free essay on animal rights

Animal Rights: Definition, Issues, and Examples

Animal rights advocates believe that non-human animals should be free to live as they wish, without being used, exploited, or otherwise interfered with by humans.

T he idea of giving rights to animals has long been contentious, but a deeper look into the reasoning behind the philosophy reveals ideas that aren’t all that radical. Animal rights advocates want to distinguish animals from inanimate objects, as they are so often considered by exploitative industries and the law.

The animal rights movement strives to make the public aware of the fact that animals are sensitive, emotional , and intelligent beings who deserve dignity and respect. But first, it’s important to understand what the term "animal rights" really means.

What are animal rights?

Animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice . In many countries, human rights are enshrined to protect certain freedoms, such as the right to expression, freedom from torture, and access to democracy. Of course, these choices are constrained depending on social locations like race, class, and gender, but generally speaking, human rights safeguard the basic tenets of what makes human lives worth living. Animal rights aim to do something similar, only for non-human animals.

Animal rights come into direct opposition with animal exploitation, which includes animals used by humans for a variety of reasons, be it for food , as experimental objects, or even pets. Animal rights can also be violated when it comes to human destruction of animal habitats . This negatively impacts the ability of animals to lead full lives of their choosing.

Do animals have rights?

Very few countries have enshrined animal rights into law. However, the US and the UK do have some basic protections and guidelines for how animals can be treated.

The UK Sentience Bill

In 2021, the United Kingdom's House of Commons introduced the Animal Sentience Bill . If passed, this bill would enshrine into law that animals are, in fact, sentient beings, and they deserve humane treatment at the hands of humans. While this law would not afford animals full autonomy, it would be a watershed in the movement to protect animals—officially recognizing their capacity to feel and to suffer, and distinguishing them from inanimate objects.

The US Animal Welfare Act

In 1966, the United States passed the Animal Welfare Act . While it is the biggest federal legislation addressing the treatment of animals to date, its scope is fairly narrow—the law excludes many species, including farmed animals , from its protections. The law does establish some basic guidelines for the sale, transport, and handling of dogs, cats, rabbits, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, and hamsters. It also protects the psychological welfare of animals who are used in lab experiments, and prohibits the violent practices of dogfighting and cockfighting. Again, this law does not recognize the rights and autonomy of animals—or even their ability to feel pain and suffer—but it does afford non-human animals some basic welfare protections .

What are some examples of animal rights?

While few laws currently exist in the UK or US that recognize or protect animals' rights to enjoy lives free from human interference, the following is a list of examples of animal rights that could one day be enacted:

Animals may not be used for food.
Animals may not be hunted.
The habitats of animals must be protected to allow them to live according to their choosing.
Animals may not be bred.

What's the difference between animal welfare and animal rights?

Animal rights philosophy is based on the idea that animals should not be used by people for any reason, and that animal rights should protect their interests the way human rights protect people. Animal welfare , on the other hand, is a set of practices designed to govern the treatment of animals who are being dominated by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment.

Do animals need rights? Pros and cons

The idea of giving animals rights tends to be contentious, given how embedded animal products are within societies such as the United States. Some people, including animal activists, believe in an all-or-nothing approach, where animal rights must be legally enshrined and animals totally liberated from all exploitation. On the other end of the spectrum are people whose livelihoods depend upon animal-based industries. Below are some arguments both in favor of and opposing animal rights.

Arguments in favor of animal rights

Should the rights of animals be recognized, animal exploitative industries would disappear, as would the host of environmental problems they cause, including water pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation.

Halting the widespread use of animals would also eliminate the systematic cruelty and denial of choice that animal industries perpetuate. The physical and psychological pain endured by animals in places like factory farms has reached a point many consider to be unacceptable , to say the least. Animals are mutilated by humans in several different ways, including castrations, dehorning, and cutting off various body parts, usually without the use of anesthetic.

“ Many species never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse.

As their name suggests, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) pack vast numbers of animals in cramped conditions, often forcing animals to perpetually stand in their own waste. Many species—including chickens, cows, and pigs—never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse. Recognizing animal rights would necessitate stopping this mistreatment for good.

Arguments against animal rights

Most arguments against animal rights can be traced back to money, because animal exploitation is big business. Factory farming for animal products is a multi-billion-dollar industry. JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, posted $9 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2020 alone.

A lesser-known, yet also massive, industry is that which supplies animals for laboratories. The US market for lab rats (who are far less popular than mice for experiments) was valued at over $412 million in 2016. Big industrial producers of animals and animal products have enough political clout to influence legislation—including passing laws making it illegal to document farm conditions—and to benefit from government subsidies.

Many people depend upon animal exploitation for work. On factory farms, relatively small numbers of people can manage vast herds or flocks of animals, thanks to mechanization and other industrial farming techniques. Unfortunately, jobs in industrial meatpacking facilities are also known to be some of the most dangerous in the US. Smaller farmers coming from multi-generational farming families more directly depend upon using animals to make a living and tend to follow welfare standards more judiciously. However, smaller farms have been decreasing in number, due to the proliferation of factory farms against which they often cannot compete.

Although people may lose money or jobs in the transition to animal alternatives, new jobs can be created in the alternative protein sector and other plant-based industries.

When did the animal rights movement begin in the US?

The modern day animal rights movement in the United States includes thousands of individuals and a multitude of groups who advocate for animals in a variety of ways—from lobbying legislators to support animal rights laws, to rescuing animals from situations of abuse and neglect. While individuals throughout history have believed in and fought for animal rights, we can trace back the modern, US-based animal rights movement to the founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866. The group's founder, Henry Burgh , believed that animals are "entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law." The organization worked with the New York City government to pass and enforce anti-cruelty laws that prevented the abuse of carthorses and provided care for injured horses. Since then, the ASPCA has expanded its advocacy across different non-human animal species—including farmed animals—and many more animal protection groups have sprung up, both locally and nationwide. Currently, there are over 40,000 non-profit organizations identified as animal groups in the US.

Why are animal rights important?

Animal rights are important because they represent a set of beliefs that counteract inaccurate yet long-held assumptions that animals are nothing more than mindless machines—beliefs popularized by western philosopher Rene Descartes in the 17th century. The perception of animals as being unthinking, unfeeling beings justified using them for human desires, resulting in today’s world where farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild, and the majority of these farmed animals are forced to endure harsh conditions on factory farms.

“ Farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild.

But the science is increasingly clear: The animals we eat ( pigs, chickens, cows ), the animals we use in laboratories ( mice and rats ), the animals who provide us with clothing , and those whose backs we ride upon have all been found to possess more cognitive complexity, emotions, and overall sophistication than has long been believed. This sophistication renders animals more susceptible not only to physical pain but also to the psychological impacts caused by the habitual denial of choice. Awareness of their own subjugation forms sufficient reasoning to rethink the ways animals are treated in western societies.

The consequences of animal rights

Currently, laws in the US and UK are geared toward shielding animals from cruelty, not giving them the same freedom of choice that humans have. (Even these laws are sorely lacking, as they fail to protect livestock and laboratory animals.) However, the animal rights movement can still have real-world consequences. Calls for animal liberation from places like factory farms can raise public awareness of the poor living conditions and welfare violations these facilities perpetuate, sometimes resulting in stronger protections, higher welfare standards , and decreasing consumer demand. Each of these outcomes carries economic consequences for producers, as typically it is more expensive for factory farms to provide better living conditions such as more space, or using fewer growth hormones which can result in lower production yields.

Of course, should the animal rights movement achieve its goals , society would look much different than it does today. If people consume more alternative sources of protein, such as plant-based or lab-grown meat, the global environment would be far less impacted. Clothing would be made without leather or other animal products; alternative sources, such as pineapple leather created from waste products from the pineapple industry, could replace toxic tanneries. The fur industry is being increasingly shunned, with fashion labels rejecting fur in favor of faux materials. Ocean ecosystems would be able to recover, replenishing fish populations and seafloor habitats. Today these are razed by bottom trawling fishing, resulting in the clear-cutting of corals that can be thousands of years old .

How you can advocate for animals

A world in which animals are free from human exploitation still seems far off, but we can make choices that create a kinder world for animals, every day. We can start by leaving animals off our plate in favor of plant-based alternatives—a choice that recognizes animals as the sentient beings that they are, and not products for consumption.

When we come together, we can also fight for better protections for animals in the US and around the world. There's a robust movement to hold corporations accountability and end the cruelty of factory farming—an industry which causes immense amount of suffering for billions of animals. If you want to help end this suffering and spread compassion for animals, join our community of online animal activists and take action .

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What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?

By Elizabeth Barber

A group of animals made of bronze woven together to create the shape of the scales of justice.

A few years ago, activists walked into a factory farm in Utah and walked out with two piglets. State prosecutors argued that this was a crime. That they were correct was obvious: The pigs were the property of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the country. The defendants had videoed themselves committing the crime; the F.B.I. later found the piglets in Colorado, in an animal sanctuary.

The activists said they had completed a “rescue,” but Smithfield had good reason to claim it hadn’t treated the pigs illegally. Unlike domestic favorites like dogs, which are protected from being eaten, Utah’s pigs are legally classified as “livestock”; they’re future products, and Smithfield could treat them accordingly. Namely, it could slaughter the pigs, but it could also treat a pig’s life—and its temporary desire for food, space, and medical help—as an inconvenience, to be handled in whatever conditions were deemed sufficient.

In their video, the activists surveyed those conditions . At the facility—a concentrated animal-feeding operation, or CAFO —pregnant pigs were confined to gestation crates, metal enclosures so small that the sows could barely lie down. (Smithfield had promised to stop using these crates, but evidently had not.) Other pigs were in farrowing crates, where they had enough room to lie down but not enough to turn their bodies around. When the activists approached one sow, they found dead piglets rotting beneath her. Nearby, they found two injured piglets, whom they decided to take. One couldn’t walk because of a foot infection; the other’s face was covered in blood. According to Smithfield, which denied mistreating animals, the piglets were each worth about forty-two dollars, but both had diarrhea and other signs of illness. This meant they were unlikely to survive, and that their bodies would be discarded, just as millions of farm animals are discarded each year.

During the trial, the activists reiterated that, yes, they entered Smithfield’s property and, yes, they took the pigs. And then, last October, the jury found them not guilty. In a column for the Times , one of the activists—Wayne Hsiung, the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere—described talking to one of the jurors, who said that it was hard to convict the activists of theft, given that the sick piglets had no value for Smithfield. But another factor was the activists’ appeal to conscience. In his closing statement, Hsiung, a lawyer who represented himself, argued that an acquittal would model a new, more compassionate world. He had broken the law, yes—but the law, the jury seemed to agree, might be wrong.

A lot has changed in our relationship with animals since 1975, when the philosopher Peter Singer wrote “ Animal Liberation ,” the book that sparked the animal-rights movement. Gestation crates, like the ones in Utah, are restricted in the European Union, and California prohibits companies that use them from selling in stores, a case that the pork industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court—and lost. In a 2019 Johns Hopkins survey, more than forty per cent of respondents wanted to ban new CAFO s. In Iowa, which is the No. 1 pork-producing state, my local grocery store has a full Vegan section. “Vegan” is also a shopping filter on Sephora, and most of the cool-girl brands are vegan, anyway. Wearing fur is embarrassing.

And yet Singer’s latest book, “ Animal Liberation Now ,” a rewrite of his 1975 classic, is less a celebratory volume than a tragic one—tragic because it is very similar to the original in refrain, which is that, big-picture-wise, the state of animal life is terrible. “The core argument I was putting forward,” Singer writes, “seemed so irrefutable, so undeniably right, that I thought everyone who read it would surely be convinced by it.” Apparently not. By some estimates, scientists in the U.S. currently use roughly fifteen million animals for research, including mice, rats, cats, dogs, birds, and nonhuman primates. As in the seventies, much of this research tries to model psychological ailments, despite scientists’ having written for decades that more research is needed to figure out whether animals—and which kind of animals—provide a useful analogue for mental illness in humans. When Singer was first writing, a leading researcher created psychopathic monkeys by raising them in isolation, impregnating them with what he called a “rape rack,” and studying how the mothers bashed their infants’ heads into the ground. In 2019, researchers were still putting animals through “prolonged stress”—trapping them in deep water, restraining them for long periods while subjecting them to the odor of a predator—to see if their subsequent behavior evidenced P.T.S.D. (They wrote that more research was needed.) Meanwhile, factory farms, which were newish in 1975, have swept the globe. Just four per cent of Americans are vegetarian, and each year about eighty-three billion animals are killed for food.

It’s for these animals, Singer writes, “and for all the others who will, unless there is a sudden and radical change, suffer and die,” that he writes this new edition. But Singer’s hopes are by now tempered. One obvious problem is that, in the past fifty years, the legal standing of animals has barely changed. The Utah case was unusual not just because of the verdict but because referendums on farm-animal welfare seldom occur at all. In many states, lawmakers, often pressured by agribusiness, have tried to make it a serious crime to enter a factory farm’s property. The activists in Utah hoped they could win converts at trial; they gambled correctly, but, had they been wrong, they could have gone to prison. As in 1975, it remains impossible to simply petition the justice system to notice that pigs are suffering. All animals are property, and property can’t take its owner to court.

Philosophers have debated the standing of animals for centuries. Pythagoras supposedly didn’t eat them, perhaps because he believed they had souls. Their demotion to “things” owes partly to thinkers like Aristotle, who called animals “brute beasts” who exist “for the sake of man,” and to Christianity, which, like Stoicism before it, awarded unique dignity to humans. We had souls; animals did not. Since then, various secular thinkers have given this idea a new name—“inherent value,” “intrinsic dignity”—in order to explain why it is O.K. to eat a pig but not a baby. For Singer, these phrases are a “last resort,” a way to clumsily distinguish humans from nonhuman animals. Some argue that our ability to tell right from wrong, or to perceive ourselves, sets us apart—but not all humans can do these things, and some animals seem to do them better. Good law doesn’t withhold justice from humans who are elderly or infirm, or those who are cognitively disabled. As a utilitarian, Singer cites the founder of that tradition, the eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that justice and equality have nothing to do with a creature’s ability to reason, or with any of its abilities at all, but with the fact that it can suffer. Most animals suffer. Why, then, do we not give them moral consideration?

Singer’s answer is “speciesism,” or “bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species.” Like racism and sexism, speciesism denies equal consideration in order to maintain a status quo that is convenient for the oppressors. As Lawrence Wright has written in this magazine , courts, when considering the confinement of elephants and chimpanzees, have conceded that such animals evince many of the qualities that give humans legal standing, but have declined to follow through on the implications of this fact. The reason for that is obvious. If animals deserved the same consideration as humans, then we would find ourselves in a world in which billions of persons were living awful, almost unimaginably horrible lives. In which case, we might have to do something about it.

Equal consideration does not mean equal treatment. As a utilitarian, Singer’s aim is to minimize the suffering in the world and maximize the pleasure in it, a principle that invites, and often demands, choices. This is why Singer does not object to killing mosquitos (if done quickly), or to using animals for scientific research that would dramatically relieve suffering, or to eating meat if doing so would save your life. What he would not agree with, though, is making those choices on the basis of perceived intelligence or emotion. In a decision about whether to eat chicken or pork, it is not better to choose chicken simply because pigs seem smarter. The fleeting pleasure of eating any chicken is trounced by its suffering in industrial farms, where it was likely force-fed, electrocuted, and perhaps even boiled alive.

Still, Singer’s emphasis on suffering is cause for concern to Martha Nussbaum , whose new book, “ Justice for Animals ,” is an attempt to settle on the ideal philosophical template for animal rights. Whereas Singer’s argument is emphatically emotion-free—empathy, in his view, is not just immaterial but often actively misleading—Nussbaum is interested in emotions, or at least in animals’ inner lives and desires. She considers several theories of animal rights, including Singer’s, before arguing that we should adopt her “capabilities approach,” which builds on a framework developed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, and holds that all creatures should be given the “opportunity to flourish.” For decades, Nussbaum has adjusted her list of what this entails for humans, which includes “being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length,” “being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves,” and having “bodily integrity”—namely, freedom from violence and “choice in matters of reproduction.” In “Justice for Animals,” she outlines some conditions for nonhuman flourishing: a natural life span, social relationships, freedom of movement, bodily integrity, and play and stimulation. Eventually, she writes, we would have a refined list for each species, so that we could insure flourishing “in the form of life characteristic to the creature.”

In imagining this better world, Nussbaum is guided by three emotions: wonder, anger, and compassion. She wants us to look anew at animals such as chickens or pigs, which don’t flatter us, as gorillas might, with their resemblance to us. What pigs do, and like to do, is root around in the dirt; lacquer themselves in mud to keep cool; build comfy nests in which to shelter their babies; and communicate with one another in social groups. They also seek out belly rubs from human caregivers. In a just world, Nussbaum writes, we would wonder at a pig’s mysterious life, show compassion for her desire to exist on her own terms, and get angry when corporations get in her way.

Some of Nussbaum’s positions are more actionable, policy-wise, than others. For example, she supports legal standing for animals, which raises an obvious question: How would a pig articulate her desires to a lawyer? Nussbaum notes that a solution already exists in fiduciary law: in the event that a person, like a toddler or disabled adult, cannot communicate their decisions or make sound ones, a representative is appointed to understand that person’s interests and advocate for them. Just as organizations exist to help certain people advance their interests, organizations could represent categories of animals. In Nussbaum’s future world, such a group could take Smithfield Foods to court.

Perhaps Nussbaum’s boldest position is that wild animals should also be represented by fiduciaries, and indeed be assured, by humans, the same flourishing as any other creature. If this seems like an overreach, a quixotic attempt to control a world that is better off without our meddling, Nussbaum says, first, to be realistic: there is no such thing as a truly wild animal, given the extent of human influence on Earth. (If a whale is found dead with a brick of plastic in its stomach, how “wild” was it?) Second, in Nussbaum’s view, if nature is thoughtless—and Nussbaum thinks it is—then perhaps what happens in “the wild” is not always for the best. No injustice can be ignored. If we aspire to a world in which no sentient creature can harm another’s “bodily integrity,” or impede one from exploring and fulfilling one’s capabilities, then it is not “the destiny of antelopes to be torn apart by predators.”

Here, Nussbaum’s world is getting harder to imagine. Animal-rights writing tends to elide the issue of wild-animal suffering for obvious reasons—namely, the scarcity of solutions. Singer covers the issue only briefly, and mostly to say that it’s worth researching the merit of different interventions, such as vaccination campaigns. Nussbaum, for her part, is unclear about how we would protect wild antelopes without impeding the flourishing of their predators—or without impeding the flourishing of antelopes, by increasing their numbers and not their resources. In 2006, when she previously discussed the subject, she acknowledged that perhaps “part of what it is to flourish, for a creature, is to settle certain very important matters on its own.” In her new book, she has not entirely discarded that perspective: intervention, she writes, could result in “disaster on a large scale.” But the point is to “press this question all the time,” and to ask whether our hands-off approach is less noble than it is self-justifying—a way of protecting ourselves from following our ideals to their natural, messy, inconvenient ends.

The enduring challenge for any activist is both to dream of almost-unimaginable justice and to make the case to nonbelievers that your dreams are practical. The problem is particularly acute in animal-rights activism. Ending wild-animal suffering is laughably hard (our efforts at ending human suffering don’t exactly recommend us to the task); obviously, so is changing the landscape of factory farms, or Singer wouldn’t be reissuing his book. In 2014, the British sociologist Richard Twine suggested that the vegan isn’t unlike the feminist of yore, in that both come across as killjoys whose “resistance against routinized norms of commodification and violence” repels those who prefer the comforts of the status quo. Wayne Hsiung, the Direct Action Everywhere activist, was only recently released from jail, after being sentenced for duck and chicken rescues in California. On his blog, he wrote that one reason the prosecution succeeded was that, unlike in Utah, he and his colleagues were cast as “weird extremists.”

It’s easy to construct a straw-man vegan, one oblivious to his own stridency, privilege, or hypocrisy. Isn’t he driving deforestation with all his vegetables? (No, Singer replies, as the vast majority of soybeans are fed to farm animals.) Isn’t he ignoring food deserts or the price tag on vegan substitutes, which puts them out of the reach of poor families? (Nussbaum acknowledges that cost can be an issue, but argues that it only emphasizes the need for resourced people to eat as humanely as they can, given that the costs of a more ethical diet “will not come down until it is chosen by many.”) Anyone pointing out moral culpability will provoke, in both others and themselves, a certain defensiveness. Nussbaum spends a lot of time discussing her uneasiness with her choice to eat fish for nutritional reasons. (She argues that fish likely have no sense of the future, a claim that even she seems unsure about.) Singer is eager to intervene here, emphasizing that animal-rights activism should pursue the diminishment of suffering, not the achievement of sainthood. “We are more likely to persuade others to share our attitude if we temper our ideals with common sense than if we strive for the kind of purity that is more appropriate to a religious dietary law than to an ethical and political movement,” he writes. Veganism is a boycott, and, while boycotts are more effective the more you commit to them, what makes them truly effective is persuading others to join them.

Strangely, where Singer and Nussbaum might agree is that defining the proper basis for the rights of animals is less important, at least in the short term, than getting people not to harm them, for any reason at all. Those reasons might have nothing to do with the animals themselves. Perhaps you decide not to eat animals because you care about people: because you care that the water where you live, if it’s anything like where I live, is too full of CAFO by-products to confidently drink. Perhaps you care about the workers in enormous slaughterhouses, where the pay is low and the costs to the laborer high. Perhaps you believe in a God, and believe that this God would expect better of people than to eat animals raised and killed in darkness. Or perhaps someone you love happens to love pigs, or to love the idea that the world could be gentler or more just, and you love the way they see the future enough to help them realize it. Nussbaum, after all, became interested in animal rights because she loved a person, her late daughter, an attorney who championed legislation to protect whales and other wild animals until her death, in 2019. Nussbaum’s book is dedicated to her—and also, now, to the whales. ♦

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Animal Rights Essay: Topics, Outline, & Writing Tips

🐇 Animal Rights Essay: the Basics
💡 Animal Rights Essay Topics
📑 Outlining Your Essay
✍️ Sample Essay (200 Words)

🔗 References

🐇 animal rights essay: what is it about.

Animal rights supporters advocate for the idea that animals should have the same freedom to live as they wish, just as humans do. They should not be exploited or used in meat , fur, and other production. At long last, we should distinguish animals from inanimate objects and resources like coal, timber, or oil.

The picture contains an animal rights essay definition.

Interdisciplinary research has shown that animals are emotional and sensitive, just like we are.

Their array of emotions includes joy, happiness, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, anger, love, compassion, respect, disgust, despair, and even grief.

However, animal rights legislation does not extend human rights to animals. It establishes their right to have their fundamental needs and interests respected while people decide how to treat them. This right changes the status of animals from being property to being legal entities.

The statement may sound strange until we recall that churches , banks, and universities are also legal entities. Their interests are legally protected by law. Then why do we disregard the feelings of animals , which are not inanimate institutions? Several federal laws protect them from human interference.

But the following statements are only some of the rules that could one day protect animal rights in full:

Animals should not be killed by hunting.
Animals’ habitats should allow them to live in freedom.
Animals should not be bred for sale or any other purpose.
Animals should not be used for food by industries or households.

Most arguments against the adoption of similar laws are linked to money concerns. Animal exploitation has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry. The lives of many private farmers depend on meat production, and most people prefer not to change the comfortable status quo.

Animal Rights Argumentative Essay

An animal rights argumentative essay should tackle a problematic issue that people have widely discussed. While choosing ideas for the assignment, opt for the most debatable topics.

Here is a brief list of argumentative essay prompts on animal rights:

The pros and cons of animal rights.
Can humanity exist without meat production?
Do animals have souls?
Should society become vegan to protect animal rights?

As you see, these questions could raise controversy between interlocutors. Your purpose is to take a side and give several arguments in its support. Then you’ll have to state a counterargument to your opinion and explain why it is incorrect.

Animal Rights Persuasive Essay

An animal rights persuasive essay should clearly state your opinion on the topic without analyzing different points of view. Still, the purpose of your article is to persuade the reader that your position is not only reasonable but the only correct one. For this purpose, select topics relating to your opinion or formulated in questionary form.

For example:

What is your idea about wearing fur?
Do you think people would ever ban animal exploitation ?
Is having pets a harmful practice?
Animal factories hinder the development of civilization .

💡 53 Animal Rights Essay Topics

Animal rights have been suppressed for ages because people disregard their mental abilities .
Cosmetic and medical animal testing .
Laws preventing unnecessary suffering of animals mean that there is some necessary suffering.
Red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs experiment .
Do you believe animals should have legal rights?
Genetically modified animals and implications .
Why is animal welfare important?
Neutering animals to prevent overpopulation: Pros and cons.
Animal testing: Arguments for and against .
What is our impact on marine life ?
Some animals cannot stay wild .
Animal testing for medical purposes .
We are not the ones to choose which species to preserve.
Pavlov’s dog experiment .
Keeping dogs chained outdoors is animal neglect.
The use of animals for research .
Animal dissection as a learning tool: Alternatives?
More people beat their pets than we think.
Duties to non-human animals .
If we do not control the population of some animals, they will control ours.
Animals in entertainment: Not entertaining at all.
Animals in research, education, and teaching.
Which non-animal production endangers the species?
Is animal testing really needed?
Why do some people think that buying a new pet is cheaper than paying for medical treatment of the old one?
Animal experiments: benefits, ethics, and defenders.
Can people still be carnivorous if they stop eating animals?
Animal testing role .
Marine aquariums and zoos are animal prisons.
Animal experimentation: justification arguments .
What would happen if we replace animals in circuses with people, keeping the same living conditions?
The ethics of animal use in scientific research .
Animal sports: Relics of the past.
Animal testing ban: counterargument and rebuttal .
Denial to purchase animal-tested cosmetics will not change anything.
Animal research, its ineffectiveness and amorality .
Animal rights protection based on their intellect level: It tells a lot about humanity.
Debates of using animals in scientific analysis .
How can we ban tests on rats and kill them in our homes at the same time?
Animal testing in experiments .
What is the level of tissue engineering development in leather and meat production?
Equal consideration of interests to non-human animals .
Animals should not have to be our servants .
Zoos as an example of humans’ immorality .
We should feed wild animals to help them survive.
Animal testing in biomedical research .
Abolitionism: The right not to be owned.
Do you support the Prima facie rights theory?
Psychologist perspective on research involving animal and human subjects .
Ecofeminism: What is the link between animals’ and women’s rights ?
No philosophy could rationalize cruelty against animals.
Qualities that humans and animals share .
Ancient Buddhist societies and vegetarianism: A research paper.

Need more ideas? You are welcome to use our free research topic generator !

📑 Animal Rights Essay Outline

An animal rights essay should be constructed as a standard 5-paragraph essay (if not required otherwise in the assignment). The three following sections provide a comprehensive outline.

The picture lists the structural parts of an animal rights essay.

Animal Rights Essay: Introduction

An introduction consists of:

Background information,
A thesis statement .

In other words, here you need to explain why you decided to write about the given topic and which position you will take. The background part should comprise a couple of sentences highlighting the topicality of the issue. The thesis statement expresses your plans in the essay.

For example: In this essay, I will explain why animal-based production harms the ecology.

Animal Rights Essay: Main Body

The main body is a place for you to argue your position . One paragraph equals one argument. In informative essays, replace argumentation with facts.

Start each section with a topical sentence consisting of a general truth. Then give some explanation and more specific points. By the way, at the end of this article, you’ll find a bonus! It is a priceless selection of statistics and facts about animal rights.

Animal Rights Essay: Conclusion

A conclusion restates your central ideas and thesis statement. Approach it as a summary of your essay, avoid providing new facts or arguments.

✍️ Animal Rights Essay Example (200 Words)

Why is animal welfare important? The term “animal welfare” evokes the pictures of happy cows from a milk advertisement. But the reality has nothing to do with these bright videos. Humane treatment of animals is a relative concept. This essay explains why animal welfare is important, despite that it does not prevent farms from killing or confining animals.

The best way to approach animal welfare is by thinking of it as a temporary measure. We all agree that the current state of the economy does not allow humanity to abandon animal-based production. Moreover, such quick decisions could make farm animals suffer even more. But ensuring the minimum possible pain is the best solution as of the moment.

The current legislation on animal welfare is far from perfect. The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 prevents cruelty against animals in labs and zoos. Meanwhile, the majority of suffering animals do not fall under its purview. For example, it says nothing about the vivisection of rats and mice for educational and research purposes, although the procedure is extremely painful for the creature. Neither does it protect farm animals.

Unfortunately, the principles of animal welfare leave too much room for interpretation. Animals should be free from fear and stress, but how can we measure that? They should be allowed to engage in natural behaviors, but no confined space would let them do so. Thus, the legislation is imprecise.

The problem of animal welfare is almost unresolvable because it is a temporary measure to prevent any suffering of domesticated animals. It has its drawbacks but allows us to ensure at least some comfort for those we unjustifiably use for food. They have the same right to live on this planet as we do, and animal farming will be stopped one day.

📊 Bonus: Statistics & Facts for Your Animal Rights Essay Introduction

Improve the quality of your essay on animal rights by working in the following statistics and facts about animals.

According to USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service , about 4.6 billion animals — including hogs, sheep, cattle, chickens, ducks, lambs, and turkey — were killed and used for food in the United States last year (2015).
People in the U.S. kill over 100 million animals for laboratory experiments every year, according to PETA .
More than 40 million animals are killed for fur worldwide every year. About 30 million animals are raised and killed on fur farms, and nearly 10 million wild animals are hunted and killed for the same reasons — for their valuable fur.
According to a report by In Defense of Animals , hunters kill more than 200 million animals in the United States yearly.
The Humane Society of the United States notes that a huge number of cats and dogs — between 3 and 4 million each year — are killed in the country’s animal shelters. Sadly, this number does not include dogs or cats killed in animal cruelty cases.
According to the ASPCA , about 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters in the United States yearly. Of this number, 3.9 Mil of dogs, and 3.4 Mil of cats.
About 2.7 million animals are euthanized in shelters every year (1.4 million cats and 1.2 million dogs).
About 2.7 million shelter animals are adopted every year (1.3 million cats and 1.4 million dogs).
In total, there are approximately 70-80 million dogs and 74-96 million cats living as pets in the United States.
It’s impossible to determine the exact number of stray cats and dogs living in the United States, but the number of cats is estimated to be up to 70 million.
Many stray cats and dogs were once family pets — but they were not kept securely indoors or provided with proper identification.

Each essay on animals rights makes humanity closer to a better and more civilized world. Please share any thoughts and experience in creating such texts in the comments below. And if you would like to hear how your essay would sound in someone’s mind, use our Text-To-Speech tool .

Why Animal Rights? | PETA
Animal Rights – Encyclopedia Britannica
Animal ethics: Animal rights – BBC
Animal Health and Welfare – National Agricultural Library
The Top 10 Animal Rights Issues – Treehugger
Animal welfare – European Commission

Research Paper Analysis: How to Analyze a Research Article + Example

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Essay on Animal Rights

Students are often asked to write an essay on Animal Rights in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Animal Rights

Understanding animal rights.

Animal rights mean animals should be free from human harm, abuse, or use for personal gains. It’s the belief that animals deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. This concept is based on the idea that animals have feelings and interests just like humans.

Importance of Animal Rights

Animal rights are important because animals are living beings. They feel pain, experience emotions, and want to live a life free from harm. By respecting animal rights, we show our respect for all life forms. We also help maintain balance in nature.

Threats to Animal Rights

Animals face many threats. These include hunting, habitat loss, and cruel treatment in farms or circuses. Many animals are also used for scientific experiments. These practices cause pain and suffering to animals. They are clear violations of animal rights.

Steps to Protect Animal Rights

We can protect animal rights in many ways. We can adopt pets instead of buying them. We can avoid products tested on animals. We can also support organizations that work for animal rights. Teaching others about animal rights is another effective way to help.

Animal rights are a crucial part of a just society. By protecting animal rights, we also protect our environment and ourselves. It’s our duty to ensure that animals live free from harm and exploitation. We must respect all life forms and their rights.

Also check:

Speech on Animal Rights

250 Words Essay on Animal Rights

What are animal rights.

Animal rights mean that animals deserve to live free from suffering, pain, and exploitation. This idea is based on the belief that animals have feelings too. They can feel joy, sadness, and pain just like us humans. So, they should be treated with kindness and respect.

Why are Animal Rights Important?

Animal rights are important for many reasons. Firstly, animals are living beings, not objects. They should not be used for our selfish needs like food, clothing, or entertainment. Secondly, respecting animal rights helps us become better humans. It teaches us values like compassion, empathy, and respect for all life. Lastly, animals play a crucial role in our ecosystem. If we harm them, it can disturb the balance of nature.

How can we Protect Animal Rights?

Protecting animal rights is not hard. We can start by being kind to animals. We should not hurt them or make them suffer. We can also stop using products that are tested on animals. Many companies test their products on animals, causing them pain and suffering. By refusing to buy such products, we can stand up for animal rights.

Role of Laws in Protecting Animal Rights

Many countries have laws to protect animal rights. These laws make it illegal to harm animals or use them in cruel ways. But, these laws are not always followed. So, it’s important for us to raise our voice against animal cruelty. We can report cases of animal abuse to the authorities and demand strict action.

In conclusion, animals have a right to live free from pain and suffering. It’s our duty to respect these rights and protect animals. After all, a world where all living beings are treated with kindness and respect is a better world for everyone.

500 Words Essay on Animal Rights

Animal rights mean that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration—what’s best for them. Regardless of how useful they are to humans, or how cute they are, they should be treated with respect. They should not be hurt or treated badly. Some people think animals should have the same rights as humans, while others believe they should have different rights.

Animal rights are important because animals are living beings. They can feel pain, they can suffer, and they have a will to live. Just like humans, they have feelings and emotions. They deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. Animal rights also help people. When we treat animals well, we also learn to treat people well.

Types of Animal Rights

There are two main types of animal rights. The first type is called ‘animal welfare’. This means that people should make sure animals are treated well. They should have good food, a nice place to live, and should not be hurt or made to suffer.

The second type is ‘animal liberation’. This means that animals should be free and not used by humans at all. People who believe in animal liberation think that animals should not be kept in zoos or farms, used for testing, or used for entertainment.

Animal Rights and Laws

Many countries have laws to protect animals. These laws say that people cannot hurt animals or make them suffer. They also say that animals should be treated with respect. But, not all countries have these laws, and in many places, these laws are not followed.

Animal Rights Movements

There are many groups that fight for animal rights. These groups work to change laws, to stop people from hurting animals, and to educate people about how to treat animals better. Some of these groups are big and well-known, like PETA and the Humane Society. Others are smaller and work in just one area or on one issue.

What Can We Do?

There are many ways we can help animals and support animal rights. We can adopt pets instead of buying them. We can choose not to go to places that use animals for entertainment, like circuses and zoos. We can eat less meat or no meat at all. And, we can tell others about why animal rights are important.

In conclusion, animal rights are about respecting and caring for animals. They are about understanding that animals have feelings and deserve to be treated well. By supporting animal rights, we are not just helping animals, we are also making the world a better place for all living beings.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Animal Exploitation
Essay on Animals Also Have Feelings
Essay on Animals Used For Entertainment

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Essays on Animal Rights

Animal Rights Essays

Animal rights are a set of concepts that allow animals to be entitled to the possession of their own existence. These rights are to ensure that the most basic interests of all animals are protected. This covers a large number of rights, such as not being subject to hard labor, experiments, killing, etc. Essays on animal rights are of critical importance as the subject is ever-relevant. This topic is essential to today’s society. If you love animals, you should definitely choose a related subject. Not only will it be interesting to research, but you will also have the chance to take your own stance on this critical issue. Besides, animal rights essays can help a student reveal one’s in-born features like compassion and empathy to readers. If you choose this topic for your work, don’t hesitate to check out our essay samples. There, the topic is considered from different angles and, as a bonus, you will find some interesting facts on this matter.

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It goes on everyday. Faced with being incapable to pay attention of their animals any more, apparently common people do something unlikely pitiless. They throw out their pets to fend for themselves. We can learn this from the personal experiences, by working with a number of animal saver groups, and from time to time, we’ll …

Animal rights have been a consistent subject of debate, with animal activists emphasizing the need to differentiate between animal rights and welfare. The government’s failure to lay down sufficient legislation to help in the protection of animals from human predation has made it difficult for several people to believe in animal rights. It is essential …

Introduction: The American Society for the preclusion of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) defines animal cruelty as “acts of violence or neglect perpetrated against animals are considered animal cruelty” (Animal Cruelty). Animal cruelty is a serious crime that occurs in different forms worldwide today. To deter or reduce the volume of this severe felony proper legislation …

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Animals have equal rights like human beings to live freely on this planet without the fear of getting killed or tortured. Today people consume meat and fish, use leather products, wear woolen and silk clothes without thinking about the effects these actions have on animals. Animals should be given their due rights and space because …

The articles chosen for examination are as follows: “Why Worry About the Animals?”, Jean Bethke Elshtain (1995), “The Moral Case for Experimentation on Animals”, H. J. McCloskey (1987), and “Ethics and Animals”, Steven Zak (1992). After extracting the moral and ethical position the writer has adopted, an opinion will be offered as to which piece …

It is indeed extremely disturbing and sad that every year millions of animals are killed, tortured or mutilated in the United States of America in the name of animal testing (Judson 12). A range of institutions that include government and private laboratories, companies manufacturing cosmetics and household products, pharmaceutical companies, government bodies and agencies, academic …

Animal rights in the ancient world

Though noted philosophers like Rene Descartes and John Locke debated the rights of animals in the 17th century, animal rights issues go much further back. Jainism as a religion has advocated for complete nonviolence towards living creatures since the 6th century BC. In ancient Greece, the famous mathematician Pythagoras declared that animals have souls, like humans, and converted to vegetarianism. Ancient Kings in India opened hospitals for animals in the 3rd century BC.

Chapter 2 Article: Discussing animal rights and animal research in the classroom Struggling with your HW? Get your assignments done by real pros. Save your precious time and boost your marks with ease. Just fill in your HW requirements and you can count on us!Customer data protection100% Plagiarism Free Order your HW now Research Question …

If one takes a look at the relationship between the mankind and the natural world, one will be able to see that there are two contradicting points of view, one of which argues that people are allowed to do anything, regardless of consequences, while another one suggests that humans are a part of the environment …

One of the most debated topics in modern animal right discourses is whether animals should be used for scientific test or not. There is always a group of scholars and common people who are dead against the animal test. On the other hand, considerate people opine that animals can be used in scientific experiments, if …

There was a time when it was commonly accepted by “civilized” people that those of non-European descent deserved to be chattel. There was a time when women could be viewed as property. In general, it seems that humanity has over time increased its level of moral sophistication and expanded its moral universe. In particular, there …

Animal rights as noted by Buzzle (2012) are also called animal liberation. It is a concept to ensure that animal rights are protected as equally as those of human beings. These rights are there to ensure that human beings do not harm, exploit, abuse or kill animals aimlessly. In this concept, it is illegal to …

Good Example Of Animal Rights Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Animals , Rights , Human , Animal , Animal Rights , Science , Ethics , Morality

Words: 1200

Published: 03/08/2023

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Introduction

Separating right from wrong remains one of the most critical factors that have generated intense debate across various contexts. Precisely, the society is clouded by an array of moral issues that have created a divide pitting those opposed and those supporting certain dynamics in the society. The rights of animals occur as one of the topics that remain controversial and raise varying opinions from the societal populations. The highly democratic nature of the society has offered a platform where animal rights advocacy thrives. While much has been hypothesized about animal rights advocacy, there is a need to note that the notion that animals should have rights was first developed in the 1970s by Peter Singer; an Australian philosopher. Ever since then, the question as to whether animals should have rights has and continues to be debated widely (Boss 76).

My Position

The concept of animal rights varies depending on different contexts such as whether animals should be domesticated, whether animals should be hunted or eaten, and whether animals should be used for scientific experiments or testing. Nonetheless, the major controversy aligned with animal rights is whether animals should be used for testing when performing scientific experiments. There are certain laws that regulate the use of animals for scientific research. Enacted in the year 1966, The Animal Welfare Act of the United States offers certain regulations governing various issues such as the use of animal in research (Cooke 933). A reflection on various settings portrays the fact that different animal species are used for research purposes. Based on a personal thought, animals have rights, which should be established and supported.

Supporting Views

The most comprehensive reason as to why I support the notion that animal has rights is guided by the utilitarian dogma. Utilitarianism hypothesizes that an action is deemed moral if it confers positive consequences that outweigh the negative consequences. Therefore, the benefits that human beings derive from using animals for various purposes such as scientific research tend to outweigh the benefits. Notable is the fact that not all the scientific tests involving the use of animals yield results that benefit human kind. Some of such researches do not yield any results at all. Similarly, the pain that animals go through when they are slaughtered as a source of food does not match the benefits that human get from consuming meat from the slaughtered animals. In a nutshell, the moral consequences emanating from the use of animals for various purposes are severe and warrant the abolition of the use of animals for the said purposes. In a nutshell, animal rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of certain practices such as the use of animals for scientific researches that do not confer many benefits to human beings. The fact that I support the argument that animals have rights is further guided by welfarism ideology. This ideology hypothesizes that human beings are tasked with the colossal responsibility of maintaining the welfare of the animals. One of the ways in which humans can assure the welfare of the animals is by reducing animal suffering caused by various practices such as research. Even in cases where use of animals for certain practices such as scientific testing, the practice should be executed in such a way that the suffering of the animals is reduced. As an example, anesthetics should be used to numb the animals before being used for purposes aligned with scientific testing (Jones 470). In a nutshell, animals have rights; hence, unnecessary suffering of the animals should be prevented. It is also of the essence to note that animals have an integral worth, which may not be comparable to the usefulness that animals offer to humans. Similar to other creatures, animals deserve the right to live freely from unnecessary pain emanating from human activities. The conventional notion that animals are intended for use by humans is unjustified and flawed; hence, should be repealed. Notable is the fact that animals have from time to time demonstrated their capability to honor human privileges. As an example, cats can form deep bonds with humans and would often avoid biting and scratching human. This depicts the fact that animals respect human rights; hence, humans should also have a mutual respect for animal rights.

Opposing Views

There are various notions expressed by those of the opinion that animals do not have rights. One of the hypotheses expressed by those opposed to animal rights is that moral norms in the society are created by moral agents. As such, animals do not qualify as moral agents; hence, what is right for the animals is solely defined by human beings. In this case, humans are the only rational agents with the moral authority to determine what is right and what is wrong. In line with this ideology, animals do not have rights; hence, can be used for various purposes including research, which are deemed appropriate by human beings are the rational agents. In a nutshell, animals do not qualify to enter into any contract pertaining their use; hence, animals do not have rights (Jones 68). The argument that animals do not have rights is further supported by the notion that it is natural for humans to use animals for different purposes. In any case, animals often strive for survival in the wild where they at times fall prey to various predators. A reflection on the natural world depicts the existence of a hierarchy indicating that some living beings are more valuable than others. In the case of humans and animals, human beings have more value than animals. For this reason, human beings are justified to use animals for pleasure, nutrition, and other essential human dynamics. The mere fact that animals appear distantly related to humans does not mean that they should have rights.

Counterargument and Conclusion

The notions expressed by those of the opinion that animals do not have rights are not justified based on the primary fact that the mere fact that humans are considered moral agents means that they are morally restrained from mistreating animals. As a result, human beings should support animal rights by not inflicting unnecessary pain when carrying our various practices including research. Various human practices that overlook issues on animal rights pose immense harm to the animals. As an example, several animals die as a result of animal testing carried out by scientific researchers. In most cases, the death or harm of animals caused by human practices does not guarantee any direct benefit to humans. In conclusion, the value of animals may not be comparable to the benefits that animals offer when used differently by humans; hence, animals have rights that should be supported.

Boss, Judith. Analyzing Moral Issues: Sixth Edition. London: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2012. Print. Cooke, Steve. Perpetual Strangers: Animals and the Cosmopolitan Right. Political Studies 62.4 (2014): 930-944. Print. Jones, Robert. Animal Rights is a Social Justice Issue. Contemporary Justice Review 18.4 (2015): 467-482. Print.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Animal Rights — Thesis Statement For Animals Deserve Rights, And Their Rights

Thesis Statement for Animals Deserve Rights, and Their Rights

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A terrified cow looks through an opening from the inside of a transport truck arriving at a Dutch slaughterhouse. Credit: Dario Endara / We Animals Media

Open dialogue is an important tool for moving discourse forward and gaining a better understanding of the issues we face in our time. In the spirit of open dialogue, the following is my response to the essay Animal Rights and the Challenge of Activism .

In the essay, the author describes the different tactics used by animal rights activists to persuade non-vegans. She emphasizes the importance of free speech, open inquiry, and debate, in particular the importance of non-vegans’ ability to challenge vegans. But in doing so, she also unwittingly exposes how her own rhetoric might influence people in such a way that might undermine the animal rights movement. My response isn’t an attempt at a ‘take-down’ of the author, but instead it is a way to show how important language is in animal rights activism and how even those of us with the best intentions can fall into these traps.

The ‘Pick Me Vegan’

The author opens her essay with the dated joke, “How do you know someone is vegan…” — well, we all know the punch line. She pokes fun at the stereotype of the annoying vegan, but then spends the rest of the essay reassuring the reader that she is actually not like one of those pushy vegans she jokes about from the outset. But in an effort to make herself appear more palatable to non-vegans, the author may actually be undermining the animal rights movement altogether.

She calls PETA’s ‘The Holocaust on Your Plate’ campaign off-putting and even “damaging for the movement.” She writes that, “[a]nimal rights activists displaying the injustices of slaughterhouses in public often seems to have the opposite effect, putting people off the cause,” despite absolute lack of evidence suggesting this to be true (and ignoring all of the anecdotes of people who went vegan overnight because they viewed animal agriculture footage).

Further on she writes that she believes the main challenge facing the animal rights movement is its associated baggage of identity. She writes, “no one wants to be identified with the militant vegan.” But by using the same language that non-vegans use to dismiss veganism, she legitimizes and reinforces these stereotypes. She concedes that there is such a thing as a ‘militant vegan’ and that being one is undesirable and off-putting. Additionally, how one might define a ‘militant vegan’ depends entirely on one’s own subjective perspective. Everyone will have their own definition–and some may be more charitable with their definition than others. This term is unhelpful and only perpetuates the stereotype of the pushy vegan that the author clearly seeks to avoid as a label for herself.

By reinforcing these stereotypes, she’s giving non-vegans permission to continue their support of cruelty without the added guilt.

Some might describe the above tactics as ones that are associated with the ‘Pick Me Vegan.’

Like the ‘ Pick Me Girl ’, the ‘Pick Me Vegan’ downplays his or her own beliefs as a way to separate themselves from those other ‘annoying vegans’ and reassure you that they are not like them. They are apologetic and passive, and they assert that “veganism is a personal choice.” The notion of something being a ‘personal choice’ is commonly espoused by cultural relativists. But this stance is what is truly doing a disservice to the animals. Any action stops being a personal choice when there is a victim involved. In this case, the victims are the animals. And when you have ‘Pick Me Vegan’ celebrities and influencers spout the same language, this language becomes more normalized and widely accepted. This rhetoric makes it more challenging for those who actually seek change and makes the unapologetic vegan appear more radical and unhinged than they are. It reaffirms animal consumption as the default behavior and veganism as an anomaly.

‘Pick Me’s’ tend to state that we should not ‘shove our views down people’s throats’ though it should be noted that food brands do this every single day in various ways. In the United States, fast food advertisements are the most viewed food/beverage ads by children . At the end of 2018, Olive Garden had the most ads among related food brands on TV in the U.S. followed closely by Domino’s Pizza and Longhorn Steakhouse. Domino’s spends the most on advertising above all other restaurants, followed by McDonalds, Subway and Taco Bell. Nestle spends billions on advertising annually in the United States alone. Coca-Cola spends the most on advertising among beverage brands.

These companies spend billions of dollars to coax us to fill our bodies with poison, but they are never told to ‘stop forcing their views on others.’ For companies, it’s simply called advertising. For individuals, it’s called ‘forcing your views.’ Ordinary people who reveal uncomfortable truths are seen as scapegoats and labeled ‘militant.’ There is immense social pressure to downplay the truth in order to make others feel less bad about their choices that impact others.

The Pick Me Vegan’s main goal is not to be a voice for the voiceless but rather to seek the approval of non-vegans. And failing to be consistent with their convictions may actually be less effective than the PETA campaign that the author deemed as being “harmful for the movement.” She sees harsh truths as being ‘harmful’ when the real harm on display here is the mass scale murder of animals at the hands of humans every single day in every corner of the world.

Further on, the author writes that the ability of non-vegans to engage vegans in open discourse is itself a key component to affecting change in the animal rights movement. She writes, “If people weren’t able to criticize vegans and challenge their arguments, nothing would change.” But in doing so she is still toeing the line, catering to non-vegans at the expense of the movement, seeking to score social points and stay on non-vegans ‘good side’ rather than truthfully exposing the realities of animal exploitation.

A critical component to changing minds is the language vegans use, not the criticisms that come from non-vegans.

It’s tempting to be a ‘Pick Me’ with any issue. I’m certainly sympathetic; I used to be like this on a number of issues. Many of us adopt this approach so we won’t offend or make anyone feel uncomfortable. We avoid direct confrontation because we think our relationships will be better off. But in doing so, we betray the causes we otherwise support. In this case, we are betraying the animals who need us to be a voice for them. How can you take anyone seriously when they spend more time apologizing for their beliefs than standing strong in them?

Animal Welfare vs Animal Rights-Based Approach

The essay culminates in this moment when the author uses welfare-based language that confirms her position as a reductionist vegan.

She writes, “For this movement, the intended change is pretty clear, a reduction in the suffering and exploitation of animals [emphasis mine].”

In this sentence it is clear that her focus is on reducing suffering. In other words, she has a welfare-based approach to animal rights activism, not a rights-based or liberationist approach. This is an important distinction that may be unimportant to non-vegans, but it does impact the messaging of the animal rights movement, as can clearly be seen in this essay. The two approaches are commonly disputed among activists, so to conflate everyone as ‘reductionist’ is patently wrong. Anonymous for the Voiceless , Animal Liberation Front , and Direct Action Everywhere are just a few groups that are abolitionist in their approach, not reductionist. Anonymous for the Voiceless clearly states this on their homepage: “We hold an abolitionist stance against all forms of non-human animal exploitation and promote a clear and direct animal rights message [emphasis mine].”

Animal welfarists only seek to reduce suffering, not eliminate it altogether. And this stance is what I believe is actually preventing vegans from moving forward and affecting change.

The reductionist approach does not carry the same sense of urgency or conviction. This approach is what drives campaigns like Meatless Mondays or 30-Day Vegan Challenges. It’s what drives a consumer to buy the plant-based nuggets instead of the chicken nuggets once in a while, but it doesn’t actually change minds in the long-term. Food consumption trends reflect this.

While going plant-based has never been easier, animal consumption continues to increase all around the world. Companies that sell mock meat products and plant-based junk food appeal to the flexitarian–but having more options does not mean that more people will go vegan as is evident in the top plant-based companies’ revenue numbers. Sales of meat alternatives have been steadily dropping. The five biggest North American meat alternative producers saw a combined 4% dip in sales in 2021 . Field Roast recently announced that it would be converting its plant-based factory into a meat producing space because it wasn’t making enough sales from its plant-based selections (or at least as much as it had hoped). This further proves that plant-based companies only care about the bottom line, no matter how virtuous they may appear. Flexitarianism does not decrease overall animal consumption, but overall elimination does.

Advocating for reductionism is an easy way to appear virtuous, and plant-based companies profit off of this virtue. Replace ‘vegan’ with any other social justice cause and suddenly the reductionist approach sounds horrifying.

By contrast, a rights-based approach asserts that all living beings have their own inherent value. This position takes into account the animal’s life before they have even reached the point of suffering. This approach encompasses all living non-human animals at every single point in their life — not just in the moments they are suffering. A rights-based approach does not make any concessions–it does not settle with reducing animal exploitation, but rather the elimination of animal exploitation.

Additionally, the author believes that “being annoyed and angry at non-vegans does little for the animals.” But self-righteous anger is one of the most important tools we have in activism. It allows us to stand in our conviction and take action and it can be an incredibly powerful catalyst to propel change. Activism cannot be done in passivity or by being polite. The Pick Me vegan tries to cushion the truth for others, but they are doing a great disservice to the animals who need us to share these harsh truths.

Based on where one stands, these two approaches may manifest very differently in the activism that is carried out, and even in the way we talk about these issues, as demonstrated in the author’s own essay.

Unsurprisingly, the author also references Alex O’Connor, also known as ‘Cosmic Skeptic’, a (former) vegan YouTube personality who has recently announced he’s no longer vegan for nebulous health reasons he has yet to disclose (and based on what we can surmise from his timeline, he hasn’t been vegan for a while). Alex was the quintessential Pick Me Vegan–a wordsmith who over-intellectualized every single issue under the guise of rationality to the point where he forgot about who matters most: the animals.

Never Apologize for Fighting Against Suffering

Because the animal rights movement provides a ‘voice for the voiceless’, that voice must be strong, assertive, and unapologetic. As such, the rhetoric we use is so important to persuade, take action, and give a voice to those who need it the most: the animals. The animal rights movement isn’t about making anyone feel comfortable or about helping others feel better about their consumption of cruelty, it’s about exposing the realities of living in a world that exploits animals for food, clothing, entertainment, sport, and everything in between. In revealing these truths we must accept that we are going to make others feel slightly uncomfortable if for a moment. Otherwise we’re not providing a voice to the voiceless–we’re just amplifying the silence.

Animal Rights with Wayne Hsiung and Dušan Pajović

Panelists: Wayne Hsiung, Dušan Pajović Moderator: Rozali Telbis

Description: Discussion on how animal rights are a free speech issue as well as a core concern for the Left.

Wayne Hsiung is an American attorney and environmental and animal rights activist. He is co-founder of the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and most currently The Simple Heart Initiative dedicated to animal rescue. Wayne has a long history of non-violent direct action in support of his activist convictions.

Dušan Pajović is a Montenegrin activist and author. He is the Campaigns Coordinator and a member of the Coordinating Collective of the pan-European leftist organization DiEM25. Previously, Dušan led DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe campaign. In 2021, Wayne wrote this article: Why we need to liberate animals as part of the Green New Deal.

Rozali Telbis writes about society, technology, culture, propaganda, and more. She is a regular contributor to Plebity and Nevermore. To get the latest updates on her work, subscribe to her mailing list at Growing up Alienated.

 Free speech and the left conference 2023 |  Jun 3, 2023

Canada’s censorship bill becomes law

After years of contentious debates, Bill C-11, Canada’s Online Streaming Act has become law.

As we’ve written here ( Senate Passes Controversial Internet Censorship Bill ) and here ( Canada’s Plans to Regulate the Internet ), this bill poses many dangers for Canadian users and creators alike.

 Rozali Telbis |  May 4, 2023

Update: Senate Passes Controversial Internet Censorship Bill

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez

On February 2, 2023, the Senate passed Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, with 43 senators voting ‘yea,’ and 15 voting ‘nay.’

The Senate proposed dozens of amendments to the bill, including highlighting the promotion of Indigenous languages and Black content creators; proposing an age verification system to restrict access to certain content; requiring the CRTC to be more flexible on determining what is deemed ‘Canadian enough’; and requiring the CRTC to focus on commercial content only.

 Rozali Telbis |  Feb 7, 2023

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Animal Rights

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Animal Rights Persuasive Essay Sample, with Outline

Published by gudwriter on November 23, 2017 November 23, 2017

Animal Rights Essay

Animals have a right to be free of human use and exploitation. They have an inherent worth and moral rights that should be respected. To have the best grades on such kind of essays, essay writing services for MBA will write them for you.

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Animal Rights Essay Outline

Introduction.

Thesis: People should consider giving animals the same rights as human beings because they deserve it.

Paragraph 1:

Animals should be granted the same rights as humans first because just like humans, they have the capacity to suffer.

They feel motherly love, loneliness, frustration, fear, and pleasure depending on the situation they find themselves in.
It should be the moral obligation of humans to take this fact into account whenever they consider undertaking actions that would interfere with the needs of animals.

Paragraph 2:

Human beings should also consider that animals have an inherent worth which in itself is completely separate from the usefulness of animals to humans.

Being living beings capable of moving, all animals have the right to life and therefore have every right not to be subjected to any kinds of pain.
It is wrong on the part of humans to presume that the sole reason for the existence of nonhuman animals is for them to be used by humans.

Paragraph 3:

Another consideration that humans should make is that their infringement of animal rights is based on prejudice that they can easily put an end to.

Only prejudice pushes a person into denying another person the rights that they expect to have for themselves.
Prejudice is morally unacceptable whether it is based on species, sexual orientation, gender, or race.

Paragraph 4:

There is no any morally relevant difference between human beings and non-human animals.

If humans are entitled to their rights, it is only fair that animals too are allowed to enjoy their own rights.
It makes no sense when human animals are granted their rights but non-human ones are denied theirs.

Paragraph 5:

Animals have a culture to preserve and thus killing or caging them amounts to an erosion of this culture.

All species suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Not justifiable to subject another species to an experience one would not wish for themselves.

Paragraph 6:

It is the belief of some people that because animals are not humans, they should not have the same rights as humans.

However, it should be noted that adult mammals and human animals have no morally relevant difference between them.
They are both animals and they deserve to be treated the same.

Animals Should Have the Same Rights as Humans

Human beings continue to go to zoos and circuses, wearing leather, and eating meat; activities all of which involve either caging or killing of animals. Animals are also kept as pets by humans and this involves the selling of animals and constructing cages for them so they may not escape. Noteworthy, all these actions have to do with the infringement of animal rights in one way or another. It is however interesting that humans never consider the impacts that these actions have on animals presumably because animals, to them, have no rights. This disregard for animal rights has even attracted court cases some of which sought to have animals viewed as persons just as humans. People should consider giving animals the same rights as human beings because they deserve it.

At the same time Gudwriter’s also provides essay on argumentative essay on animal rights with examples.

Animals should be granted the same rights as humans first because just like humans, they have the capacity to suffer. They feel motherly love, loneliness, frustration, fear, and pleasure depending on the situation they find themselves in. As such, it should be the moral obligation of human beings to take this fact into account whenever they consider undertaking actions that would interfere with the needs of animals. As pointed out by Bennett-Jones (2015), “Factors to consider would include the degree of an animal’s autonomy, sensitivity to pain, level of sentience, self-awareness and ability to hold preferences.” It is well deserving for animals to lead their lives free from being exploited or being subjected to sufferings. As a matter of fact, when deciding on the rights of any being, the question should be whether they can suffer and not whether they can talk or reason.

Human beings should also consider that animals have an inherent worth which in itself is completely separate from their usefulness to humans. Being living beings capable of moving, all animals have the right to life and therefore have every right not to be subjected to any kind of pain. In this regard, it is wrong on the part of human beings to presume that the sole reason for the existence of nonhuman animals is for them to be used by humans. Animals attach immense value to their lives just like humans do, and rightly so. This is why they will always try to evade danger either by defending themselves or running away from sources of danger ( Smith, 2012 ). It is also why they go about looking for food to fend for themselves and their young ones, much like humans.

Further, there is no any morally relevant difference between human beings and non-human animals. If humans are entitled to their rights, it is only fair that animals too are allowed to enjoy their own rights. It makes no sense when human animals are granted their rights but non-human ones are denied theirs. Moreover, being ‘subject-of-a-life,’ both the human and non-human animal species have many attributes in common. They are for instance alive to the fact that they live (“Animal Rights,” 2014). There is thus no justification whatsoever why animals should be denied the rights they deserve. This point leaves human beings with no valid reason to continue trampling upon the rights of non-human animals.

Another consideration that humans should make is that their infringement of animal rights is based on prejudice that they can easily put an end to. As it is, only prejudice pushes a person into denying another person the rights that they expect to have for themselves. As noted by Smith (2012), prejudice is morally unacceptable whether it is based on species, sexual orientation, gender, or race. If humans would not eat a dog for instance, why should they eat goats? The capacity to feel pain is inherent in both dogs and goats. However, out of prejudice, humans consider one as food and the other as a companion.

Further, animals have a culture to preserve and thus killing or caging them amounts to an erosion of this culture. Just like humans, “Elephants that have witnessed the slaughter of their parents by poaching or culling and lost the support of their extended family group exhibit the same erratic and often detached behaviors…” (Siebert, 2014). Their fate resembles that of orphans of war who after losing their families and witnessing the destruction of their villages, remain to wallow in miser. In other words, all species suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Why subject another species to an experience you would not wish for yourself?

It is the belief of some people that because animals are not humans, they should not have the same rights as humans. However, as already seen, adult mammals and human animals have no morally relevant difference between them ( Cavalieri, 2003 ). They are both animals and they deserve to be treated the same. No matter how humanely animals may be treated, killing, confining, breeding, buying, and selling them invade into their rights. It is unjust to subject one species to sufferance while fighting for the rights of another species yet morally; they both deserve respect and freedom. It is thus dishonest to assume that humans can do whatever they like with animals.

It is true that animals are not human beings and that is not up for debate. However, they deserve to have the rights granted to humans because they suffer like humans. They have an inherent worth given that they are animals like humans save for the difference in their species. They have the will to organize their life according to their culture which is unfortunately interfered with by humans. It amounts to prejudice to subject them to untold sufferings in the name of being turned into food or being kept in cages for whatever purposes. In this respect, it is high time humans considered championing for animals to have the same rights as humans.

Animal Rights. (2014). In BBC . Retrieved July 10, 2020 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/rights/rights_1.shtml

Bennett-Jones, O. (2015). Should animals be given human rights? . BBC News . Retrieved 22 November 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-32854504

Cavalieri, P. (2003). The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights . Cary, NC: Oxford University Press, USA.

Siebert, C. (2014). Should Animals Have The Same Rights As People? . Popular Science . Retrieved 22 November 2017, from https://www.popsci.com/should-animals-same-rights-people

Smith, W. J. (2012). A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement . New York City, NY: Encounter Books.

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The Eclipse Chaser

As millions of americans prepare to see a total solar eclipse, a retired astrophysicist known as “mr. eclipse,” discusses the celestial phenomenon..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

Can you hear — Fred, can you hear me?

[DISTORTED SPEECH]:

The internet is a little wonky.

OK. Well, [DISTORTED SPEECH]: Arizona. So the internet speed here isn’t really fast.

I think we’re going to call — yeah, I think we’re going to call you back on a — for the first time in a really long time — a landline.

[PHONE RINGING]

Hey, Fred, it’s Michael Barbaro.

You can hear me OK?

I can hear you.

Perfect. So, Fred, where exactly am I reaching you?

I’m in Portal, Arizona, in a little community called Arizona Sky Village. And it’s a very rural community. So our internet and phone lines are not very good. And the nearest grocery store is 60 miles away.

Wow. And why would you choose to live in such a remote place with such bad internet?

Because the sky is dark. It’s like the sky was a hundred years ago before cities encroached on all of the country. I guess you’d call it an astronomy development. Mainly, amateur astronomers who have built homes here far from city lights for the express purpose of studying the sky.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So it’s literally a community where once the sun goes down, it’s pitch black. And some, perhaps all of you, are stargazing?

Yes, exactly.

Well, I think I’m beginning to understand why you might have the nickname that you do. Can you just tell our listeners what that nickname is?

My nickname is Mr. Eclipse.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today’s total solar eclipse will be watched by millions of people across North America, none of them as closely as Fred Espenak, a longtime NASA scientist who’s devoted his entire life to studying, chasing, and popularizing the wonder that is an eclipse.

It’s Monday, April 8.

Fred, help me understand how you become Mr. Eclipse, how you go from being Fred to this seemingly very hard-earned nickname of Mr. Eclipse.

Well, I was visiting my grandparents at their summer home. And it was a partial eclipse of the sun back in the early 1960s. And I was a 10 - or 12-year-old kid. I got my parents to get me a small telescope. And I watched some of the partial phases. And it was really interesting.

And I started reading about eclipses. And I found out that as interesting as a partial eclipse is, a total eclipse is far more interesting. The moon is only 1/400 the diameter of the sun. It’s tiny compared to the sun. But it’s 400 times closer to the Earth. So it’s just this incredible coincidence that the moon and sun appear to be the same size in the sky. And once in a while, the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun. And you’re plunged into this very strange midday twilight.

But they’re limited to a very small geographic areas to see a total eclipse. And this little book I was studying had a map of the world, showing upcoming paths of total solar eclipses. And I realized that one was passing through North America about 600 miles from where I lived. And that eclipse was in 1970.

And I was reading about this in 1963, 1964. And I made a promise to myself that I was going to get to that eclipse in 1970 to see it because I thought it was a one chance in a lifetime to see a total eclipse of the sun.

So just to be very clear, you see a partial eclipse, and you immediately think to yourself, that was fine. But I need the real thing. I need a full eclipse. And you happen to find out, around this time, that a real eclipse is coming but in seven years.

Right. I mean, there were other eclipses between that time and seven years in the future. But they were in other parts of the world. And I couldn’t buy an airplane ticket and fly to Europe or Australia.

And by 1970, I’d been waiting for this. And by this point, I had just gotten a driver’s license. And I convinced my parents to let me drive the car 600 miles to get down into the path of totality to see this great event.

Wow. Wait, from where to where?

From Staten Island, New York, down to a little town in North Carolina.

How did you convince your parents to let you do that? I mean, that’s —

Well, I had seven years to work on it.

[LAUGHS]: Right.

And I was just a nerdy kid. I didn’t get into trouble. I was interested in science. I was out in the woods, studying frogs and wildlife and stuff. So this was just a natural progression of the type of things I would normally do.

Right. OK. So I wonder if you can describe this journey you end up taking from Staten Island. How does the trip unfold as you’re headed on this 600 mile?

So, I think, on March 6, 1970, it was a Friday. My friend and I left to drive to the eclipse path. We probably got on the road probably at 5:00 AM because it was going to be a very long day.

And we’ve got a detailed map in the car, which I’ve plotted the eclipse path on. And we’re just trying to get far enough south to get into the path of the eclipse, which for us is easternmost Virginia or Eastern North Carolina. And I drive and drive and drive all day long. Very long day.

We get down to North Carolina right about maybe 6:00 PM. And we just see this little town in North Carolina that we’re driving through. And it happens to have a convenient motel right in the center of the path. And that was good enough. Got a room available. And we check in. And that’s where we’re going to watch the eclipse from.

And the next morning was eclipse day. It was a bright, crisp, sunny morning. There weren’t any clouds at all in the sky. And I was amazed that outside the back of the motel, in this grassy field, there were dozens and dozens of people with telescopes out there, specifically there for the eclipse that morning.

We were really excited about this. We set up our — my telescope. And we had another camera set up to watch it. And we walked around and marveled at some of the other people and their telescopes and discussed the eclipse with them. And the eclipse started probably around noon or 1:00 in the afternoon.

Describe the actual event itself, the eclipse. How did it begin?

Well, all solar eclipses begin as a partial eclipse. And the sun is gradually covered by the moon as the moon takes larger and larger pieces out of the sun, as it slowly crawls across the sun’s surface. And you don’t really notice much going on with a naked eye.

It’s really only in the last 10 minutes or so that you start to notice changes in the environment because now enough of the sun has been covered, upwards of maybe 90 percent of the sun. And you start to notice the temperature falling. There’s a chill in the air.

Also, since so much of the sun is covered, the daylight starts to take on an anemic quality. It’s weak. The sun is still too bright to look at. But the surroundings, the environment is not as bright as it was a half hour earlier.

You start to notice animals reacting to the dwindling sunlight. They start acting like it’s sunset. And they start performing some of their evening rituals, like birds roosting, perhaps calling their evening songs. And plants start closing up and the dropping sunlight. And then the dropping temperatures.

And there’s an acceleration now of all these effects. The temperature drop, the drop in the sunlight, it starts happening faster and faster and getting darker and darker. And maybe about a minute before the total eclipse began, we noticed strange patterns on the ground beneath us, on the grassy field that we were on — these ripples racing across the field. And these are something called shadow bands.

They look a lot like the rippling patterns that you would see on the bottom of a swimming pool, bands of light and dark, and moving very quickly across the ground. The sky is — it’s a dark blue. And it’s getting darker rapidly in this dwindling sunlight. And you go from daylight to twilight in just 10 or 20 seconds. It’s almost like someone has the hand on the rheostat and turns the house lights down in the theater.

You just see the light just go right down.

And the sky gets dark enough that the corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun, starts emerging from the background sky. This ring or halo of gas that surrounds the sun, and it’s visible around the moon, which is in silhouette against the sun. And along one edge of the moon is this bright bead of sunlight because that’s the last remaining piece of the sun before it becomes total.

And this is the diamond ring effect because you’ve got the ring of the corona and this dazzling jewel along one edge of it. You only get to see this for 10 or 15 seconds — it’s very fleeting — before the moon completely covers the sun’s disk. And totality begins. Suddenly, you’re in this twilight of the moon’s shadow.

And you look around the horizon. And you’re seeing the colors of sunrise or sunset 360 degrees around the horizon because you’re looking out the edge of the moon’s shadow. And looking back up into the sky, the sun is gone now. And you see this black disk of the moon in silhouette surrounded by the sun’s corona.

Maybe this says more about my nature than anything else, but what you’re describing, a little bit, feels like the end of the world.

Well, I think, when you see this all transpire, you can easily understand how people thought this was the end of the world because it seems far outside of the realms of nature. It seems supernatural. So you can see how people panicked that didn’t understand what was going on.

That was not your reaction?

No. I think it’s a sense of belonging — belonging to this incredible universe, both belonging and a humbleness that how minuscule we are. And yet we’re a part of this fantastic cosmic wheel of motion in the solar system. You almost get a three-dimensional sense of the motions of the Earth and the moon around the sun when you see this clockwork displayed right in front of you, this mechanics of the eclipse taking place.

It almost lifts you up off the planet, and you can look back down at the solar system and see how it’s all put together. And you’ve only got to, in that case — in that particular eclipse, it was only 2 and 1/2 minutes to look at this.

Wow. It’s kind of a clock in your head, saying, you don’t have much of this.

You don’t have much of it. And it almost seems like time stops.

And at the same time, all of a sudden, the eclipse is over. Those 2 minutes just raced by. And it’s over. All of a sudden, the diamond ring forms again on the opposite side of the moon, as the sun starts to become uncovered at the end of totality. And the diamond ring appears. It grows incredibly bright in just a few seconds. And you can’t look at it anymore. It’s too bright. You’ve got to put your filters back on and cover your telescope with a solar filter so it doesn’t get damaged. And you’re trembling because of this event.

Everybody was cheering and shouting and yelling. I mean, you would have thought you were at a sports game, and the home team just scored a touchdown. Just everybody screaming at the top of their lungs. And I immediately started thinking that this can’t be a once in a lifetime experience. I’ve got to see this again.

We’ll be right back.

OK. So, Fred, it’s the early 1970s. And you are not Mr. Eclipse yet. You’re just a kid who felt something very big when you watched an eclipse. So how did you end up becoming the premier authority that you now are on eclipses?

Well, after that 1970 eclipse, I started looking into upcoming solar eclipses so I could get a chance to see the sun’s corona again. And the next total eclipse was in Eastern Canada in July of 1972. And I started thinking about that eclipse. And by then, I was going to be in college.

And I started planning because that one was still something I could drive to. It was 1,200 miles instead of 600 miles.

So the summer of 1972 rolls around. And I drove up to the eclipse in Quebec to see totality and was unfortunately clouded out of the eclipse. I saw some of the partial phases. But clouds moved in and obscured the sun for that view of the sun’s corona.

You were robbed.

I was robbed. And I realized, well, I’ve got to expand my outlook on what’s an acceptable distance to travel to see a total eclipse because the next total eclipse then, in 1973, was through the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa. So I traveled to the Sahara desert for the eclipse, where we had decent weather, not perfect but decent weather. And we got to see totality there.

You saw totality in the desert?

In the desert. In the Sahara Desert. After that, it was just trying to get to every total eclipse I possibly could get to.

At this point, you’re clearly starting to become an eclipse chaser. And I don’t even know if such a thing existed at that moment.

Yeah. I don’t know if it was called that then, but certainly, yeah.

And if you’ll permit me a question that might seem maybe dopey to someone in your field, after you’ve seen one or two or three of these, do they start to blend in together and become a little bit the same?

Not at all. Each one is distinctly different. The sun itself is dramatically different. The sun’s corona is different at each eclipse because the corona is a product of the sun’s magnetic field. And that magnetic field is changing every day. So the details, the fine structure in the sun’s corona is always different. So every eclipse is dramatically different. The appearance of the sun’s corona.

Right. If you look at one Renoir, it’s not the same as the next one. You’re describing the corona of each eclipse as its own work of art, basically.

Exactly. Yeah.

So as you’re chasing these eclipses around the world, what is the place of an eclipse in your day-to-day academic studies and, soon enough, your professional work?

So I went to grad school at University of Toledo and did some work at Kitt Peak National Observatory, learning the ins and outs of photometric photometry — that is, measuring the brightness of stars. And eventually, this led to a job opening at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

And I got interested in the idea of predicting eclipses and started studying the mathematics of how to do this. And I took it over unofficially and started publishing these technical maps and details. And we published about a dozen books through NASA on upcoming eclipses. People would just write me a letter and say they wanted a copy of the eclipse bulletin for such and such an eclipse. And I would stuff it in an envelope and mail it to them.

So you take it upon yourself to make sure that everyone is going to know when the next eclipse is coming?

And no doubt, during this period, you keep going to each and every eclipse. And I wonder which of them stand out to you.

Well, I’ve seen total eclipses from Australia, from Africa, from the Altiplanos in Bolivia, from the ice sheet on the coast of Antarctica, and even from Northern China, on the edge of the Gobi Desert. But one of the most notable eclipses for me was I traveled to India to see a 41-second eclipse, which was very short. And besides seeing a great eclipse in India, I also met my future wife there. She was on the same trip.

I have to hear that story.

Well, she had been trying to see a total eclipse for about 25 years.

She tried to see the 1970 eclipse. But her friends who were going to drive down from Pennsylvania down to North Carolina talked her out of it at the 11th hour.

They talked her out of seeing the same eclipse that was your first total eclipse that was so important to you?

Yes. And they talked her out of it because from Pennsylvania, they were going to have maybe a 90 percent eclipse. They didn’t know any better. They thought that was good enough. And she regretted that decision.

So then she said, OK, well, I’ve got to get to the next total eclipse, which was in Quebec in 1972, the same one that was my second eclipse. And we were probably within five miles of each other in Quebec. And we were both clouded out. Then she was married. She was raising kids. She got busy with domestic life for 20 years. She became a widow.

So now, 1995, there’s this 41-second eclipse in India that is very difficult to get to. It’s halfway around the world. But she’s still itching to see a total eclipse. And we joined the same expedition, a travel group, of 30 eclipse chasers and end up in India for the eclipse. And we have fantastic weather. It’s perfect.

She was in tears after totality. She had been waiting so long to see it. And we struck up a friendship on that trip. By the time the 1998 eclipse was taking place in the Caribbean, at that point, we were together. That was our first eclipse to observe as a couple. I think our wedding cake had a big eclipse on the top of the cake.

[LAUGHS]: Perfect.

We made a music CD for the wedding that we played during the reception. And of course, all the music on the CD had sun and moon themes to it.

Nothing I can say, a total eclipse of the heart

Of course, we had “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” It was a must-have.

Had to. Had to.

It strikes me, Fred, that eclipses are such an organizing principle in your life. Your life seems to literally orbit around them. When you were a kid, you started planning for them years in advance. This work becomes central to your career. It’s how you meet your wife.

And you said, when I asked you, about each eclipse that they’re all different. And obviously, you’re different at each eclipse because time has passed. Your life has changed. And it just feels like your life is being lived in a kind of ongoing conversation with this phenomenon of the sun and the moon overlapping.

Well, the eclipses are like benchmarks that I can use to figure out what else was going on in my life during these times, because I remember the dates of every single eclipse I’ve been to. And if I see a photograph of the solar corona shot during any particular eclipse, I know what eclipse that was. I can recognize the pattern of the corona like a fingerprint.

That’s amazing.

And I the year of the eclipse. It reminds me of when Pat and I got married and between which eclipse we were getting married and had to plan our wedding so it didn’t interfere with any kind of eclipse trips.

And they just serve as benchmarks or markers for the rest of my life of when various eclipses take place. So they’re easy for marking the passage of time.

So we are, of course, talking to you a few days before this year’s eclipse, which I cannot fathom you missing. So where are you planning to watch this total eclipse?

Pat and I are leaving for Mazatlán, Mexico, actually tomorrow. And we’ve got about 80 people joining us down in Mazatlán for this eclipse in our tour group.

And for you, of course, this year’s eclipse is just the latest in a very long line of eclipses. But I think, for the rest of us — and here, I’m thinking about myself — this is really going to be my first total eclipse, at least that I can remember. And for my two little kids, it’s absolutely going to be their first.

And given the hard-earned wisdom that you’ve accumulated in all your decades of chasing eclipses around the world, I wonder if you can give us just a little bit of advice for how to best live inside this very brief window of a total solar eclipse, to make sure, not to be cliche, but that we make it count.

Well, I think one mistake that people tend to make is getting preoccupied with recording everything in their lives, what they had for lunch, what they had for dinner. And seeing the eclipse is something that you want to witness firsthand. Try to be present in seeing the eclipse in the moment of it. So don’t get preoccupied with recording every instant of it.

Sit back and try to take in the entire experience because those several minutes pass by so rapidly. But you’ll replay them in your mind over and over and over again. And you don’t want technology getting between you and that experience. And remember to take your eclipse glasses off when totality begins. Note how dark it gets during totality.

Take the glasses off because?

Well, the glasses protect your eyes from the sun’s bright disk. But when totality begins, the sun’s bright disk is gone. So if you use your solar eclipse glasses to try to look at the corona, you won’t see anything. You’ll just see blackness. You’ve got to remove the eclipse glasses in order to see the corona. And it’s completely safe.

And it’s an incredible sight to behold. But during totality, you just want to look around without the glasses on. And take in the sights. Take in the horizon, 360 degrees, surrounding you with these twilight colors and sunset colors.

You’ll easily be able to see Jupiter and Venus shining on either side of the sun during totality. And look at the details in the sun’s corona, fine, wispy textures, and any possible red prominences hugging against the moon’s disk during totality.

And let’s say it’s now the moment of totality, and you, Mr. Eclipse, can whisper one thing into someone’s ear as they’re watching. What would you say to them?

Enjoy. Just take it all in.

Well, Fred, thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

No, thank you. I hope everybody has some clear sky.

After today, the next total solar eclipse to be visible from the continental United States will occur 20 years from now, in 2044. In other words, you might as well watch today’s.

Here’s what else you need to know today. Israel has fired two officers in connection with the deadly airstrike on aid workers from the World Central Kitchen who were killed last week while delivering food to civilians in Gaza. In a report released on Friday, Israel blamed their deaths on a string of errors made by the military. The airstrike, Israel said, was based on insufficient and incorrect evidence that a passenger traveling with the workers was armed.

Meanwhile, Israel said it withdrew a division of ground troops from Southern Gaza on Sunday, leaving no soldiers actively patrolling the area. The move raises questions about Israel’s strategy as the war drags into its sixth month. In particular, it casts doubt on Israel’s plans to invade Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, an invasion that the United States has asked Israel not to carry out for fear of large-scale civilian casualties.

Today’s episode was produced by Alex Stern and Sydney Harper, with help from Will Reid and Jessica Cheung. It was edited by Devon Taylor; fact-checked by Susan Lee; contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Corey Schreppel; and sound design by Elisheba Ittoop and Dan Powell. It was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Anthony Wallace.

[THEME MUSIC]

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

April 9, 2024 • 30:48 How Tesla Planted the Seeds for Its Own Potential Downfall
April 8, 2024 • 30:28 The Eclipse Chaser
April 7, 2024 The Sunday Read: ‘What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living’
April 5, 2024 • 29:11 An Engineering Experiment to Cool the Earth
April 4, 2024 • 32:37 Israel’s Deadly Airstrike on the World Central Kitchen
April 3, 2024 • 27:42 The Accidental Tax Cutter in Chief
April 2, 2024 • 29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
April 1, 2024 • 36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
March 29, 2024 • 48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
March 28, 2024 • 33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
March 27, 2024 • 28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
March 26, 2024 • 29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Produced by Sydney Harper and Alex Stern

With Will Reid and Jessica Cheung

Edited by Devon Taylor

Original music by Dan Powell , Marion Lozano , Elisheba Ittoop and Corey Schreppel

Sound Design by Elisheba Ittoop and Dan Powell

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Today, millions of Americans will have the opportunity to see a rare total solar eclipse.

Fred Espenak, a retired astrophysicist known as Mr. Eclipse, was so blown away by an eclipse he saw as a teenager that he dedicated his life to traveling the world and seeing as many as he could.

Mr. Espenak discusses the eclipses that have punctuated and defined the most important moments in his life, and explains why these celestial phenomena are such a wonder to experience.

On today’s episode

Fred Espenak, a.k.a. “Mr. Eclipse,” a former NASA astrophysicist and lifelong eclipse chaser.

A black circular object stands out against a black sky with light bursting out around its edge.

Background reading

A total solar eclipse is coming. Here’s what you need to know.

Millions of people making plans to be in the path of the solar eclipse on Monday are expecting an awe-inspiring. What is that feeling?

The eclipse that ended a war and shook the gods forever.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Fact-checking by Susan Lee .

Special thanks to Anthony Wallace.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Corey Schreppel leads the technical team that supports all Times audio shows, including “The Daily,” “Hard Fork,” “The Run-Up,” and “Modern Love.” More about Corey Schreppel

The Debate About Animal Rights Essay

The debate about animal rights is a controversial among those that support the notion that animals have rights and those who hold the reverse notion. Some people oppose the use of animals in medical research because they say that violates the rights of the animals and amounts to animal cruelty. The others say animals have no rights and hence can be used in medical research. This paper will look at the comparisons between two articles; Why animals have no rights by Carl Cohen and All animals are equal by Peter Singer.

Both authors agree that animals and human beings suffer. Therefore, both should be treated with consideration to avoid unnecessary sufferings. Carl, a speciesist says animals suffer. Peter Singer says that animals suffer and certain kind of treatment can cause an animal to feel pain thus there it is important to treat the animals well.

The two authors differ on the use of animals in biomedical research. Carl argues that the use of animals in biomedical research is important and necessary. The bio medics use the animals to test for drugs and even though they inflict pain on the animals it does not mean they are being cruel to them.

The benefits of such laboratory research on the animals outweigh the sacrifice of some animals because drugs that help to cure human beings and other animals are developed. On the contrary, many people would suffer and die from diseases without a cure if animals were not used in the laboratory to run tests for drugs. The drugs developed have helped to alleviate pain, improve quality of life and eliminate some terrible diseases yet such drugs would never be developed without the use of animals (Cohen, 1986).

In contrast, Peter argues that the use of animals in medical research is cruel. He says that the use of an animal in a test to save human beings is immoral and just as the experimenters would not perform the tests on an orphan human infant even if that could save thousands of human beings so they should not perform the tests on animals because they suffer just like a human being would suffer. Therefore, there should be no discrimination between animals and human beings because animals have rights (Singer, 1989).

Carl says that” rights in general: they are in every case claims, or potential claims, within a community of moral agents” (Cohen, 1989, p.865). Thus, only human beings possess rights because they are the only ones capable of making moral claims and can or do against another human being.

Animals are not capable of any moral capability therefore they do not have rights. He urges that because animals lack the ability for moral judgement thus speciesism is alright and they can be used in medical research. On the contrary, Peter urges that animals have rights and appear to be able to enjoy life hence they should be allowed to live and not be used in medical laboratories and as food. He is against speciesism.

In conclusion, animals should be treated with consideration. I share similar views with those of Carl because I believe animals should be treated well, but they should be used in medical research because the benefits are huge and help humankind in dealing with diseases. Furthermore, animals are a source of food for many people and compliment other sources of food.

Reference List

Cohen, C. (1986). Why Animals Have No Rights/In Defense of Speciesism . Web.

Singer, P. (1989). “All animals are equal.” In Tom Regan & Peter Singer (Eds.) Animal Rights and Human Obligations , New Jersey, pp. 148-162. Web.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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Animal Rights: Speciesism
In Defense of Speciesism
Humanism, Racism, and Speciesism
Speciesism in Shakespeare’s Othello and Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
The Human Superiority Complex
"Modernism and Eugenics" and "The Sun Always Rises"
Equal Rights for All Animals
Violence and War in Japanese Popular Culture
The Animated Movie "Up" by Carl Fredricksen
Animal Rights: The Article “All Animals Are Equal”
Use of Animals in Research Testing: Ethical Justifications Involved
Experimentation on Animals
The Problem of the Racial Inequality in US
Legalization of Marijuana: Arguments For and Against
Negotiated Intimacy in "Casablanca" and "Mrs. Doubtfire"

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