new to Regan or the animal rights literature.

The book has three parts. Part 1 focuses on the theoretical basis of animal rights, and responses to objections to animal rights. Part 2 looks at questions relating to the comparative value of human and nonhuman lives, with a focus on the comparative harm of death for humans and animals and the question of whether or not humans and animals have an equal right to life. Part 3 turns to the practical import of animal rights.

Part 1 begins with an essay by Regan, which succinctly summarizes the argument he made in The Case for Animal Rights that all individuals who are "subjects of a life" -- conscious, sentient individuals with an experiential welfare who have beliefs and desires and some awareness of the past and future -- have certain basic moral rights. This essay, combined with the relevant summaries in subsequent chapters, provide a sufficient overview of Regan's views, so those who have not read Regan before will not be lost.

In Chapter 2, Jeremy Garrett argues that deontological libertarians should accept animal rights. Garrett argues that libertarian views harmonize quite nicely with Regan's defense of animal rights and defends this view against objections from Nozick. In Chapter 3, Mylan Engel Jr. makes a straightforward and compelling case that if all humans have moral rights, then many other animals do as well since these animals have the properties that confer rights on humans. Engel also argues that most of the harmful uses of animals are wrong even if animals do not possess rights. In Chapter 4, Nathan Nobis considers some of the limitations of Regan's response to Carl Cohen's well-known "kind" argument, which holds that since animals are not of the kind of beings who are moral agents, they do not possess rights, and develops stronger objections to Cohen's position. In Chapter 5, Anne Baril argues that the equal inherent value of all animals does not demand intervention to prevent predation among wild animals. She argues that respect for wild animals, as the kinds of beings they are, does not require intervention to prevent predation.

Central or important to many of the essays in Part 1 is the much discussed (and poorly named) "Argument from Marginal Cases." [1] Versions and variations on this argument are put forward here by Regan, Garrett, Engel, and Nobis. Engel and Nobis, in particular, do a superb job challenging many of the common attempts to defend the view that all humans possess certain basic rights but all nonhumans do not. These essays present important challenges to those who think some form of human exceptionalism is defensible.

One important point made by Engel is that defenders of human exceptionalism must provide a plausible rationale for why any specific capacity, claimed to be both necessary and sufficient for the possession of a given right, is connected to that specific right in question. Many attempts to do this fail the test of having a plausible rationale. Moral autonomy is relevant to whether or not beings can be held morally accountable for their behavior, but it is far from clear why being morally autonomous is a necessary condition for possessing a right not to be harmed. This is because being morally autonomous is not necessary to have a morally relevant interest in not being harmed. As Engel notes, it is a much more plausible rationale to think that sentience is the morally relevant rights-conferring property for the right not to be harmed. This capacity has a much more plausible connection to the specific right in question.

A similar point is made by Nobis in response to Cohen's "kind" argument. Cohen claims all humans (regardless of cognitive capacities) have moral rights because they are members of a kind of being that possess moral agency. But this lacks a plausible rationale when it comes to the specific rights of non-rational humans (such as babies or individuals with severe cognitive disabilities). Cohen claims these individuals have rights related to autonomy because they are members of a kind that is morally autonomous. But even if we concede this, it would be wrong to let them make all the decisions about their lives that we allow paradigmatic adults to make (75). They seem to lack these rights because they do not possess the relevant interests. Once we recognize this, however, it is not clear why membership in a kind is morally relevant: we can be classified in different groups, but we don't always have the rights typical members of those groups possess.

Part 2 focuses primarily on the comparative harm of death for humans and animals and the question of whether or not humans and other animals have an equal right to life. In Chapter 6, Aaron Simmons argues that while life has less value for animals than for humans, they nevertheless possess an equal right to life, such that the negative rights they possess are just as stringent as those possessed by humans. In Chapter 7, Molly Gardner argues that Regan's rights view does not, as he claims, actually prohibit animal research in all cases. She develops an alternative position, what she calls the "attenuated rights view," that balances rights with a somewhat complex but interesting weighing principle. This view generates a strong presumption against animal research, but would not justify a categorical opposition to all harmful research involving animals. In Chapter 8, Evelyn Pluhar draws on ethological research to argue that all vertebrates and some cephalopod invertebrates should be seen as subjects of a life. She defends the view that all subjects of a life, who have satisfying lives and opportunities for future satisfaction, are harmed equally by death. In Chapter 9, Alastair Norcross argues that Singer's account of moral considerability -- where all sentient creatures deserve equal consideration -- can be combined with Regan's account of subjects of a life. Norcross argues that all sentient creatures deserve equal consideration, but that subjects of a life have a lot more to lose by dying than "merely" sentient beings. And in Chapter 10, Gary Comstock gives empirical evidence that suggests much of the time human behavior is controlled by non-conscious mechanisms. Comstock uses this to argue against the view that the ability of humans to control their behavior is a morally relevant difference separating humans from other animals: if animals act "on instinct" much of the time, so do we.

The question of whether or not humans are harmed more by death than animals and the related question of whether or not humans and animals have an equal right to life are some of the most difficult and perplexing questions in animal ethics. One notable feature of the essays in Part 2 is the diversity of views presented on these issues, despite the (mostly) shared belief that nonhuman animals possess basic moral rights.

Both Simmons and Gardner, for example, defend the common position that life has more value for (most) humans compared to most other animals because of our more sophisticated cognitive abilities. Simmons defends this by arguing that our more sophisticated cognitive capacities allow us to experience more creative and intellectual pleasures that are quantitatively and qualitatively superior to other pleasures (110).

One important objection not considered by either author concerns the ways in which the more sophisticated capacities of humans might allow for qualitatively and quantitatively worse forms of displeasure or negative experiences. If human life has more value because of the quantity and types of pleasures and valuable experiences we can enjoy, why are the distinct types of suffering, anxiety, and agony we can experience not relevant? If the claim is that humans have more valuable lives because of the net quantity and quality of pleasure and valuable experiences we can enjoy, then it isn't obviously true that humans have more valuable lives compared to animals, once we take the distinct types of displeasure we can experience into account. Further, even if it is true that some human lives contain more net value than other animals, this is likely not true for all of us.

More interesting, I think, is Simmons' suggestion that even if most humans are harmed more by death than most animals, this does not undermine an equal right to life. The assumption needed to ground this claim holds that two beings have an equal right to life only if the value of life for them is equal (112). But Simmons thinks we ought to reject this assumption because it entails that all humans do not have an equal right to life. Not only would this be the case for humans with severe cognitive disabilities but, Simmons rightly notes, there are reasons to think that among paradigmatic adult humans some are harmed more by death, as "some normal, adult humans seem to have greater capacities for reflective, creative, and intellectual activity than others" (112). This is an important point often ignored in this debate. Instead, Simmons suggests that to have an equal right to life only requires that the value of life for a being meets a certain threshold of value. And this threshold, he argues, should be set to include all individuals who are subjects of a life.

Norcross takes a different approach to these questions. He draws attention to an important element related to the harm of death not addressed in the other essays: the psychological relationship between an individual and her self in the future. Norcross argues that death is worse for animals who are subjects of a life (and who have some degree of self-consciousness) because of our psychological connection to our future selves: a fact we see when you must decide between a procedure that would extend your life for two years, or one that would extend "your" life by twenty years but sever all psychological connections between your present self and the future individual. Since it is rational to prefer the first procedure, Norcross argues that what is significant about death to individuals with a personal identity over time is the effect on their well-being (as opposed to the well-being of the organism) (171).

Subjects of a life, as beings with some degree of self-consciousness, have lives that matter to them . In this respect, their death is quite different from beings who are merely sentient and lack any psychological connection to their future selves. Their death may affect the net amount of well-being in the world, but it lacks personal significance to that being, in the same way that opting for the second procedure in the example above lacks any personal significance for me. This fact, Norcross argues, can ground a preference for subjects of a life over the merely sentient when it comes to issues of life and death (174).

Part 3 turns to more practical implications of animal rights and contains a variety of interesting and unique essays. In Chapter 11, Ramona Ilea argues that the capabilities approach to animals, articulated by Nussbaum, provides a useful and rigorous way to practically apply Regan's account of animal rights to questions of public policy and the law. In Chapter 13, Robert Bass develops an argument for veganism centered on moral caution. Bass argues that if there is a reasonable chance that an action is seriously wrong and no chance that it is morally required, then we ought to avoid that action. Bass thinks meat eating meets these criteria, and presents an array of arguments that attempt to show that the more modest conclusion is that there is a substantial chance meat-eating is wrong. In Chapter 14, Jason Hanna responds to arguments that animal rights views are consistent with "therapeutic hunting" aimed at reducing the suffering and future death of overabundant species. Hanna contends that hunters and wildlife managers are not in a situation where they must override an individual's rights, and that this blunts attempts to defend therapeutic hunting.

In Chapter 12, Scott Wilson argues that many who have made moral arguments for vegetarianism have failed to appreciate the significant interest meat-eaters have in consuming meat. He makes a strong case that the interest in consuming meat cannot be reduced to an interest simply in taste or nutrition, but instead reflects and involve a much wider variety of interests, including our self-conceptions of who we are, relationships with family and friends, convenience, and a variety of symbolic meanings. Wilson contends that this ultimately undermines utilitarian arguments for vegetarianism, and shows that rights-based approaches to animals are superior.

While I think Wilson is right to highlight some of the ways in which the consumption of meat reflects more than a simple interest in taste or pleasure, it is not clear his argument actually undermines a utilitarian argument for vegetarianism. Two points can be made in response to his argument. The first concerns the plasticity of our desires. We might think, against Wilson, that many meat-eaters overestimate the effect that switching to a vegetarian lifestyle will have on their welfare. If this is the case, it is not clear that any loss they might experience is as significant as they might initially be inclined to think (many vegetarians and vegans, for example, report enjoying food just as much or nearly as much as during their omnivorous days). Second, and related to this, there is a considerable body of evidence that suggests eating a plant-based diet makes it much more likely an individual will be healthier, avoid chronic diseases, and live longer. If this is the case, individuals who adopt a vegetarian diet may experience welfare gains (even if they miss eating meat), and even if they don't appreciate this fact.

This book offers an interesting and expansive exploration of current thought on animal rights. One downside it has, however, is that none of the essays engage with more recent work on the political status of non-human animals and their place in our legal and political institutions (Ilea's essay is in this ballpark, but it doesn't address any of the recent work on the topic). This omission is understandable: the anthology grew out of a 2011 conference, and much of the emerging literature on the political status of nonhuman animals was sparked by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's (2011) Zoopolis . However, one of the volume's stated goals is to "reflect the current state of philosophical thought on the moral rights of animals" (x). The political turn that is happening in animal ethics (and among animal rights theorists) can be understood as a potential implication of the moral rights of animals (and would thus fit in Part 3). This omission leaves out a rather exciting current development in the field that is particularly relevant to advocates of the moral rights of animals.

Some of this new work, moreover, would connect the topics in Parts 2 and 3 in an interesting way. One question we might have concerns whether much hangs on questions about the comparative harm of death or claims to an equal right to life. If other animals are significantly harmed by death and have a right to life, then we might think this is all we need to see that harmful animal-use industries, like animal agriculture, must be stopped, even if humans are harmed more by death or possess a more stringent right to life.

However, if we frame our relationship to other animals in political terms, the question of the comparative harm of death may take on a new importance. If, to give just one example, we begin to look at other domesticated animals as fellow members of our political communities, then there might be additional reasons why it matters how much death harms these beings. Domesticated animals could have positive rights to things like health care, emergency services, research and development into present diseases, and the policing and investigation of crimes. How we think about these claims and their comparative strength may depend, in part, on how we think about the comparative harm of death, and whether or not humans and animals have an equal right to life. I highlight this not to fault the book for this omission, but to note how some of the more recent developments in animal ethics connect with some of the topics explored in the essays, and potentially make these questions more urgent and intriguing.

Overall, this anthology makes an excellent companion to the work of Regan, and contains a great collection of readings on current debates in the area of animal rights. It would work quite well in a class on animal ethics, and the material is suitable and accessible for undergraduates of all levels.

[1] One problem with this name is that it is misleading. The cognitive diversity that is characteristic of humans is not something that just affects those with cognitive disabilities or dementia, but all of us across our lives (when we are young, during periods of severe illness, and for many of us, as we age).

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What Are Animal Rights & Why Should Animals Have Rights?

Estimated reading time: 9½ minutes

Around the world, the fight for human rights continues – for equality, justice and freedom. Alongside this important movement, compassionate people are working to ensure that non-human animals are not left behind. For centuries, animals have been exploited, abused, deliberately harmed and killed by people because they have been seen as different and inferior. So, while the rights that humans need and deserve are different from those that animals need and deserve, there is much in common between the two movements. Both seek justice and fairness for beings who have traditionally been treated – and are still being treated – appallingly.

What Are Animal Rights?

If human animals have rights, then why not non-human animals? After all, we are all just creatures living on this same planet, and sharing many biological, psychological and emotional traits. We’re not the same as a dog or a bird, and they are not the same as each other, but if we are worthy of dignity, autonomy and respect, then what reason could there be for denying the same to non-human animals?

Some people argue from a position of ignorance, or perhaps deliberate misunderstanding, and say but cows don’t need to vote! as if this is what is meant when we talk about the rights of animals. What we are saying is that animals deserve not just better treatment, but to be given dignity, have their interests recognised and respected, and – crucially – not to be exploited for human gain.

Why Are Animals’ Rights Important?

We may as well ask why human rights are important! Because animals are sentient beings here on this planet with us, not for us. Because who would we be if we abused those weaker than ourselves just because we could, or treated others with kindness only if we thought them attractive or intelligent?

For animals, having rights is everything. With rights, they would not be trapped, beaten, caged, artificially inseminated, mutilated, drugged, traded, transported, harmed and killed just because someone else profits by it. By granting animals rights, the sum of suffering in the world would reduce dramatically.

How Are Animal Rights Violated?

In thousands of ways. When we breed animals so we can take their babies and eat them; when we deliberately impregnate them so we can take their babies’ milk; when we force them into a circus ring or into a cage at a zoo; when we breed and sell them as ‘pets’ for profit; when we force them to race; when we beat them to make them do what we want; when we rub chemicals into their eyes in laboratories; when we shoot or hunt them for fun; when we trap them for fur; when we pluck out their feathers to fill duvets or jackets; when we put them in a tank or cage in our living rooms so we can watch them instead of the television for a few minutes.

Our relationship with animals is based entirely on their subjugation and our dominance. And this unequal relationship stems from the historical ideology that might is right, that it is acceptable for the stronger to bully and abuse the weaker simply because they can.

The Difference Between Animal Welfare And Animal Rights?

Often, the difference between these two has been described as the difference between giving animals bigger cages and abolishing cages altogether. Animal welfare asks that we reduce suffering while still exploiting, harming, governing every aspect of their lives, and ultimately killing them.

If you believe it is not OK for one being to exploit and subjugate another, then you believe in animal rights.

Do Animals Need Rights?

They do, just as human animals do. Without rights that are enshrined in law, there is nothing to stop up being harmed and exploited.

Animals can suffer, like us, they have personalities and preferences like us, and they do not wish to be harmed, like us. Their rights should not be based on a human perception of their intelligence or worth. Our own prejudices should not matter when it comes to the rights of animals, just as they should not matter when it comes to ensuring that the rights of marginalized people are conferred and upheld.

Arguments In Favor Of Animal Rights

Simply, it is the right thing to do. Animals are not ours to harm and abuse just because we can. They are not our playthings, but sentient beings in their own right.

But there is a wider impact of conferring rights on animals, one that benefits people, too. Human rights would be enhanced because the same forces that give rise to racism, sexism, and hatred of – or prejudice toward – marginalized groups also give rise to the systematic exploitation of animals. This prejudiced worldview stems from the notion of a biological hierarchy with European straight white males at the top, and below them, women, people of colour, those from the LGBTQ+ community, people with a disability, and animals. Conferring rights on animals helps demolish this hierarchy, dismantles this old, destructive way of categorizing and ranking individuals, and helps achieve justice for all.

Arguments Against Animal Rights

Those who profit from harming or exploiting animals are unsurprisingly the most resistant to a change in the status quo. Instead of being honest about their own vested interests, they put forward other arguments.

They might say: Animals are not intelligent, which of course is not true, but even if we were to confer rights based on intelligence, would we accept that babies should not have rights? They might say: You can’t have rights without responsibilities. Again, this makes no sense unless we accept that children and those with serious mental impairments do not have rights; and what about our own responsibilities to other sentient beings? Or they might say: God put animals here for our use. This belief stems from a certain reading of the Bible, one that many compassionate Christians do not support.

There are also people who argue that giving rights to animals would diminish human rights and undermine our ‘special’ role in the world. Our view is – as above – that it would only enhance it.

The Consequences Of Animal Rights

For so long, we have treated animals like property, not like beings, and much of our way of life is predicated on us doing whatever we want to them. While we are incrementally moving towards a few rights for some animals, it’s wonderful to imagine what the world would be like if animals were afforded full legal rights.

If that was the case, we wouldn’t eat them, breed them for milk or confine them for eggs. Factory farming would end, slaughterhouses would close and we would all be vegan. Without consuming animal fats and protein, some or our biggest killers – heart disease, diabetes and hypertension – would be dramatically reduced. With reduced sickness, there would be a boost to the economy .

Because we wouldn’t be wasting precious antibiotics trying to keep sick animals alive inside factory farms, we would limit the dangers of antibiotic resistance. And since three quarters of emerging infectious diseases come from animals, we would drastically reduce the risk of pandemics, too.

Without factory farming, our impact on the Earth would be much gentler. We’d reduce deforestation, pollution and climate change. With everyone vegan, we could feed many more people using less land, and that means people would not go hungry and nature would benefit, too. With 68 percent of animal populations having been wiped out in the past 50 years, a massive reduction in land use would redress that shocking annihilation.

No profit could be made from the lives and bodies of animals, so we would not wear their skins or keep them as ‘pets’. This is not to say we would have to throw away our old leather jacket or turn out our dogs to fend for themselves. Nothing can protect the cows whose skin that coat once was, and we have a duty of care to the animals already here, but we would not skin more cows or breed more dogs.

Circuses would showcase the very best human talent, as many already do, but there would be no tigers forced through hoops or other animals made to dance. Zoos would initially close to the public because animals are not put here for our entertainment. That industry would no longer breed, sell on and kill animals at their own convenience, and eventually, they would close altogether. Any claims they have as conservation bodies would be rendered obsolete because there would be a lot more land available for wildlife, and wild populations could flourish again.

We would not spend our time at horse or dog races. We would not attend rodeos or bullfights. We would not see animals in films or adverts, dressed up and exploited, their ‘cuteness’ or ‘strength’ being used to sell products and make rich people richer.

And instead of causing horrific suffering to animals in laboratories – testing chemicals, cosmetics, and drugs on them, as well as infecting them with human diseases – we would use cutting-edge, modern, scientifically excellent techniques that are quicker, more efficient and more effective.

Our whole attitude and way of life would change and it would benefit us in so many ways. Nature would thrive. People would thrive. The world would be kinder, more compassionate and safer.

Do Animals Have Legal Rights?

There are welfare laws that protect some animals in some circumstances against certain treatment but these are not universal, and are often not enforced. But do animals have meaningful legal rights? Not yet, but thanks to groups like The Non Human Rights Project, that is changing. They are securing court hearings in support of the legal personhood and right to bodily liberty of chimpanzees and elephants, the organization’s first clients.

In 2020, Bronx Supreme Court Justice Alison Y. Tuitt issued a decision in the case of Happy, an elephant held in isolation in a one-acre exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. She wrote that the Court “agrees [with the NhRP] that Happy is more than just a legal thing, or property. She is an intelligent, autonomous being who should be treated with respect and dignity, and who may be entitled to liberty … the arguments advanced by the NhRP are extremely persuasive for transferring Happy from her solitary, lonely one-acre exhibit at the Bronx Zoo to an elephant sanctuary.”

There is much work to do, but it is a fight that, when successful, will liberate us all.

Most people understand that our lives are as important to us as animals’ lives are to them. And yet we exist in a society that treats them as things, not beings, as something not someone. To achieve justice for all, we must unpick the hierarchy that keeps different groups of people and animals ‘in their place’. Conferring rights on animals is vital to them and long overdue, but the benefits for people would be momentous, too.

For those wishing to know more about the history of animal rights and the campaigns to confer meaningful rights on animals, we recommend reading:

• Animal Liberation , Peter Singer
• The Case for Animal Rights , Tom Regan
• The Sexual Politics of Meat , Carol J Adams
• Animals Matter , Marc Bekoff
• Animals as Persons , Gary L Francione
• Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters , Aph Ko and Syl Ko

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Animal Rights: The Simple Idea That Sparked a Movement

Animal rights is a revolutionary idea and social movement that requires humans to reexamine their relationship with animals, especially animals used for food.

Explainer • Policy • Reflections

Words by Hemi Kim

There are many awkward conversations you might have at family or work meetings as the singular vegan . It’s possible to find yourself carefully describing your food choices, aware that you are on the edge of disassembling a joyous bulgogi dish into the painful experiences that were required to produce it. Talking about issues related to animal rights can be emotionally difficult especially when eating with and cooking for others is a love language; rejecting family and friends’ cooking can be hurtful. 

Yet animal advocates have managed to tap into common, shared values, successfully encouraging more and more people to reexamine what living their values really looks like, especially values of respect, empathy, imagination, cooperation, adaptability, and compassion for all living beings. 

Do Animals Have Rights?

In the United States, many animals are defined as property and do not have rights in the same sense that humans have rights. At least 13 nations have symbolically acknowledged the dignity and personhood of nonhuman animals or the need to show compassion towards them as something other than objects in their constitutions . (These are Brazil, Germany, India, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, the Iroquois Nations, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, the People’s Republic of China, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia.) Yet such acknowledgments remain largely lip service—the animals in these thirteen nations are still treated similarly, both culturally and legally, to the animals in any other country. 

Nevertheless, animal studies researchers such as Maneesha Deckha often see potential in the “shift in legal standing of nonhumans that constitutional recognition can precipitate.”

One advocacy approach seeks to translate the moral rights of animals into practical change by expanding how the law views animals: from property to personhood . Legal status as a person is something that U.S. courts have given to corporations, ships, and “entities of nature,” according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund , and it has been conferred on individual great apes outside the United States. Read more about the nuances of how advocates are trying to improve the status and legal protections of animals here .

What Are Animal Rights?   

Animal rights form part of a way of thinking about nonhuman animals as off-limits for human exploitation. People that espouse this way of thinking try to direct their own and others’ behaviors away from eating, dressing, conducting scientific experiments, and being entertained in ways that involve harm to nonhuman animals. 

Animal rights is also a broad term describing animal advocacy , and the social movement focused on improving the lives of nonhuman animals. Yet the term “animal rights activist” can be alienating , which may be why groups prefer to use the terms “animal protection” or “animal advocates.” 

When Did the Animal Rights Movement Begin in the U.S.?   

The modern animal rights movement in the United States saw a major milestone in the 1970s with the publication of Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation,” in which he argued that it was ethically important that nonhuman animals feel pain, and that this fact demanded far more equal treatment of nonhuman animals and humans. He also popularized the term “ speciesism ” to describe what happens when nonhuman animals are not given the same consideration as humans. Other thinkers, writers, and activist groups have also notably furthered and developed the fabric of the animal rights movement, both before and since Singer’s book, including Tom Regan and PETA.

Singer’s text itself reportedly sits on the shoulders of at least one British author who lived about a century prior. And for many centuries European travelers to India have learned about, and been attracted to, the concept of ahimsa and care for animals. Ahimsa , documented as early as the eighth century B.C. in Indian religious texts—Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist—affirms nonviolence and the alleviation of the suffering of all beings.

From the perspectives of scholars such as Cree writer Billy Ray Belcourt, and vegan theorists such as Aph and Syl Ko, the modern divide between animals and humans works in tandem with the imposition of white supremacy: on Indigenous people whose land was stolen by settler-colonists and who were targets of genocide, and on Black and Brown people who were and often continue to be treated as less than human.

Thus the animal protection movement in the United States is limited by the legacies and habits of thought of settler colonialism and other oppressions, and the history of the movement is whitewashed—something that people are now trying to undo. Belcourt, for example, argued in a 2020 article that people concerned with living ethically must challenge the white supremacy underpinning many efforts to expand the rights of nonhuman animals, and instead look to Indigenous traditions that see “animals as kin who co-produce a way of life that engenders care rather than and contra to suffering.”

What’s the Difference Between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights?   

The terms “animal welfare” and “animal rights” are similar, but animal rights is a broader idea than animal welfare. Animal welfare refers to the responsibility of humans to treat nonhuman animals well and directly care for their health, but without challenging the overall circumstances that animals find themselves in or the ways they are used in society. 

For example, an animal welfare advocate may be vigilant about how animals such as bears and apes are treated in the movie industry when they are working on a set. An animal rights proponent may instead call for an end to the use of animals in films altogether. 

Another example of animal welfare is when people campaign for better treatment of young chickens before they are slaughtered. Though groups that campaign for animal welfare may also support goals that are compatible with animal rights, for example when promoting the consumption of plant-based foods.

What Are Some Examples of Animal Rights?

Animal rights supporters tend to be concerned that people use animals as a means to an end, typically without the animals’ assent to participate in an activity. In addition to the examples below, common areas of concern for animal rights include clothing, makeup, scientific experimentation, sports, and wildlife.

Animal Agriculture

Hogs are not just the source material for a good slow roast, crispy bacon, and pork belly. The pork industry also disassembles pigs for their parts to be used as ingredients in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other scientific endeavors. People who support animal rights tend to oppose all farming of livestock and fish. The fictional film “Okja” is often cited as an animal rights story dealing with these issues—one that is sympathetic to animals sent to slaughter. 

Entertainment

Circuses, zoos, and aquariums have been the subject of animal rights campaigns and popular documentaries, such as “Blackfish” , that have resulted in changes to how the entertainment industry markets animal-based entertainment.

Companionship and Working Animals

People concerned with animal rights might be more concerned with the potential for conscripting an animal into an unhealthy situation that exploits their labor than they would be about the benefits to humans of emotional support animals or land-mine-sniffing rats. 

Animal Rights Arguments: Pros and Cons   

The arguments of critics and supporters of animal protection can seem as diverse as the number of people who express an opinion. Below are some common reasons why people may feel pulled toward or away from animal rights causes.

Arguments in Favor of Animal Rights

In “Aphro-ism” , Syl and Aph Ko promote a view of animal rights within Black Veganism that sees animal rights as essential to ending racism. They write sensitively about the topic in a way that acknowledges how white supremacy has animalized Black people. They also draw a line from the oppression of nonhuman animals to white supremacy and convincingly argue that being antiracist is essential to animal liberation.

People allied with animal rights might also include Coast Salish activists in the Block Corporate Salmon campaign, who identify themselves as Salmon People and oppose the introduction of genetically modified fish to the local wildlife environment.

Arguments Against Animal Rights

People who oppose animal rights might see animals as property, and inferior to humans. They might argue that eating meat is a natural feature of the food chain, or that nonhuman animals exist for the benefit of humans . 

Sometimes, deciding to disregard animal rights is a matter of practicality. For example, using life-saving products that were created with scientific research that relied on experimentation on nonhuman animals, as is the case with vaccines and pharmaceutical medicines. 

As animal advocate, Christopher Soul Eubanks wrote in March 2021, “To Black people and non-vegans of all races, the animal rights movement can appear as an affluent far-left group who ignore the systemic oppression they have benefited from while using that affluence to advocate for nonhumans.” Indeed, roughly 9 out of 10 people working for farmed animal protection organizations are white. In a more racially equitable world, that number would be closer to 6 in the United States. 

Colonialist harms brought about by animal rights and vegan activism can be investigated: it’s something people of the global majority and others have begun.

Why Are Animal Rights Important?   

“Being labeled less-than-human” is a condition that most people experience, one that Black and other oppressed peoples live daily, according to Aph Ko in a chapter of “Aphro-Ism.” Ko also writes in a later chapter that “‘[a]nimal’ is a category that we shove certain bodies into when we want to justify violence against them, which is why animal liberation should concern all who are minoritized, because at any moment you can become an ‘animal’ and be considered disposable.” 

For Ko, being a critical thinker is more important than believing popular, yet false, narratives about oneself and nonhuman animals. This desire to re-evaluate what one thinks is a launching point for Afrofuturist possibilities, or Black-centered creativity , a philosophical wellspring for Black veganism. You can read more about Black veganism here , here , and here .

Animal rights, then, is an opportunity to constantly ask tough questions. And asking questions creates spaces within which vulnerable communities can flourish. For antiracist humane educator Dana McPhall , the following questions guide her work:

“So what would it look like to imagine a world where I’m not defined by the racial and gender constructs imposed upon me? Where people racialized as white are no longer invested in whiteness? Where the lives of nonhuman animals are no longer circumscribed within the social construct “animal?” Where huge swaths of our planet are not considered disposable, along with the people and wildlife who inhabit them?”

What Are the Consequences of Animal Rights?

Results of animal rights activism include the increasing popularity of vegan food products, a ban on selling fur in California, and state bans on using most animals in circuses. Keeping up with Sentient Media is one way to see these types of stories as they proliferate.

Ending Suffering Wherever It Persists

Nonhuman animals’ rights are not so much a question of legality or illegality, especially as laws tend to treat them as property. They are rather a way of thinking about what is morally right in a given cultural context. Avoiding the suffering of animals and respecting their right to exist are basic tenets of animal protection. As a way of thinking and being in community with others, animal rights can be an invitation for learning and imagining. Animal advocates of all races can dismantle white supremacy and undo “isms” by re-centering the experiences of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and other previously “less-than-human” people.

Independent Journalism Needs You

Hemi is a writer and educator.

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Nicholas Kristof

Turning the Tide on Animal Suffering

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

In 1971, a half-dozen graduate students at Oxford University held what was perhaps the first protest of the modern animal rights movement. They insisted that respecting animals was a moral imperative.

And the world changed.

No, not right away. But one of those students, a young Australian philosopher named Peter Singer, turned his ideas into a transformative 1975 book, “Animal Liberation,” that was initially mocked for overreach. “The animal movement was still widely seen as crackpot,” Singer recalls.

Yet to anyone who thinks that ideas are irrelevant in a practical age, think again. His arguments stirred a slow-motion revolution that has changed the way we treat other animals.

Singer has just issued a new edition of the book, updated and titled “Animal Liberation Now.” It’s a monument to the remarkable spread of the ideas he articulated in 1975. At least nine states and the European Union now ban veal crates, hen cages or tight stalls for sows. The top supermarket chains in America have agreed to sell only cage-free eggs by 2026, and McDonald’s has done the same.

A court in Argentina accepted that habeas corpus rights apply to a chimpanzee. Israel and California have banned the sale of fur coats. Pope Francis has suggested that animals go to Heaven and that the Virgin Mary “grieves for the sufferings” of mistreated livestock.

How times have changed. When Mary Wollstonecraft advocated for the rights of women in 1792, that seemed to some so ridiculous that a satirist mocked her by calling for the rights of animals as well. Now it’s unquestioned (at least in the abstract) that rights extend to people of all races and religions, including women, and in some cases to animals as well. When voters face referendums on animal rights, they often approve them by large margins.

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Animal Rights: Ashgate International Library of Essays on Rights. Edited collection. 582p.

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Essay on Animal Rights

Students are often asked to write an essay on Animal Rights in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Animal Rights

Understanding animal rights.

Animal rights mean animals should be free from human harm, abuse, or use for personal gains. It’s the belief that animals deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. This concept is based on the idea that animals have feelings and interests just like humans.

Importance of Animal Rights

Animal rights are important because animals are living beings. They feel pain, experience emotions, and want to live a life free from harm. By respecting animal rights, we show our respect for all life forms. We also help maintain balance in nature.

Threats to Animal Rights

Animals face many threats. These include hunting, habitat loss, and cruel treatment in farms or circuses. Many animals are also used for scientific experiments. These practices cause pain and suffering to animals. They are clear violations of animal rights.

Steps to Protect Animal Rights

We can protect animal rights in many ways. We can adopt pets instead of buying them. We can avoid products tested on animals. We can also support organizations that work for animal rights. Teaching others about animal rights is another effective way to help.

Also check:

250 Words Essay on Animal Rights

What are animal rights.

Animal rights mean that animals deserve to live free from suffering, pain, and exploitation. This idea is based on the belief that animals have feelings too. They can feel joy, sadness, and pain just like us humans. So, they should be treated with kindness and respect.

Why are Animal Rights Important?

Animal rights are important for many reasons. Firstly, animals are living beings, not objects. They should not be used for our selfish needs like food, clothing, or entertainment. Secondly, respecting animal rights helps us become better humans. It teaches us values like compassion, empathy, and respect for all life. Lastly, animals play a crucial role in our ecosystem. If we harm them, it can disturb the balance of nature.

How can we Protect Animal Rights?

Protecting animal rights is not hard. We can start by being kind to animals. We should not hurt them or make them suffer. We can also stop using products that are tested on animals. Many companies test their products on animals, causing them pain and suffering. By refusing to buy such products, we can stand up for animal rights.

Role of Laws in Protecting Animal Rights

Many countries have laws to protect animal rights. These laws make it illegal to harm animals or use them in cruel ways. But, these laws are not always followed. So, it’s important for us to raise our voice against animal cruelty. We can report cases of animal abuse to the authorities and demand strict action.

500 Words Essay on Animal Rights

Animal rights mean that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration—what’s best for them. Regardless of how useful they are to humans, or how cute they are, they should be treated with respect. They should not be hurt or treated badly. Some people think animals should have the same rights as humans, while others believe they should have different rights.

Animal rights are important because animals are living beings. They can feel pain, they can suffer, and they have a will to live. Just like humans, they have feelings and emotions. They deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. Animal rights also help people. When we treat animals well, we also learn to treat people well.

Types of Animal Rights

The second type is ‘animal liberation’. This means that animals should be free and not used by humans at all. People who believe in animal liberation think that animals should not be kept in zoos or farms, used for testing, or used for entertainment.

Animal Rights and Laws

Many countries have laws to protect animals. These laws say that people cannot hurt animals or make them suffer. They also say that animals should be treated with respect. But, not all countries have these laws, and in many places, these laws are not followed.

Animal Rights Movements

What can we do.

There are many ways we can help animals and support animal rights. We can adopt pets instead of buying them. We can choose not to go to places that use animals for entertainment, like circuses and zoos. We can eat less meat or no meat at all. And, we can tell others about why animal rights are important.

In conclusion, animal rights are about respecting and caring for animals. They are about understanding that animals have feelings and deserve to be treated well. By supporting animal rights, we are not just helping animals, we are also making the world a better place for all living beings.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Happy studying!

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Animal Rights Essay

Posted by David S. Wills | Jan 20, 2023 | Model Essays | 0

In the IELTS writing exam, you could be asked to write an essay about animals. Most likely, your question would relate to animal rights . This might seem challenging for some people, so I have written this article to help you understand it better.

Animal Rights and IELTS

For IELTS writing, you often have to discuss ethical issues. Thus, for the topic of animals, you would most likely have to write about animal rights. This could include:

• whether it is ethical to keep animals in a zoo
• discussing animal experimentation
• the ethics of eating meat
• whether humans should keep pets

Because IELTS requires no specialist knowledge, you would probably not have anything more specific than this to discuss. For example, you wouldn’t be asked about the ethics of purebred pet ownership because most people don’t know much about it. You would also not be given anything that is extremely controversial.

Therefore, the most common animal topics will be quite general and relate to animal rights.

Animal Rights Essay – Experimentation

Here is the question that we will examine today:

Some people argue that all experimentation on animals is bad and should be outlawed. However, others believe that important scientific discoveries can be made from animal experiments. Can experimentation on animals be justified? Are there any alternatives?

Note that there are many variants upon this topic. I have seen this same idea with “ Discuss both views ” and “ To what extent do you agree/disagree ” question types.

This one, of course, is a two-part question . Therefore, don’t waste too much time reading the long part above the questions. Regardless of what that says, your task is to:

• Say whether or not experiments on animals can be justified.
• Say whether there are alternatives to this practice.

Be aware that your answer to the first question cannot negate having to answer the second. Whether you say that animal testing can or can’t be justified, you still have to say whether there are alternatives.

Language for an Animal Rights Essay

If you need to write an essay on animal rights, you need to know some appropriate language. Again, you do not need to be an expert, but you should have enough of a grasp of English to say something intelligent about the topic.

You may have noticed that I’ve used these expressions in this article:

• Animal experimentation
• Experiments on animals
• Animal testing

These all mean the same thing but it can be useful to employ different ways to do that, so that you don’t just repeat yourself.

Of course, what you say will also depend hugely on your position and your ideas. If you think that animal experimentation is wrong, then you’ll probably incorporate some rather negative language, such as:

• Impossible to justify

On the other hand, if you support animal testing, you might say something more positive:

It is also good to know some specific language related to the topic:

• Medical testing
• Subjected to

You can learn more language by reading articles on this topic. Try searching Google for “animal rights” or “animal testing.” You’ll find lots of articles. Just make sure that it is written by a native speaker or a professional writer. Also, be aware that with a contentious topic there will probably be a lot of passionate language and maybe even some misinformation.

Planning your Answer

First of all, you need to figure out what your position is in regards the question(s). Then, you need to think about how to explain your position in a straightforward way.

Here, we had two questions. Both of them are yes/no questions but of course you need to develop those ideas with explanations. Think of your answer as “Yes because…” or “No because…” This will help you to think of reasons that you can then incorporate into your answers.

Also, be aware that two-part questions are really easy to structure! You can just devote one body paragraph to each question:

My position is that animal experimentation cannot be justified, so I will explain that in my first body paragraph. I will start with the main argument in defence of animal testing, then refute it comprehensively.

For the next question, I will state that I don’t really know whether or not there are any alternatives. Thus, my structure will be:

Sample Band 9 Answer

Over the past few decades, animal testing has been fiercely debated due to the ethical problems inherent in this area of science. This essay will explain why it cannot be justified and that alternatives need to be sought.

The people who believe that animal testing is necessary tend to say that there are serious benefits to humanity, such as testing medicines before using them on human beings. They believe that this will help to figure out the cures to many serious illnesses, which will make the world a better place for humans. However, this is wrong for several reasons. Chief among them is the fact that animal testing is not as helpful in developing medicines as people think. Medicines that work on animals do not always work on humans, and vice versa. As such, these trials are not just unnecessary but also profoundly unhelpful. For example, if scientists give a mouse diabetes and then try various drugs to cure the problem, they may find that there are twelve drugs that do not work on the mouse. However, maybe one of those drugs would have worked on a human. As such, animal testing would have caused more problems than it solved.

Part of the reason for animal testing is that there are not many alternatives. Whilst it is obviously cruel and pointless to subject animals to experiments, most people would agree that it is worse to do this to human beings. However, there needs to be some sort of procedure by which testing can move from theoretical to human trials without the need for the evils of animal testing. What this process would be remains to be seen, but it is essential for any humane society.

In conclusion, people may argue that there are benefits that come from experimenting on animals, but in fact there is no good reason to continue doing this. Scientists need to immediately seek an alternative and end this barbaric and pointless practice. 

Notes on the Answer

This was a good answer because it gave fully developed explanations and used language accurately. Here are some words and phrases from the answer:

• fiercely debated
• ethical problems
• profoundly unhelpful
• cruel and pointless
• theoretical
• humane society

Paragraph two was also quite interesting. I felt that the most convincing way to make my point was to show conventional logic and then comprehensively debunk it. To do so, I gave a clear example and demonstrated through a simple explanation of just why animal testing is so useless.

About The Author

David S. Wills

David S. Wills is the author of Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the 'Weird Cult' and the founder/editor of Beatdom literary journal. He lives and works in rural Cambodia and loves to travel. He has worked as an IELTS tutor since 2010, has completed both TEFL and CELTA courses, and has a certificate from Cambridge for Teaching Writing. David has worked in many different countries, and for several years designed a writing course for the University of Worcester. In 2018, he wrote the popular IELTS handbook, Grammar for IELTS Writing and he has since written two other books about IELTS. His other IELTS website is called IELTS Teaching.

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Animal Rights Essay. Research Paper on Animal Rights

Published by gudwriter on January 4, 2021 January 4, 2021

This sample animal rights essay features an outline, 1000+ words, and a list of credible references.  If you would like to write a high quality research paper, ideas from this sample will give you a head start and the much needed inspiration. Animals are entitled to rights also that’s why MBA essay writers from Gudwriter are experts in writing such kind of essays for you.

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Animal Rights Argumentative Essay Outline

Introduction.

Animals are entitled to fundamental rights.

Paragraph 1:

Animals have an inherent worth just like human beings and this value is completely separate from their usefulness to humans.

• They should enjoy the right to freedom from suffering and pain.
• It wrong for society to view them as existing solely for human use
• They have emotions
• Animals have rights just like human being rights .

Paragraph 2:

Denying animals their rights is based on no meaningful argument but prejudice that is conducted by humans.

• It is only prejudice that makes humans to deny others the rights that they expect to have for themselves
• Prejudice is morally unacceptable in the society whether it is based on species, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or race.

Paragraph 3:

Animals are sentient just like the human species and it is only speciesism of animals that makes humans treating them differently.

• Speciesism is the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of nonhuman animals
• Speciesism is wrong because animals suffer when they are tortured

Paragraph 4:

Human rights opponents may argue that animals do not deserve rights because rights should be accompanied by responsibilities.

• This is wrong because animal rights are essentially about allowing animals to live freely
• This is a fundamental right that any creature should naturally enjoy by virtue of being a living being

Paragraph 5:

Opponents may contend that animals do not have the capacity to make free moral judgment

• However, some animals such as chimpanzees at times show behaviors that are truly altruistic
• Moreover, humans do not always make moral judgments
• Animals should have rights because they are living beings with the right to live freely
• They have an inherent value that cannot be separated from them just like humans
• There is no moral ground upon which humans should deny them their rights

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Animal Rights  

Almost everybody grew up going to zoos and circuses, wearing leather, and eating meat. People also visited pet shops and bought and kept their beloved “pets” and even went fishing and wore clothes made from silk and wool. Well, it turns out that while people did not care to find out the effects of all these activities on animals, they were going against animal rights. The debate about whether non-human animals have rights still rages on with some people saying they do while others saying they are non-human and thus do not. This debate is however irrelevant because animals, just like humans, are entitled to fundamental rights.

Animals have an inherent worth just like human beings and this value is completely separate from how they might be seen as being useful to humans. Every being that has a will to live should be able to enjoy the right to freedom from suffering and pain. It is thus wrong for society to view nonhuman animals as existing solely for human use. When it comes to such emotions as fear, loneliness, joy, love, and pain, the same feeling a human being has is the one an animal has. Each attaches immense value to their life and fights to keep it and that is why animals too try to avoid harm as much as they can (Smith, 2012). It is surprising that humans see no wrong in snatching this freedom from animals. Moreover, determining whether a living being has rights or not should not rest on whether it can reason or talk but on whether it has the capacity to suffer. Thus, humans should consider the extent of harm or suffering they would expose animals to before subjecting them to certain acts. This is because the capacity to suffer has more sensitivity and significance as compared to other characteristics such as the capacity to think, talk, or worship. Animals undergo suffering when exposed to harm just like humans do, and can also succumb to pain. They can feel pressure, frustration, and motherly love as well.

Denying animals their rights is based on no meaningful argument but prejudice that is conducted by humans. This is because it is only prejudice that makes humans to deny others, including animals, the rights that they expect to have for themselves (Smith, 2012). Prejudice is morally unacceptable in society whether it is based on species, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or race. It is this prejudice that makes humans to think of some animals as food and others as companions or pets. If a dog should be kept at home for security purposes, why should a cow for instance be butchered for its meat? Society should give similar levels of attention it gives to different forms of prejudices against humans to prejudices against animals because they are not justifiable.

Animals are sentient just like the human species and it is only speciesism that sends humans into treating them differently. Cochrane (2012) defines speciesism as the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of nonhuman animals. Out of this assumption, humans have developed an incorrect belief that they are the only species among all species that deserve to be treated morally. Speciesism is wrong because when animals such as chickens, pigs, and cows are slaughtered, tortured, or confined for their meat, they suffer. Such sufferance is unjustified because morally, there is no reason that creates a distinction between nonhuman animals and humans. The reason for which people have rights, which is to prevent unjust suffering, is the same reason why animals should have rights.

Animal rights opponents may argue that animals do not deserve rights because rights should be accompanied by responsibilities. They may say that humans are granted rights and are at the same time expected to be responsible by for instance abiding by universal laws. Since animals may not be in a position to exercise such responsibility, the opponents feel they should not be entitled to any rights (Cavalieri, 2004). People promoting such an argument are however forgetting that animal rights are essentially about allowing animals to live freely, free from human exploitation and use. This is a fundamental right that any creature should naturally enjoy by virtue of being a living being. It is not like animal rights involve animals coming to scramble for economic, social or political opportunities with humans or compete with them in any manner.

Opponents may also contend that animals do not have the capacity to make free moral judgment and thus deserve no moral treatment. It is for example often argued that animals are selfish in their behavior and are only interested in their own wellbeing and not of other beings. The argument goes on that on the other hand; humans will always offer a helping hand to others even if it means getting disadvantaged in the process. This argument fails to recognize that some animals such as chimpanzees at times show behaviors that are truly altruistic (Isacat, 2014). Moreover, it is not true that humans will always help fellow humans since there are situations in which a person would actually rejoice when another person is experiencing difficulties.

Animals should have rights because they are living beings with the right to live freely as long as they have the will to. Humans are not in a position to determine when an animal should die or what its life should be like. Animals have an inherent value that cannot be separated from them just like humans. They value their lives very much and are sentient and this is why they try to avoid any harm that may come their way. There is no moral ground upon which humans should deny them their rights. Moreover, granting them their rights will take nothing away from humans.

Cavalieri, P. (2004). The animal question: why nonhuman animals deserve human rights . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cochrane, A. (2012). Animal rights without liberation: applied ethics and human obligations . New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Isacat, B. (2014). How to do animal rights . Raleigh, NC: Lulu.

Smith, W. J. (2012). A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy: the human cost of the animal rights movement . New York, NY: Encounter Books.

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Allegory And Totalitarianism In Animal Farm By George Orwell

George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a timeless classic that serves as a powerful allegory for the rise of totalitarianism. Through the lens of a seemingly simple farmyard tale, Orwell masterfully depicts the complexities of political oppression, manipulation, and the perversion of ideals. Let’s delve into the allegorical elements and explore how Orwell’s work mirrors the realities of totalitarian regimes.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Allegory

An allegory is a literary device where characters, events, and settings symbolize deeper meanings, often conveying moral, political, or social messages. In “Animal Farm,” Orwell uses animals to represent different social classes, political figures, and ideologies, allowing readers to draw parallels with real-world events.

George Orwell and Animal Farm

George Orwell, a renowned British author, penned “Animal Farm” as a critique of totalitarianism and Stalinist Russia. Drawing from his own experiences, Orwell crafts a compelling narrative that reflects the injustices and hypocrisies of oppressive regimes.

Understanding Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism refers to a form of government where a single party or leader exercises absolute control over every aspect of public and private life. Characteristics include censorship, propaganda, surveillance, and the suppression of dissent.

Allegorical Elements in Animal Farm

The setting: manor farm.

Initially owned by Mr. Jones, Manor Farm symbolizes pre-revolutionary Russia, plagued by inequality and exploitation. After the animals’ rebellion, it transforms into Animal Farm, reflecting the promise of a utopian society.

The Characters: Animals and Humans

Each animal represents a different facet of society. For instance, Old Major embodies revolutionary ideals, while Napoleon symbolizes Stalin. Human characters like Mr. Jones and Mr. Pilkington represent oppressive rulers and foreign powers, respectively.

The Plot: The Revolution

The animals overthrow Mr. Jones, inspired by Old Major’s vision of equality. However, the revolution’s ideals are gradually corrupted as Napoleon consolidates power and adopts human vices.

The Outcome: Corruption and Betrayal

Despite their initial aspirations, the animals find themselves oppressed under Napoleon’s rule. The pigs, representing the ruling elite, exploit and manipulate the other animals, betraying the revolution’s principles.

Analyzing Totalitarianism in Animal Farm

Power dynamics.

Napoleon’s rise to power highlights the ruthless pursuit of authority. Through coercion and violence, he establishes himself as the farm’s supreme leader, mirroring the tactics of totalitarian regimes.

Manipulation of Language

The pigs manipulate language to control the narrative and justify their actions. Slogans like “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” illustrate the perversion of truth in totalitarian states.

Censorship and Propaganda

Napoleon suppresses dissent and controls information to maintain his grip on power. Propaganda, such as the glorification of Napoleon’s leadership, reinforces the regime’s legitimacy while silencing opposition.

Suppression of Individuality

Under totalitarian rule, individual freedoms are sacrificed for the collective good. The animals’ conformity and obedience to Napoleon’s regime demonstrate the erosion of personal autonomy in oppressive societies.

The Relevance of Animal Farm Today

Orwell’s allegory remains relevant in contemporary society, serving as a cautionary tale against the dangers of authoritarianism and the abuse of power. The themes of manipulation, corruption, and oppression resonate with audiences worldwide, urging vigilance in defending democratic principles.

READ MORE :

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“Animal Farm” stands as a timeless masterpiece that exposes the perils of totalitarianism through allegorical storytelling. By unraveling the complexities of power and corruption, George Orwell invites readers to confront the realities of oppression and strive for a more just and equitable society.

How does “Animal Farm” reflect George Orwell’s political views?

Orwell, a democratic socialist, wrote “Animal Farm” as a critique of totalitarianism, drawing parallels with Stalinist Russia and other authoritarian regimes.

What role do the pigs play in “Animal Farm”?

The pigs, led by Napoleon and Snowball, represent the ruling elite who exploit and manipulate the other animals for their own gain.

Why is language manipulation significant in “Animal Farm”?

Language manipulation reflects the distortion of truth and the manipulation of public opinion by totalitarian regimes, highlighting the power dynamics at play.

What lessons can we learn from “Animal Farm” in today’s context?

“Animal Farm” reminds us of the dangers of unchecked power, the importance of vigilance in defending democratic principles, and the need to resist oppression and injustice.

How does “Animal Farm” continue to resonate with readers today?

The themes of oppression, corruption, and the perversion of ideals depicted in “Animal Farm” remain relevant in contemporary society, serving as a stark warning against authoritarianism.

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