DO ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS?
But ask the animals, and they will teach you; or the birds of the air and they will tell you; or ask the plants of the earth, and they will instruct you. … In his hands is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.
Job 12: 7-10.
One of my dear friends loaned me two books on Animal Rights: “Do Animals have Rights,” by Alison Hills, an easy read which gave a measured approach, and “The Case for Animal Rights,” by Tom Regan, a hard slog and much more radical. In it he refutes the still current view that the animals we eat, hunt, and experiment on are, in the words of Rene Descartes, “thoughtless brutes.” His opinion is that animals are sophisticated mental creatures who have beliefs and desires, memories and expectations, who feel pleasure and pain and experience emotions, and like us, animals have a basic moral right to be treated in ways that show respect for their independent value.
Is he right?
Years ago, while on my way to Bancroft for business, I noticed a freshly killed bird on the side on the road and its partner standing next to it as in mourning.
We all know that chickens are kept in cages and cows in confined conditions, not unlike people in faraway countries, packed in favelas, in shantytowns, and other make-shift slums. A few months ago a fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, killed hundreds of people because they could not escape their packed places. We condemn it where it concerns people. Should we also agitate against the same situations for animals?
There is a curious passage in Genesis 2, where God named the first couple Adam and Eve. Later that same human pair were given the right to name animals. It seems to me that this signifies that we have a certain power over animals, which is plain in later biblical episodes.
At first, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve apparently were vegetarians, eating only from the plants and trees. Later, with Noah, this changed. Abraham provided (Genesis 18:7) the Lord with meat from a calf, tender and good. The same happened when the Prodigal Son re-appeared. Jesus ate fish. Also the Bible is full of animals being slaughtered for ceremonial purposes.
Can our mass-production of animals continue? The on-going disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and the production of Tar-Sand oil are real signs that the easy energy has been used and that EROI or Energy Returned On Investment becomes ever smaller with the result that the fuel price creeps up, and air-and water pollution is growing by leaps and bounds, heralding hard times ahead. Just as heat at the hint of a hand or cool at a computer command, so the days of the raising chickens in cages and cows in crowded quarters will soon become impossible as the oil-clock stands a few seconds before mid-point, meaning that the days of using ten energy calories to produce one food calorie will soon be over. As an aware Christian I believe that we should welcome the days when chickens revert back to their natural pecking order and contended cows roam the vast expanse of prairies where they belong.
But back to my original question: Do animals have rights? Yes, they do. Do chickens and other incarcerated animals have rights? Yes, they do. Just as the people in Bangladesh and elsewhere have the right to be housed decently, and live comfortably, so, if my Bible is true, animals too have the right to exercise their freedom of movement. Job’s words thousands of years ago are still relevant today. What we have lost is the wisdom animals can teach us. We no longer have the ability to understand what the birds are trying to tell us. We no longer know how plants can enlighten us. We are paying lip service to the knowledge that in God’s hands are the life of every living being – animal, birds, plants – and the breath of every human being. It is exactly our ignorance of “the wider world out there” that has led to the mechanization of animal production.
However, our first duty is to see that people everywhere in the world live in humane conditions, as God has named them and they are made in His image. As long as this is not the case, we cannot demand that animals have priority over humans.
Bert Hielema (bert@hielema.ca) uses solar power to mow his grass – trying not to cut too soon the many different wild flowers.