In his article, “The Case Against Animal Rights”, Carl Cohen makes the explicit claim that humans do not have a moral or ethical responsibility to uphold the rights of animals due to their lack of “moral capability.” I intend to argue that humans, as the highest level of morally autonomous sentient beings, like Cohen recognizes in his article, do, in fact, possess both moral and ethical obligations to recognize animal rights and take appropriate action to ensure their wellbeing. I will make use of statistics and information that displays the imperative need for animal welfare, primarily in relation to modern day agricultural practices, as well as philosophical claims in support of the rights of animals, to counter Cohen’s argument.
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The pseudo images pictured on dairy packaging and meat cutlets of cows roaming open, green fields are nothing more that advertisement ploys to convince the buyer that they are purchasing something healthy and less processed. Broiler chickens that are raised in CAFOs are injected with hormones that make them grow much larger than their natural size to produce more meat; these chickens are confined by the thousands in compact, dark, warehouses where they often cannot move due to lack of space and lack of strength to support their abnormally large size. This is only one example of the appalling treatment of animals inside CAFOs and AFOs. A few other abusive methods of control are the removal of the horns of cattle, docking cows’ and hogs’ tails, or castrating bulls; all of which are done without anesthesia (Heinzen and Russ 3). Eisnitz states that, “In slaughterhouses, where the average kill rate is 400 animals per hour, the assembly line is not necessarily stopped even if the animal remains alive after being ‘stunned’.” This kind of unfair treatment can continue without consequence because it has become increasingly difficult to regulate what happens inside animal feeding operations. Heinzen and Russ explain