Human and animal rights are issues that should be of concern to every citizen. For most persons, animal rights are a topic that is not worth much debate. But, animals can be hurt by the cruel hands of mankind and their need to satisfy their hunger and social desires. Instead, mankind is more concerned with human rights even though animals and humans are treated with similar levels of cruelty in the society. Persons are beaten and killed and the society defends the right to life and the right to be free from abuse, yet some persons continue to believe that is right and justifiable to kill and abuse animals for different reasons. David Foster Wallace argues that animal face the wholesale slaughtering or genocide in his article “Consider the Lobster.” Hal Herzog looks at animal rights from a different perspective as the author discusses the relationship between humans and animals. While both authors address the issue of the inhumane treatment of animals, neither Wallace nor Herzog truly addresses the cultural factors that helps to determine the life and death of specific animals.
Wallace’s work “Consider the Lobster” argues that lobsters in particular suffer the injustice of becoming the ideal meal for persons with expensive tastes. The issue is one that is uncomfortable and complex as some critics disagree with Wallace’s moral implications on the wholesale slaughter of lobsters at the Maine lobster festival. Wallace compares these lobsters to a variety of giant sea insects and draws parallel to Herzog’s arguments that birds and fish are vertebrates that lead social lives that are similar to that of persons. Both ideas are reminders of the dissimilarity between animals and humans and this helps to justify the reasons for eating animals. Wallace questions the morality that comes with boiling lobsters and the ways in which these animals experience. In addition, Wallace examines how animals experience pain Wallace 505). The author further justify that animals fall in the lower level of the food chain instead of the humans (Wallace 505) and their animal rights demands allows persons to take “moral consistency too seriously” (Herzog 259).
The moral implications of the treatment of animals and humans stem from the connections to ethnic and cultural groups and their food patterns. Many persons have cultural beliefs that allows for eating different foods. Some persons eat different animals because of their beliefs and different cultures. Some animals are delicacies for some persons while these animals are inedible to other cultures. Moral problems arise because different persons have different morals regarding the consumption of food. But, some people have strong respect for the life of animals and their well-being. Some persons have animals as their pets, while others would seek to consume these animals. Yet, some persons “lives in a moral universe that should cause even hardcore animal activists to shudder” (Herzog 255).
In addition, Herzog refers to Koreans who eat dogs while other countries believe that dogs are personal companions to persons. In addition, cows are significant to the religious practices of some Indians, yet beef and its by-products form the staple diet of other persons. Herzog also explains that dogs that are eaten in Korea are reared under foul conditions and are electrocuted or slaughtered. Similarly, Wallace argues that lobsters are prepared at either the Maine lobster festival or at home, but the lobsters face their inhumane death as they are put in boiling water while they are alive. The lobsters react in similar ways to humans as they “cling to the containers sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rims like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of the roof” (Wallace 506).
In concluding, the moral and ethical principles surrounding animal and human rights to live and to be free of abuse and cruelty differ mainly because of the different ways in which cultural practices and beliefs impact animal and human lives. Wallace speaks specifically to the deaths of lobsters, but his arguments strikes the core of vegan and those persons who are bound by the ethical principles on the right to life. Many persons consume animal life because of the historical cultural practices. In fact, these persons are unaware of the sufferings of these animals before consumption.
The truth is that animals feel their cruel deaths and the lobster’s death is most similar to that of a desperate human trying to remain alive. Yet, human rights activists are more concern with the cruelty to humans and less to the cruelty and slaughtering of humans. Herzog has respect for human lives but his practices towards animals could be controversial as his treatment of these animals conflict the moral practices of other persons. Either ways both authors differences in the treatment of animals do not detract from the common issue that animals are often mistreated, eaten or kept as pets because of the differences in culture.
Works Cited
Herzog, Hal, Animals Like Us from Some we love, some we hate, some we eat (2011) Harper
Perennial, pp.242 - 247 USA, Print
Wallace, David Foster, Consider the Lobster and other Essays (2004) pp. 498 – 510 Little,
Brown, USA, Print
