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Animal Rights In Canada

Decent Essays

The Canadian law currently states that the killing of any animal for the purpose of food is legal in any circumstance. As newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, I want to propose a law that will make it illegal for anyone to kill an animal unless it is an extreme emergency. In what follows I will argue that our current law violates the rights of animals and I will define what an extreme emergency is. When a discussion is brought up about moral rights of a living being, we must first ask ourselves why do humans have rights? This might seem like an obvious answer to some but I would like to explore this thought as there could be some relevance for other living beings as well. Humans are thought to have moral rights because they meet the criteria of belonging to a species where rights are inherent upon birth. These rights are inherent to humans because there is a certain cognitive level met by the species. We are able to understand a subjective experience …show more content…

Since we cannot communicate in an effective way to these animals, some people find it hard to believe that animals really do experience subjectivity. However, it seems that every person can understand that animals such as dogs, cats, and primates seek pleasure and avoid pain. These two ideas are contradictions of each other because if an animal seeks to enhance its subjective experience, it must follow that they do have a similar subjective experience as humans. Not surprisingly, just like the mentally retarded children that were previously mentioned, even if these animals cannot solve complex math problems, read or write, or compose music that these animals are still subjects of life. It follows that if these animals are subjects of life that they should also fall into the domain of equality of

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