Ramblings on Animal Rights

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
-- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Introduction

Jeremy Bentham writing on the rights of animals

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity [hairiness] of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum [whether there is a tail or not] are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk, but can they suffer?"

Origin of the 'supremacy of Man' idea

This concept was passed on from the Jews to the Christians and Muslims, thus pervading Western society; and, I suspect, even many of those of us who have managed to free our minds of the God-made-the-rules idea have not got rid of the belief in the supremacy of Man. We probably do not even realize that we still carry some of the baggage that came along with the religion we were brought up with.

Eastern cultures do not all seem to place Man on a higher plane than animals; the Jains in particular, but Hindus and Buddhists to a lesser extent as well. However, I'm certainly not advocating replacing Judeo-Christian unsubstantiated beliefs with Eastern unsubstantiated beliefs.

Is the 'supremacy of Man' idea justified?

In Man's favour, he is probably more intelligent than any other animals. Man is technological, Man has the power of life-and-death over all other animals (as individuals anyway, the smallpox virus is the only species that we have come close to entirely exterminating - intentionally).

But this is justifying our privileges by the 'might is right' argument; "we have the guns so we make the rules", I can't see any moral vindication here. (There is an interesting parallel here with the USA's approach to international relations.)

Considering our record as custodians of the earth we can't claim supremacy by right of moral excellence. I don't think that further explanation is needed on this point.

It has been argued that humans have souls, animals do not. Where is the evidence for this? And I would argue that the concept of an immortal soul is meaningless anyway.

Some would say that we are the only animals that are self-aware and the only animals with culture. To this I would reply to the former with "prove it" and to the latter with "scientific research has demonstrated that chimpanzees have culture" (Whiten and Boesch, Scientific American, Jan. 2001).

Craig Stanford, in 'Significant Others: The Ape-Human Continuum and the Quest for Human Nature' says, "Apes and humans are cut from the same evolutionary cloth; all that fundamentally distinguishes us is posture, we being upright walkers and the apes quadrupeds. Everything else, from the size and function of our brains to the other aspects of our shared anatomies, is a difference of degree and not of kind."

Eating meat

Death is not necessarily cruel, it is quite possible to humanely kill an animal, nor is death to be feared. We cannot live without impacting the lives of other species, but we do have an obligation to minimise the negativity of that impact. If we take up a vegetarian life style we have to protect the plants that we grow from the animals that would eat them and we have to remove (kill) plants that would compete against them. Even if we adopt a fruitarian diet, we still have to clear away the pre-existing vegetation to make room for our fruit trees, kill weeds, and protect our crops from birds; for every additional fruitarian person who lives there is that much less space for wild plants and animals.

We can argue that animals being killed as a source of food is entirely natural, but this does not prove that it is ethical. We have to look at the balance of good and bad that results from raising animals for food and slaughtering them.

So long as they are raised and killed humanely I do not see a problem; they live a 'happy' life (if the concept of happiness can be applied to animals), and do not suffer at the time of death.

Shade and shelter for livestock

An area in the Mid North of South Australia showing that trees do grow readily; the photo also shows some large areas without shelter for stock.

In winter, shelter from cold winds, especially cold winds with rain, is similarly needed by stock. Again it is often not provided, except for ewes with young lambs because the lambs are likely to die in such weather without shelter - the farmers maximise their profits. A small patch of trees and shrubs could make the animals' lives more pleasant in the worst of the wintry weather.

Growing trees in the Mid North is not difficult, I have planted and successfully grown thousands on roadsides and on my own property. In areas with rainfalls around 400mm per year it seems best to plant in the autumn so that the seedlings can get established before the summer. They then will benefit from one or a few waterings during summer, but not so many that they rely of watering and fail to develop deep roots.

In areas with rainfalls around 600mm it seems best to plant in summer, so that the seedling can establish before the winter; they do not actively grow in the winter in the colder, wetter areas. Whether planted in summer or winter, they should be given at least 10 litres of water at the time of planting and the soil around them given a good covering of mulch to conserve water and stop weeds from establishing. With this treatment many will survive their critical first year. As in the case of autumn planting, a summer planted seedling will benefit from a watering or two to help them through the first summer, but this is not essential in the cooler areas.

Of course nearly all trees need to be protected from browsing by livestock when they are young. This is particularly the case with the more palatable genera like Callitris, Casuarina, and Allocasuarina. Eucalypts are less palatable, but their leaves - and even small twigs - will still be eaten by hungry sheep. The only genera that I have come across that does not need protection is Araucaria and one of the spiny palms - both very slow growing.

Mulesing if a process that involves taking off an area of skin at the rear of a lamb. The aim is to stop wool growing in that area, and thereby stopping fouling of the sheep's backside with excrement. Sheep with dirty, continually damp, fouled backsides are much more susceptible to blowfly strike.

In blowfly strike a species of fly called the sheep blowfly lays its eggs in the fouled wool. The eggs hatch into maggots which then burrow into the sheep's skin.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are campaigning against the mulesing practice, particularly against the Australian sheep industry. See Save the Sheep. PETA's Save the Sheep page, I believe, exaggerates the negatives in sheep farming. I do not own any sheep, but I do have a small property on which another man runs sheep seasonally.

Mulesing does cause pain, however blowfly strike is worse for the sheep. Mulesing quite probably also makes sheep more susceptible to sun-light induced skin cancers.

There are two other methods of avoiding blowfly strike, both of which also avoid sun damage to bare skin:

Crutching

Crutching is the process of shearing an area around a sheep's backside to stop the build-up of shit and consequent increased risk of fly strike. Why mules rather than crutch? Because it need be done only once, while crutching might need to be done twice a year.

Breeding

This is a long-term solution. It would be quite possible to bread sheep with little wool around their backsides and thus little susceptibility to blowfly strike. Obviously, it would require a number of sheep generations to achieve it. The effort should be underway now. Sheep breeders are working toward this solution.

Conservation groups claim that these nets are responsible for many deaths of species that are harmless to people. Pressure from these groups has persuaded both Queensland and New South Wales Governments to order environmental impact studies of their shark netting programs. But both states insist that whatever the result of the studies, the nets will stay.

The shark is one of the top predators of the seas and there is evidence that depletion of top predators will greatly impact, in unpredictable ways, on species further down the food chain.

It seems that politicians believe that, at least from their selfish point of view, saving one human life is worth more than a great many animal deaths. Or perhaps more accurately, the politicians fear that if they were to remove the nets and one human life was lost to sharks, they would be blamed at the next election. It's probably a matter of votes, not justice.

People to contact: Nicole Beynon, Human Society International; David Butcher, World Wide Fund for Nature.

The practice of breeding dogs toward some weird 'ideal' shape and form has resulted in many of the long-suffering animals living with breathing difficulties, spinal problems, heart defects, neurological problems as well as chronic and sometimes severe pain.

When one takes control over the breeding of an animal one also accepts a moral responsibility for the welfare of that animal and its descendents. Dog breeders need to seriously consider the ethics of their practices. To bread an animal with intentional deformities is grotesque, if those deformities come with pain and misery then the practice is cruel and immoral.

I can only suggest that those of us who love dogs should react against the damage being done by the breeders. Perhaps we should start a breed of muts; dogs that have the greatest possible genetic diversity? We could keep ancestry records for our dogs, based on photographs (genetic testing would be too expensive to be a practicallity), and breed to maximise the gene mix in our mongrels?

If we grant that animals deserve rights just as much as humans do, what follows?

But it is not just a matter of comparing the right to life of a plant with that of an animal. If we choose to eat animals then those animals must eat plants; so the plants are the beginning of the food chain that ends in us. If the animals were cut out of the chain and we ate the plants direct, then fewer plants would be needed to support us; a smaller area of land would have to be dedicated to our support, our ecological footprint would be smaller than if we ate the animals that ate the plants.

Another factor to be considered is that grazing animals can live on poor land or low-rainfall land. Humans would not be able to grow plants to eat on such land, but they can eat the grazing animals, drink their milk, and wear their furs and wool.

Fruitarianism? Living by eating fruit alone? Fruit is 'designed' to be eaten. But it is impossible to grow fruit without depriving other plants of the space needed for 'your' production plants, and you must protect 'your' plants from predatory animals and insects. It is impossible to make a living without disrupting the lives of other species to some extent, so even being a fruitarian infringes upon the 'rights' of other plants or results in the death of animals.

However, if animals and Man logically have equal rights, and people are allowed to kill animals, how then do we justify stopping people from killing each other? Expediency?

Should we stop people from killing each other in all cases? (Death penalty?)

Index

On this page...

Animal vs. human rights
Bentham on the rights of animals
Beyond animal rights?
Cattle feed lots
Eating meat
Introduction
Mulesing sheep
Pedigree dogs
Shade for livestock
Shark netting on beaches
Supremacy of Man
Is the supremacy of Man concept justified?
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