Animals do feel pain
Animals should be treated carefully and protected from pain, suffering and fear. Unfortunately, millions of animals are mistreated every day without anyone intervening.
To the left you can watch a short clip (1:18 min) from the movie EARTHLINGS which contains an example of how animals are abused in slaughterhouses.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian
Sir Paul McCartney
Animal protector and vegetarian since 1975
Animal Rights or Animal Welfare
What's the difference?
Animal Welfare
Those who believe in animal welfare feel that it is acceptable to use animals as long as we do so without the animal suffering or feeling pain.
This means that it is OK for chickens to be used to lay eggs as long as they do not live their lives in cages. Similarly, most people think that factory farms, zoo’s and circuses are OK as long as the animals are not subjected to violence and torture. Even experimental animals are OK as long as they are given painkillers to minimize the feeling of pain.
Animal Rights
The challenge when thinking about animal welfare is that we do not see things from the animal’s perspective, but from our own.
Being locked inside a barn without the possibility of grass or sunlight can seem more humane than being in a cage the size of a piece of paper and giving experimental animals painkillers does not change the fact that monkeys, dogs, mouse and other experimental animals are filled with substances, cut in, tortured and in the end killed and thrown away.
People who believe in animal rights believe that the subject animal welfare is a violation of animal rights and just an excuse to justify our behavior toward the animals.
People who believe in animal rights are against factory farms, animal testing, fur farms, circuses etc. They do not accept and do not agree that we have the right to use animals for our own purpose or exclude them from living in their natural environment. People who believe in animal rights do understand that some people have to eat meat, due to the fact that they live under conditions where their primary food source is meat.
