Essay on Animal’s Have Feelings
From the very beginning of world history humans have had greatly controversial relationship with other species of planet. It’s a common fact that ancient people worship some animals, just analyze their mythology. Domesticated animals were the irreplaceable and precious companions of our ancestors, whom they are still nowadays. At the same time humans throughout the history have exterminated other live beings, either for the essential needs or for the less significant matters. With approaching of technical progress and substantial development of civilization people start to raise the problems of cruelty with animals and their brutal using in capitalistic interests. Audacious works of first protectionists of animal welfare had cultivated the grain for a powerful social movement, “the civil rights movement of the twenty-first century” (Yount 42). By using different methods, often rather imposing, activists of such organizations manage to get attention of public, making them to reconsider the morality of treatment of animals.
Animal used in research
After cruelty to working and companion animals, vivisection is the biggest and the longest issue that concerned animal rights movement. Started with Hippocrates’ surgical experiments in the ancient times the practice continued and developed in the Renaissance, giving the humanity essential knowledge in anatomy and physiology. At first concern about vivisection appeared in 1875 in Great Britain, after one of their scientists had published the dissection’s description of un-anesthetized animals. This matter caused the negative reaction of public shocked by painful experiments and therefore adoption of strict law regulating the medical researches on vertebrates and obtaining a license for such experiments. As for the USA antivivisectionist societies there had a slight success in their struggle with government-supported scientific researches on animals till 1965. That year a dog of one family was stolen and sold to the pounds and that fact was brightly covered in the press. A few months later appeared another publication in newspapers telling readers about terrible conditions of keeping dogs in shelters. These two events in pair caused the great negative reaction of public whose indignant letters flooded the Congress in 1966. Adopted that year Laboratory Animals Welfare Act (LAWA) was mainly directed on protection of family pets and required “to promulgate standards to govern the humane handling, care, treatment, and transportation of animals by dealers and research facilities” (43).
More intensive concern of keeping animals in laboratories revived in the early 1980s after two videotapes made clandestinely by activists in the laboratories had been published. Those films were edited and shot by members of the powerful organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and showed the callous experiments with monkeys (macaques and baboons). From that moment had begun a great number of lawsuits against researchers and multiple expanding the LAWA with the goal “to emphasize the importance of minimizing pain and distress to animals during experiments” (46). But in comparison with Europe animal welfare normative acts in U.S. are relatively lax as public feeling against brutal using animals in scientific researches in Europe is much stronger and respective laws in EU are more rigorous. The most typical species are used in medical experiments and products testing are rats, mice, birds (85 to 95 percent of animals used in the laboratories), primates (mostly chimpanzee), cats, dogs and rabbits. The alternative for scientific researches is cell culture techniques, operations with transgenic or genetically modified animals and the principle of the “Three Rs”:
Replace — substitute tests and experiments using such things as cultured cells or computer simulations for tests and experiments on whole animals; reduce —redesign tests and experiments so that they can be performed on smaller numbers of animals; and refine — redesign tests or experiments to cause less pain and distress to animals. (53)
“The beauty of the three Rs is that they provide a way for all parties to work together to advance the cause of both animals and humans,” Richard Smith wrote in an editorial in the British Medical Journal in 2001 (53). But a lot of scientists consider that making essential experiments without involving animals in them is a mistake, because “Many of the processes that occur within the human body remain too complex to be simulated by a computer or a cell culture” (54). So scientists are trying to refine their researches and to relieve the pain they bring to the experimental animals, at the same time to improve the conditions of their housing.
It took some time for scientists to realize that using ‘dirty’ animals [animals exposed to disease-causing microorganisms] can compromise the validity of experiments. Today, we are about to realize that the same could hold true if we use animals with impaired welfare. It is time to improve housing conditions for scientific, if not for ethical reasons. (55)
Another similar issue of confrontation is school education in the USA, where students at the biological classes are required to dissect the bodies of animals such as frogs and dogs. It is estimated that nearly 6 million vertebrates are used for students practicing in medical and surgical techniques each year in U.S. high schools alone. The alternative for such studies is preparing with help of the special computer programs which are available now and are cheaper than involving real animals. On the other hand, “Dissection gives students a unique opportunity to observe how animals are structured to function the way they do” (50). Proponents of these educational methods claim that surgery with animals gives the students experience about dealing with living organisms, which can’t be compared with theoretical knowledge from simulation programs.
Animal pelts being use for clothing
The centuries-old extermination of such species as tigers, leopards, beavers for their pelts has resulted in not only considerable decrease of their number but even they became endangered. For instance beavers hunt had led to their virtual extinction in continental Europe by the 16th century. Nowadays furriers have two ways of getting fur: trapping fur-bearing animals in the special seasons, with the regulation of type and number of mammals they can trap, or raising them on fur farms. Nearly 30 million of animals are caged and killed for their fur, and they form 60 to 75 percent of American fur trade. The most popular species among those cage-reared animals are minks, foxes, sables and ferrets. The conditions of their keeping are filthy and inhuman, chiefly cages are small wire mesh and adjacent to each other. “Minks are euthanized by bottled gas that contains pure carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. It takes approximately 50 mink skins to make a mink coat.”(Sherry 73).
Our quilts, pillows and comforters are also stained in blood. Just to fill them is the reason of euthanizing of birds or their constant painful plucking till their death. It’s difficult to say when and who started the feather fashion but it caused a dreadful number of hunted birds such as ostrich, egret, heron, pheasant, peacock, lark, starling, blackbird, oriole, grebe, kingfisher, parrots and parakeets for their plumage. Two federal laws in the USA, The Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, were passed to regulate the preservation and reservation of game and foreign birds, prohibit their uncontrolled extermination.
And don’t forget about killing some mammals, reptiles and birds for their leather. Cattle, crocodile and snake hides, lamb and deer skins, ostrich leather are widely used in the closing and household industries.
Animals used for entertainment
Nonetheless such establishments as zoo and circuses seem at first sight wholesome and innocent in real fact they can bring a lot of harm and discomfort for their pets. Confining cages, abusing of animals to make their perform tricks and, the most important, their captivity are that problems that concern animal liberation groups. “To treat animals as objects for our amusement is to treat them without the respect they deserve.” (Yount 56). PETA activists consider that circus animals cannot live in a normal environment or carry out some social relationship. Besides, they claim they dispose of information that some trainers regularly use whips or other pain-inducing devices. Therefore lawsuits against accused by organization trainers were held, but in most cases jury supported defendants and brought them an acquittal. Performers deny all the charges of animal activists, vowing they are in perfect relationship with their pets and are trying to make their life as comfortable as possible.
More shameful fact of using animals in the entertainment is animal fighting. Such inhuman contests like cock, dog fighting and bullbaiting have been greatly popular among the population since the ancient times and became outlawed in the beginning of the 20th century. Dog and roosters fighting (except Louisiana and New-Mexico) are illegal in the USA and in most states is felony, but it’s still underground activity. These illicit competitions cause the horrible pain and injuries for fighting animals (losers are often abandoned to die of their wounds), furthermore those raged competitors are also dangerous for watching people.
Conclusion
Animal liberation movement raises the problems of our treatment of animals and claims the responsibility for the all suffering and pain we bring to them. It’s a significant fact that activists besides of strict critics of working system propose the alternatives, such as synthetic clothing instead of fur and leather, dissecting cell culture and genetic materials and reducing the number of experiments with living animals, making them only in case of the inevitability of research and it’s necessity for the scientific progress. Animal welfare organizations also are against of such common entertainment establishments as circus and zoo which are symbol of animal slavery for them. So, don’t forget that other species have a nervous system too and they could do feel the pain. We must stop a thoughtless consumering of our Earthly gods and halt the speciesism because other its inhabitants must have their rights too.
Works cited
Yount Lisa. Library in a book, Animal rights. ISBN 978-0-8160-7130-2. New York NY 10001. 2008. Print.
Sherry Clifford J. Contemporary world issues, Animal Rights, second Edition. ISBN 978-1-59884-191-6. Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911. 2009. Print
Guither Harold D. Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998. Print
Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, quoted in Curnutt, Animals and the Law
1985 revision of Animal Welfare Act, quoted in Curnutt, Animals and the Law
Morrison Adrian, quoted in Patterson, Animal Rights. Print
Smith Richard. Animal Research: The Need for a Middle Ground. British
Medical Journal, vol. 322, February 3, 2001.
National Association for Biomedical Research, quoted in Guither, Animal
Rights.
Wurbel Hanno. Better Housing for Better Science. Chemistry and Industry, Print. April
16, 2001.
Animal Rights FAQ: Section 9, Animals for Entertainment. Web. January 9, 2003.
Russel W. M., Burch R. l. Principles of Human Experimental Technique [Paperback]. ISBN 978-0900767784. Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW). 1992. Print
