A famous and offensive ad by PeTA
When talking about pets and love of animals, many people confuse the two terms Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Most people assume that, though different terms, the two phrases mean essentially the same thing. As with any highly charged topic, the answers are not simple. While the two groups do align on many key issues, their differences are noteworthy as well.
Animal welfare groups are concerned with increasing the responsibility and accountability of pet owners and livestock producers. Welfare groups like the ASPCA run a few shelters and animal hospitals in New York City (which are not affiliated with your local SPCA) and focus on advocating for tougher laws against unethical treatment of animals. Animal welfare groups do not believe it is inherently wrong to use animals for human gain as long as unnecessary suffering is avoided. Human beings are responsible for the creation of domesticated animals through years of selective breeding. Therefore, they believe we should treat them well and take responsibility for their welfare. They do not believe it is wrong to keep animals as pets, eat animals for food or use them for medical research.
In contrast, one of the basic tenets of animal rights is that any use of animals for human gain is exploitive. For most animal rights groups, the primary focus is to eliminate factory farming and the fur clothing industries. Very little attention or funding goes towards the improvement of life for companion animals like cats and dogs. In the view of animal rights groups, pets are a selfish creation of man and should be freed at any cost. There is controversy in Norfolk, VA over a PeTA run shelter which euthanizes animals. Euthanizing animals is a sad but necessary part of most shelters. But even shelters with extremely high kill percentages were shocked at this shelter's high euthanasia rates. During 2006, over 97% of animals brought to the shelter were euthanized. By 2008 the numbers were holding steady at 95.8%. PeTA likens an animal's existence as a pet to a life of slavery and freedom through euthanasia is preferable to being someone's pet.
Organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States walk a precarious line between animal rights and animal welfare. The HSUS describes itself as an animal welfare organization and focuses its attention on legislation for companion animals but shares some larger goals with animal rights organizations as well. It is not widely known, but the HSUS does not operate any animal shelters. Local Humane Societies that operate throughout the country are not affiliated with the HSUS. If you are donating money to HSUS online or through the mail, the funds are not going to directly benefit companion animals.
When mailers arrive at your door asking for donations to help poor defenseless animals, animal rights groups are reaching out to people who love their cats and dogs and want to see the welfare of domesticated animals improve. However, little of the money from these well-intentioned donors will go to such causes. Instead, funds are used to promote political agends most of the donors do not share. Thereofre, it is important to know the differences between groups advocating for animal welfare and those advocating for animal rights.
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Comments
That you distinguish "pet" animals from "livestock" is curious to me. As it is understood chickens, cows, pigs and so forth have just as much interest in their lives as cats and dogs do. These "food" animals are just as aware of their world and want to live free from harm - just like Spot and Fluffy. How do you separate the care and treatment of one animal as opposed to another? Is it their "cuteness"? Or their "tastiness"? Simply that some animals have monetary value does not justify abusing them. As we know in the 21st century - it is not "necessary" to consume meat in order to thrive. Indeed science is telling us everyday that it is not healthy... Therefore, consuming flesh can be said to cause needless pain and suffering to animals. Further, man does not need fur, leather, rodeos or circuses. Wouldn't you agree that using animals in such a way goes against the creed of animal "welfare"... "Animal welfare groups do not believe it is inherently wrong to use animals for human gain as long as unnecessary suffering is avoided." You see, all the ways which we use "farmed" animals, "entertainment" animals, etc. is "unnecessary". It's really very simple if you abide by the literal meaning of the concept "necessary". Nothing we do to animals is really "necessary" at all. Go Vegan.
You're on the right track however HSUS is just as bad as PeTA and the ASPCA is heading in the same direction. Anyone wishing to donate for the benefit of animals should try and find a local NO KILL shelter. No kill goes against the animal rights fanatics beliefs.
Animal rights and animal welfare are poles apart and it is the ignorance of animal rights that infringes on true animal welfare. Here in the UK our largest animal rights organisation the rspca refuse to accept the death and suffering caused by fireworks each year they have become basically PETA but with the power of the Police.
I like to eat meat. I do not want to be a vegan, man was not meant to live on vegetables alone.
On the other hand...ASPCA...be fairly and duly warned...they are not animal welfare. They are animal rights but very subtle animal rights. Dig deep and do some research. ASPCA supported the destruction of the horse industry by supporting the bill that did away with the horse slaughter plants. Now they want to 'free' horses from slavery in NYC from pulling carriages.
They believe in mandatory spay and neuter. They believe that breeding is not the way to go although they accept it with more grace then HSUS and the other animal right groups.
Just beware, many of these group that say they are animal welfare are not really: they are animal rights.
Anyone who advocates the position that eating meat is inherently harmful to humans or that you can "thrive" on an all-vegetarian diet has not done their homework. Humans are not genetically adapted to consume an all-vegetarian diet. It has only been approximately 10,000 years since humans successfully domesticated grains and other vegetables and fruits that has allowed us to make starchy carbohydrates the mainstay of our diet. For pre-agricultural humans, animal proteins formed up to 50% of their caloric consumption. In other words, for millions of years during the course of human evolution, we led an omnivorous existence. Forensics archaeology and recent studies of primitive tribes backs up this contention.
10,000 years is a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. If we are to believe vegans, we can now thrive on a radically different diet that came about in that blink of time versus the one humans have adapted to eating over the course of 2.5 million years of known human evolution. If you wish to refrain from eating animal protein for perceived moral or ethical objections, that is your prerogative. Just don't try to drag science into it.
Good description
As for the euthanasia question, an interested person might want to read "PETA and Euthanasia" at Peta.org.
Man doesn't need cars, houses, computers, or cell phones to survive either, yet you'll be hard pressed to find a vegan that doesn't have some or all of these, and every one of them in one way or another contributes to harming or exploiting animals.
Bea, when you give up all the luxuries of life and begin living a completely utilitarian life in which no animals are exploited in one way or another, you can preach your vegan lifestyle without hypocrisy. Until then, you need to realize that just because you don't eat meat or wear fur or leather, you are on no higher a pedestal than those that do.
@ acerbus - what do you mean 'until you start leading a utilitarian lifestlye' - that's got nothing to do with article and I don't believe she was putting herself on a pedastal. She was merely outlining the differences. By the way utilitarian doesnt mean relinquishing all luxury and its not animal rights. Why must one live in a cave to take a moral high ground?
@ Blaine Harper. I think you will find that many people working in animal welfare organizations are actually animal rights. The issue is very confused because the groups themselves are very confused. A lot of us have animal rights ideals (except for pets - many animal rights people have pets. There is nothing wrong with certain kinds of pet keeping as long as you treat them properly and it's a mutually affectionate relationship. Dogs love people - we co-evolved and many dogs prefer human company so it would be ridiculous to end that and as for cats... well they use us!)
Animal welfare organisations are generally taking a pragmatic approach to things. Ideally we don't want people to eat meat but realistically many will continue to, so we need to make sure those animals are cared for in the best way they can be. I personally hate it when people take such a moral high ground that nothing changes - rome wasnt built in a day!
Just because an animal organisation doesn't run a shelter - it doesnt make them useless! There are other important areas of animal advocacy like political lobbying and campaigning and education.
It is true that are are other ways to be useful to animals, such as through advocacy. There is nothing wrong with that. The fact that the HSUS does not run shelters is not why their fundraising practices are questionable. The mailers they send out do imply that they directly care for companion animals in shelters when this is not the case. During the Michael Vick trial the HSUS received a flood of donations because they asked the public to help them "care for these victims of dog fighting" when in reality they were not caring for a single dog. The general public assumes the the Humane Society of the United States is associated with local Humane Societies, an assumption that has been the HSUS' major source of funds.
The HSUS also told the courts, after they received (reportedly) hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to "care for the victims of Vick's dog fighting ring" that the dogs should all be euthanized and not given a chance because they were "too aggressive." Temperament testing showed the dogs, with one exception, to be good candidates for behavioral therapy, and some needed no rehabilitation at all despite all they had been through.
It is unethical to ask the public to give you money to care for dogs that a) are not even in your care BUT b) to then turn around and recommend they all be destroyed and are not worth trying to save.
I think PETA performs a very important role in putting awareness about animal suffering right in people's faces. That's why some people hate PETA - because they can't close their eyes anymore once animal cruelty has been so dramatically exposed. I think it's OK for PETA to have lofty goals of a world where all animals are free ... I hate that people breed and sell, and sometimes abandon or surrender, pet animals. I wish animals could have a say in who owns them instead of being bought and sold like inanimate objects.
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