Saturday, February 13, 2010

Human Rights or Animal Rights?

Listen to Porolita explain how she responds when people ask how she could focus on nonhuman animal rights when there are so many human rights issues to be addressed. Check out her YouTube channel here.

7 comments:

Allison, The Busy (Happy!) Vegan said...

Thanks for posting this! I think Porolita makes some very good points. I would add just one point.

As Porolita says, human rights and animal rights are not mutually exclusive. In fact, factory farming exploits not only the non-human animals that are slaughtered, but the human animals who do the slaughtering. Slaughterhouse employees are often foreign workers with limited options who are paid by the product, rather than by the hour, which encourages speed over safety, leading to debilitating, and often untreated, acute and chronic injuries. Moreover, the acts which the employees are forced to do in order to feed their family often lead to trauma, anxiety, and depression.

Therefore, being vegan helps non-human and human animals alike!

M said...

I agree with your comment. The exploitation that goes on in the animal slaughter industry certainly isn't restricted to nonhuman animals.

It's a shame that some folks try to turn it into an "either/or" scenario. The truth is that vegans are against the exploitation of all animals.

Humans are animals.

Luis Tovar said...

Aren´t "Human Rights" speciesist?

If we eliminate speciesism from our moral view, then it´s not acceptable a right only for humans. That would be a morally unjustified discrimination.

I accept that, inside Rights, there are basic rights, civil rights, labor rights, etc... but not bovine rights, canine rights, mammal rights, etc... So, why "human rights"?

Animal Rights are not discriminatory because only animals could be sentient, and sentience must be the fundamental only criterion for moral consideration and basic rights.

Cavall de Quer said...

It's also true that historically many of the people involved in early animal rights work were also busy on the human rights front - see Richard Ryder's "Animal Revolution" for details. I've certainly found that an involvement with AR leads straight to renewed involvement with human rights issues - no way they can be split up.

Unknown said...

love this video, thank you for sharing! @richardturgeon

Vanilla Rose said...

When I get a patronising person drone on about human rights, I congratulate them on their great passion for human rights and ask if they have any petitions they want me to sign, or letters they want me to write.

They seldom do.

I also ask them why they think eating meat gives them the ability to be a better human rights activist and they never seem to actually answer that one.

Vanilla Rose said...

I recently was attacked by a snide meat eater. Here, if I have the hang of blogger links, is a picture of my response.