Animal Rights: Food for Thought

Not so long ago animals were habitually treated with casual cruelty. They were viewed as little more than flesh and blood robots; this is spite of the fact that it was obvious that they could feel pain and pleasure and that they were capable of forming relational bonds.

In much the same way that public executions fell out of favour as our tastes refined, gross cruelty to animals fell out of vogue: animal welfare was born. It was, at first, patchy and selective: flogging cart horses in the street was frowned upon as was working donkeys in mines until they were arthritic and blind, but slaughter house practices went largely unreformed, farmers were left to their own devices as to how they treated their animals and foxes were fair game for the velvet jacketed classes to hunt, corner and savage, albeit vicariously via their hounds (most of the time). Eventually the scope of animal welfare widened, poking its often unwelcome nose into aspects of the food industry with varying degrees of success.

I welcome this movement, but a deeper question underlies this slow progress: as well as meriting welfare do animals have rights? For many years I thought not, but I have recently revised my opinion.  I have been an advocate and supporter of human rights for many years; I based this, in part, on the belief that rights were necessarily bound to personal autonomy.  In other words, individual humans have a will with desires and intentions that ought to be respected and defended through a code of rights. This much remains true.

Another, complementary, basis of rights, however, is found in the idea of ‘interests’. In other words, certain things are in human beings’ interests and these things ought to be enshrined in rights. For example, it is in our interests to be protected, nurtured and to be given freedom to develop to the best of our potential. In this understanding of rights, babies, the comatose and the severely mentally disabled are afforded rights even though they have limited, if any, personal autonomy.

This argument, however, can be extended to other sentient creatures. Animals too, have interests; they benefit from nurture, protection and conditions that enable them to fulfil their natural potential. This transforms the ways in which we think and treat animals; perhaps annoyingly so.

At a personal level it has underscored by decision, a little over a year ago, to become vegetarian. My thinking runs that either animals enjoy their lives and have an interest in staying alive or else they do not enjoy being alive because of the misery of the conditions in which they are kept in which case I do not want to have any part in the process of their ‘production’.  Of course, as with all rights, there are many instances of rights conflicting and it is by no means a simple matter to respect, protect and promote the rights of all, especially if animals are included, but nonetheless, food for thought?