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Discussion Point: Animal Rights

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Two recent news stories inspired this one, first Mark Prichard’s private members bill to ban wild animals in circuses, second the Dutch parliament voting to ban ritual slaughter of animals.

The logic behind these acts of legislation is that we should treat lesser,non sentient creatures in a humane way regardless of religious belief.

Now this may sound callous, but I place the highest value on human freedom.  Furthermore I put humans before other species, and while I personally don’t like to eat it myself it doesn’t bother me if others wish to eat animals that were killed using kosher/halal methods. Therefore I oppose these bans for restricting our freedom of choice.

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One response to “Discussion Point: Animal Rights”

  1. Ben Lodge Avatar
    Ben Lodge

    I strongly believe that libertarians should be passionate advocates of animal rights, because we’re talking about negative rights such as freedom from torture and murder.

    If you want to put higher value on human life, you need to actually explain why. I’d agree to an extent – in a life or death situation, I’d save a human over a different species. However, when you have an animal suffering greatly from a particularly cruel method of slaughter weighed up against trivial benefits to us (it’s certainly not necessary to kill animals in this way), I think the animals should win that contest.

    To say otherwise doesn’t just mean you value human freedom over non human animal freedom in matters of life or death – it means you think very trivial human interests outweigh basic negative rights of animals. You would need to justify that phisophically. The argument from marginal cases shows that animals must be treated with a higher regard than that. The following article is essential reading for all libertarians regarding animal rights, it’s all from a libertarian perspective:

    http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/A%20Libertarian%20Replies%20to%20Tibor%20Machan%27s%20%27Why%20Animal%20Rights%20Don%27t%20Exist%27.htm

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