The arguments below focus upon blood sports, which involve hunting with dogs and include fox-hunting, hare coursing and stag hunting, but many are also applicable to hunting in general
Any morally justifiable means of controlling animal populations needs to pass the tests of necessity, effectiveness, and humaneness. It is on these three issues that the two sides of the hunting debate clash, each claiming that their preferred method of culling best fits these criteria. A vast amount of scientific data and research is being collated in order to back up the respective positions. Here, I have tried to steer away from empirical data and to concentrate instead on the broader arguments for and against; in a real-life debate being able to marshal facts and figures will also be necessary. However, there is a fundamental philosophical difference between the two sides in their view of the relationship between man and animals. The arguments below focus upon blood sports, which involve hunting with dogs and include fox-hunting, hare coursing and stag hunting, but many are also applicable to hunting in general.
Arguments
Pros Cons
The test for whether beings should enjoy moral significance is their capacity to feel pain. Animals react in a way consistent with our understanding of what it is to be in pain - they scream and avoid the source of that pain. Research also shows that the pain sensing structures of animals’ nervous systems are similar to our own. A distinction cannot be made between animals and humans on grounds of intelligence since we don’t consider the new-born, senile or mentally impaired to be non-human. Therefore, both humans and animals should enjoy equal moral consideration. Any attempt to distinguish between animals and people is ‘speciesism’. To say that animals deserve less consideration simply because they are animals is analogous to claiming that women deserve inferior treatment by virtue of their sex. "The question is not, Can animals reason? Nor, Can they talk? But can they suffer" (Vicki Hearn, What’s Wrong with Animal Rights?) Common sense tells us that there is a difference between animals and humans. In the presence of the senile or disabled we feel sorry for them because they lack the faculties that humans normally possess. We feel no such pity for animals because they lack faculties that they can never have. For example, animals cannot construct hypothetical scenarios, don’t have values and are not consciously aware. The value of animals is not only instrumental but also because they contribute to the beauty of the natural world and furthermore because of the symbiotic relationship between animals and human communities. People are the most developed of all the species and as such are in the best position to consider the interests of all of nature.