Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from February 2005.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

As Mark Bittman rightly notes, California’s new farm animal welfare law presages what is coming for all farm animal industries nationally (“Hens, Unbound,” column, Jan. 1).

The tiny cages and crates that confine about 90 percent of laying hens and more than 80 percent of gestating sows are both physically and mentally tormenting for the animals involved.

Physically, the muscles and the bones of the animals atrophy from lack of use. Mentally, they go insane from boredom and stress, just as our dogs or cats would if they were kept in tiny crates or carriers for their entire lives.

There is no difference between cruelty to a pig or a dog or a hen or a cat, and so the sooner we relegate these awful devices to the dustbin of history, the better.

BRUCE G. FRIEDRICH
Washington, Jan. 1, 2015

The writer is director of advocacy and policy for Farm Sanctuary, a national farm animal protection group.

Statistics

This blog had 1,246 visits during December, which is an average of 40.1 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 56.5.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from January 2005.

Statistics

This blog had 1,530 visits during November, which is an average of 51.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 73.6.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from December 2004.

Anniversary

I started this blog 11 years ago today. It's not quite dead, because I still post statistics every month, but I no longer post anything substantive. Evidently, some people still find its posts useful.

Statistics

This blog had 1,201 visits during October, which is an average of 38.7 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 57.5.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from November 2004.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from October 2004.

Statistics

This blog had 812 visits during September, which is an average of 27.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 44.9.

Statistics

This blog had 660 visits during August, which is an average of 21.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 27.9.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from September 2004.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from August 2004.

Statistics

This blog had 763 visits during July, which is an average of 24.6 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 34.5.

Statistics

This blog had 842 visits during June, which is an average of 28.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 46.8.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from July 2004.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Once again people associated with the animal rights group PETA (letter, June 19) have tried to disparage the commitment circuses have for animal care and conservation. Despite the claims made in the letter, circuses like Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey are dedicated to providing the very best of care for all our animals, especially the Asian elephant. Rather than adopt stringent United States animal care standards, which Ringling Bros. fully supports, officials in Mexico City unnecessarily banned circuses with animals.

In the United States, 10 million fans a year see a Ringling Bros. performance, and their No. 1 reason for coming is our animals. Rather than rely on PETA’s rhetoric, circus fans should come and see for themselves how all our animals are thriving at the Greatest Show on Earth.

STEPHEN PAYNE
Vienna, Va., June 19, 2014

The writer is vice president, corporate communications, for Feld Entertainment, parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Worry Under the Big Top as Mexico City Moves to Ban Circus Animals” (news article, June 15):

Mexico City joins the growing list of cities that have banned the exploitation of animals in circuses. Several countries, including Austria, Bolivia, Colombia, Greece, Peru, Britain and Paraguay, have already imposed or approved bans. Why is the United States lagging so far behind?

Our elected officials must recognize that beating elephants with bullhooks—heavy batons with a sharp metal hook on the end that can tear elephants’ skin—and whipping tigers until they cringe and cower, are ethically indefensible.

When not performing, animals spend most of their lives caged or chained in tractor-trailers and railroad boxcars while traveling from city to city. They have none of what makes their lives worth living: roaming freely, controlling territory, socializing and simple autonomy.

The trend is undeniable: The days of hauling and hurting animals in the name of entertainment are quickly coming to an end.

JENNIFER O’CONNOR
Staff Writer, PETA Foundation
Norfolk, Va., June 16, 2014

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from June 2004.

Statistics

This blog had 1,513 visits during May, which is an average of 48.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 66.4.

Statistics

This blog had 1,721 visits during April, which is an average of 57.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 78.8.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from May 2004.

Statistics

This blog had 1,520 visits during March, which is an average of 49.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 66.0.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from April 2004.

"They Die Piece by Piece"

Here.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “They’re Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens” (front page, March 4):

While the conditions in California’s colony cages are certainly better than those of the barren battery cages used for 90 percent of egg-laying hens in this country, they still involve cramming 60 animals into a wire cage, each bird with just 116 square inches in which to live her entire life

At Farm Sanctuary, we spend our lives with hens, and we can attest that chickens are individuals with needs and personalities, just like the dogs and cats most readers will know a bit better. It is no more acceptable to confine 60 hens for their entire lives in a cage that you report is “about the size of a Ford F-150 pickup truck’s flatbed” than it would be to treat 60 cats similarly.

Compassionate consumers can take a stand against this cruelty by choosing vegan options.

BRUCE FRIEDRICH
Senior Policy Director
Farm Sanctuary
Washington, March 4, 2014

To the Editor:

The humane laws for hens in California that provide them more space in which to live should be countrywide. Chickens deserve to live humanely. That’s the least farmers can do.

People seem to lose sight of the fact that these are sentient animals, not food machines! The same goes for pigs and cattle that are exploited and forced to live in substandard conditions.

Congratulations to California for being so compassionate and leading the way.

ELAINE SLOAN
New York, March 4, 2014

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from March 2004.

Statistics

This blog had 1,204 visits during February, which is an average of 43.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 78.4.

Statistics

This blog had 1,134 visits during January, which is an average of 36.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 82.3.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from February 2004.

According Animals Dignity

In this New York Times op-ed column, Frank Bruni predicts that our understanding of and concern for animals is only going to grow as scientific advances help us to understand the rich psychological and emotional lives of animals. Tom Regan was right: Many of the animals we routinely exploit are experiencing subjects of a life just like us.

Lions

Statistics

This blog had 1,754 visits during December, which is an average of 56.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 81.7.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from January 2004.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on the Golden Rule

How, then, shall we sum up in a sentence the principle of our duties to the lower animals? I do not know that it can be better done than in the words of George Nicholson, one of those early pioneers to the influence of whose writings, though now almost forgotten, the cause of humaneness owes so much. "In our conduct to animals," he wrote, "one plain rule may determine what form it ought to take, and prove an effectual guard against an improper treatment of them—a rule universally admitted as a foundation of moral rectitude: Treat the animal in such a manner as you would willingly be treated, were you such an animal." In our dealings with the non-human as with the human race, it is not "charity," or "self-sacrifice," or "mercy" that is required, but simple justice—an insistence on our own duties as on those of our neighbors, a recognition of our neighbors' rights as of our own.

(Henry S. Salt, "The Rights of Animals," International Journal of Ethics 10 [January 1900]: 206-22, at 222 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from December 2003.

Statistics

This blog had 2,210 visits during November, which is an average of 73.6 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 93.2.

Ten Years Gone

I began this blog 10 years ago today. The time has gone fast. Although I rarely post anything substantive, I did so for many years, so the blog still serves a useful purpose. Here are the posts from November 2003. On the first day of each month, from now on, I will link to the posts for that month 10 years earlier. I hope you enjoy the flashback.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Animal Rights

Nor is it true that the worth of an animal's life, any more than of a man's, can be measured simply by the amount of "agreeable sensation," a fallacy often put forward by those who cage animals in menageries, on the plea that they are there well tended and saved from the struggle for existence. To live one's own natural life, to realize one's self, is the true moral purpose of man and animal equally, and the wrong done by the unnecessary cramping and thwarting of animal individuality, as in the turning of an active intelligent being into a prisoner or pet, cannot really be compensated by the gift of any material "comforts." Compare the life of the wild bison with that of the stall-fed ox, or that of the sheepdog with the pampered pug, and the moral can hardly be overlooked. An animal has his proper work to do in the world, his own life to live, as surely as a man; and those who scoff at this idea, and deny individuality to animals, should remember that there was a time, under the Greek and Roman civilization, when it was held to be doubtful whether a slave, in like manner, had any claim to be regarded as a person.

(Henry S. Salt, "The Rights of Animals," International Journal of Ethics 10 [January 1900]: 206-22, at 209 [italics in original])

Statistics

This blog had 1,785 visits during October, which is an average of 57.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.8.

Statistics

This blog had 1,349 visits during September, which is an average of 44.9 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 79.2.

Kristof

My friend Mylan linked to an op-ed column by Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times. Let me make a few comments.

1. Kristof says that "SeaWorld [marine park] denies the claims [of mistreatment], which isn't surprising since it earns millions [of dollars] from orcas." This is cynicism. Kristof should address SeaWorld's argument, not question its motives. How would he like it if his readers questioned (or speculated about) his motives? (For example: Does Kristof own stock in a rival company?) Charity requires that good (or at least benign) motives be imputed to arguers. Cynicism is the imputation of bad motives. Cynicism is not argumentation; it is the evasion of argumentation.
2. Kristof writes: "The juxtaposition of the two reviews made me wonder: Some day, will our descendants be mystified by how good and decent people in the early 21st century—that's us—could have been so oblivious to the unethical treatment of animals?" Good question! I would replace "animals" with "fetuses."
3. Kristof writes, by way of apology for his "hypocrisy," that he eats meat ("albeit with misgivings") and has "no compunctions about using mousetraps." Eating meat and using mousetraps are as different (morally speaking) as night and day. Using a mousetrap can be justified by defense of self or property (though there are more humane ways of getting rid of pests). Eating meat cannot be so justified. Nobody needs to eat meat in order to survive or flourish. This shows that Kristof has not given much serious thought to the topic of the moral status of animals. He knows just enough about the topic to be dangerous (since he has a large audience).

Now you see why I don't read Kristof. Had Mylan not linked to his column, I would not have read it.

Statistics

This blog had 866 visits during August, which is an average of 27.9 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 58.1

From The New York Times

In Response to Nicholas D. Kristof's column "Can We See Our Hypocrisy to Animals?"NYTimes readers urge consistency in our treatment of and concern for animals here.

From Sunday's New York Times

Can We See Our Hypocrisy to Animals? by Nicholas D. Kristof

Statistics

This blog had 1,070 visits during July, which is an average of 34.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 55.5.

Veganism

Want to kill your cat? Feed him or her a vegan diet.

Statistics

This blog had 1,406 visits during June, which is an average of 46.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 62.6.

Vegetarianism

According to the Wall Street Journal, vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters.

Statistics

This blog had 2,060 visits during May, which is an average of 66.4 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.2.

Green Energy Kills

Cockroaches

Idiocy never sleeps.

Vegan Food Groups

Roscoe and Surya

Statistics

This blog had 2,364 visits during April, which is an average of 78.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 111.3.

Humor

Statistics

This blog had 2,049 visits during March, which is an average of 66.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 102.4.

Animals

According to the Guardian, the new pope (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) took his name from Saint Francis of Assisi (depicted above), who is the patron saint of animals. This would be a wonderful opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church, which has 1.2 billion adherents, to drive home the point that animals are not resources for human use but fellow denizens of the planet, with lives, a good, and a dignity of their own.

Statistics

This blog had 2,196 visits during February, which is an average of 78.4 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 104.3.

Farmers

Many viewers were moved by Dodge's Super Bowl commercial "So God Made a Farmer." This rich parody, God Made a Factory Farmer, dispels the myth of the family farm in a humorous, but accurate way. Very funny and so true!

Statistics

This blog had 2,552 visits during January, which is an average of 82.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 85.2.

Killing Animals

Here is an essay by law professor Gary Francione.

How to Go Vegan

Here.

The Philosophy of Animal Rights

Mylan Engel Jr and Kathie Jenni are the authors of this book. Mylan is a longtime contributor to this blog. We met in graduate school at the University of Arizona in 1983.

Statistics

This blog had 2,533 visits during December, which is an average of 81.7 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 87.5.

Meat

Here is an interesting story about the evolutionary value of a meat-based diet.

Statistics

This blog had 2,797 visits during November, which is an average of 93.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 98.7.

Anniversary

I began this blog nine years ago today. (Here is the first post.) In that time, there have been 245,434 visits, which is an average of 27,270.4 visits per year and 74.6 visits per day. My posting has slowed considerably, but I hope the archive is of use to students (no plagiarism, please!) and anyone else who is interested in the moral status of nonhuman animals.

Statistics

This blog had 2,784 visits during October, which is an average of 89.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.2.

From the Mailbag

Dear Professor Burgess-Jackson,

I'm a great admirer of your animal ethics blog, which I've found to be an invaluable resource. I just wanted to share a link to Gary Francione's recent philosophy bites podcast. An interesting debate has taken place in the comments section regarding Francione's (mis)interpretation of Peter Singer—hope it will be of interest!

best regards,
Spencer Lo

Statistics

This blog had 2,378 visits during September, which is an average of 79.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 73.3.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

In “Where Cows Are Happy and Food Is Healthy” (column, Sept. 9), Nicholas D. Kristof describes “happy” cows that are loved “like children” by an organic dairy farmer. I applaud his recognition that cows are individual feeling beings that share with us the ability to experience happiness and contentment, fear and pain.

The article does, however, gloss over the undeniable fact that even cows with names produce milk only because they have recently given birth to calves who, if male, have been taken away from them. Consumers should consider that cows like Edie or Sophia are often fiercely protective, grieving mothers whose anguished cries the farmer undoubtedly heard as he removed their young.

The article also doesn’t mention the common practices of castrating male calves and amputating the horns of cows and calves, typically without any pain relief. Most cows are also forcibly impregnated, and the closely spaced pregnancies impose significant metabolic stress on cows.

Even at Bob Bansen’s dairy, food comes at the cost of animal welfare. It’s a safe bet that any glass of milk is from a grieving mother, named or unnamed, that will end up dying at the slaughterhouse.

INGRID E. NEWKIRK
President, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Norfolk, Va., Sept. 10, 2012

Tom Regan on the Animal-Rights Movement

In issuing its condemnation of established cultural practices, the rights view is not antibusiness, not antifreedom of the individual, not antiscience, not antihuman. It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals. To protest against the rights view that justice applies only to moral agents, or only to human beings, and that we are within our rights when we treat animals as renewable resources, or replaceable receptacles, or tools, or models, or things—to protest in these terms is not to meet the challenge the rights view places before those who would reject it. On the contrary, it is unwittingly to voice the very prejudices it has been the object of the present work to identify and refute.

But prejudices die hard, all the more so when, as in the present case, they are insulated by widespread secular customs and religious beliefs, sustained by large and powerful economic interests, and protected by the common law. To overcome the collective entropy of these forces-against-change will not be easy. The animal rights movement is not for the faint of heart. Success requires nothing less than a revolution in our culture's thought and action. . . . How we change the dominant misconception of animals—indeed, whether we change it—is to a large extent a political question. Might does not make right; might does make law. Moral philosophy is no substitute for political action. Still, it can make a contribution. Its currency is ideas, and though it is those who act—those who write letters, circulate petitions, demonstrate, lobby, disrupt a fox hunt, refuse to dissect an animal or to use one in "practice surgery," or are active in other ways—though these are the persons who make a mark on a day-to-day basis, history shows that ideas do make a difference. Certainly it is the ideas of those who have gone before—the Salts, the Shaws, and more recent thinkers—who have helped move the call for the recognition of animal rights, in the words of Mill that serve as this book's motto, past the stage of ridicule to that of discussion. It is to be hoped that the publication of this book will play some role in advancing this great movement, the animal rights movement, toward the third and final stage—the stage of adoption. To borrow words used in a different context by the distinguished American photographer Ansel Adams, "We are on the threshold of a new revelation, a new awakening. But what we have accomplished up to this time must be multiplied a thousandfold if the great battles are to be joined and won."

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 399-400 [ellipsis added] [first edition published in 1983])

Bernard E. Rollin on Animals as Ends

As we mentioned, Kant restricts having intrinsic value or being an end in itself to rational beings, but it is difficult to see why this should be so. Surely any sentient or conscious being has states that matter to it in a positive or negative way—pleasure matters to an animal in a positive way, pain or fear in a negative way. Since it can value what happens to it, it has intrinsic value. Given the logic of morality, we should extend our moral attention to those states that matter to it when our actions affect that being. So what if it can’t reason?—not all or even most of our moral attention focuses on reason vis a vis people. Most of it in fact focuses on feeling, on not hurting people physically or mentally, or helping them be happy or escape from suffering. So if human beings are ends in themselves, why not animals, since they too have feelings and goals that they value?

(Bernard E. Rollin, "Reasonable Partiality and Animal Ethics," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 [April 2005]: 105-21, at 117)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Your reporting on the illegal ivory trade (“Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits,” “The Price of Ivory” series, front page, Sept. 4) is a chilling reminder of just how high the stakes have become today for elephants in the wild.

Our experience on the ground confirms your reporting that this trade is increasingly tied to organized crime. Money for greater local enforcement is now the most pressing need to combat poachers and the armed wildlife trade syndicates to which they are increasingly linked.

This holds true whether it is in the Democratic Republic of Congo or right here in New York City, where Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, recently prosecuted two jewelers selling illegally obtained ivory with a combined retail value of more than $2 million.

Unless we start taking wildlife crime seriously and allocate the resources necessary to tackle a sophisticated and well-financed global criminal network, elephants and other charismatic species will continue their tragic slide into oblivion.

ELIZABETH L. BENNETT
Jeju, South Korea, Sept. 4, 2012

The writer is vice president for species conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Note from KBJ: I take it that rats are not a "charismatic species."

Tom Regan on the Use of Animals in Science

All that the rights view prohibits is science that violates individual rights. If that means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it. There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 388 [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 1,803 visits during August, which is an average of 58.1 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 53.4.

Tom Regan on Wild Animals

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Since this will require increased human intervention in human practices that threaten rare or endangered species (e.g., halting the destruction of natural habitat and closer surveillance of poaching, with much stiffer fines and longer prison sentences), the rights view sanctions this intervention, assuming that those humans involved are treated with the respect they are due. Too little is not enough.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 361 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

“Some in California Skirt a Ban on Foie Gras” (news article, Aug. 13) might give readers the impression that California chefs are free to serve foie gras as a complimentary side dish and so evade the state ban on sales.

Not so. When a diner pays money to a restaurant with the expectation that he or she will receive foie gras and then is served the dish, that constitutes a sale. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals applauds the efforts of those district attorneys and animal control officers who are enforcing the law against those few chefs who continue to flout it.

Foie gras is the diseased liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed through pipes shoved down their throats. PETA urges everyone to avoid this product of cruelty to animals.

GABE WALTERS
Counsel, PETA Foundation
Norfolk, Va., Aug. 13, 2012

Tom Regan on Endangered Species

The rights view is not opposed to efforts to save endangered species. It only insists that we be clear about the reasons for doing so. On the rights view, the reason we ought to save the members of endangered species of animals is not because the species is endangered but because the individual animals have valid claims and thus rights against those who would destroy their natural habitat, for example, or who would make a living off their dead carcasses through poaching and traffic in exotic animals, practices that unjustifiably override the rights of these animals. But though the rights view must look with favor on any attempt to protect the rights of any animal, and so supports efforts to protect the members of endangered species, these very efforts, aimed specifically at protecting the members of species that are endangered, can foster a mentality that is antagonistic to the implications of the rights view. If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable. In this way people may be encouraged to believe that, for example, the trapping of plentiful animals raises no serious moral question, whereas the trapping of rare animals does. This is not what the rights view implies. The mere size of the relative population of the species to which a given animal belongs makes no moral difference to the grounds for attributing rights to that individual animal or to the basis for determining when that animal's rights may be justifiably overridden or protected.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 360 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 1,721 visits during July, which is an average of 55.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 48.4.

Tom Regan on Utilitarianism

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. . . . Because animals are sentient (i.e., can experience pleasure and pain) and because they not only have but can act on their preferences, any view that holds that pleasures or pains, or preference-satisfactions or frustrations matter morally is bound to seem attractive to those in search of the moral basis for the animal rights movement. Especially because animals are made to suffer in the pursuit of human purposes—in the name of "efficient" factory farming, for example, or in pursuit of scientific knowledge—the utilitarian injunction to count their suffering and to count it equitably must strike a responsive moral chord. But utilitarianism is not the theory its initial reception by the animal rights movement may have suggested. It provides no basis for the rights of animals and instead contains within itself the grounds for perpetuating the very speciesist practices it was supposed to overthrow. To secure the philosophical foundation for animal rights requires abandoning utilitarianism.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 315 [italics in original; ellipsis added] [first edition published in 1983])

Tom Regan on Rights

Whether individuals have legal rights depends on the laws and other legal background (e.g., the constitution) of the society in which they live. In some countries (e.g., the United States) citizens meeting certain requirements have the legal right to vote or run for elected office; in other countries (e.g., Libya) citizens do not have these rights. Moreover, even in those countries that give this right to its citizens, the requirements are not always the same and are subject to change. In the United States, for example, citizens once had to be twenty-one years of age to vote in federal elections; now they must be eighteen. At one time one could not vote if one were black or female or illiterate; now one has this right regardless of race or sex or educational achievement. Legal rights thus are subject to great variation, not only among different countries at the same time but also in the same country at different times. When it comes to legal rights, not all individuals are equal. This should not be surprising. The legal rights individuals have arise as the result of the creative activity of human beings. Those rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, for example, were not rights that citizens of the United States could claim as legal rights before these rights were drawn up and the legal machinery necessary for their enforcement was in place.

The concept of moral rights differs in important ways from that of legal rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal. This means that if any individual (A) has such a right, then any other individual like A in the relevant respects also has this right. What counts as the relevant respects is controversial. . . . What is not controversial is the exclusion of some characteristics as relevant. An individual's race, sex, religion, place of birth, or country of domicile are not relevant characteristics for the possession of moral rights. We cannot deny that individuals possess moral rights, as we can in the case of the possession of legal rights, because of, for example, where they live.

A second feature of moral rights is that they are equal. This means that if any two individuals have the same moral right (e.g., the right to liberty), then they have this right equally. Possession of moral rights does not come in degrees. All who possess them possess them equally, whether they are, say, white or black, male or female, Americans or Iranians.

Third, moral rights, unlike legal rights, do not arise as a result of the creative acts of any one individual (e.g., a despot) or any group (e.g., a legislative assembly). Theoretically, one could, it is true, create legal rights that accord with or protect moral rights, but that is not the same as creating these moral rights in the first place. If there are moral rights, they do not "come to be" in the way legal rights do.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 267-8 [ellipsis added] [first edition published in 1983])

Veganism

A professional football player has gone vegan. It's not clear whether he's doing it for moral reasons, for health reasons, or both.

Tom Regan on Cruelty

Cruelty is manifested in different ways. People can rightly be judged cruel either for what they do or for what they fail to do, and either for what they feel or for what they fail to feel. The central case of cruelty appears to be the case where, in Locke's apt phrase, one takes "a seeming kind of Pleasure" in causing another to suffer. Sadistic torturers provide perhaps the clearest example of cruelty in this sense: they are cruel not just because they cause suffering (so do dentists and doctors, for example) but because they enjoy doing so. Let us term this sadistic cruelty.

Not all cruel people are cruel in this sense. Some cruel people do not feel pleasure in making others suffer. Indeed, they seem not to feel anything. Their cruelty is manifested by a lack of what is judged appropriate feeling, as pity or mercy, for the plight of the individual whose suffering they cause, rather than pleasure in causing it; they are, as we say, insensitive to the suffering they inflict, unmoved by it, as if they were unaware of it or failed to appreciate it as suffering, in the way that, for example, lions appear to be unaware of, and thus are not sensitive to, the pain they cause their prey. Indeed, precisely because one expects indifference from animals but pity or mercy from human beings, people who are cruel by being insensitive to the suffering they cause often are called "animals" or "brutes," and their character or behavior, "brutal" or "inhuman." Thus, for example, particularly ghastly murders are said to be "the work of animals," the implication being that these are acts that no one moved by the human feelings of pity or mercy could bring themselves [sic] to perform. The sense of cruelty that involves indifference to, rather than enjoyment of, suffering caused to others we shall call brutal cruelty.

Cruelty of either kind, sadistic or brutal, can be manifested in active or passive behavior. Passive behavior includes acts of omission and negligence; active, acts of commission. A man who, without provocation, beats a dog into unconsciousness is actively cruel, whereas one who, through negligence, fails to feed his dog to the point where the dog's health is impoverished is passively cruel, not because of what he does but because of what he fails to do. Both active and passive cruelty have fuzzy borders. For example, a woman is not cruel if she occasionally fails to feed her cat. She is cruel if she fails to do so most of the time. But while there is no exact number of times, no fixed percentage, such that, once it is realized, cruelty is present, otherwise not, there are paradigms nonetheless.

We have, then, at least two kinds of cruelty (or two senses of the word cruelty) and two different ways in which cruelty can be manifested. Theoretically, therefore, cruelty admits of at least four possible classifications: (1) active sadistic cruelty; (2) passive sadistic cruelty; (3) active brutal cruelty; and (4) passive brutal cruelty.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 197-8 [italics in original; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 1,880 visits during June, which is an average of 62.6 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 62.4.

Tom Regan on Kant's View of Animals

Unlike [John] Rawls, whose considered views on our duties regarding animals are unclear at best, [Immanuel] Kant provides us with an explicit statement of an indirect duty view. That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. . . . On Kant's view, rational beings, by which he means moral agents, are ends in themselves (have, that is, independent value, or worth, in their own right, quite apart from how useful they happen to be to others). As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means. This is not to say that we may never make use of the skills or services of moral agents in their capacities as, say, mechanics, plumbers, or surgeons. It is to say that we must never impose our will, by force, coercion, or deceit, on any moral agent to do what we want them [sic] to do just because we stand to benefit as a result. To treat moral agents in this way is to treat them as if they had no value in their own right or, alternatively, as if they were things. As Kant remarks, "beings whose existence depends, not on our will, but on nature, have nonetheless, if they are non-rational only a relative value and are consequently called things."  Moral agents are not nonrational, do not have "only a relative value," and are not things. Moral agents (rational beings) are ends in themselves.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 174-5 [italics in original; ellipsis added; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

Tom Regan on Harm to Animals

That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions. The animals frequently are crowded together, as in the case of hogs, or kept in isolation, as in the case of veal calves. Since the only environments these animals ever see are the artificial ones in which they live, it sometimes is claimed that they don't know what they are missing and so cannot be worse off for having to forego [sic] an alternative environment they know nothing about. The unspoken assumption is not that what you don't know can't hurt you; it is that what you don't know can't harm you. This assumption is false. If I were to raise my son in a comfortable cage, in isolation from other human contact, though seeing to it that his basic biological needs were satisfied, and if, in all of my dealings with him, I went to considerable trouble to insure [sic] that he experienced no unnecessary pain, then I could not be faulted on the grounds that I was hurting him. However, I would have quite obviously harmed him and this in a most grievous way. How lame would be my retort that my son "didn't know what he was missing" and so wasn't harmed by me. That he doesn't know what he's missing is part of the harm I have done to him. Those animals who are raised intensively, then, let us assume, do not know what they're missing. But that does not show that they are not being harmed by the conditions under which they live. Quite the contrary, just as would be true in the case of my son, what we should say is that part of the harm done to these animals by factory farming is that they do not know this.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 97-8 [italics in original; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 2,768 visits during May, which is an average of 89.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 106.0.

Tom Regan on Human Chauvinism

There is a neglected other side to the anthropomorphic coin. This is human chauvinism. The anthropomorphic side reads: "It is anthropomorphic to attribute characteristics to nonhumans that belong only to humans." The human chauvinism side reads: "It is chauvinistic not to attribute characteristics to those nonhumans who have them and to persist in the conceit that only humans do." Human chauvinism, that is, like all other forms of chauvinism, involves a failure or refusal to recognize that those characteristics one finds most important or admirable in one's self, or in members of one's group, are also possessed by individuals other than one's self or the members of one's group, as when male chauvinists fail, or refuse, to see that they are not alone in possessing admirable qualities. With the argument of the present chapter serving as the backdrop, the conclusion we reach is that to deny consciousness or a mental life to mammalian animals is an expression of human chauvinism.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 31 [italics in original; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

African Philosophy and Nonhuman Animals

This interview may be of interest.

Statistics

This blog had 3,341 visits during April, which is an average of 111.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 152.1.

Dairy

Veganism

Here is a New York Times story about veganism.

Sustainable Meat

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about "sustainable meat."

In the Company of Animals

Here is a New York Times blog post about companion animals.

Humor

Global Animal

My friend Mylan Engel spoke at a conference on human use of animals. Here is a report.

Statistics

This blog had 3,175 visits during March, which is an average of 102.4 visits per day. A year ago in March, the average was 134.9.