Response to "PETA and Animal Rights."

Response #22

In Sarah's blog, she talks about PETA's intentions and how animal rights groups need to complement each other's actions but try different tactics to actually make a difference in the lives of animals. She asks the question, "Do you think the goal for animal rights will ever be reached?" I think, with all of the animal rights groups put together with the growing education of students and people about animal treatment along with books, videos, and other means showing how animals are mistreated can all come together to make a difference. The problem is how oblivious the public is and how everyone thinks the people around them just do not care about the welfare of animals. Some animal rights groups, like PETA, turn the public off by the ways they try to bring the concern for animals to the limelight. The shock tactic is a start but people need to be educated and actually shown how animals really aren't too different from humans and that they deserve rights just as we do. I think the goal can be reached if only people were willing to come together to save the animals we are currently hurting. There are so many ways humans cause suffering for animals but this can stop only if humans were willing to do it. Just by simply taking Ethics & Animals, I am much more aware about what animals go through to benefit the lives of humans and I realize how unnecessary it is. We cam start by taking this subject seriously and realizing we would never want animals to do such terrible things to us so why do we have the right to do it to them? Maybe I have more faith in humanity than other people but I think making people more aware and showing them how unnecessary and hurtful what we do to animals is, whether it be slaughtering them for food or testing makeup on them, then maybe we can stop it. However, I do not have faith this is happen overnight but will be a slow movement which has already begun.

Here is a list of the rights I think all animals should have and can obtain just by making people more aware and changing the ways our society and culture views animals:

• The right to be free from exploitation, cruelty, neglect, and abuse.
• The right of farm animals (if there must be farm animals) to have an environment that satisfies their basic physical and psychological needs.
• The right of companion animals (if there must be companion animals) to have a healthy diet, protective shelter, and medical care.
• The right of all wildlife to have a natural habitat, untouched by humans, and to have a self-sustaining species population as well as an ecologically adequate existence.
• The right to be freed from cruel and unnecessary experimentation and testing.
• The right to have their interests represented in court and safeguarded by the law.

To deny all animals these rights is to claim human beings have the power to control all other species and, to me, this is true speciesism. To choose humans over non-human animals and claim them as ultimately superior is morally unjustifiable.

My question to you is: Why do you think some people want nothing to do with animal rights and continue to advocate for our superiority (aside from power)? What would we really lose by granting animals basic rights?