Animals should have rights

I want to start first by pointing out that the burden of proof lies mainly on my opponent to prove the resolution true. He can't just stand up here and disprove any argument I may advance because that wouldn't be sufficient to affirm under his resolution. Even if he's disproving why we should be going out and making animals' lives hell, that doesn't warrant why we should be giving them rights. He has to have a separate warrant for that, therefore is required to advance his own arguments. Of course, I'll be advancing a case of my own to say why we shouldn't have to give them rights, but if he isn't sufficiently winning on his side of the debate, you negate the resolution as he's failed to uphold his burden of proof. This means that my argument is thus: we don't have a reason to give animals rights. Two things would have to stop if we were to give animals rights: we couldn't kill animals and we couldn't test on animals. I'll briefly explain why we shouldn't do either. Why Not Killing Animals Sucks:For one, without animals dying, a lot of the food we get goes away. No more beef. No more chicken. No more turkey. No more fish. No lamb or veal. This harms our ability to eat and, therefore survive. Even if there are other options in vegetarianism or veganism, there's still less available food beause we're taking any and all animal-food products off the table, which means there's less food to go around, which means more people go hungry. But for two, slaughtering animals is actually kind of important to the US economy. Lets just take a look at some stats here. In 2010,[1]- the meat and poultry packing and processing industries employed more than 487 thousand workers- meat companies and their employees provided 81.2 billion dollars in direct tax revenue to state and local governments. - states sales tax generates 2.4 billion dollars in profit just from the consumption of meat and poultry- through companies involved in meat production (suppliers, distributers, retailers, and anicllary industries), the meat industry employed 6.2 billion workers with 200 billion dollars in wages. - the meat and poultry industry's economic ripple effect generated 864.2 billion dollars, equivalent to 6% of the GDP, to the US economyAnd through the distribution and production linkages, the meat and poultry industry impacts firms in all 509 sectors of the US economy in every single state and every single congressional district nation-wide. I don't know about you, but I don't want all that to go away just so we can give animals rights. That's kind of important to keep around. Why Not Testing on Animals is Bad:This one is simple enough: think of all the great medical advances we've had in the past century or so. For pretty much every medical advancement in the past century, there's been an animal behind it. Let's just take a look at how far we've come just from animals alone. The University of Minnesota actually published a small, but not insignficant, list of medical advances due to animals, along with what animal was credited for the discovery[2]. I won't cover them all, but let's just get some of the highlights for the road:1990 - We developed more advanced organ transplant technicques thanks to dogs, pigs, sheep, and cows.1982 - We developed a treatment for leprosy thanks to the armadillo.1964 - We discovered ways to regulate one's cholestoral, thanks to the rat.1956 - We developed ways to perform open-heart surgery and invented pacemakers thanks to the dog.1954 - We made a vaccine for polio thanks to mice and monkeys1921 - We discovered insulin thanks to dogs and fish. It even goes back further than the past century, going all the way to 1881 where we developed a vaccine for anthrax because of sheep and 1796 where we developed a vaccine for smallpox thanks to cows. But why freaking stop there? Lets throw out some more discoveries from animal testing[3]. Breast Cancer? Animal research was crucial when we developed Herceptin and Tamoxifen, which help cure breast cancer. Leukemia? Testing on mice lead to the development of Gleevec, which is the first molecularly targeted drug against cancer, and we also use Gleevec to gastrointestinal stromal tumor (known as GIST) which was untreatable before it's development. Lung Cancer? Researching on mice is critical to understanding, preventing, and detecting lung cancer, as well as for developing new therapies for treating it. Heart Disease or Stroke? Everything from what foods to eat to minimze risk to the development of statins, a pill that helps control cholestoral and reduce risk for heart disease, come off of the back of animal studies. I could keep going, but I think I've made my point fairly clear: medical advances stop if we stop testing on animals to give them rights. With that, I'll pass the floor over to my opponent and wish him good luck. Sources:[1] - . http://www.meatami.com...[2] - . http://cflegacy.research.umn.edu...[3] - . http://www.amprogress.org...