Do animals have rights? That is the question being asked after recent demonstrations at Shoreham and Brightlingsea. I think the transportation of three day old calves for the veal trade is cruel and unnecessary. They travel hundreds of miles with no rest, food or water. On arrival at veal farms they are locked into crates with no bedding, no light, and fed on an unnatural diet of milk and proteins to keep their flesh pale. This is a practice that has been banned in England, yet farmers are allowed to transport their animals to continental Europe to suffer under conditions that are not allowed here.

I am not advocating that everyone should become a vegetarian. I think that people should have freedom of choice to eat meat. However, what I find very disturbing is the whole way the meat industry is run. Animals are kept in appalling conditions and fed on a substandard diet which means the meat that people eat is full of chemicals and of poor quality.

The recent BSE outbreak would not have happened if animals were fed a proper diet. Instead carcasses are fed to herbivores because it is cheaper and increases profits. Recent scientific studies have shown that there could be a risk of BSE being passed on to humans, and scientists believe that people may have already died from BSE.

I don't think that animals have more rights than humans but I am totally opposed to animal testing for cosmetic purposes. Every week major cosmetic companies bring out new 'improved' products which are the same as the old ones with a new label or chemical added. For each one of these products animals suffer and die needlessly. If these companies were not competing against each other to be the first to bring out the 'new improved product' thousands of animals' lives would be saved.

As a socialist I understand that under the present system the companies that test their products on animals are not likely to stop competing with each other and share their test results. I am not, however, against animal testing for medical purposes but again in this field there is excess. Multinational drug companies compete with each other to be the first to put a new drug on the market and are all carrying out virtually the same tests on animals. The search for a cure for Aids is a case in point. Around the world drug companies compete to be the first to find a cure, not because they are particularly concerned with ending the misery of the Aids epidemic but purely for financial gain. The first company to produce a miracle drug will reap all the profits.

Under socialism, a society based on need not profit, there would be less testing on animals. Animals would be treated in a more humane way when going to slaughter, and the food that people eat would be of a better quality.
Zoe Camenzuli

It comes as a surprise to many people that SWP publications (and most SWP members) do not support the idea of animal rights. We are always talking about rights: women's rights, human rights and so on. Surely animal rights is the logical extension of this language.

But animal rights is a flawed concept that ignores our relationship with the rest of nature. Humans are commonly thought of as being either totally separate from, and above, the rest of nature (the traditional view in Western thought) or as just another animal, no more different from dogs, say, as dogs are from cats, The latter view is probably most often expressed in the theories of sociobiologists.

In fact our relationship to nature is much more contradictory than either of these one sided views. On the one hand we are, and always will be, part of nature. We have evolved just like every other animal and we will always depend on nature for our survival.

On the other hand, it is evident that we are different from the rest of nature. Through our labour and consciousness we have transformed our lives and our environment. We have separated ourselves from the rest of nature.

One manifestation of this separation is the concept of rights itself, which is an entirely human concept. I mean this not just in the sense that only humans can be aware of rights, but that rights are rooted in the conflicts and antagonisms in human society. Rights are political concepts, not things that exist 'out there' waiting to be discovered, or that we carry around with us whether we can exercise them or not.

Contrast this view of rights with that of Peter Singer, theorist and populariser of the idea of animal liberation. He believes, for example, that human beings have always had the right not to be slaves. But what can this really mean, when throughout most of human history people have been enslaved? The right not to be enslaved can only have meaning in the context of a society where the right is either fought over or recognised.

The basis of animal rights for Singer is that, like us, animals are conscious of their pain and suffering and are therefore entitled to equal consideration. Yet this is an entirely one way obligation. Why is it immoral for us to eat meat if it is perfectly acceptable for lions or owls? Vegetarians might argue that we should 'go veggie' because 'we can', but if it was a real priority we could also begin trying to stop animals eating each other, like the curious people who make their dogs 'go veggie' too!

Nobody seriously suggests this course of action, which indicates that we are not really debating the rights animals have, but the extent to which we should give their suffering consideration.

When we look to the other side of our relationship to nature, we must recognise that we can never live without trampling on the 'rights' of animals. Take the case of one of the officials of the Vegan Society, scorned by the society's members for laying a mousetrap in his soya milk factory!

No vegan I know suggests we should do without clothes, clean water or many other products that make us comfortable at the expense, one way or another, of other animals.

To be sure, socialism would certainly put animal welfare at a higher priority than capitalism does. The question is: how much effort should socialists expend now to reduce animal suffering? When I think of the amount of human suffering in this world, as well as the job we have on our hands building an organisation that will be able to influence and lead a revolution, I must admit that animal welfare falls off the bottom of my list of current priorities.
Matt Staples

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