11.5 Animal Rights

Previously in this chapter we have already noted how some issues of the environment and business involve non-human organisms. We use the somewhat cumbersome term “non-human organisms” when we wish to acknowledge that there are other forms of life beyond those we normally call “animals.” Most ethical thinkers concern themselves mainly with animals, however, and so we will use thate term here in this brief section on animal rights.

We should note before beginning, though, that a short treatment such as this one is not nearly sufficient to cover all the issues related to animal rights and how business and the environment can affect them. So with that in mind, we present only a few crucial points.

First, in chapter 2 we defined a “right” as an entitlement to do (or not have to do) certain actions, or to experience (or not to experience) certain things. In that chapter we were talking about human rights, in the context of ethical theories based on rights.

But we can also speak of animal rights. The meaning of the term “right” here is no different from its meaning when we speak of humans: animal rights are the entitlements animals have to do or not do certain things, or to experience or not experience certain things.

Do animals have rights? It would be hard to argue that they do not. Mammals such as dogs, cats, and horses, as well as other kinds of animals, like birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, feel pain—at least, on the basis of their behavior, the most reasonable assumption is that they feel pain. And it also seems reasonable that pain for animals is undesirable—they try to avoid it when possible, they seek to minimize it, when they feel it they try to make it stop, and so on. Animals have interests as well—there are things they want to accomplish and things that are valuable to them as they try to accomplish them.1

Given these assumptions and facts, it would be hard to deny that animals have rights, because denying their rights would amount to saying that human beings are allowed to treat animals however they wish. If they had no rights, we could hurt them as we please, or ignore their needs, or massacre them on a large scale without violating any of their entitlements, as they would have none. Since these actions seem wrong at least most of the time, animals must possess rights protecting them from these kinds of actions.

Given these assumptions and facts, it would be hard to deny that animals have rights, because denying their rights would amount to saying that human beings are allowed to treat animals however they wish. If they had no rights, we could hurt them as we please, or ignore their needs, or massacre them on a large scale without violating any of their entitlements, as they would have none. Since these actions seem wrong at least most of the time, animals must possess rights protecting them from these kinds of actions.

Which rights animals have, exactly, is a question we will not consider here, though any list would begin with certain basic rights humans have, such as the right not to be harmed or made to experience unnecessary pain. The more important question for business and the environment is, to what extent should animal rights protect them from the kinds of harms that businesses can cause, either to animals directly or indirectly, by changing the environment?

The answer to this question depends on how we view the rights of animals in relation to the rights of human beings.

Even if they do believe that animals have certain rights, most people also believe that human rights are superior in the sense that they can trump or otherwise override animal rights when the two come into conflict. The clearest example of this overriding is in eating meat: cannibalism among humans is a gross violation of rights and a horrific act, while eating animals, at least for many people, is not.

We can capture this belief about the superiority of human rights by saying that human concerns matter more than the concerns of animals. Our needs matter more; our desires matter more; our projects matter more, and while we ought to extend some amount of consideration to animals, the fact is that not only human rights, but human needs and desires, can and should override animal rights in many circumstances.

What justifies this unequal treatment? That is, what justifies the claim that human rights, needs, and desires are superior to those of animals? Many answers spring to mind, though it is not clear how compelling any of them are. Humans use language, but many animals communicate with each other, and why should language in particular be what makes humans superior to animals? Humans have science and technology, but do those accomplishments make us morally superior to non-human organisms? What about our ability to live in human communities, or our emotions?

There are two problems with almost any attempt to justify the superiority of human rights by referring to some special feature of human beings that animals don’t seem to have. The first problem is, the fact that humans have that feature and animals don't doesn’t seem sufficient by itself to justify the unequal treatment. Differences between humans and animals are biological differences, but how and why should those differences become moral differences as well? The second problem is that, for any special feature of human beings, we can either find certain animals that have something like that feature, or we can find human beings that don’t have that feature. For example, through most of human history it has been thought that humans had a special capacity called “reason” or “understanding,” which makes their minds superior to those of animals. But “reason,” whatever the term might mean, is just another biological ability, and it’s one whose value depends on a specific context—animals are better at “reasoning” through many problems that humans would fail at. So some animals have some parts of reason. And some humans seem to lack “reason,” or certain parts of it, as when humans have intellectual disabilities. We would not want to conclude that having certain disabilities deprives a person of human rights—so why should animals be deprived of theirs, in relation to ours?

Partly in response to these sorts of problems, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer has popularized the term speciesism. A “species” is a group of biologically related organisms, and so speciesism the idea that one species is morally justified in treating members of its own species in special ways, compared to animals of other species. In other words, speciesism is preferential treatment toward members of one’s own species. is the idea that one species is morally justified in treating members of its own species in special ways, compared to animals of other species. Speciesism is preferential treatment toward members of one’s own species.

Singer has popularized this idea in order to argue that all forms of speciesism are unjust; in other words, Singer claims that the rights of human beings are not superior to the rights of animals, and that animals are deserving of equal treatment in just the way human beings are. Speciesism is immoral, according to this view, because it improperly privileges the rights, needs, and desires of human beings above those of animals.

Because speciesism is such a natural way of thinking for most people, your response to arguments against it might be to scoff. But ask yourself: what are my reasons for thinking that human beings are deserving of better treatment than animals? Try to be specific—why, exactly, do you believe that speciesism is morally permissible? In answering, remember that you must avoid the two problems we discussed above. Your answer must not only mention a difference between humans and animals, but must also say why that difference should lead to a moral difference in how we treat animals. And your answer must also explain why humans who lack certain capacities are nevertheless still deserving of the treatment given to other human beings.

At its root, Singer’s arguments are based on the idea that the interests of all forms of life should be given equal consideration in our actions. If animals feel pain and have interests in carrying out actions and in living certain ways—and again, it seems clear that they do—then, according to Singer, we ought to weigh their interests just as much as we do our own.

Issues of animal rights arise throughout the business world. We’ve raised them here in a chapter on the environment, but animals serve many purposes through many areas of business. Wherever we find animals in the business world, then, we ought to ask ourselves the questions we’ve asked in this section: what justifies treating animals in these ways? What makes them different from us, such that there is a moral justification for treating them differently? What rights should animals have in relation to human business activities, and how should we act to respect and further them?