Maryn Long

ENG 102
Salyers
3 October 2015
Animals Need Rights
Animals are living creatures. They completely deserve to be treated as living .They have
feelings, and as a result deserve a life, free from torture, exploitation and slaughter. Various laws
have been enforced to protect the basic right of animals to live. Information on animal rights or
animal liberation broadly specifies that animals should be considered and given the same kind of
treatment as humans.
These animals have been deprived of the chance to live their lives in the way they were
meant to: in family and social groups, tending to their young, and fulfilling their basic needs
(Animal). They can never understand why they are being made to suffer. They do not deserve to
be locked in cages, and have their whole lives twisted and stolen by humans. Every experiment
they are subjected to is a crime against these animals. We must never, ever forget that animal
experimentation means the suffering and destruction of sensitive, individual creatures. Once a
life is taken, there is no way to make amends.
Liberation is dedicated to protecting these animals (Scully). There are intensive efforts
that are educating the public about the reality of vivisection. Our pressure on companies and
governments is forcing them to take notice of the respect that animals are due, and respond to the
public's growing demand for an end to the abuse of animals. We are now starting to make
historic progress on behalf of animals in laboratories (Scully). But we are faced with an immense
uphill struggle. The barbaric tradition of vivisection is deeply ingrained in many areas of
'science'.
To make matters worse, the new technology of genetic engineering threatens to inflict
more pain and death of animals (Animal). What the future holds for animals, ultimately depends
on us. For the sake of every animal, we want to build on the progress that has been achieved, and

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prevent new forms of suffering and exploitation from being established. But we can only
continue with your support. Although, as a single individual, you may feel you can't make a
difference, it really isn't true. Anything that you can do to increase our prospects of success will
help bring closer the day when animals are saved from vivisection.
On December 10th, 1948, the United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR). The Declaration established once and for all the principle that all human
beings - however poor or powerless, whatever their color, or gender or beliefs - have rights that
no-one, no matter how powerful, may ever abuse or take away. Rights to live, to be free, to be
protected from torture and to live their lives free of exploitation (PETA).
The UDHR symbolized the triumph of compassion and justice over the prejudices of the
past, and even though we still have a long way to go before our world lives up to those ideals,
holding those ideals makes us a better and more civilized human race (PETA). But why should
rights stop with human beings? There is a long and growing tradition that argues that animals
have rights too.
Once upon a time, people thought that human rights, racial equality and democracy were
crazy ideas. Could it be that the people of the future will one day look on the slaughterhouse and
animal laboratory as we now look on the slave ship, the torture chamber and apartheid?
If we take a serious and intelligent look at this question, maybe we can see why there is a
growing recognition that all animals deserve respect and the right to life and liberty, whatever
their species (Animal).
The human race has, in fact, long recognized that it is wrong to treat animals as things.
They experience pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, in just the same way as we do.
Science has taught us that we are, of course, animals ourselves, with our nearest relatives, the
chimpanzee, sharing 99% of our genes (Animal).
People used to think that animals were just like machines, and that human beings could
use them however they chose, but as we have become civilized we have come to understand that

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cruelty to animals is wrong. Now, some of us are saying, that if we recognize that cruelty is
wrong, then animals should have the right to be protected from cruelty. If people have a right not
to suffer, why not other animals?
Of course there are many differences between human beings and other animals, but that
doesn't mean that animals can't have rights, there are differences between people too. Just
because one person is less intelligent than another doesn't mean that their pain hurts less, or their
life is worth less. Just because a baby or perhaps a person suffering from a mental handicap
cannot tell the difference between rights and wrong, does not mean that they can have no rights.
In fact, we recognize that we have a duty to protect and nurture those who cannot take a full part
in our society - those who are weaker than ourselves (Scully). If we apply the opposite rule to
animals - that because they are weak, or lack intelligence, we can use them however we choose are we not guilty of hypocrisy and discrimination?
It is time to stop looking at our differences - which is the way of the racist, the sexist and
the bigot - and start looking at our similarities. We know that animals, like us, suffer fear and
pain, but they are still experimented upon in our laboratories. We know that they form bonds of
affection and perhaps even love with their families, just as we do, but calves are still taken from
their mothers within days of their births. Weve learned that animals, like us, flourish in freedom,
but still they are imprisoned in zoos, circuses, laboratories and on our factory farms (What).
Finally, we have learned that they, like us, will protect and preserve their own lives if they
can, but they are still slaughtered in their billions for food which is unhealthy, unnecessary and
environmentally destructive.
In 1799, people thought those who wanted to abolish slavery were crazy. In 1899, people
thought the suffragettes were crazy. But in 1999, people started to realize that the idea of
honoring the rights of animals isn't crazy, foolish or sentimental, but was just the next step along
the journey to make our world a fairer, more compassionate and more civilized place (PETA).

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Advocates don't believe that rights belong to the few anymore and they don't believe that the
powerful may use the weak how they choose.
Even now in the new millennium, animals are abused and exploited in ways that could
not even have been imagined a century ago; cloned, genetically engineered, factory farmed,
poisoned in laboratories with chemicals nobody needs, and even, used as spare part factories for
transplants (Scully). More and more people now believe that the future belongs to compassion
and justice; to believe that one day the world will recognize fully the rights of animals just as it
has recognized the rights of humans. They are campaigning for the future.
The animal and human rights movements have grown considerably over the last few
years (What). Many now seek a more fulfilling set of ethics, with the number of those who now
live a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle growing to such an extent that the food industry sees them as
major consumers (What).
I honestly dont know what to put for my closing paragraph. Ill figure that out later.

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Works Cited

Animal Rights. BBC News. BBC, 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2015

PETA. Why Animal Rights? PETA. PETA, 2015 Web, 28 Sept 2015
Scully, Matthew. Pro-Life, Pro-Animal. National Review Online. N.p., 7 Oct. 2013. Web. 28
Sept. 2015.
What Are Animal Rights? WiseGEEK. Conjuncture Coporation, 2003-2015. Web. 27 Sept.
2015