Animal Rights in the Media Essay -- social issues

Animal Rights in the Media This essay will explore the moral and ethical issues raised by human superiority over animals, why we shouldn’t have any superiority, and how this subject is portrayed in a variety of different media. The world today is becoming less aware of the pain and suffering being inflicted on animals. As a result, animals are becoming even more and more downtrodden in society. Humans have, and continue to, treat animals as if they are property, as if we can own and therefore control their lives and what happens to them. This is immoral, animals are here for themselves, animals have their own lives, and they think, have feelings, feel pain, require love (from their own species), feel emotional hurt, have families, and everything else that humans do. To just simply say that non-human animals should have no rights because they’re â€Å"defective† is a mindless statement! People come to this â€Å"conclusion† because they come up with some mindless babble like, non-human animals can’t talk, drive cars or vote, therefore they have no non-tradable properties. Well answer me this; do non-human animals have the right to exist in their natural environment and express behaviours that matter to them? We withhold non-human animals the very basic rights, simply because they don’t resemble humans. Humans are speciest. Humans are callous, brutal and cold-blooded towards non-human animals; humans have no consideration for the feelings and suffering which they selfishly inflict on animals. When a human kills another human they are the disgrace of the country, the headlines in the news, and all they did was kill one human, one insignificant human life. Yet, no one seems to care that everyday billions upon billions of innocent animals are being sickeningly, nauseatingly, hideously, vilely, unanaesthetically murdered for meat. If you think the process of that cute cow in the field to the steak on your plate is all candy and roses, then here is an extract from a very informative article on the way in which an animal is killed to become meat, (something that humans have no nutritional requirement for!). â€Å"Death came in the form of a pneumatic nail gun that was placed against their heads and fired. The gun is designed so that the nail never completely leaves the gun, but simply is blown into the animal's head and then pulled out by the butcher as the animal co... ...or things as vain as make-up, yes that’s right, millions of whales are murdered to make useless cosmetics, vain and heartless! This book shows man in his most arrogant state, it shows that humans will stop at nothing, they don’t care if it involves the ruthless torture of non-human animals, as long as their profiting then they don’t care. So as all the sources show, humans are heartless and speciest. The way in which humans treat non-human animals needs drastic changing; we should not be exploiting them for any reason at all. There are not here to serve us, they are here for there own purposes. One final question for you to consider; â€Å"If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?† References Sewell, A. (1877) Black Beauty, United States of America: Nancy Springer Ø Smith, V. (1943) Musco – Blue Whale, Maryborough, Vic: Hedges & Bell Pty. Ltd Ø Andre (1996) Ø Gifford, D. (2001) â€Å"meat is murder†, URL: http://www.meat.org/ Ø Pyers, G & Gott, R. (1994) â€Å"Treated like animals†, The relationships between people and animals, Carlton, Vic: CIS publishers