animal rights

Animal rights activists pretend to be about animal welfare, but in reality, they want to outlaw all instrumental uses of animals.

We can see this illustrated in Oregon, where animal rights activists are attempting to qualify Initiative Petition 28 for the November ballot. Proponents claim it is about ending cruelty. But the actual purpose is to effectively outlaw animal agriculture and hunting in the state.

First, if passed, the law would create a legal equality between animals and people. From the Yes on IP28 website:

We believe everyone should be equally protected under the law, and that all animals deserve equal consideration, regardless of whether or not we consider them our companions. All animals deserve a life free from cruelty.

The rights of nature movement has been more successful than the animal rights movement. Geological features such as rivers, but few animals, have been granted rights. But now in a merger of sorts of these worldviews, stingless bees have been granted rights in two local ordinances in Peru. From the Smithsonian magazine story: Under the new laws, stingless bees now have the fundamental right to exist and flourish in a healthy environment, without pollution, habitat loss, climate change, human activity or other threats getting in the way of their survival. Humans can also file lawsuits on the insects’ behalf. So, in essence, bees have been granted a right to life. PETA must be dancing a jig. Also, notice the global warming Read More ›

Princeton “moral philosopher” Peter Singer has co-authored a piece decrying the “speciesism” of AI. What is speciesism, you ask? The misanthropic argument made by many bioethicists and animal rights activists that treating an animal — like an animal — is an evil akin to racism. In other words, herding cattle is as depraved as slavery. And now AIs are being programmed to promote speciesist immortality. Oh, no! From “AI’s Innate Bias Against Animals,” published in Nautilus. Even though significant efforts are being made to reduce the harmful biases in LLMs [large language models] against certain groups of humans, and other kinds of output that could be harmful to humans, there are, so far, no comparable efforts to reduce speciesist biases Read More ›

The push to grant rights to, well, everything continues apace. Now, a long piece in the progressive publication Current Affairs argues that “Wild Animals Deserve Rights, Too.” Animal-rights activist Michael Burrows writes: Wild animals deserve our attention and respect, for the same reasons that we should care about any creature: they are sentient, with recognizable social behaviors and emotions, and just like humans their lives have intrinsic value. But wild animals are also unique, simply by virtue of existing outside of the sphere of human stewardship. They live their lives mostly out of our sight, and we have no hands-on role in their breeding or care. Still, our current system of land management treats wild animals as simply another variable in our nation’s supply-and-demand graph, to be kept Read More ›

Animal rights activists keep attempting to grant “rights” to animals through novel — and I would say, frivolous — lawsuits. PETA sued SeaWorld, claiming that the orcas were “slaves.” The Nonhuman Rights Project has sued three times to have chimpanzees and elephants declared “persons” entitled to writs of habeas corpus. Those suits failed. But animal rights activists never give up. Now, PETA is suing the NIH and the National Institute of Mental Health, claiming that the agency’s refusal to allow them to receive closed-circuit monitoring of research monkeys and communicate directly with them violates the animal rights fanatics’ First and Fifth Amendment rights. The irrationality begins in the complaint’s first and second paragraphs when the complaint alleges PETA has a Read More ›

Animal rights activists are determined to persuade a court to declare an animal a “person” to enable them to engage in unremitting lawfare against all animal uses — an advocacy project known as “animal standing.” Having failed twice in New York to have chimps and then an elephant named Happy declared persons, the NonHuman Rights Project moved its effort to Colorado seeking writs of habeas corpus to be issued on behalf of zoo elephants. The activists had some reason for hope. Two judges in New York’s highest court swallowed the baloney in a 5-2 ruling against elephant personhood. Thankfully, the Colorado supreme court exhibited greater wisdom in unanimously turning the case away. Why? Because as any ten-year-old could tell the Read More ›

We hear a lot from environmentalists, animal rights activists, and just plain caring people about the supposed evils of industrial farming. Neo-Luddites throw tantrums about GMOs, for example. And many commenters — including in these pages — lament the conditions in which meat animals and egg-laying hens are raised. Those are certainly legitimate concerns worthy of investigation and debate. But we also need to focus on the tremendous good humans receive from having bountiful, affordable, and nutritious food supplies, which would seem to require at least some industrial methods to achieve. Indeed, until now, these and other benefits humans receive from industrial agriculture and so-called factory farms seem to be one of those hot potato topics that we are not allowed to Read More ›