Do Animals Have a Right to Life?

Abstract

The question of whether nonhuman animals have a right to life has less practical importance than one might think, for even if they have no such right, the slaughter of nonhumans can still be condemned on other grounds. The principal human activities that involve killing animals—hunting, trapping, meat production, and scientific research—all involve such cruelty that they should be rejected for that reason alone. 2 If, in addition, the animals have a right to life that is violated, the already conclusive case against those practices is simply made stronger. Nevertheless, the question in my title does have some practical importance, for there are some cases of painless killing not covered by the moral prohibition on cruelty. And of course it has considerable theoretical interest, not only for those concerned with animal welfare, but for all those interested more generally in the concept of the right to life. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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