Animal Rights

Animal rights is defined as an animal's own rights to be free from any harm to serve the purpose of humans and continue living freely in their own environment. 

Animal Issues

1. EXPERIMENTS  

Animals are used to observe chemical reactions based on cosmetics, drugs, and food testing before medics approve the selling of products. The scientists treat their animal test subjects harshly by forcing them to unwanted procedures that put them a high risk of injury or even death. For example, scientists may burn their skin when chemicals are placed on them, while animals do not have any escape because they are injected with tranquilizer drugs. Nearly all animals have been victims of medical and science experiments forced upon them, such as dogs, frogs, cats, birds, monkeys, rabbits, rats, fish, guinea pigs, pigs, reptiles, etc. 

2. FOOD

Many animals are used for meals depending on the culture each country has. For example, people in Mexico eat grasshoppers by frying them, people in Cambodia eat fried spiders, people in China eat snakes, pigeons and ducks. Some animals like cows and chickens are overfed in slaughterhouses so they can be fuller by the time they are killed because people prefer animals that are bigger. Also, animals may be given steroid hormones because this supplement makes animals increase their size faster. The two main animals that are most used for food are cows and chickens. In most countries, cows are used to make hamburgers, while chickens are used for fried or grilled chicken.  

3. LABOR

Depending on the country, people will use specific animals for labor in order to help humans with daily tasks. These animals are working against their will, because they are always tied or caged so they are unable to leave and can remain there when the owner needs their use again. Animals are used in labor to carry supplies, transport people, and complete other services. Animals that are used to transport people or objects are donkeys, camels, elephants, horses, yaks, buffalos, and llamas by tying a rope around them to carry bags or boxes of supplies. Dogs are one of the main animals used for labor because they contribute  to different services, such as herding, protecting, guiding people, and for K-9 specialities. Horses are also often used for people to ride them, however they suffer from whippings and branding burns. 

4. CLOTHING/PRODUCTS

Several pieces of clothing, accessories and products come from animals. Animals are taken away from their lives to make products that will be sold in stores. Animals create several materials seen today, such as leather used for leather jackets, wool used for blankets, fur used to make coats, silk used for ties, and ivory used for piano keys. The skin of animals can be taken to make products too, such as snake skin used to make purses, shoes and belts or crocodile skin used to make shoes. Animals can be used for fashionable accessories, such as the pearls of clams to make necklaces. The tissue of oily fish is taken away to make fish oil. Products for physical health can come from animals to create ointments and medicine. 

5. ENTERTAINMENT 

The main forms of entertainment that involve the presence of animals are in circus, aquariums, and zoos. Animals in zoos and aquariums do not have a lot of area to explore because they are kept in small living spaces. While circus animals are kept inside cages unless they are needed for a performance. They are overly trained to make performances to impress the crowd, such as sea lions that play with balls and try to make tricks. Another form of entertainment that involve animals are also, chicken or dogs fights in Mexico. Similar to Olympic Games for humans, there are Olympic games for dogs that are trained to become a contestant and win first place. Horses are overtired when they are forced to participate in horse-races in which they are pressured to win. In Mexico, they have a game that involves riding a bull to see who can stay on the bull the longest. While in different parts of Latin America they bring in a bull to chase a red fabric held by a person, who is continuously moving around trying to get the bull's attention. 

Laws in Place

Within the United States, there are only a few laws that protect animals. A few laws in place that protect animals are:

• The Animal Welfare Act: The Animal Welfare Act was the first law in place that gave some form of protection to animals. It was established on August 24, 1966 to protect animals from maltreatment through experimentations, exhibitions, transportations, and dealers. 
• Endangered Species Act: The Endangered Species Act was first signed into law in 1973 in order to protect animals that were at risk of injury or death. 
• The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act: The PACT Act was effective in 2019 to stop the act of animal cruelty that involved any form of physical torture towards them. Forms of physical torture involve crushing, drowning, burning, or suffocating an animal. 

Animals Stripped Away from their Environments

The association of the American zoo and aquarium have given privilege to 2,633 animal exhibitors to set up their zoo or aquarium settings. This means that each year several thousand animals are taken away from the wildlife and placed in zoos or aquariums for entertainment purposes. In addition, they are not given the proper accommodations to live adequately. More so, millions of animals are taken away from their home for experiment purposes where they are injected and tested with all kinds of drugs and chemicals. Without knowing the effects on the animals, the scientists continue to practice experiments on these animals. 

Effects on Animals

Negative effects animals may experience due to suffrage are depression, psychotic feeling, and trauma. Therefore, people fill them with antidepressants, tranquilizers or other drugs to calm their state of mind. It is clear these animals are experiencing negative effects after being taken away from their environment, which is why they require them to take drugs to help them. Even if animals return back to their environment they can still live with the negative effects that were built on them when they were taken away to a different environment. For example, dogs who are taken away from their home for experiment purposes can return home with negative or odd behavior due to the trauma it experienced. 

Solutions to this Issue

Therefore, the initial start to help animals is to exclude them from experiments because it can result in physical or emotional problems. Today, we see advanced equipment and technology that can be used for transportation to terminate animal labor. An alternative to reduce the consumption of animals is to eat beans, rice, bread, salad, almond-milk, fruits and vegetables. Lastly, an effective method to help animal rights is to stop removing animals from their natural environment. Animals can't speak for themselves so people have to ensure that they have their rights and do not suffer abuse. 

References

“Animals used for entertainment.” Peta. https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/

Gullone, E. (2014). “Risk factors for the development of animal cruelty.” Journal of Animal Ethics, 4(2), 61-79. Doi:10.5406/janimalethics.4.2.0061 

Humane Society International/Global (2020). “About Animal Testing.” Humane Society International, [page numbers if there are any]. https://www.hsi.org/news-media/about/

“Laws that protect animals: Federal, state, and local.” Animal Legal Defense Fund Est 1979. https://aldf.org/article/laws-that-protect-animals/

Orzechowski, K. (2020). “The Animal Rights Movement: History and Facts about Animal Rights.” Faunalytics. https://faunalytics.org/the-animal-rights-movement-history-and-facts-about-animal-rights/