All Animals are Equal: Ethical Issues of Use of the Animals - Essay Example

 There are several people who firmly believe that animals have no rights and they can be used for personal benefit, it is very important to deal with such people first. This mindset has to be worked upon if we are to restore parity, it is a very upsetting sight to see a dog get kicked but if we treat the dog like our property, no one will ever dare to damage our property. We should start having a sense of belongingness towards these animals to be able to stop other people from exploiting them. Several people have stood up and worked for those who are experiencing unjust, the people who helped them understood that they have duties towards the other people who need their help. The case of animals is very similar to those of the exploited people, we must treat them like human beings because even they feel the pain and react to it, and it is our duty to stop these animals from getting exploited and from getting treated like dirt. They have every right in the world to be treated well and to be shown love and affection. All human beings are capable of logical thinking and deciding whether their actions are right or not? Off late there have been numerous issues when the logical thinking of the human beings has come under the scanner. Ethical issues are issues that question whether the treatment given to animals is humane or not? Ethics are extremely important when it comes to the treatment of animals or for that matter anything else. There have been numerous researches conducted on animals and the animal rights activists have protested a lot against the same. The question is whether we are treating the animals the way they deserve to be treated? Different people will have different says on this but it is largely concluded that we are using the animals for various purposes other than what they are supposed to be used for. This paper will explore the ethical issues concerning animals and a conclusion will be arrived at in the concluding part of the paper. Use of Animal Fur Using animals for different purposes has become more of a trend these days, celebrities often wear animal fur coats, jackets etc and they succeed in catching the attention of the people. All species on this planet has certain basic rights and every other specie must respect those rights, human beings have completely forgotten the fact that animals have certain basic rights which must not be violated. Human beings speak of human rights and expect the fellow human beings to follow the same but this is a distant reality and it will only come true if the human beings start respecting the other species. Animals are being exploited day in and day out, fur has become the latest fashion statement and the use of fur must be strictly forbidden. “Every piece of fur is the result of horrific cruelty. Animals trapped for their fur can suffer for hours or days in body-gripping traps, chewing through their own feet in a desperate attempt to escape. More than four million wild animals are trapped and killed each year in the United States by commercial and recreational trappers alone.” (The Cruelty of Fur Trim) “Each year, in China, millions of dogs and cats are cruelly killed by bludgeoning, hanging and slow strangulation with wire nooses and their fur turned into trim and trinkets. Chinese fur is often deliberately mislabeled so that it will be bought by unsuspecting customers around the globe.” (China’s Gold Medal for Cruelty). There must be strict restrictions on the same. The animal rights activists must ensure that no country violates the animal rights; animals also feel the same pain as human beings do, this should be understood by the human beings. There must be strict rules and the violators must be strictly prosecuted to stop this inhumane treatment of animals. The nest part of the paper will focus upon the research done on animals and issues related with the same. Research on animals different from using them for food Research on animals is extremely different from using them for food, the only similarity between the two is that both these things are highly unethical and should not be carried out. Animals should be treated the way human beings treat each other. The question is do we conduct experiments on each other? Do we kill each other for the sale of food? The obvious answer is no we don’t do it because we consider it unethical but the same does not apply when it comes to treating animals. Double standards are certainly evident here, we treat animals with far less care than we treat the other fellow human beings, this goes to show that we don’t consider the animals important. An important thing is given attention and treated with so much more care than the animals are treated these days. Cloning is fast picking up when it comes to the preservation of the endangered animals. “Cloning members of an endangered species, for example, is generally regarded as a positive application of the technology, whereas attempting to clone an extinct woolly mammoth from preserved tissue elicits more negative responses, including that this interferes with nature.” (The Cloning Ban). It is really good to clone an endangered species because the same ensures that the endangered species live on for a considerable amount of time, on the contrary the process of cloning has also been condemned for interfering with the nature. Every coin is two sided and research and experimentation is also two sided. It has its own negatives and positives but on the whole if this case is considered; it is found that experimentation on animals is never good because it is against the ethics and the term ethics has been brought into use by the human beings and it is the human beings that have started violating these ethics. “The Canadian Council on Animal Care Guidelines for the Care and Use of Experimental Animals offer standards to be used by Investigators, Animal Care Staff and Animal Care Committees to judge the level of pain and stress and the degree of invasiveness experienced by an animal during the course of scientific experimentation, testing or teaching.” (Ethical Considerations). Animals are put under intense pain during the various experiments conducted on them this is highly unethical and to conclude it is very fair to say that experiments should never be conducted on animals neither the animals should be used for meat and for other unethical reasons. “We can't justify harming or killing a human being (my Aunt Bea, for example) just for these sorts of reasons. Neither can we do so even in the case of so "lowly" a creature as a laboratory rat.” (Empty Cages) It is very important to treat animals well and we must completely stop inflicting pain upon them, it is high time to introduce laws which will protect the rights of each and every animals so that their exploitation can be brought to an immediate end. References China’s gold medal for cruelty (2011). In Animal Rights Articles. Retrieved from: Ethical Considerations (2011). Moral, Legal and Ethical Issues. Retrieved from: Empty Cages (2011). The Case for Animal Rights. Retrieved from: The Cloning Ban (2011). In Cloning Ethical Issues. Retrieved from: The Cruelty of Fur Trim (2011). In Fur Trim Kills More Animals. Retrieved from: Read More