Animal Rights By: Gabe Coffey, Tricia Consul, and Kim Krykew

Animal Rights Issues Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the movement to protect non-human animals from being abused as property by humans Some issues concerning animal rights movement groups are inhumane treatment, exploitation, product testing, and experimentation. Animal cruelty refers to treatment or standards of care that causes unwarranted or unnecessary suffering or harm to animals

Why Should We Be Concerned With Animal Rights? Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth-a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans. Animal rights activists feel that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. Animal rights is not just a philosophy, it is a social movement that challenges societies traditional view that all non-human animals exist solely for human use.

Histor y After the civil war Animal rights became a major issue. Henry Bergh organized the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Through this organization, Bergh prosecuted butchers, carriage drivers, carters and organizers of dog fights and cock fights. Henry Bergh was responsible for the first anti-animal cruelty legislation to be passed in the United States. Other famous advocates for animal rights in history include, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Ghandi, Mark Twain, and Charles Darwin.

Animals Used For Clothing Leather Every year the global leather industry slaughters more than a billion animals and tans their skins and hides. Many of these animals suffer all the horrors of factory farming such as extreme crowding and confinement, deprivation, and anaesthetized castration, branding, and dehorning, and cruel treatment during transport and slaughter. Some of the animals affected by this inhumane process are cattle, horses, sheep, lambs, goats, pigs, zebras, elephants, dolphins, crocodiles, and seals.

Animal Used For Clothing, cont’d Fur The most commonly farmed fur- bearing animals are minks, followed by foxes. Chinchillas, lynxes, and even hamsters are also farmed for their fur. The way these animals are caught caged and killed is gruesome and unnecessary. After being confined to small crowded cages methods such as gassing, decompression, and neck- breaking are used to mass slaughter herds of animals.

Animal Testing 50 to 100 million animals worldwide, from fruit flies and mice to non human primates, are used annually and either killed during experimentation or subsequently euthanized. Universities, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, farms, defense research establishments and commercial factories that provide animal testing services to industry. Animals differ from humans significantly making animal drug tests unreliable and dangerous. New research methods, such as computer models, cell cultures, and human studies are more accurate, less expensive, and much more humane.

Animals in Entertainment Animals are exploited in many different forms of entertainment such as rodeos, circuses, bullfighting, and cock fights. Some people might think they’re enjoying a fun and entertaining experience but in reality, they’re contributing to the further cruelty and harm that is inflicted on these innocent animals. Some ways the animals are mistreated in these various “entertainment” activities are: confinement for long periods of time, whipping, shackles around their legs, bullhooks, electrical shock, and even death.

Animal Rights and Protection Organizations Pennsylvania Groups -Lehigh Valley Animal Rights -Animal Advocates -Dogs Deserve Better -Mobilization for Animals, Pa inc. -Letters for Animals

Quotes “The question is not can they reason, nor can they talk, but rather can they suffer” -Jeremy Bentham “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” -Mahatma Gandhi “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it” -Mark Twain

References Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Animal Rights (2007) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)