Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights


**AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENTS** **Animal Rights Not Respected Now**



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**AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENTS**

**Animal Rights Not Respected Now**

Federal Government Violates Animal Rights


FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS DIRECTLY AND DEEPLY INVOLVED IN ANIMAL EXPLOITATION

Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 137



The US government is deeply involved in nonhuman exploitation. The Department of Agriculture subsidizes and promotes the flesh, egg, honey and milk industries. The National Institutes of Health fund vivisection. The Food and Drug Administration requires that drugs be tested on nonhumans. The Department of Defense uses dolphins, dogs, and other nonhuman animals for military purposes. The Fish and Wildlife Service supports hunting, fishing and trapping. And on and on.

Animal Exploitation & Confinement Extensive Now


MILLIONS OF ANIMALS SUBJECT TO RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION

Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 109-10



In the United States alone, we use millions of animals annually for biomedical experiments, product testing, and education. Animals are used to measure the effects of toxins, diseases, drugs, radiation, bullets, and all forms of physical and psychological deprivations. We burn, poison, irradiate, blind, starve, and electrocute them. They are purposely riddled with diseases such as cancer and infections such as pneumonia. We deprive them of sleep, keep them in solitary confinement, remove their limbs and eyes, addict them to drugs, force them to withdraw from drug addiction, and cage them for the duration of their lives. If they do not die during experimental procedures, we almost always kill them immediately afterward, or we recycle them for other experiments or tests and then kill them.
MILLIONS OF ANIMALS KEPT IN CONFINEMENT FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES

Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 110



We use millions of animals for the sole purpose of providing entertainment. Animals are used in film and television. There are thousands of zoos, circuses, carnivals, race tracks, dolphin exhibits and rodeos in the United States, and these and similar activities, such as bullfighting, also take place in other countries. Animals used in entertainment are often forced to endure lifelong incarceration and confinement, poor living conditions, extreme physical danger and hardship, and brutal treatment. Most animals used for entertainment purposes are killed when no longer useful, or sold into research or as targets for shooting on commercial hunting preserves.
MANY ANIMALS CONFINED FOR FASION INDUSTRY

Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 110

And we kill millions of animals annually simply for fashion. Approximately 40 million animals worldwide are trapped, snared, or raised in intensive confinement on fur farms, where they are electrocuted or gassed or have their necks broken. In the United States, 8-10 million animals are killed every year for fur.


Species Barrier Blocks Recognition of Animal Rights Now


THE RIGID SPECIES BARRIER IS FIRMLY ENTRENCHED

Steven M. Wise, Professor Animal Rights Law at the Harvard Law School, 2000, “Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals” Questia p. 19

Professor Robert Brumbaugh has written that "(f)rom Xenophon through Aristotle through the Stoic school, the preposterous idea of a world designed for human exploitation diffused quite thoroughly into Western common sense." 80 Professor Lovejoy believed it "one of the most curious movements of human imbecility." 81 Preposterous as it may be, imbecilic as it may now appear, it buried itself so deeply into philosophy, science, political science, and finally, the law, that it has proven exceedingly resistant to change. 82 It became a commonplace in the Middle Ages. Aquinas accepted it almost exactly the way Aristotle had proposed it seventeen.

Now all animals are naturally subject to man. This can be proved in three ways. First, from the order observed by nature. For just as in the generation of things we perceive a certain order of procession from the imperfect (thus matter is for the sake of form; and the imperfect form for the sake of the perfect), so also is there order in the use of natural things. For the imperfect are for the use of the perfect: as the plants make use of the earth for their nourishment, animals make use of plants, and man makes use of both plants and animals. Therefore it is in keeping with the order of nature, that man should be master over animals. Hence the philosopher [ Aristotle] says that the hunting of wild animals is just and natural, because man thereby exercises a natural right. Secondly, this is proved from the order of divine providence which always governs inferior things by the superior. Wherefore, since man, being made to the image of God, is above other animals, these are rightly governed by him . . . 83
PLACING A BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SPECIES BARRIER RENDERS THEM INELIGIBLE FOR ALMOST ANY LEGAL PROTECTIONS

Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 248-9

Those who support these principles as legal rules, and not just as moral statements, must recognize that the laws of most countries, and certainly American law, present very serious conceptual obstacles to such a position. The American legal system is replete with categories and attaches negative consequences to those categories based on race, sex, sexual preference, age, nationality and disability. But there are no more serious consequences than those attached to classification based on species.

For example, although experimentation involving a human being requires the person’s informed consent (or the consent of a legal guardian if the person is incapable of giving consent), and is subject to legal scrutiny on a number of different levels, animal experiments (in the United States) may be performed an any animal for any purpose that is approved by a committee of other animal experimenters, and the concept of informed consent obviously has no applicability. Moreover, there is no need—as there is in virtually every instance of human experimentation—to demonstrate that the experiment will benefit the experimental subject. Once some being is placed on the other side of the species barrier, the law provides virtually no protection for that being, and humans may harm that being in ways that would be unthinkable if applied to even the most disadvantaged members of human society.





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