Animal Rights: Ethics of Food, Testing, and Pet Care

Introduction: Animals and Moral Responsibility

Animals have the ability to feel pain and suffering, just as humans do, and they have similar emotional reactions to such suffering. Because this is true, morally conscientious people throughout the ages have understood that just as we have a responsibility toward other humans to treat them with compassion and respect — and at the very least to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain — we have the same kind of responsibility toward animals. Just as each person has the responsibility to determine how they will live their lives so as to be most moral toward their fellow humans, each person must also determine how they can live so that they are moral toward their fellow animals.

It can be harder to know how to live morally toward animals because the cruelty inflicted on them is so systemic. The main areas in which one must make decisions about personal morality are: the eating of animals and the use of their bodies for pleasure and profit; the use of animals for experimentation; and the appropriate way to live with animals who are our companions. In each of these areas, it is necessary to consider the facts of the case and to balance the pain and suffering they entail against one's own self-interest.

Factory Farming and the Ethics of Eating Animals

When it comes to eating animals, some people might point out that animals eat each other, and therefore argue that it is natural for different species to prey on one another. On this view, one can treat an animal morally even while killing it for food, so long as one is not cruel. This may be valid, especially for hunters — even though most prey animals do not kill other animals and are therefore the "innocent" parties involved. However, most animals who are eaten today are not killed in a humane way.

The documentary Meet Your Meat, narrated by Alec Baldwin, describes the conditions in which animals are raised and slaughtered. It depicts cows still alive, strung up by their hind legs and screaming as their throats are cut, or dunked in boiling water while still conscious. In one scene, a half-slaughtered pig broke one of his own legs trying to get free, slipping and sliding in blood as he attempted to escape the slaughterhouse. Factory-farmed chickens and pigs are kept in terrible conditions while alive. Chickens have their beaks cut off without anesthesia and are confined to cages so small they cannot turn around, causing many to go insane. Pigs have their ears, tails, and genitalia mutilated without pain medication, are kept in tiny, unsanitary enclosures, and frequently freeze to the sides of transport trucks during shipment.

A close examination of the factory farm environment reveals that no commercially available meat today is harvested with genuine respect or high-quality care for the animals involved. As the film states: "They are never allowed to do anything that is natural to them — they are never able to feel the grass beneath their feet, the sun on their faces, or fresh air. … All their energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. They spend their lives confined to concrete stalls and metal cages, terrified and suffering in such unnatural conditions." (Meet Your Meat)

Conclusion: Confronting Systemic Cruelty

As the preceding sections have shown, most animal abuse in our culture is unnecessary. Cruel slaughter practices, cruel vivisection, and the mistreatment of companion animals could all be ended if people were genuinely committed to ending them. The animal rights movement has long argued that the capacity to suffer — not species membership — is the morally relevant criterion for ethical consideration. Until meaningful change occurs, however, it may be very difficult for individuals to know how to live ethically within a society where cruelty toward animals remains deeply entrenched.