Free Essay Sample on Whether Animals Have Rights

I write following a statement in the newspaper article of last weeks edition of the Sunday special that seemed to insinuate that animals have absolutely no rights in the face of man. The article said: It is acceptable for us to use animals for entertainment and to improve our health and lifestyle. The needs of humans are more important than the rights of animals. The author finds these sentiments to be disgusting, to say the least. There is no better term to say it. To say that humans are ethical for thinking they have rights and yet other life forms like animals have no rights is sad. It is not acceptable for humans to use animals for entertainment and the improvement of our health and lifestyles.

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There is sufficient disagreement as to whether animals deserve rights and whether or not they deserve to be treated with respect. There is disagreement beginning with the very definition of the word animal rights in the first place. There is much uncertainty about what might happen if we agree that animals have rights. Animal rights simply imply that there are certain things that cannot be done to the animals as a matter of principle. Leaving alone the theoretical facts about whether or not animals need to be treated with the respect it is enough that hurting an animal like a dog is painful just as much as hurting a fellow human being would hurt.

A human being must not treat animals they keep or that life around them in certain ways no matter what it would cost to refrain from doing those kinds of things to the animals. Animal rights demand that humans do not do the things that they ought not to do to the animals despite the human way in which the things might be done. Some things like carrying out experiments on the animals qualify as an inhuman act. There is a place where there arises a conflict between the human acts on the animals and the significance of the things that they do. For example, it is possible that humans need to carry out the tests on the animals to make out new experiments that cannot be achieved in any other way. There comes a time when humanity is in need to carry out research on the workability of certain drugs, and these kinds of research cannot be achieved any other way. In the place where ethics comes in the way of finding solutions to human problems of health and medicine then the rights of the animals can easily be compromised.

Finally, accepting the full code of the right of animals would mean there will no longer be the possibility of hunting the animals for food or capturing them to be placed in the zoos. There are only too many animals that are accepted to as food for man, and these are domesticated animals like cattle, sheep, and goats. Wild games are not supposed to be hunted and eaten for they are reserved for the wild. The fact that there are some animals that are domesticated for food is not to say that they can be mistreated and mishandled at the will of the owners. Animals ought to be treated with tender affection and care all the days of their lives.