Chickens Range Free Language Analysis

In his essay Against the Moral Standing of Animals, Peter Carruthers argues that animals have no moral standing and therefore no rights, unlike all humans.

The abuse of Animals is increasing around the world, for personal and recreational uses. Animals are used in ancient and modern medicine to cure different types of illnesses and diseases. Animals are also being used for testing different types of hygiene products; which leave many of them are left scarred for life, while others are left to die in a cage. Animal rights groups around the world are working around the clock trying to stop this abuse, groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Are working around the clock to make sure such practices stop. This paper will demonstrate how modern liberals view animal rights, and how animals are viewed within society.

Do animals have the right to a certain quality of life? How would your views change if our cooks got treated the same way cattle and poultry do? How would you feel about them being beaten and brought to their knees just to be detained to know how to cook todays specials? You might think that the food industry has no issues and no faults behind their tasty food, but when you open up the meat curtain, there is a different kind of world out there that is cruel and inhumane. In Robert Kenner’s 2008 film, Food, Inc., He shows the conditions that cows, chickens, and pigs have to live in. The dark and closeted homes in which the animals are closely compacted together and eating, sleeping, and walking in their own manure. As a person who would consider themselves an animal rights activist, most people would agree that the food industry treats their animals like products instead of living things.

On the topic of animal rights, Vicki Hearne and Peter Singer represent opposite ends of a belief spectrum. Singer describes, in numerous articles, that he believes animal rights should focus on if the animal is suffering, and the best option to prevent it is to limit interaction between animals and humans. Specifically, in “Speciesism and Moral Status” Singer compares the intelligence and ability of non-human animals to those with severe cognitive disabilities to establish an outrageous solution to animal belittlement. He uses logos (the appeal to reason) and ethos (the appeal to ethics), to question the current rights in place to appeal to other scholars. Nevertheless, his approach can cause an emotional disconnect to the readers; this apparent in contrast to Hearne’s pathos (the

Shamarkia Minor Carol Hogan EN 1103-71 5 October 2014 Animals Have Rights Too It has always been a problem when it comes to the ‘rights’ of animals. Some people believe that these defenseless, small creatures don’t have rights that are equivalent to human rights. In Tom Regan’s article, “Animal Rights, Human Wrongs”, he attempts to get the attention of people who are taking advantage of these small animals and using them for their own selfish reasons.

Recently we have read and discussed Rodger Gottlieb’s essay “Can we Talk? Understanding the ‘Other Side’ in the Animal Rights Debate” and Anthony Weston’s ideas of the three integrative methods: compromise, compatible values, and common ground, in the textbook, A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox. Weston claims that Gottlieb “makes use of all the integrative tools offered.” Therefore, we will discuss Weston’s definitions of the methods and how Gottlieb incorporates them into his views throughout his essay. Then, we will discuss how Gottlieb’s essay ties back into the ideas of dialogue as discussed by Weston in chapter 11. Lastly, I will provide my own opinion on Gottlieb’s views and discuss what interests and values ground this opinion.

In “The Case for Animal Rights,” Tom Regan emphasizes his philosophy on animal and human equality. After reading further into his work, he illustrates a societal system that belittles animals and their significance to our own existence. Regan conceptualizes that animals won’t have real rights unless we change our beliefs. We need to acknowledge a problem. After identifying the issue, we must recognize that there is a need for change in society. In addition, he also reiterates the importance of the populace changing the way they view animals. The way society views animals will create a snowball effect that will influence politicians to also believe in animal rights.

“Imagine being abused by someone you trust and who is supposed to love you, and to make the situation worse, you can’t use your voice to cry out for help. Animals are like humans except they can’t tell people to stop.” Animal cruelty and abuse, a good website, said that. I think that is a big problem we need to fix. People hurting animals just because they can’t speak out for themselves. Some people take advantage of that. And it us up to humans to tell those people to stop.

All forms of media, magazines, radio, television, newspapers, social media such as Facebook, have increased their exposure of animal right protests over the last several years while giving room for groups to produce their own publications. In these publications, activists constantly make the analogy between the work of abolitionists before the emancipation and the efforts of animal right activists. This analogy of racism and “speciesism” was brought about by a philosopher named Richard Ryder in 1985 and brings up the issue of research with animal subjects to be emotionally unpredictable for many people. (Sperling Susan – Applied Ethics in Animal Research Introduction pages 4-6)

‘Animal welfare’ refers to the dominant ideology surrounding animal use in western cultures. The term assumes that humans have the right to use animals in ways that are detrimental and sometimes fatal to them; for purposes such as food, clothing or the testing of medicinal or cosmetic products; although it also stipulates that humans should acknowledge the animal’s inherent right, as a sentient creature, not to be treated with ‘unnecessary cruelty’ within those already accepted uses and behaviours.

Animals’ lives are as important to them as ours are to us. We must stand up for them, as good people from other eras stood up or even risked their own lives in order to defend children from sweatshops and women’s right to vote and fight against massacres of entire groups of people and other acts of violence” (Benjamin).

Approximately 9 billion chickens are slaughtered each year solely for their meat. A high percentage of chickens each are confined in a single compacted area for the majority of their lives until the day they reach their life expectancy of 7-8 weeks. So, the question that arises is, to what extent should raising and killing a chicken be considered moral and natural? For instance, factory farmed chickens are placed at the top of the poultry list for being raised and slaughtered for consumption. As a matter of fact, the assistance of the federal law to protect chickens has been fruitless. Little to no effort towards improving the chickens raised in factory farms has declined. These chickens are continually being deprived from partaking in anything that is natural to their behavior. They can’t take dust baths, build nests, scavenge for seeds, or even breathe fresh air. . In addition, health advocates such as Mark Bittman quotes,“allow industry — rather than lawmakers — to make any practice legal as long as it’s common.” He is implying as large numbers of poultry industry’s continue use these practices, it’ll only be accepted as a ‘normal’ procedure and a requirement to sufficiently be used as food for people.

John Oliver, host of the HBO talk-show, Last Week Tonight, argues that chicken farming is unfair and inhumane for the chickens, and more importantly, for the chicken farmers. Oliver begins building his credibility with respectable sources, sharing facts and statistics, and he effectively utilizes emotional appeals; luckily, his attempts to appeal to viewers’ ethics, logic, and emotions strengthens his credibility and ultimately, his argument.

Modern animal agriculture, particularly intensive industrialised farming and the systematic slaughtering of animals, is a pressing ethical issue that deserves critical analysis. In Australia alone between 520 and 620 million animals are slaughtered in abattoirs every year for the purpose of human consumption (ABS). If we pause and ponder the scale of the systems involved in such practices, and the shear amount of animals killed, Heidegger's (1977) evocative assertion that “agriculture is now a mechanized food industry, in essence the same as the manufacture of corpses in the gas chambers and death camps, the same thing as the blockades and reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs” seems quite fitting, and ought to provoke us into contemplation. Thus, the topic which I will consider here is: what are the key components that allow and perpetuate modern industrial animal exploitation? In order to deal with this topic, I will propose three projects using distinct, yet complementary, paradigms. Namely, Marxist, Structural Functionalist, and Hermeneutic paradigms, which I regard as capable of elucidating the suggested issue. Furthermore, I shall offer an analysis of each proposal, and finally, will discuss how the different paradigms relate to, and complement, each other.

Thesis statement – Globalization with its ideology of wealth creation has discarded the impacts it has on animal rights, and instead deteriorated the constitutional rights of animals.