Non-Human Rights, Essay Example

There is lot of controversy surrounding the non-human or animal rights. There is much less disagreement on the consequences of accepting that animals have rights. Animal rights do not allow some things to be done on the animals. The ethics surrounding this teach us that certain things are wrong if done to the animals. It is important to avoid doing some things to animals. It is important that the animals should not be bred and killed for food according to the animal rights surrounding them and the ethics behind it.

Accepting some animal rights doctrines means that there should be no experiments that should be done on the animals. It also means that the animals should not be bred or even killed for food, clothes or even for medicine. Non-Human rights extend to not allowing animals to be used for hard labor like the case of donkeys. It is ethical that the animals should not be subjected to hard labor under any circumstances. The argument on animal rights has been avoided by the philosophers on the grounds that the consequences are limiting to the human beings dependency to animals. They also argue that this idea of giving the animal rights is so simple that it seems to defy the common sense.

The animal rights are usually derived from the human right case. It is argued that the non-human animals have rights and that there is no morally relevant difference between the adult mammals and the non-human animals and hence adult mammals must have rights too. The main reason behind the argument that the animals have same rights and deserve them as the other human being is that they have similar levels of the biological complexity; like human beings, animals are also aware and conscious that they exist. The non-human animals also know what is happening to them; they also dislike and like some things like the human beings as well as making conscious choices. These are some issues that are behind fighting for the animal rights. The non-human animals also live in such a way that they give themselves best quality of life as human beings do. There are still some issues like animals planning their life by the animals as well as minding about their length and quality of their life. it is even more demanding for the animals to be given the rights they deserve by not being exploited.  Animals therefore have inherent values like the human beings and thus they are entitled to same rights to human beings.

It is also ethical that the animal beings are not supposed to be hunted for food at all cost. The animals also have rights to live without their lives beings terminated because of food. The animals should also not be used for entertainment or even taken to zoos for the purpose of tourism. This can be ethically argued by the concept that the animals and human rights have a same fundamental right; this is the right of being treated with a lot of respect as a creature which has inherent value. Therefore, it is important for the animals to be treated as living creatures but not to be used for entertaining others or even be used by human beings to achieve their needs (BBC ethics guide).

Many animals have been used for research in many laboratories thus some of their rights being taken away. There has been a lot of controversy behind this idea and process. It has been concluded that animals should not be used as specimens for testing; this is because some of results turn out to be fatal or deadly. It is the right of the animals to live without their life being interfered with at any moment. Some people use some animals like dogs, cats and even monkeys as their pets in homes. Ethically, this is like slavery to animals which are confined within home compound without being released to do their own things. Like human beings, the animal need to be given the right to live and do what they feel is right as they also have senses just like the human beings.

Although there has been a lot of support for the animal rights, a lot of controversy is rising as some people argue that animals do not behave in moral ways hence they are not supposed to be treated like the human beings. It is said that the animals are not part of the moral community, and hence they should not be given the rights like human beings. They go ahead to argue that only members of the moral community are valuable. They also say that animal lacks the capacity for moral judgments hence do not have moral rights (BBC ethics guide).

The non-human animal rights are really confusing and they have no agreed conclusion that has been reached up to now. The issues of animal rights are ever confusing and conflicting.

Work Cited

“Animal rights.” BBC Ethics Guide. 28 Oct. 2007. 17 Feb. 2010.  <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/rights/rights_1.shtml>