Literature Review
Animal Rights: Literature Review
Taking a moral stance for animal rights means the support of natural rights given to animals. The ethical, or moral obligation, of those fighting for animal rights from the ethical perspective come from the view that it is “morally right to keep other beings, among which animals, from suffering,” (Doomen, 2015, p. 514). And yet, reason alone as the decisive factor, would mean that “moral appeals may simply be dismissed, as no means to enforce such appeals are available lest those appeals not be moral it is in the nature of such appeals that one should not act upon them from exterior considerations,” (Doomen, 2015, p. 514). In other words, fighting for animal rights using reason alone would need support from self-interest, and whether it would be for the better self-interest of others.
After the Humane Society of the United States released a video showing workers at a slaughterhouse abusing cows to the public, state government have issues ag-gag laws, which force people with incriminating evidence to surrender their evidence to the police and not to the public. Such laws “attempt to restrict undercover investigations into abuses at agricultural facilities. These industry-supported laws are criticized for intimidating would-be whistleblowers and silencing undercover reporters that try to expose abuses,” (Shea, 2015, p. 343). The evidence that the Humane Society showed to the public resulted in a mass recall of 143 million pounds of beef, and so policies have been enacted to prevent such events from happening again. It is these actions that benefit the public, but now the law is benefiting the meat-packing industry instead. Such laws need to be reversed, which would entail that politicians will have to be stopped from gaining monetary support from meat-packing industries.
Hadley (2015) bases his research on deliberative democracy theory, which seeks to “promote the political equality of citizens who would otherwise struggle to exercise their rights to inform public deliberation and decision making” (p. 696) by forcing citizens and policy makers to be exposed to non-mainstream political speech. This kind of theory is meant to make everything more democratically equal. However, abolitionist animal rights groups have been “waging a concerted direct action campaign of property damage and intimidation against individuals and organizations involved in animal-based biomedical research,” (Hadley, 2015, p. 697). Researchers targeted by animal rights extremists “have suffered fire bombings, physical attacks, destruction of personal property and campaigns of harassment,” (“Animal Rights,” 2011, p. 435). This would even happen to researchers working on research that might be extremely beneficial to humanity, such as the study of cross-species diseases. Despite being encouraged by their institutions to engage with the public, “not more than one-quarter felt they were given the necessary training or support” (“Animal Rights,” 2011, p. 435) to handle the public.
“Threats and property damage [will] more like serve to constrain public deliberation and decision making” (Hadley, 2015, p. 697) about animal rights, as well as setting up complicated legal precedents for the toleration of such behavior. In essence, when it comes to educating the public, there needs to be exposure for non-mainstream views to the public that would allow for people on all sides to speak about the issue. In essence, legislation needs to be passed that would enforce the freedom of speech and yet criminalize harassment harshly, so that neither group would have to endure marginalization. This type of solution may not be as feasible and monitoring the actions of politicians, considering the problems regarding limits of freedom of speech. Law makers would then need to specifically define the limits of speech and campaigning so that is does not venture into violence.
References
Animal rights and wrongs. (2011, February 24). Nature, 470: 435.
Doomen, J. (2015). Of mosquitoes and men: The basis of animal and human rights. The Journal Jurisprudence: 507-526.
Hadley, J. (2015). Animal rights advocacy and legitimate public deliberation. Political Studies, 63: 696-712.
Shea, M. (2015). Punishing animal rights activists for animal abuse: rapid reporting and the new wave of ag-gag laws. Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, 48(3): 337-371.
