The responses presented here are by no means the only answers to common questions. They are intended as suggestions and as a source of ideas when formulating your own responses. We recommend that you do not try to memorise and repeat these but rather to incorporate them into your own comments.
GENERAL
‘What do you mean by “animal rights”?’
‘Animal rights’ means that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration—consideration of what is in their own best interests regardless of whether they are cute, useful to humans or an endangered species and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all (just as a mentally challenged human has rights even if he or she is not cute or useful or even if everyone dislikes him or her). It means recognising that animals are not ours to use—for food, clothing, entertainment or experimentation.
‘What is the difference between “animal rights” and “animal welfare”?’
‘Animal welfare’ theories accept that animals have interests but allow these interests to be traded away as long as there are some human benefits that are thought to justify that sacrifice.
‘Animal rights’ means that animals, like humans, have interests that cannot be sacrificed or traded away just because it might benefit others. However, the rights position does not hold that rights are absolute; an animal’s rights, just like those of humans, must be limited, and rights can certainly conflict.
‘Animal rights’ means that animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment or experimentation. Animal welfare allows these uses as long as ‘humane’ guidelines are followed.
‘What rights should animals have?’
Animals have the right to equal consideration of their interests. For instance, a dog most certainly has an interest in not having pain inflicted on him or her unnecessarily. We therefore are obliged to take that interest into consideration and respect the dog’s right not to have pain unnecessarily inflicted upon him or her.
However, animals don’t always have the same rights as humans because their interests are not always the same as ours and because some rights would be irrelevant to animals’ lives. For instance, a dog doesn’t have an interest in voting and therefore doesn’t have the right to vote, since that right would be as meaningless to a dog as it is to a child.
‘Where do you draw the line?’
The renowned humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, who accomplished so much for both humans and animals in his lifetime, would take the time to stoop and move a worm from hot pavement to cool earth. Aware of the problems and responsibilities an expanded ethic brings with it, he said we each must ‘live daily from judgement to judgement, deciding each case as it arises, as wisely and mercifully as we can’.
We can’t stop all suffering, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop any. In today’s world of virtually unlimited choices, there are usually ‘kinder, gentler’ ways for most of us to feed, clothe, entertain and educate ourselves than by killing animals.
‘What about plants?’
There is currently no reason to believe that plants experience pain, devoid as they are of central nervous systems, nerve endings and brains. It is theorised that the main reason animals have the ability to experience pain is as a form of self-protection. If you touch something that hurts and could possibly injure you, you will learn from the pain it produces to leave it alone in the future. Since plants cannot locomote and do not have the need to learn to avoid certain things, this sensation would be superfluous.
Plants are completely different physiologically from mammals. Unlike animals' body parts, many perennial plants, fruits and vegetables can be harvested over and over again without resulting in the death of the plant or tree.
If one is concerned about the impact of vegetable agriculture on the environment, a vegetarian diet is still preferable to a meat-based one, since the vast majority of grains and pulses raised today are used as feed for cattle. By eating vegetables directly, rather than eating animals such as cows who must consume 16 kilos of vegetation in order to convert them into 1 kilo of flesh, one is saving many more plants' lives (and destroying less land).
‘It’s fine for you to believe in animal rights, but you shouldn’t tell other people what to do.’
Now you are telling me what to do!
Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but freedom of thought does not always imply freedom of action. You are free to believe whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt others. You may believe that animals should be killed, that black people should be enslaved or that women should be beaten, but you don’t always have the right to put your beliefs into practice.
As for telling people what to do, society exists so that there will be rules governing people’s behaviour. The very nature of reform movements is to tell others what to do—don’t use humans as slaves, don’t sexually harass women, etc.—and all movements initially encounter opposition from people who want to go on doing the criticised behaviour.
‘Animals don’t reason, don’t understand rights and don’t always respect our rights, so why should we apply our ideas of morality to them?’
Because an animal’s inability to understand and adhere to our rules is as irrelevant as that of a child or a person with a developmental disability. Animals are not usually capable of choosing to change their behaviour, but human beings have the intelligence to choose between behaviour that hurts others and behaviour that doesn’t.
‘It’s almost impossible to avoid using all animal products; if you’re still causing animal suffering without realising it, what's the point?’
It is impossible to live your life without causing some harm; we’ve all accidentally stepped on ants or breathed in gnats, but that doesn’t mean we should intentionally cause unnecessary harm. Just because you might accidentally hit someone with your car is no reason to run someone over on purpose.
‘What about all the customs, traditions and jobs that depend on using animals?’
The invention of the automobile and the end of World War II, for example, also necessitated job retraining and restructuring. This is simply an ingredient in all social progress—not a reason to deter progress.
‘How can you justify spending your time on animals when there are so many people who need help?’
There are very serious problems in the world that deserve our attention; cruelty to animals is one of them. We should try to alleviate suffering wherever we can. Helping animals is not any more or less important than helping human beings—they are both important. Animal suffering and human suffering are interconnected.
‘Aren’t most animals used for food, fur or experiments bred for that purpose?’
Being bred for a certain purpose does not change an animal’s biological capacity to feel pain and fear.
‘Since animals in cages on factory farms or in laboratories have never known anything else, they don’t suffer that much, do they?’
To be prevented from performing the most basic instinctual behaviours causes tremendous suffering. Even animals caged since birth feel the need to move around, groom themselves, stretch their limbs or wings and exercise. Herd animals and flock animals become distressed when they are made to live in isolation or when they are put into groups too large for them to be able to recognise other members. In addition, all confined animals suffer from intense boredom—some so severely that it can lead to self-mutilation or other self-destructive behaviour.
‘If all forms of animal exploitation were wrong, they would all be illegal, wouldn’t they?’
Legality is no guarantee of morality. Who does and doesn’t have legal rights is determined merely by the opinion of today’s legislators. The law changes as public opinion or political motivations change, but ethics are not so arbitrary. Look at some of the other things that have at one time been legal—human slavery and the oppression of women, for example.
‘Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse/vivisection laboratory?’
No, but enough people have filmed inside and written about what goes on in these places to tell the story. You do not need to experience the abuse of animals close up to be able to criticise it any more than you need to personally experience rape or child abuse to criticise those. No one will ever be witness to all the suffering in the world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop it.
‘Animals are not as intelligent or advanced as humans, are they?’
If possessing superior intelligence does not entitle one human to abuse another human for his or her purposes, why should it entitle humans to abuse nonhumans?
There are animals who are unquestionably more intelligent, creative, aware, communicative and able to use language than some humans, as in the case of a chimpanzee compared to a human infant or a person with a severe developmental disability. Should the more intelligent animals have rights and the less intelligent humans be denied rights?
‘Conditions on factory farms or fur farms aren’t any worse than in the wild, where animals die of starvation, disease or predation, are they? At least the animals on factory farms are fed and protected.’
This argument was used by those who owned slaves in the US claiming that African-Americans were better off as slaves on plantations than as free men and women. The same could also be said of people in prison, yet prison is considered one of society's harshest punishments.
Animals on factory farms suffer so much that it is inconceivable that they could be worse off in the wild. The wild isn’t ‘wild’ to the animals who live there; it’s their home. There they have their freedom and can engage in their natural activities. The fact that they might suffer in the wild is no reason to ensure that they suffer in captivity.
VEGETARIANISM
‘Vegetarianism is a personal choice, isn’t it? Why are you trying to force it on everyone else?’
From a moral standpoint, actions that harm others are not matters of personal choice. Murder, child abuse and cruelty to animals are all immoral. Our society now encourages meat-eating and the cruelties of factory farming, but history teaches that society also once encouraged slavery, child labour and many other practices now universally recognised as wrong.
‘Animals kill other animals for food, so why shouldn’t we?’
Most of the animals who kill for food could not survive if they didn’t. That is not the case for us. We are better off not eating meat. Many other animals are vegetarians, including some of our closest primate relatives. Why don’t we look to them as our example instead of to carnivores?
‘The animals have to die sometime, don’t they?’
Humans do, too, but that doesn’t give you the right to kill them or to cause them a lifetime of suffering.
‘Farmers have to treat their animals well, or they won’t produce as much milk or lay as many eggs, will they?’
More and more animals in India are being raised on factory farms. These animals do not gain weight, lay eggs and produce milk because they are comfortable, content or well cared for but, rather, because they have been manipulated specifically to do these things through genetics, medications, hormones and management techniques. In addition, animals raised for food today are slaughtered at extremely young ages, usually before disease and misery have decimated them.
Such huge numbers of animals are raised for food that it is less expensive for farmers to absorb some losses than it is to provide humane conditions.
‘What will we do with all those chickens, cows and pigs if everyone becomes a vegetarian?’
It’s unrealistic to expect that everyone will stop eating animals overnight. As the demand for meat decreases, the number of animals bred will decrease. Farmers will stop breeding so many animals and will turn to other types of agriculture. When there are fewer of these animals, they will be able to live more natural lives.
‘If everyone turned vegetarian, it would be worse for the animals because so many of them would not even be born, wouldn’t it?’
Life on factory farms is so miserable that it is hard to see how we are doing animals a favour by bringing them into that type of existence, confining them, tormenting them and then slaughtering them.
‘If everyone switches to vegetables and grains, will there be enough to eat?’
Yes. We feed so much grain to animals in order to fatten them up for consumption that if we all became vegetarians, we could produce enough food to feed the entire world. In the US, for example, animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn the US grows and more than 95 percent of the oats. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth.
‘Don’t vegetarians have difficulty getting enough protein?’
The problem is the possibility of getting too much protein, not too little. Most meat-eaters get about seven times as much protein as they need! Vegetarians can get enough protein from whole wheat bread, potatoes, beans, corn, peas, mushrooms or broccoli—almost every food contains protein. Unless you eat a great deal of junk food, it's almost impossible to eat as many calories as we need for good health without getting enough protein.
By contrast, too much protein is the major cause of osteoporosis and contributes to kidney failure and other diseases of affluence.
‘Don’t humans have to eat meat to stay healthy?’
Both the US Department of Agriculture and the American Dietetic Association have endorsed vegetarian diets. Studies have also shown that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than meat-eaters and that meat-eaters are almost twice as likely to die of heart disease, 60 percent more likely to die of cancer and 30 percent more likely to die of other diseases. The consumption of meat and dairy products has been conclusively linked with diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, clogged arteries, obesity, asthma and impotence.
‘Isn’t eating meat natural? Hasn’t it been going on for thousands of years? Aren’t our bodies designed to eat meat?’
Actually, human bodies are better suited to a vegetarian diet. Carnivorous animals have long, curved fangs, claws and a short digestive tract. Humans have flat, flexible nails and our so-called ‘canine’ teeth are minuscule compared to those of carnivores and even compared to vegetarian primates like gorillas and orangutans. Our tiny canine teeth are better suited to biting into fruits than tearing through tough hides. We have flat molars and a long digestive tract suited to a diet of vegetables, fruits and grains. Eating meat is hazardous to our health; it contributes to heart disease, cancer and many other health problems.
‘What’s wrong with drinking milk? Don’t dairy cows need to be milked?’
In order for a cow to produce milk, she must have a calf. ‘Dairy cows’ are impregnated every year in order to keep up a steady supply of milk. In the natural order of things, the cow’s calf would drink her milk (eliminating her need to be milked by humans). But dairy cows’ babies are taken away within a day or two of birth so that humans can have the milk nature intended for their calves. Female dairy calves may be slaughtered immediately or raised to be future dairy cows. Male dairy calves may be killed immediately or are confined to tiny veal crates too small for them even to turn around in.
The current high demand for dairy products requires that cows be pushed beyond their natural limits, genetically engineered and fed growth hormones in order to produce huge quantities of milk. Even the few farmers who choose not to raise animals intensively must both eliminate the calf (who would otherwise drink the milk) and eventually send the mother off to slaughter or release her into the street after her milk production wanes.
‘I know a vegetarian who is unhealthy—what about that?’
There are healthy and unhealthy vegetarians. But doctors agree that vegetarians who eat a varied, low-fat diet stand a much better chance of living longer, healthier lives than their meat-eating counterparts.
‘Why blame me? I didn’t kill the animal.’
No, but you hired the killer. Whenever you purchase meat, that means that the killing was done for you and you paid for it.
‘If you were starving on a boat at sea, and there were an animal on the boat, would you eat the animal?’
I don’t know. Humans will go to extremes to save their own lives, even if it means hurting someone innocent. (People have even killed and eaten other people in such situations.) This example, however, isn't relevant to our daily choices. For most of us, there is no emergency and no excuse to kill animals for food.
‘It’s OK to eat eggs because chickens lay them naturally, right? The eggs we buy in the supermarket are sterile and not unborn foetuses, aren’t they?’
This is true, but the real cruelty of egg production lies in the treatment of the ‘laying hens’ themselves, who are perhaps the most abused of all factory-farmed animals. The number of factory farms in India is growing. Each egg from today’s factory farms represents 22 hours of misery for a hen packed in a cage the size of a filing cabinet drawer with up to five other chickens. Cages are stacked many tiers high, and faeces from cages above fall onto the chickens below. Hens become lame and develop osteoporosis from forced immobility and calcium lost to produce eggshells. Some birds’ feet grow around the wire cage floors; they starve to death because they are unable to reach the food trough. At just 2 years old, most hens are ‘spent’, and they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Egg-laying hatcheries don’t have any use for male chicks; they are killed by suffocation, decapitation or crushing or are ground up alive.
VIVISECTION
‘Hasn’t every major medical advance been attributable to experiments on animals?’
Medical historians have shown that improved nutrition, sanitation and other behavioural and environmental factors—not anything learned from animal experiments—are responsible for the decline in deaths since 1900 from the most common infectious diseases and that medicine has had little to do with increased life expectancy. Many of the most important advances in health are attributable to human studies, among them anaesthesia; bacteriology; germ theory; the stethoscope; morphine; radium; penicillin; artificial respiration; antiseptics; the CAT, MRI and PET scans; the discovery of the relationships between cholesterol and heart disease and between smoking and cancer; the development of x-rays and the isolation of the virus that causes AIDS. Animal testing played no role in these and many other developments.
‘Is it really feasible to stop using animals for basic medical research in view of the need to observe the complex interactions of cells, tissues and organs?’
Besides the moral issues involved, clinical and epidemiological studies of humans offer a far more accurate picture without hurting anyone. Observing interactions in animals is no guarantee that the information can be extrapolated to humans. Different species of animals vary enormously in their reactions to toxins and diseases and in their metabolism of drugs. For example, a dose of aspirin that is therapeutic in humans is poisonous to cats and has no effect on fever in horses; benzene causes leukaemia in humans but not in mice; insulin produces birth defects in animals but not in humans and so on. Animal experiments cannot replace careful clinical observation of human beings.
‘But weren’t many treatments we have today developed on animals—like polio vaccines, for instance?’
In fact, two separate bodies of work were done on polio—the in vitro work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize and which did not involve animals, and the subsequent animal tests, in which close to 1 million animals were killed and which the Nobel committee refused to recognise as anything more than wasteful. Also, polio died out just as quickly in areas of the world that did not use the vaccine as in areas that did.
However, certainly, some medical developments were discovered through cruel animal tests. But just because animals were used doesn't mean they had to be used or that primitive techniques that were used in the 1800s are valid today. It's impossible to say where we would be if we had declined to experiment on animals, because throughout medical history, very few resources have been devoted to non-animal research methods. In fact, because animal experiments frequently give misleading results with regard to human health, we'd probably be better off if we hadn't relied on them.
‘Don’t scientists have the responsibility to use animals to keep looking for cures for the diseases people suffer from?’
More human lives could be saved and more suffering spared by educating people on the importance of avoiding fat and cholesterol, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol and other drug consumption, exercising regularly and cleaning up the environment than by all the animal tests in the world. Animal tests are primitive, and besides, we have modern technology and human clinical tests.
Even if it could be proved that we have no alternative to using animals—which it can’t—as George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘You do not settle whether an experiment is justified or not by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments, but between barbarous and civilised behaviour.’ After all, there are some medical problems that can probably only be cured by testing on unwilling people, but we don’t do it, because we recognise that it would be wrong.
‘If we couldn’t use animals, wouldn’t we have to test new drugs on people?’
The choice isn’t between animals and people. There’s no guarantee that drugs are safe just because they’ve been tested on animals. Because of the physiological differences between humans and other animals, results from animal tests cannot be accurately extrapolated to humans, leaving us vulnerable to exposure to drugs that can cause serious side effects.
Ironically, unfavourable animal test results do not prevent a drug from being marketed for human use. So much evidence has accumulated about differences in the effects that chemicals have on animals and humans that government officials often do not act on findings from animal studies. In the last two decades, many drugs, including phenacitin, Eferol, Oraflex, Suprol and Selacryn, were taken off the market after causing hundreds of deaths and/or injuries. In fact, more than half the drugs the US Food & Drug Administration approved between 1976 and 1985 were either removed from the market or relabelled because of serious side effects. If the pharmaceutical industry switched from animal experiments to quantum pharmacology and in vitro tests, we would have greater protection, not less.
‘If we didn’t test on animals, how would we conduct medical research?’
Human clinical and epidemiological studies, cadavers and computer simulators are faster, more reliable, less expensive and more humane than animal tests. Ingenious scientists have developed, from human brain cells, a model ‘microbrain’ with which to study tumours, as well as artificial skin and bone marrow. We can now test irritancy on egg membranes, produce vaccines from cell cultures and perform pregnancy tests using blood samples instead of killing rabbits. As Gordon Baxter, co-founder of Pharmagene Laboratories (a company that uses only human tissues and computers to develop and test drugs) says, ‘If you have information on human genes, what’s the point of going back to animals?’
‘Doesn’t animal experimentation also help animals by advancing veterinary science?’
This is like saying it’s acceptable to experiment on poor children to benefit rich ones. The point is not whether animal experimentation can be useful to animals or humans; the point is that we do not have the moral right to inflict unnecessary suffering on those who are at our mercy.
‘Don’t medical students have to dissect animals?’
No, they don’t. In fact, more and more medical students are becoming conscientious objectors, and many students now graduate without having used animals; instead they learn by assisting experienced surgeons. In Great Britain, it is against the law for medical students to practise surgery on animals, and British physicians are as competent as those educated elsewhere. Many of the leading US medical schools, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, now use innovative, clinical teaching methods instead of old-fashioned animal laboratories. Harvard, for instance, offers a Cardiac Anaesthesia Practicum, where students observe human heart bypass operations instead of dog labs; the Harvard staff members who developed it have recommended that it be implemented elsewhere.
‘Should we throw out all the drugs that were developed and tested on animals? Would you refuse to take them?’
Unfortunately, a number of things in our society came about through others’ exploitation. For instance, many of the roads around the world were built by slaves. We can't change the past; those who have already suffered and died are lost. But what we can do is change the future by using non-animal research methods from now on.
‘Aren’t the animals protected by the law from cruelty?’
Animal protection laws still permit painful experiments and are poorly enforced. Animals in laboratories are often starved, electrically shocked, driven insane or burned with a blowtorch—in the name of ‘science’.
‘Don’t most scientists care about animals—don’t they have to since their research depends on the animals’ well-being?’
Investigations at America’s most prestigious institutions show that this is simply not the case. At the City of Hope in California, a prominent research facility, animals starved to death and drowned in their own faeces ‘by accident’. Many experimenters become calloused after years of research and don't see the animals’ suffering—they treat animals as disposable tools for research. Improvements in the animals’ care are fought as ‘too expensive’.
‘What about peer review and animal care committees at institutions?’
Many such committees are composed mainly or totally of people with vested interests in the continuation of animal experimentation. It has taken lawsuits to permit public access to committee meetings.
‘Would you allow an experiment that would sacrifice 10 animals to save 10,000 people?’
Suppose the only way to save those 10,000 people was to experiment on one mentally challenged orphan. If saving people is the goal, wouldn't that be worth it? Most people will agree that it is wrong to sacrifice one human for the ‘greater good’ of others because it would violate that individual’s rights. But when it comes to sacrificing animals, the assumption is that human beings have rights while animals do not. Yet there is no logical reason to deny animals the same rights that protect individual humans from being sacrificed for the common good.
‘What about experiments that don't harm animals but simply observe them?’
If there really is no harm, we don't object. But ‘no harm’ means that the animals aren’t kept isolated in barren, cold steel cages, because the stress and fear of confinement are harmful, as shown by the differences in blood pressure between caged and free animals. Caged animals also suffer by being prevented from performing their normal behaviours and social interactions.
‘If you were in a fire and could save only your child or your dog, whom would you choose?’
I would save my child, but that’s just instinct. A dog would save her pup. Regardless of whom I save, however, my choice proves nothing about the moral legitimacy of experimenting on animals. I might save my own child instead of my neighbour’s child, but that hardly proves that experimentation on my neighbour’s child is acceptable.
