Do Animals Have Rights?

The way someone answers the question posed in the title of this blog post is a good indicator of how open that person is to becoming vegan.

For instance, people who say, "Heck no," probably aren't going to be converting to veganism anytime soon. But those who believe that animals do have rights -- such as the right to live -- might be more open to the idea.

During the past two weeks, the question of whether animals have rights was an underlying theme in a couple prominent news stories.

If you live in or near New York City, you probably heard about the carriage horse that keeled over and died in Midtown last Sunday. The horse was trotting toward Central Park to begin its morning shift when it just collapsed. Since healthy horses normally don't just die in the street, the city is asking for an autopsy, though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a press conference on Wednesday that there was no evidence of abuse.

During that press conference, Mr. Bloomberg also dismissed calls for a ban on the carriage industry, citing its place in New York's history. The New York Times reports:

"I have no idea what goes through their minds," the mayor said of opponents of horse-drawn carriages.

"The horses here are supervised by the health department, the A.S.P.C.A.," he said. "They're well taken care of. And most of them wouldn't be alive if they didn't have a job."

While the quality of the horses' treatment is debatable (after all, horses aren't meant to live in urban environments) Mr. Bloomberg is right to say that many wouldn't be alive if they didn't have the carriage job.

Though the country's last meat processing plant that slaughtered horses for human consumption was closed five years ago, just as many American horses are still ending up on a dinner plates: according to a recent government study, horse slaughter is now taking place across the border in Mexico and Canada.

Though in recent weeks lawmakers have pushed Congress to take action, The Times reports that a resolution does not appear imminent:

"It's just a hot political issue," said Dr. Whitney Miller, a lobbyist for the American Veterinary Medical Association, which supports allowing horse slaughter. "It's hard to see something definitive happening."

The problem is that many people still view horses as livestock animals, similar to a cow, sheep or goat. Not to mention, in some places horse meat is prized as a delicacy. Still, the argument of "they're being killed anyway so we might as well be the ones doing it (and profiting off of it)" is pretty cynical.

But horses weren't the only animals getting slaughtered in the news this week. In Ohio, lions, tigers and bears were being killed in the double digits.

Last Tuesday Muskingum County Animal Farm owner Terry Thompson turned loose 56 animals and then shot himself to death. Sheriff's deputies in Zanesville, Ohio were issued shoot-to-kill orders, managing to kill 48 animals and capture six (a wolf was later found dead and a monkey is still on the loose).

The animals killed included 18 rare Bengal tigers (there are only 1,400 of the endangered cats left in the world) and 17 lions.

It's a tragedy that this happened, and though it's pretty galling that tranquilizers weren't used at all, I can understand that the police department was worried about the town's safety.

What I don't understand is why they allowed Mr. Thompson to run a farm in the first place. Time reports:

Thompson, 62, had had repeated run-ins with the law and his neighbors. Lutz said that the sheriff's office had received numerous complaints since 2004 about animals escaping onto neightbors' property. The sheriff's office also said that Thompson had been charged over the years with animal cruelty, animal neglect and allowing animals to roam.

He had gotten out of federal prison just last month after serving a year for possessing unregistered guns.

John Ellenberger, a neighbor, speculated that Thompson freed the animals to get back at neighbors and the police. "Nobody much cared for him," Ellenberger said.

How does someone who has just gotten out of federal prison assemble a zoo of more than 50 animals in a month? And more importantly, why is someone who has just gotten out of federal prison being allowed to build a private zoo that includes a cross section of some of the most dangerous animals in the world?

For starters, Ohio has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them. Governor John Kasich also allowed a statewide ban on the buying and selling of exotic pets to expire in April.

Above all, it's the complete disregard for animal rights that allowed this killing spree to happen. And that disregard isn't exclusive to Ohio, but rather endemic of a number of other state's in this country as well.

PETA is taking advantage of this animal media frenzy by filling a lawsuit against SeaWorld over the company's treatment of its killer whales. The 20-page complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Southern California to declare that the five whales are being held in slavery or involuntary servitude in violation of the 13th Amendment.

The lawsuit is unprecedented and will certainly fail; instead, PETA is using the legal action to stoke the debate about animal rights. And while most commentators have scoffed at this lawsuit, Stephen Colbert made a pretty good point about the idea that animals can't be equated to humans:

If corporations can be afforded the same rights as people, why can't animals? After all, they're quite the job creators: while the economy for us humans has imploded, the pet economy has continued to grow.