by Altamush Saeed | Jul 2, 2022 | Commentary |
Peter Singer in his famous book “The Animal liberation” in the 1970s, wrote that the ability to feel pain and happiness is the prerequisite for the consideration of rights and not the ability to reason. If the ability to reason was the main criteria, then children who have no linguistic skills or mentally incompetent person would have no rights as well as they cannot reason. Thus, to deny a non-human animal rights because it cannot reason would mean that children also cannot have any rights. Therefore, the pre-requisite to deciding whether one should have rights is their ability to feel, a phenomena science has credibly proved to be true for animals. However, despite this criteria, non-human animals have been tortured in laboratories and slaughtered for food, for purely humanistic reasons. In the 20th century, where there were technological alternatives, usage of animals for research and food purposes would have had made sense as there were no possible alternatives to the usage of animals. Some may say that research was essential for human survival. However this theory doesn’t hold any merit today because of technological alternatives available where plant based and veganism, technology capable of mimicking the human physiology is a reality. Sadly, as animals themselves cannot advocate for this change, economic advantage for a few is preventing this change to happen and that is a very problematic summation of humanity in the 21st century. For Animal welfare activists in the US, the Edward Taub case of 1981 rings stressful memories. Dr. Taub was working on a federal research program at the Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR) in Takoma Park,...
