I bet all of you have heard of Darwin’s Theory of evolution. Basically, it’s saying that we have evolved from apes, (the very same apes that are held captive in zoos all over the world). Now listen to this, trust me, it makes sense. Most of us believe that God created us, in nearly every religion it is believed that, and so, we worship him/her. See where I’m going? Well, if we are supposedly evolved from apes, therefore where we came from, shouldn’t we worship apes to a certain extent just like we worship God, instead of testing and experimenting on them and keeping them in captivity? It’s just wrong to do something like that to the animals we came into existence from!
We have been exploiting animals for so long now, that we simply continue doing so by habit alone. Animals are treated as things, and more specifically as property to people. Recently a professor stated that property “cannot have rights or duties or be bound by or recognize rules.” We abide to this statement with animals even though they are not properties owned by humans but living, breathing organisms that in most cases are similar to us. Many of us deny that particular fact (the similarity of non-humans and humans), by saying that animals have defects, such as the inability to use language or have a supposedly inferior intelligence, and that these reasons give us the right to treat them in any way we want. However, there is simply no defect that is possessed by animals that is not also possessed by some group of human beings. There are some humans for example who are severely impaired and will never fit into their environment as actively as a healthy dog. Nevertheless, we would never think of using such humans in experiments, or eating them.
It is even said by the very conservative federal health authorities that meat is not necessary for a healthy diet, and many health care professionals now say that eating meat can have a negative affect on human health. Despite this lack of necessity to eat animals, we nevertheless kill billions of animals every year for no better reason other than that we enjoy the taste of flesh. Furthermore, how many people do you know who are vegetarian? I’m sure you’ve met a lot of vegetarians whom are all fit and alive as people who eat the flesh of animals’ day in and day out, and this further proves that we do not need to eat meat.
Also, a note on experimenting…there’s no point in it as how do we know that what may appear to be ok on animals, be good for humans? This has happened before where a chemical that had no side effects on animals, had long term and disastrous effects on humans. You may have already heard of it Thalidomide, a maternity drug. There were no side effects on the rats that the drug was tested on, but once marketed for pregnant women, the drugs affected the offspring in that it caused the child to have short limbs. Furthermore, I’m sure you have all heard of The Body Shop, an extremely successful cosmetics store that sells products that are safe and have not been tested on animals. If The Body Shop can do it, why can’t the rest of the scientists and product producers do it?
Another area where animals are killed for our pleasure is fashion. Let me just ask you, who wants to wear a dead animal’s skin, which is simply what fur is! Would you like to wear a human’s skin because that is exactly the same thing, just a different animal. Besides, you have other options than wearing dead skin for clothing, that serves its purpose (to keep us warm) and that is fashionable at the same time. So to sum it all up, fashion is not fur, so don’t wear it!
Now carefully think about this now that you have read it. Is it seriously worth killing all of those animals? Shouldn’t they be treated and respected as humans are? I haven’t even covered all the reasons of why they should be, but I think that these are far more than enough reasons to consider and accept. Hopefully we can only hope for the prevention of such demeaning and unnecessary acts. Already there are new but only a few laws on animal cruelty. There needs to be much more in order to make any noticeable change in this situation. This is where you come in; all you have to do is act upon the vicious murder of innocent animals. In order to raise more awareness of animal cruelty, join one of the animal cruelty campaigns. Just by doing this you will feel wonderful as you are doing something good and just that may just help animals survive and live a better life.