Argumentative Essay: The Ethics Of Animal Welfare

Ethics in agriculture is the view of right vs. wrong. As we all know, humans have a broad opinion on how animals and nature should be taken care of. We have placed these differences into two different groups: animal rights activists and animal welfare activists. Animal right activists believe animals should have the same liberties as humans. “Animal Rights is a philosophical view that animals have rights similar or the same as humans. True animal rights proponents believe that humans do not have the right to use animals at all. Animal rights proponents wish to ban all use of animals by humans.” (Animal Welfare Council). There are organizations set up to push this belief such as PETA and ASPCA.

Animal welfare activists have the opinion that

“Animals present society with ambiguities; with companionship, food, clothing, fun, but also with demands for compassion, abstinence and kindness.” (Tester 1).

“My experience has been that more problems of animal welfare are to be found in the extensive the open rage - the old-fashioned methods and that by-and-large the standard of welfare among animals kept in the so called 'intensive ' systems is higher. On balance I feel that the animal is better cared for; it is certainly much freer from disease and attack by its mates; it receives much better attention from the attendants, is sure of shelter and bedding and a reasonable amount of good food and water.” (Taylor 1972, A Scientific Conception 190)

Although everybody has their own opinion to be either an animal rights activist or an animal welfare activist, we need animals to live. They provide many different essential things for us and we need to keep that in mind and preserve their well-being. Without them, we would lose so many things that are well known in today’s world such as meat, fur skin, and certain oils. Agriculture is our main basis of life and agriculture ethics is something that will forever be a part of this world, even if the opinion of it will be forever