Scientific Essay on Animal Rights

Scientific Essay on Animal Rights

Animal rights: a pending legislative debt for humanity

Legislation on animal rights or, as many prefer to refer to them to remind us that we are not so different, "non-human animals" is a fairly recent phenomenon in the history of law, although there are notable antecedents in times ancient.

It took until the seventeenth century for the formal appearance of the first laws that prohibited cruel treatment towards certain animals: in Ireland in 1635 it was prohibited to tie plows to the tails of horses, for example, while In the American colony of Massachusetts, a body of laws was passed in 1641 in defense of the domestic animals. All this as a prelude to the philosophical challenges that the British John Locke made at the end of the century of traditional positions Cartesian with respect to animals, according to which these were nothing more than automatons programmed by God, incapable of suffering or feel.

Since then, animal law became, little by little, a subject worthy of study and interest. About 100 law schools in the world teach courses on the matter, including the prestigious Harvard, Stanford, Duke, UCLA and Michigan State University in the United States and yet a universal declaration of animal rights did not take place until 1978.

A declaration, incidentally, that despite being supported by UNESCO and the planet's environmental consensus, never went beyond being a glittering declaration of intentions: established October 4 as the International Day of Animal Rights and the duty of treatment between human beings and animals was enshrined in 14 written articles. animals, but at no time were real, concrete and efficient measures available to guarantee what was agreed, especially since this goes against the large food industries. It is easy to react to a man who beats his dog but how difficult it is to advance on one of the majors industries of the planet and one of the main culprits of contemporary animal abuse.

The debate, it must be admitted, is not simple. Grant rights to living creatures that they could never voluntarily use them, that they cannot respect the rights of others is a challenge to legislative thinking, especially on food issues, where these rights conflict with human rights.

Many, in this line of reflection, insist that it is not necessary to grant rights to animals, but to enforce a strict ethical code to human beings. At the end of the day, it is we who can feel empathy for the short and full of suffering that many animals experience today.

In 2000, the United Nations Organization considered assuming this last position in its Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, which has not yet been approved by this organism. The purpose of this declaration was nothing more than to recognize and formalize internationally something that for any person endowed with a minimum margin of empathy It would be obvious: that animals are living beings capable of feeling and suffering, many of them in measures very close (if not identical) to those of being human; and that the exercises of cruelty towards them constitute an ethical and moral dilemma for our species. But even such an obvious approach is difficult to formalize in international law.

Other initiatives at a more local level have been more successful in this regard, such as the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, in which the States of the European Union committed to develop effective legislation regarding animal abuse, something that only Belgium, France, Hungary and Spain have done, with their respective Protection Laws Animal. Similar laws exhibit the laws of Chile, Brazil and Argentina, in South America, and those of only some of the United States.

It happens that the rearing and slaughter in cruel, unsanitary and degrading conditions (both for the animals as well as humans who deal with it) respond to some extent to the need for manufacture food at a steady and dizzying pace.

A more responsible meat consumption would not only collaborate with the environment, but would also reduce the pressure on the livestock system and breeding (would make it less profitable) to allow the emergence of new models that meet the ethical call regarding animal suffering and incidentally reduce the risk of the appearance of zoonotic infections, minimize the impact of this industry on bacterial resistance to the antibiotics and, finally, allow us to lead a healthier existence on the planet, both for ourselves and for the rest of the living beings that accompany us.

References:

• "What is a scientific essay?" on the National university of Trujillo (Peru).
• "Animal rights" in Wikipedia.
• "Animal rights" by Daniela Castillo and Roberto Wesley in the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo (Mexico).
• "The Universal Declaration of Animal Rights, wet paper" in the magazine Consumer (Spain).

What is a scientific essay?

A scientific essay It is a type of writing that addresses a scientific topic, explores it in depth and supports its findings, hypothesis and conclusions in scientific evidence, that is, in own and / or other people's research in the area. It is the main type of documents in scientific and informative publications, aimed at a specialized or general public, and whose fundamental purpose is to transmit and preserve the scientific knowledge.

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