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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] New Animal rights laws
  • Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:43:39 -0800 (PST)

I heard the president of PETA, once, make the statement that if she had the
choice of either saving a drowning child or a dog, it would depend on whether
the child was bright and attractive. Those are the PETA types that I
consider irrational and dangerous.

I don't like all of this gov't involvement (projected in this article), but
I also don't like animal abuse, whether they are pets or food animals. If I
were given the option the PETA lady said, and the dog was 'my dog', for whom
I care more than you can imagine; and the human , child or not, was a
stranger, I would save the human. However, if I knew for a fact that the
human was a recidivist armed robber or rapist or a person who hurt children;
or an investment banker; I would save my dog. I guess everything is
relative.........................bobford

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FOOD

The Rights Of Animals

California voters have put the animal-rights movement squarely in the
mainstream. Will we all soon be vegans?


The notion that animals should have rights was widely ridiculed when it was
first advocated in the 1970s. Now it is getting more respect. The movement
has gained tens of millions of adherents and has already persuaded the
European Union to require that all hens have room to stretch their wings,
perch and lay their eggs in a nest box, and to phase out keeping pigs and
veal calves in individual crates too narrow for them to walk or turn around.

And earlier this month Californians voted 63 percent to 37 percent for a
measure that, beginning in 2015, gives all farm animals the right to stand
up, lie down, turn around and fully extend their limbs. The state's 45 major
egg producers will have to rip out the cages that now hold 19 million hens,
and either put in new and larger cages with fewer birds or, more likely, keep
the birds on the floor in large sheds. California's sole large-scale
pig-factory farm will also have to give all its pigs room to turn around.

Pressure on other states to grant the same basic freedoms may prove
irresistible. Many people see this movement as a logical continuation of the
fight against racism and sexism, and believe that the concept of animal
rights will soon be as commonplace as equal pay and opportunities for women
and minorities. If that happens—and I believe it will—the effects on the food
we eat, how we produce it and the place of animals in our society will be
profound.

If this sounds radical, so did suffrage and civil rights a few decades ago.
The notion that we should recognize the rights of animals living among us
rests on a firm ethical foundation. A sentient being is sentient regardless
of which species it happens to belong to. Pain is pain, whether it is the
pain of a cat, a dog, a pig or a child.

Consider how widely humans differ in their mental abilities. A typical adult
can reason, make moral choices and do many things (like voting) that animals
obviously cannot do. But not all human beings are capable of reason, not all
are morally responsible and not all are capable of voting. And yet we go out
of our way to claim that all humans have rights. What, then, justifies our
withholding at least some rights from nonhuman animals? Defenders of the
status quo have found that a difficult question to answer.

If animals do have rights, what rights would those be? The most basic right
any sentient being can have is for his or her interests to be given equal
consideration. After that, things get more complicated. Some advocates think
that all animals have a right to life. Others give more weight to the lives
of beings such as chimpanzees, which are capable of understanding that they
have a life, and of having hopes and desires directed toward the future. The
movement's supporters agree that the way we treat animals now, as test
subjects and factory-farm products, is flagrantly wrong.

If society were gradually to accept animal rights, it would spell dramatic
changes. Some people might accept humanely raised meat, eggs and dairy
products, if the animals had good lives, living outdoors in social groups of
a size natural to the particular species. But this would most likely prove to
be an interim stage. As the demand for animal products dwindles, the meat
industry would breed fewer chickens, turkeys, pigs and cattle. Eventually the
only remaining beef cattle, sheep and pigs would be small herds preserved so
that we can take the grandchildren to see what these once abundant animals
look like. Factory farming—for meat, eggs or milk—would disappear.

If we are to continue to eat meat, we'll have to rely on scientists who are
now trying to grow meat in vats. When they succeed, it will be the real
thing, grown from animal cells, not a soy-based substitute, and it might even
be indistinguishable from the meat we eat now. But since it would involve no
animals, and hence no suffering or killing, there will be no ethical
objections.


Milk and cheese are no easier than meat to reconcile. Cows will not give
milk unless they are made pregnant each year, and if the calves are left with
their mothers, there won't be much milk for humans. The separation of the cow
and her calf causes distress to both. Hens are not so concerned about the
removal of their eggs, and genuinely free-range hens appear to have a good
life, but male chicks have to be disposed of, and no commercial egg producer
allows hens to live beyond the point at which their rate of laying declines.
That's why animal-rights advocates today tend to be vegans.

Where animals are now used for research, we must find alternatives. In
Europe, cell and tissue cultures have already replaced some product testing
of live animals, and that will increase dramatically once harmful research on
animals is put ethically out of bounds. Research using animals may not cease
entirely, but in a nonspeciesist world it could continue only under the same
strict ethical safeguards that we use for research on human subjects who
can't give their consent.

Our greatest difficulty in respecting other species may lie in our quest for
land. The animal movement forces us to consider that land we do not use is
the habitat of other sentient beings, and we must do what we can to allow
them to continue to live on it, including limiting our own population growth.
Even wilderness presents a problem. Are humans ethically bound to prevent
animals from killing other animals? To contemplate interfering with the
workings of ecosystems would be presumptuous, at least for now. We will do
better to concentrate, first, on lessening our own harmful impact on our
domestic animals.

Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton. His latest book, "The Life You
Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty," will be published in March.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/169881








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