Animal Rights

Rebuttal: According to research in the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, a properly planned vegetarian diet is "healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provides health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." Following a vegetarian diet reduces the mortality rate from ischemic heart disease by 25% (20% in females, 30% in males). Vegetarians tend to have lower body mass index, lower levels of cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and less incidence of heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, renal disease, metabolic syndrome, dementias such as Alzheimer's disease, obesity, and other disorders. A study of vegetarian and non-vegetarian adults, conducted in Taiwan, showed that there was no major difference in the bone density of vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and showed that non-vegetarians are at equal risk from Vitamin B12 deficiency as vegetarians. The China-Cornell-Oxford Project, a 20-year study conducted by Cornell University, the University of Oxford, and the government of China has established a correlation between the consumption of animal products and a variety of chronic illnesses, such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers. Vitamin B12 can be consumed by vegetarians in the form of tempeh, collard greens, leafy greens and tofu; Omega-3 fatty acids can be taken through walnuts, edible seeds and flaxseed oil. Milk can be consumed in its organic form by ethical vegetarians in certain countries, especially India (where beef is very rarely sold and is an unprofitable business) and some other countries. Milk can help in calcium and B12 deficiencies. Ethical reason for animal rights: Most people are unaware of the horrendous abuse that animals endure everyday; lab tests on animals have been proven unnecessary and are yet practiced by a variety of companies; animals are killed for ENTERTAINMENT (Spanish bullfighting) et cetera. Animals have the same ability to feel pain as humans, and many can even feel emotions. To help forge society, humans created a concept of ethics, based on the stronger psychology of human beings. While one can argue that ethics is only mutual, and meant for intra-human relationships, why do animals not deserve similar respect from humans? All sentient beings deserve respect. An animal may kill a human, and yet that animal is psychologically made to do such a thing; ethics is too complex for animals to practice. Humans, though, have the ability to extend compassion, and animals deserve this compassion. Animals are an important portion to the world's evolution. Why do animals deserve to be treated equally to humans? Many years ago, humans created the concept of ethics, where an advanced psychological being, the human, treats another with emotions and psychological environmental-fostering such as compassion. By these ethics, murder and torture, for example, are considered crimes, as is cannibalism. While one could argue that it is biologically necessary for humans to help each other for the survival of the human species, ethics was, in fact, made as the framework of civilization and society for humanity. So, humans gave rights and welfare great importance. Yet, why are animals not given the same respect? As the legendary Mahatma Gandhi said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." Why do other non-human species deserve such equal respect? 1. Animals can feel emotions and physical impulses. They feel pain, et cetera. 2. By the basic human concept of ethics, they do not deserve any direct infliction of pain by humans, bound to follow these ethics by society. 3. Humans have caused great harm and destruction to the Earth, while animals have merely helped the ecosystem balance. 4. Animals cannot commit "crimes". What an animal does is morally justifiable as animals have a varied notion of "ethics", and do not have the psychological complexity to understand these ethical propositions. Therefore, animals have not committed crimes, and do not deserve infliction of pain. Research on dogs and arthropods at the University of Lincoln showed that these animals react to stimuli by a nervous charge pattern similar to that of humans while experiencing emotions, proving that animals are capable of emotions. Thus, I conclude with the fact that animals deserve equal respect, welfare and rights, and do not deserve to be treated in cruel conditions of factory farming, slaughterhouses and laboratories that practice animal testing. Sources: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: Mortality in Vegetarians and Non-vegetarians; BBC news, "Rejecting meat 'keeps weight low'."; Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian diets; International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders: Lower Body Mass Index in Non-meat Eaters; Diabetes Care Journal; Diet-Brain Connection: Impact on Memory, Mood, Aging and Disease - by Mark P Mattson; Proceedings of the Nutrition Society; Public Health Nutrition: EPIC-Oxford: lifestyle characteristics and nutrient intakes in a cohort of 33 883 meat-eaters and 31 546 non meat-eaters in the UK; Environmental Values: Why the Naive Argument against Moral Vegetarianism Really is Naive; Journal of Popular Culture: Configuring the Human in Western History; The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity; The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan (Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, North Carolina State University)