Animal Rights - Pahla Kadam Foundation
What are animal rights? Similar to human rights, animal rights are centered around the notion of freedom. Usually, we’re talking about either guaranteeing freedom to do something, or freedom from something else. In many countries, human rights are enshrined to protect people’s autonomy, like the right to expression, protection from torture, and access to democracy. Advocates for human rights fight to ensure that all people—regardless of orientation, race, class, or gender—are afforded the same basic rights, simply on the grounds that we are all human.
Animal rights activists aim to do something similar for non-humans. They believe that all animals—given scientific data proving their ability to experience pain and emotions—deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice.
The opposite end of the spectrum from animal rights is animal exploitation, which are situations in which animals have no choice to live freely, no autonomy over their own lives. Instead, humans dictate every aspect of an exploited animal's life. Animal exploitation occurs in agriculture, where animals are treated as commodities to be turned into food. It occurs in science, as well, when animals are treated as unwilling test subjects. Animal rights can also be violated when humans destroy wild animals’ habitats—often to make room for more farms.
Does the government give animals rights?
Animal rights are very rarely afforded by governments around the world. However, countries do have some basic protections and guidelines for how animals can be treated. Even these baseline protections, we’ll see, come with exceptions. And just because some laws protect animals from the most blatant forms of abuse, doesn’t mean those animals have guaranteed rights—more on this later.
The UK Sentience Bill
In 2024, animal rights activists celebrated the passage of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill in the UK. Fittingly passed 200 years after the Martin’s Act—considered by some as the first piece of legislation in the ongoing movement to give animals legal protection–the landmark 2024 bill marks the first time the country’s government formally recognized the inherent sentience of animals. Why is this recognition important to animals rights activists? With sentience and welfare needs now enshrined in the law of the land, activists now have better legal backing to oppose exploitative industries and practices that inflict cruelty upon sentient, emotional animals. In this case, lawmakers are finally catching up to something that’s been scientific understanding for years: animals feel pain, just like you and me.
The US Animal Welfare Act
In 1966, the United States passed the Animal Welfare Act. While it is the primary federal legislation addressing the treatment of animals to date, its scope is fairly narrow—the law excludes many species, including farmed animals, from its protections. The law does establish some basic guidelines for the sale, transport, and handling of dogs, cats, rabbits, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, and hamsters when they are used in research, sold commercially, or exhibited. It also protects the psychological welfare of animals who are used in lab experiments, and prohibits the violent practices of dogfighting and cockfighting. Again, this law does not recognize the rights and autonomy of animals—or even their ability to feel pain and suffer—but it does afford non-human animals some basic welfare protections.
Farmed animals are some of the least protected beings in the US. Even something basic like the Humane Slaughter Act, which was passed to ensure animals do not suffer unduly at the time of their slaughter, does not extend to chickens, fish, or rabbits—all of whom have demonstrated sentience in research studies.
What are some examples of animal rights?
Part of learning about animal rights is coming to terms with the fact that, at this point, animals are mostly not afforded many rights at all. We just covered some of their basic protections from abuse, but animal rights activists envision a world where countries go further and ensure animals a level of freedom and autonomy over their own bodies, their own lives.
Here are some of the rights that the folks at the Animal Legal Defense Fund believe should be enshrined into law in the US.
1. The right of wild animals to self-determination and an environment that allows them to engage in their natural behaviors.
2. The right of animals under human care to have their species-specific and individual needs fulfilled.
3. The right of animals to have their interests represented in legal proceedings without impediments.
4. The right of animals subject to criminal acts to be legally recognized as crime victims.