Should animals have rights? Should dogs and cats be able to sue you for not feeding them on time? Should farm animals be able to get an injunction to stop us eating them? There’s a growing movement to recognise that many of our fellow creatures are sentient, feel pain and loss, and therefore, perhaps, should have legal rights. But how could this work? How would it change our lives? And where do we draw the line - fairness for fleas? Justice for microbes? Phil and Roger consult Dr Stephen Cooke, associate professor of Political Theory at the University of Leicester.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
[00:00:00] The Y-curve with Phil Dobby and Roger Hearing
[00:00:04] Should animals have rights?
[00:00:07] Does your cat have a case?
[00:00:09] Do you have a duty to your dog?
[00:00:11] Are either of those animals actually yours?
[00:00:14] There are groups now campaigning to establish legal personalities for the creatures who
[00:00:19] share our world, claiming our current attitudes to animals will soon seem as out of date as
[00:00:25] the way our forefathers regarded people of different ethnicities. But what will
[00:00:29] this mean for farmers, for horse racers, for those who have pets and if a cow has
[00:00:35] a right to life and liberty what about a flea? Is the world ready for animal rights?
[00:00:40] The why? Curve. So I mean the question is how far do you go with all of this? I mean should
[00:00:48] animals have the same rights as human beings? Clearly not because they can't vote, they can't
[00:00:53] buy a house. Well yeah but you could say that about a lot of people in society who may not be
[00:00:58] able to afford a house, who may not be able to XYZ and yet we still give them rights. We don't
[00:01:02] insist that people have to have particular capacities to vote.
[00:01:07] So should I own my cat?
[00:01:09] That's, I mean, that question of ownership.
[00:01:12] Look, my cat, I have to say...
[00:01:13] Do you own your cat?
[00:01:14] Well, no, I think my cat owns me, actually, to be honest with you.
[00:01:17] Well, no, I mean, so I woke up this morning and he was lying right next to me.
[00:01:21] He was peering away.
[00:01:22] He seemed very happy.
[00:01:24] And when I was sitting in the TV, in front of the TV in the evenings and he's sitting on my lap
[00:01:28] and I'm stroking him he seems he seems you know as though life is pretty good
[00:01:32] to him. Yeah but that's that's the attitude of the tyrants down the ages
[00:01:36] isn't it yes no the peasants are fine they seem happy it's fine. Well I don't
[00:01:40] know he seems he does seem happy I'm not quite so sure they were. So, I mean, like
[00:01:46] all of these things, you know, you've got, I mean, there's a difference, isn't there,
[00:01:49] between having rights and protecting them. So we want to look after animals. We want
[00:01:54] to protect them and make sure that they have a decent life, unless of course we're killing
[00:01:59] them and eating them.
[00:02:00] Well, there is that's the problem, isn't it, fundamentally. We use them, not just eat killing
[00:02:03] any, I mean, we kill them and might turn them into leather or we do all these kind of
[00:02:06] things. And there are plenty of people in society who don't think we should be doing that.
[00:02:10] Yeah. And then you made, in the introduction, we mentioned horse racing. So my wife
[00:02:14] loves riding horses and she would argue that horses like it, you know, enjoy it.
[00:02:18] Not horse racing, perhaps, but galloping across the horse.
[00:02:22] Horse riding. Well, maybe they do. We can't ask them. That's the problem. Yeah. There's a difference I think, though, isn't there, between horse riding across the horse. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding.
[00:02:25] Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:28] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:31] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:33] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:34] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:35] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:36] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:37] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:38] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:39] racing. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:40] racing. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:41] racing. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:42] racing. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:43] riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse
[00:02:44] horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding don't know. We just don't know because they never answer. Exactly. But in societies, I say we don't necessarily disenfranchise people because
[00:02:49] of their limited abilities to do particular things. You know, even talk to us. We don't then say,
[00:02:54] well, you're no longer a human being, do we? So I think it's very, very difficult.
[00:02:57] So it's so difficult. Do we just not bother with it? I mean, isn't it just fine to say,
[00:03:02] look, so long as we're not cruel to animals,
[00:03:05] what really does need to change?
[00:03:07] I mean, because if you started to go any further,
[00:03:11] it's a can of worms, isn't it, Roger?
[00:03:13] Well, I don't know.
[00:03:14] I think a lot of people, so unless you have actual rights,
[00:03:17] people will do anything they feel like.
[00:03:18] Yes, some people will be kind and humane,
[00:03:21] but other people won't.
[00:03:22] Is that what the RSPCA is for, though?
[00:03:24] Well, yeah, but that's like a kind of, we are coming in to try and help, but other people won't. Is that what the RSPCA is for though? Yeah, but that's like a kind of, you know, we are coming in to try and help, but you're
[00:03:28] still not covered.
[00:03:29] And there's a famous case of a police dog who got stabbed in some incident, and the
[00:03:34] only thing they could charge the person with who did the stabbing was damage to property.
[00:03:38] Everyone felt this was an outrage.
[00:03:40] I think there are certainly areas that need to be explored, and we've got someone who
[00:03:44] can tell us about that.
[00:03:45] And that's Dr. Steven Cook, Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of
[00:03:49] Leicester who joins us now.
[00:03:50] So, Steven or Steve, I think we can call you Steve.
[00:03:53] So let's get to that level straight away.
[00:03:57] So we just asked the question about, you know, how far these animal rights should go.
[00:04:02] I mean, obviously animals can't have the same rights
[00:04:05] as humans. That is crazy because they, you know, they can't go to school, they can't
[00:04:10] own a house, they can't get a job. So, I mean, so gracious question, if we were to offer
[00:04:15] more in the way of rights to animals, where exactly would you draw the line?
[00:04:18] It's a difficult question because it will depend on the kind of animal that we're talking
[00:04:22] about. And I agree, I don't think animals should have exactly the same rights as humans, but we also don't think that all humans
[00:04:28] should have the same rights, right? So my children don't have the right to vote yet, at least not
[00:04:34] all of them. And it'd be the same for non-human animals, it would depend on the kind of interest
[00:04:39] they have. So I think rights are grounded in interests and different non-human animals have different
[00:04:46] kinds of interests. Some have more of an interest in control over their environment. For example,
[00:04:52] if their habitat really matters to them, or if they're quite sophisticated animals like
[00:04:57] orangutans that like to use their environment and do lots of free roaming around it, use
[00:05:04] the plants and leaves for self-medication
[00:05:06] and things like that, then they will have different sorts of rights than a mouse would
[00:05:09] have. So yeah, it will depend.
[00:05:12] But it also, it also depends on their ability to conceive things. I mean, you know, we're
[00:05:18] not going to say that a flea or a wasp has the same rights as an orangutan, but how can we get an idea of what they do perceive?
[00:05:26] How intelligent, what capacities they actually have?
[00:05:30] Yeah, these are questions I like to leave to scientists
[00:05:33] because I'm an armchair philosopher.
[00:05:35] I like to strap my chin and look out
[00:05:37] through my office window meaningfully,
[00:05:39] but not do any of the sort of dirty,
[00:05:40] empirical, scientific work.
[00:05:43] But there's lots of techniques that scientists
[00:05:45] use to find out the level of consciousness that non-human animals have. For example,
[00:05:50] there's a common test known as the mirror test. It's a little bit controversial, but
[00:05:55] it's been going for a long time. And it measures whether an animal has a sense of self. And
[00:06:00] to do this, a scientist will make a mark on an animal's body and then put a mirror
[00:06:05] in front of them.
[00:06:06] And if the animal can then react and spot that the mark is on themselves, they start
[00:06:10] touching their own body where they see the mark.
[00:06:12] It gives them an idea, it gives us an idea that they perceive themselves.
[00:06:17] And that test has been successfully carried out on.
[00:06:20] The first animal that was carried out was Hapley the elephant in the Bronx Zoo, very
[00:06:24] badly named elephant unfortunately, but it's since been replicated with all sorts of other species.
[00:06:30] Dolphins, it's very tricky to do it with animals that don't have limbs, that can touch themselves,
[00:06:36] but it's done with dolphins, even zebrafish, some birds and many of the higher primates
[00:06:42] will be able to do this kind of thing. So your analogy of comparing it to children, so we have a, is a good one I think, because
[00:06:50] we protect our kids, don't we? And so if we thought the same way about animals, and in lots
[00:06:55] of cases we do, if it's a pet. So, Roger was asking the question, should we actually own pets?
[00:07:01] And I, just before you came on, I was saying, well, you know, I started my day lying in bed and my cat was lying his head on the pillow
[00:07:09] paring away. He seemed pretty happy with his lot in life and generally does if, you know,
[00:07:14] the pairing of a cat is a mark of happiness. Let's assume it is. He's a very happy cat,
[00:07:19] but he's getting protection in the same way that we protect our kids. So, I mean, if we
[00:07:24] thought about it, you know,
[00:07:25] extended that to other animals,
[00:07:27] that's not a bad way of looking at it, is it?
[00:07:29] But I was making the point, Steve,
[00:07:31] that actually if you transfer that kind of language
[00:07:33] to a century or two ago,
[00:07:36] the way people would have talked about ideas like slavery,
[00:07:39] oh, they're happy and it's fine,
[00:07:41] they're not really responsible, we can deal with them.
[00:07:43] I mean, that's a worrying kind of parallel, isn't it?
[00:07:45] But I don't think they were happy.
[00:07:46] Yeah. I mean, I think it's conceptually possible for there to be a happy slave, but that still
[00:07:52] wouldn't make slavery morally permissible. Right. So that's the sort of I think that's
[00:07:57] the thought that's going on here. And I've got to do quite a lot of sympathy with that
[00:08:00] idea. And I think you're right, your cat probably is happy. It's living a nice life. And there's quite a lot of disagreement within animal rights theory within the field
[00:08:08] about whether or not the rights of animals permit ownership of them. And I used to think
[00:08:13] it was it was potentially possible, but I'm less convinced now.
[00:08:17] Why don't you think it's possible to own? What's the problem with that ownership principle?
[00:08:22] Well, so if you look at non-human animals at the moment, particularly pets, you often find,
[00:08:27] if you read the sort of industry magazines of veterinarians,
[00:08:31] you will often find articles where vets talk about
[00:08:34] a term they've actually had to coin
[00:08:35] as convenient euthanasia.
[00:08:37] And so although many of us love our pets and our-
[00:08:39] Convenient euthanasia,
[00:08:41] I just want to just tell you about that.
[00:08:42] Yeah, so that's when someone just decides that their pet is no longer convenient
[00:08:46] for their lifestyle. Perhaps they bought a new sofa and their hairs don't match it, for
[00:08:51] example, well, they've quite often they've got a new partner who doesn't like their pet
[00:08:54] or is allergic to something, allergic to their pet or their moving house because they've
[00:08:57] got a new job. They will ask their vet to put their animal down.
[00:09:00] Right. Well, that is a violation of the rights of the animal. I mean, clearly.
[00:09:05] Yeah, there's no law against that.
[00:09:06] But some theorists think even if animals have rights, and it was possible to reconcile sort
[00:09:12] of property ownership with them having rights, it would still put them in a position where
[00:09:17] they're subject to domination.
[00:09:22] It would allow us so much control over their lives that it would be possible for
[00:09:27] them to be quite seriously harmed.
[00:09:29] But I mean, doesn't that become it? So again, but getting back to kids, though, you've got
[00:09:34] control over your children, haven't you? And you know, it doesn't mean you're going to
[00:09:38] harm them or have them put down, even though I'm sure we've all been at the stage where
[00:09:43] thinking, well, that's not a bad idea.
[00:09:53] Also, until very recently, it was fine, legally speaking, maybe in some areas to hit your kids. I mean, that's been a thing. And before that, you know, going back 200 years,
[00:09:56] it was fine to beat your wife. So, I mean, that's the kind of analogies, I suppose,
[00:10:00] it was saying it's fine to kick your cat.
[00:10:02] Yeah. And it might be something to do with the attitudes that are associated with the
[00:10:05] idea of ownership as well, that there's a claim that it's your property and you can
[00:10:09] do what you like with it. Now, I think there are ways that you can modify property rules.
[00:10:13] I mean, for example, someone might be able to own them on a leisure and still be prohibited
[00:10:16] from destroying it. So there are different ways you can think about property ownership.
[00:10:20] But I think there is something about the attitude of ownership that might be problematic here.
[00:10:24] And there's a different way we could think about our relationship
[00:10:26] with companion animals. And that's much more like the child, parent or familial relationship.
[00:10:32] Or as a sort of a guardian or award that gives you some kind of legal duties and some rights
[00:10:41] regarding your ward. But it's not quite the same way of thinking about the relationship
[00:10:46] you have. There's much less idea that it's something that's an instrument for you to
[00:10:52] use like a form of property and something that you instead have to care for and are
[00:10:57] required to care for by law. So that would be the kind of model I think is probably more
[00:11:00] appropriate in an animal rights world for thinking about companion
[00:11:05] animals.
[00:11:06] But how would that then work for farmers or something like that? Because that's not a
[00:11:09] companion. That's an instrument of your business.
[00:11:13] That's a completely different kettle of fish, isn't it? Just finishing on the, because I
[00:11:16] think we should go there, but just finishing off this point about companion animals. So
[00:11:20] that would just be corrected, wouldn't it, by some changes in legislation, just being a bit more specific about what you're compelled to do if you have a pet.
[00:11:31] I mean, that's all that needs to change, isn't it?
[00:11:34] Yeah, I think so.
[00:11:35] I think so.
[00:11:36] I mean, we have those legal frameworks already in place, and they've been used for some non-human
[00:11:41] animals in the past, particularly where animals have been left, for example, gifts in people's wills. And they have sort of legal frameworks set up to look
[00:11:52] after them and pursue their interests. Let's move on to that. The other question,
[00:11:56] because I mean, there's a lot of emotion in this. We love our animals, at least we theoretically do.
[00:12:01] It's not so much an ownership thing as a companionship, almost a relationship
[00:12:06] going on there. But where, Steve, you have this issue of animals being a functional in
[00:12:12] a business or part of your farm or the donkey that carries your luggage or whatever it is,
[00:12:18] the same thing doesn't apply, does it?
[00:12:19] Well, it might do. In an animal rights view that at least the position I adopt is that rights
[00:12:25] are grounded in the interest, the very serious interests of a nonhuman animal. And that would
[00:12:29] rule out actions that would severely set back those interests. So interest against being made to
[00:12:35] suffer for an animal that have an identity that persists over time and interests connected with
[00:12:41] the future desires, future directed goals,
[00:12:45] you know, then that would give a right against being killed.
[00:12:48] But we can, so that would rule out, you know,
[00:12:50] farming non-human animals for food,
[00:12:52] killing them, bringing them into existence,
[00:12:53] killing them, using them in ways that cause them
[00:12:55] to suffer and so forth.
[00:12:57] But it might permit relationships where we gain
[00:13:00] a sort of mutual benefit that doesn't violate rights.
[00:13:03] So there are a lot of animals that quite enjoy work and get a lot out of it.
[00:13:08] They're capable of flourishing, living good lives with us.
[00:13:13] And I think they might have something akin to labor rights
[00:13:16] that protect their interests in those kind of relationships.
[00:13:18] Can we be sure they're enjoying it?
[00:13:20] How do we know they're enjoying it?
[00:13:21] Yeah. And can you give us an example of something that an animal might enjoy that
[00:13:25] could be perceived as work?
[00:13:26] JF. So for example, like a potentially a guide dog or something like that, or a guard dog,
[00:13:32] a therapy animal, perhaps, even some animals that might, you might engage in sort of leisure
[00:13:41] pursuits with them while riding horses, perhaps, and less convinced
[00:13:46] because the process of training a horse to be ridden is quite often quite brutal. It's
[00:13:50] called breaking a horse in for a reason. But you can see cases like that.
[00:13:54] There's a world of difference, isn't there, between training a horse to go in horse races,
[00:13:59] for example, and a horse that you just hack through the countryside. I mean, a world of
[00:14:03] difference.
[00:14:04] Yes, I think so. Yes, there is, there is.
[00:14:07] So I think those kind of relationships,
[00:14:09] the non-human animal could potentially flourish,
[00:14:11] particularly things like a guide dog or a guard dog
[00:14:14] or something like that.
[00:14:16] And in those cases, I think they should be entitled to,
[00:14:19] you know, working time regulations,
[00:14:22] health benefits, maybe the prospect of a happy retirement,
[00:14:24] things like
[00:14:25] that.
[00:14:26] But that's a very difficult thing to legislate though, isn't it? Because people would say,
[00:14:29] okay, maybe that's true for a horse, potentially for a cow or a sheep, a chicken though. I
[00:14:35] mean, it kind of, the distance as you go with the principle then comes back to the problem
[00:14:41] of definition of the animal and its position legally speaking.
[00:14:46] Yeah. I mean, we know a lot about the kind of minds of non-human animals and we're learning
[00:14:49] a lot more as our science gets better in finding these things out. But we fundamentally know an
[00:14:55] awful lot about them because we wouldn't be able to domesticate them and live lives with them
[00:15:00] if we weren't able to pretty accurately predict how they were thinking a lot of the time
[00:15:05] and how they were feeling,
[00:15:06] the whole idea of domestication depends upon that.
[00:15:09] And it's been very successful.
[00:15:11] So I think we can make lots of good inferences
[00:15:14] about what's going on in an animal's minds.
[00:15:15] And we're always, we're gonna get things wrong sometimes,
[00:15:17] but we can be pretty confident about, you know,
[00:15:20] what it is that makes a chicken's life go well for it
[00:15:23] and what makes it go bad for it. And from that, developers set up rights that might protect it against having its interests.
[00:15:31] But I mean, we, a lot of these animals, so 9 million cattle in the UK, I think is what
[00:15:37] one number I saw, maybe a bit more than that. It's, that's a lot. And they're only there
[00:15:43] for one reason, aren't they? Well, either
[00:15:46] there to be milk or to be eaten. Well, there's two reasons. They get milk,
[00:15:48] do they get killed? Exactly. So, I mean, on the surface, that would seem to be a violation of
[00:15:56] their rights. They have the right to stay alive. Absolutely. I think it is.
[00:16:00] So, we shouldn't be drinking milk and we shouldn't be eating meat.
[00:16:03] No, I don't think so. I mean, in particular, I mean, putting aside the factory farming case,
[00:16:08] I mean, you know, when 70 odd percent, 71% plus of British farm animals are factory farmed in
[00:16:15] increasingly in very large mega farms. So the sort of picture we have of the sort of
[00:16:20] rural idyll isn't very accurate. But even without that, I think, you know, you're still
[00:16:26] violating an animal's rights, even if it's brought up and it lives a reasonably happy
[00:16:29] life to then simply kill it for your benefit.
[00:16:32] But okay, so that's an ethical question here is if they, as you said, they're leading a,
[00:16:37] you know, reasonably happy life, and then all of a sudden it ends rather abruptly. I
[00:16:42] mean, they're presumably not aware of that. Maybe they are. Maybe there's
[00:16:45] talk amongst them in the field about how they're ultimately going to be slaughtered. But I mean,
[00:16:51] if they don't know that, I mean, if that wasn't their end purpose, they wouldn't have existed in
[00:16:57] the first place. If they're having a happy life in the meantime, big question mark.
[00:17:01] There's two things going on there. One is how much do we know about the minds of cattle?
[00:17:07] Do they have future directed goals, for example? We know they're actually more sophisticated
[00:17:12] than most people think. In fact, there's lots of psychological evidence that the people
[00:17:16] tend to downplay the cognitive sophistication of animals they want to eat. They'll ignore
[00:17:21] evidence about how sophisticated they are because it's very convenient for us to do that. Cows are, you know, they have complex relationships, they're
[00:17:28] capable of grieving. They form friendships, they have preferred grooming partners, they
[00:17:34] have preferred feeding partners. They have individual personalities, there are studies
[00:17:38] that show they're either more optimistic or pessimistic. So you'll get ones that are more
[00:17:41] fearful and others that are more curious. So they have quite sophisticated lives. They look forward to the future. They have memories of the
[00:17:48] past. Anyone who's worked with cows will know this. So there's this sort of level of sophistication
[00:17:55] that says they do have an interest in the future and they have an identity that persists over time
[00:17:59] and they have preferences directed towards that. And so when we kill them, it's bad for them
[00:18:03] because it cuts off the possibility of them enjoying those future pleasures.
[00:18:07] So you're thinking really, we are going to get to a point pretty soon where ethically,
[00:18:13] we will all have to be vegetarian. I mean, there's just no way to have animal rights
[00:18:18] in any meaningful sense without reaching that point.
[00:18:20] Well, potentially, right? So and I think technology might have a different answer
[00:18:25] for here. I think farming asset practice now is unethical. It can't be done without causing
[00:18:32] severe suffering, or different forms of harm like killing can't be you can't, you can't raise cows,
[00:18:38] social beings without disrupting their relationships in very serious ways,
[00:18:42] separating them from their children and their friends and moving them around and then killing them and causing them to suffer.
[00:18:47] But the science at the moment is pushing us towards increasing capability of manufacturing
[00:18:55] animal proteins, milk, eggs, meat in bioreactors, lab grown meats, without any real harm to
[00:19:02] non-human animals.
[00:19:03] So I think...
[00:19:04] possibly harm to the environment, we don't know yet where that is yet.
[00:19:07] Yeah, that's possible. But at the moment, the evidence is suggesting that the environmental
[00:19:10] footprint of those technologies is much less than particularly industrial farming, as we
[00:19:16] practice it now.
[00:19:17] I've been looking at... I'm looking at a study from the University of Oxford, I mean, it's
[00:19:20] from a few years ago, so maybe it's advanced, arguing that cultivated meat actually could
[00:19:24] release more greenhouse gases than traditional farmers.
[00:19:28] But there may be ways in which that can be adjusted, and then that's a whole issue about
[00:19:32] climate rather than the right thing.
[00:19:34] Yes, it's not an animal rights issue, it's a different kind of effort.
[00:19:37] It's a science issue where you don't want to go.
[00:19:40] Absolutely.
[00:19:41] Fair enough.
[00:19:42] But one other thing, we've spoken about pets, we've spoken
[00:19:45] about farm animals, but what about wildlife, Steve? Because that's a whole other thing,
[00:19:50] the extent to which, for example, we encroach on wildlife's habitats, we get rid of wildlife
[00:19:57] in certain cases, that's a whole other relationship, isn't it?
[00:20:00] Yes. Yeah. And it's a very interesting, difficult philosophically relationship as well. I tend
[00:20:07] to think there are certain kinds of animals that can only live in particular habitats.
[00:20:11] They can't live good lives unless they have a very particular habitat. And so I think
[00:20:15] the interest they have in that habitat will generate rights to that habitat. Other animals
[00:20:20] can exist in all sorts of habitats. and perhaps that might not generate a right to
[00:20:25] a particular habitat, but they would still have fundamental rights, I think, in the same way that
[00:20:29] I think we have rights to distant strangers. People we don't know on the other side of the globe,
[00:20:33] we've never met, we haven't got any particular family or close relationship, we don't know them.
[00:20:37] We still owe them something, and we still think they ought to have rights. And I think the same
[00:20:41] is true of wild animals, free roaming animals. They have rights to be able to live out their lives and flourish. And
[00:20:49] that means when it comes to our relationships with them, we ought to change the way we behave.
[00:20:53] And some of those animals like living amongst us. There's a couple of political theorists,
[00:20:59] Sue Donaldson, the one Will Kimlock have written a great book called Zoopolis or Zooopolis,
[00:21:05] and Will Kemler have written a great book called Zoopolis, or Zooopolis, that talks about thinking of wild animals as a separate sort of sovereign communities almost. And those
[00:21:10] kind of animals that enter into our spheres, it's almost like migrant workers or migrant
[00:21:15] travellers. And we should make accommodations in our own communities to allow them to pass
[00:21:20] through safely, or to divert them where they're are threats to us or something like that.
[00:21:25] So all of this relates to the expansion of the human being as a species, doesn't it?
[00:21:30] That we are growing in number, we're taking over more territory around the world.
[00:21:34] So that means that we are relying on animals for food, we are also encroaching on their
[00:21:40] natural environment and taking away some of that environment.
[00:21:43] It seems like the only way to solve
[00:21:46] all of that is for there to be less humans. I mean, ultimately, I wonder whether any of this can be
[00:21:50] done while the human race continues to expand in the numbers that it currently is.
[00:21:55] Yeah, because we inevitably encroach, don't we, Steve? I mean, and then you balance human rights
[00:22:00] against animal rights almost in a legal sense, don't you?
[00:22:03] Yeah, absolutely. Now, I'm not the kind of misanthropic animal rights theorist. You think
[00:22:07] we should have fewer humans. I'm very uncomfortable about that kind of approach of thinking about
[00:22:12] animal rights, particularly because it often directs blame for population problems onto
[00:22:20] the least advantaged people in the world in the global south, and particularly upon women.
[00:22:24] And I think there's something somewhat distasteful
[00:22:26] about that way of thinking.
[00:22:29] I would say that, you know,
[00:22:30] an awful lot of our demands for land
[00:22:33] come from our demands for animal agriculture.
[00:22:37] So vast swathes of the Amazon, for example,
[00:22:40] a chopped down to grow soya
[00:22:41] in order to feed cattle, beef cattle in particular.
[00:22:49] So a lot of our agricultural land, lots of use of our water, enormous amounts of water and land are used in animal agriculture. And it's quite inefficient. We're converting plant protein into
[00:22:57] animal protein, which we then consume. And we could have lots more space and feed a lot more
[00:23:01] people with far fewer animals. So then cattle just wouldn't exist or just we might have a few roaming the countryside
[00:23:10] leading the meeting.
[00:23:12] Much as they would have been before we started farming.
[00:23:14] A wild oxen here and there.
[00:23:20] How do we get there?
[00:23:21] I mean, that's the point.
[00:23:22] Do we just stop breeding them?
[00:23:23] Do we?
[00:23:24] Yeah. I mean, this is the tricky bit, right?
[00:23:25] So there's a transition question in all this.
[00:23:27] Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of focused on the persuading people first and then worrying about the transition
[00:23:31] later. But there are lots of ways we could do this. I mean, and most people working
[00:23:36] in this field will say that the process ought to be gradual. You can't just suddenly end
[00:23:40] everything tomorrow. And it's not like it happened anyway. It's not really a consideration that we would likely face, but you could, for example, just cease deliberately
[00:23:49] breeding non-human animals. Those processes are very invasive and aggressive at the moment.
[00:23:54] The way we breed farm animals, if you've ever been near a farm, it's not pleasant and happy.
[00:24:01] Some animals get together and have some fun times. The
[00:24:06] artificial insemination process is often pretty brutal and very systematized. But you could
[00:24:13] you could gradually I think we'd be gradually thinking about reducing numbers, breeding
[00:24:17] breathing them out, maybe using contraception and that kind of approach rather than just
[00:24:22] leaving everything as it is in the room. But. But Steve, the point, the impetus for all that is going to have to be legal, isn't it?
[00:24:28] That's the only way forward.
[00:24:29] And that I think is another interesting aspect of all this, which is when we talk about rights,
[00:24:33] you talk in a way about how those rights can be enforced and that's going to involve the
[00:24:40] courts.
[00:24:41] I mean, you can have a situation where a cow is represented by a barrister in court.
[00:24:44] It seems bizarre in a way that we're bringing animals into court.
[00:24:48] Fantastic for a legal profession, isn't it?
[00:24:50] I mean, they will make a monster out of all of this.
[00:24:52] Yes.
[00:24:53] Yes.
[00:24:54] And that's the point of fundamental rights though, isn't it?
[00:24:55] They are enforceable.
[00:24:58] When we violate someone's rights, we're doing them serious wrong and it's kind of wrong
[00:25:02] that's important enough to justify the use of coercion to protect that right. And this is the fundamental argument
[00:25:09] about animal rights that they have these kind of really strong interests that justify us
[00:25:13] as using legal protections to prevent people making not a preference.
[00:25:18] Look, I mean, I think it's easy for cows, you know, if you could talk to them and say,
[00:25:23] you know, are you happy with the whole
[00:25:25] artificial insemination thing so that you can breed children who ultimately get slaughtered
[00:25:30] to feed humans? A cow would probably go, yes, that's not quite such a good deal. Not particularly
[00:25:35] happy about that.
[00:25:36] And there was only the pessimistic cows, the optimistic cows might be happy.
[00:25:40] I might escape for a whole new life for myself, absolutely. Or we'll fight for rights and then everything is going to be hanky dory.
[00:25:47] But I mean, I'm looking at my slave cat.
[00:25:50] If he was let loose, he would run to the main road just round the corner and probably go on over by a car.
[00:25:58] And so would all the other cats who were sort of let loose and same for dogs.
[00:26:01] Well, I tell you what else your cat would do.
[00:26:03] He'd probably rush out and find the nearest bird that he could find and violate that bird's rights pretty dramatically,
[00:26:09] wouldn't he? Yeah, he's already done that. Yeah. Well, exactly. That's another interesting point
[00:26:13] in this, Steve, which is rights and duties. There's a kind of idea that you don't have rights unless
[00:26:17] you also have duties. Well, yeah. And that's it. Then you get to the question about, yeah,
[00:26:20] these animals. If we're imposing our legal architecture on them to say, yeah, these animals, if we're imposing our legal architecture
[00:26:27] on them to say, well, we're going to give you the rights that we give to, or similar
[00:26:31] to the sorts of rights that we give to other humans, we should be saying to them, but you
[00:26:34] have to do the same thing as well. So if we're not going to kill you, you can't kill anything
[00:26:37] else. And then you can show you the laws of nature there.
[00:26:40] And in the Middle Ages, of course, they did put animals on trial, famously, at various
[00:26:44] points. They also put statues, swords, and all they did put animals on trial, famously, at various points.
[00:26:45] They also put statues, swords and all sorts of other things on trial.
[00:26:48] They were wrong to do so.
[00:26:50] And I think we can sort of deal with this question by going back to the analogy with
[00:26:54] children.
[00:26:55] Very commonly, people think rights and duties have to go together.
[00:27:00] You can't have a right unless you can exercise, unless you can also perform a duty.
[00:27:04] And that isn't the case.
[00:27:05] It's not how our legal system works.
[00:27:08] We think about children in particular, we think they have rights, whether or not they
[00:27:13] have duties, right?
[00:27:14] We don't hold them to the same criminal standard for that reason, because they don't have the
[00:27:19] capacity to control their desires in the same way.
[00:27:24] They don't have reason. And the same is true
[00:27:26] of non-human animals. So a cat that kills a bird isn't violating the bird's rights.
[00:27:33] It's harming the bird. And perhaps as the guardian of your cat, you might have duties
[00:27:38] to prevent your cat from causing too much serious harm. So you might be required to
[00:27:44] rescue that bird, for example,
[00:27:45] that's something we commonly do if we find our cat has caught something we re-rescue it.
[00:27:51] So you might have a duty to maybe put a bell on your cat or take reasonable precautions, but
[00:27:56] the cat isn't violating a right, it's not being held to a legal standard and being punished for
[00:28:01] that doesn't make sense to punish a cat because it doesn't have the ability to make moral choices.
[00:28:06] Mason- What about, so anglers, just as another example. I mean, there's over 100,000 people
[00:28:10] in the UK go angling at the weekend. So should fishing be illegal? Is that taking away the
[00:28:14] rights of the fish?
[00:28:15] Andrew- So yeah, I used to be one of those people a long, long time ago. And I think
[00:28:19] it probably is. It probably is, you know, where you would be releasing the fish is going to be less serious than
[00:28:31] if you're killing it.
[00:28:32] But there's lots of good research now that suggests that fish are capable of feeling
[00:28:37] pain and have much more sophisticated psychologies then we realized, you know, the science that's been developed to
[00:28:46] find this out is quite distressing some of it. But for example, if you, if you put some
[00:28:53] acid into a fish tank, the fish get sad. And if you release an analgesic into the fish
[00:28:58] tank, the fish get happier again. And so we know they can feel that's the sort of experiments
[00:29:03] that scientists always send because I've heard a similar experiment where they said, you know,
[00:29:08] somebody abused a plant, a potted plant. And when that same individual came back into a room,
[00:29:19] there was a reaction from all the other plants. So where do we get into all the vegetable rights?
[00:29:25] Exactly. How far can this go?
[00:29:27] Plants are capable of responding to their environment, but there's no convincing evidence
[00:29:30] whatsoever that they're capable of feeling. And this is what the sentience position is
[00:29:34] about. It's about the capacity to feel, to experience emotions. So for example, if you
[00:29:39] if you touch a hot thing, the first thing you do is your hand moves away. And then
[00:29:44] momentarily afterwards,
[00:29:45] you'll get a feeling that's when you got out of that hood. But that's that initial physiological
[00:29:51] shying away is known as no perception. It's a physical response to a not just stimuli,
[00:29:56] a stimulus and plants might get that. But they don't have the feeling that comes later,
[00:30:03] the emotion of pain or something like that. They don't have and because of that, they don't have the feeling that comes later, the emotion of pain or something like
[00:30:05] that.
[00:30:06] They don't have, and because of that, they don't have a sort of, there's no sense of
[00:30:09] what it's like to be a plant.
[00:30:11] Whereas there is a sense of what it's like to be a cat or a dog or a mouse.
[00:30:15] But isn't that just our capacity to know what a plant is feeling rather than there actually
[00:30:20] being a fact that they don't feel?
[00:30:22] Isn't it just somewhere we just don't understand as yet? I mean, it's possible that maybe there's some kind of feeling in there, but you know, scientists
[00:30:30] will think, well, what is it that we know generates our capacity to feel? Well, for
[00:30:35] example, it's the behavior that we have, we can tell from behavior, or we can look at
[00:30:40] the kind of physiological requirements necessary, like having nerve endings, those kind of bodily
[00:30:48] elements that are connected with those feelings. And we can look for those in other animals.
[00:30:53] And when we spot them, we've got a good indication and then we can perform experiments to find
[00:30:57] out and that will tell us. I leave those questions to the side. I think the ethical questions are kind of,
[00:31:06] yeah, they flow from them.
[00:31:06] But there is an irony in that you're saying,
[00:31:08] you know, we know that fish react
[00:31:10] because if you pour acid into the water,
[00:31:12] we see them react.
[00:31:13] I mean, that is harming the fish, obviously,
[00:31:15] as part of that experiment.
[00:31:16] And then there are 70 million animals killed
[00:31:19] in experiments in the United States each year,
[00:31:21] 11 million in the EU.
[00:31:23] I'm not sure how many in the UK,
[00:31:24] but I'm sure it's up there as well. And scientists would say, well, we need to experiment. We
[00:31:29] need to test on animals because it is impossible to recreate something as complex as the living
[00:31:35] body. We need to see the reaction and we can't do that unless we're using live animals. And
[00:31:41] we've got half the disease in the world, currently
[00:31:46] there's no treatment for it. So, you know, do we stop medical science because we don't
[00:31:50] want to experiment on animals any further?
[00:31:52] Which is then a violation of human rights because they are not being helped in a way
[00:31:56] that we feasibly could help them.
[00:31:58] Yeah. So I think there are several, there's several common answers that we can make here.
[00:32:01] First we could say, well, is it true that those kind of advances
[00:32:05] can't be made without the use of non-human animals? And recently, the American, well,
[00:32:10] Biden signed a legal instrument that said America doesn't have to test on animals anymore.
[00:32:17] The government in the UK has responded to requests for information from an animal rights group and
[00:32:22] agreed that that's not a legal requirement in the UK either. And there are scientific organizations like Animal Free Research UK that funds scientific
[00:32:31] research into non-animal based methods, computer modeling and things like that. And those
[00:32:37] advances are being made very rapidly at the moment. So we have a lot of capacity for doing
[00:32:41] the research without the use of animals. But I think even if it were true that we could only get them from nonhuman animals,
[00:32:48] it wouldn't necessarily justify those kind of research activities because it would be a
[00:32:53] violation of rights. In order to say it's permissible, you have to first say, well,
[00:32:57] animals don't have rights, right? And we need to make the argument first. And if they do have
[00:33:01] rights, then they're, you know, they're right to protect us from being used for the benefit of other people or the means.
[00:33:08] That's the nature of them.
[00:33:09] But isn't there a hierarchy of rights though that, you know, the rights are always going
[00:33:13] to conflict and it has to be what the, the higher of those rights are, the, the, the
[00:33:18] one that supersedes the others, which naturally we would feel human rights.
[00:33:23] In some cases you will get conflicts of rights, right? That doesn't mean that the person who's rights eventually are superseded doesn feel human rights. In some cases you will get conflicts of rights.
[00:33:26] That doesn't mean that the person who's rights eventually are superseded doesn't have rights.
[00:33:30] And it doesn't mean that they can just be used for the benefit of another.
[00:33:33] And I'm thinking about cases where you've got forced choice cases, where you can only
[00:33:36] save one person rather than two.
[00:33:39] Who do you save?
[00:33:42] Or the classic example is the lifeboat cases where you've got to throw
[00:33:45] someone overboard, or you've got to eat someone to survive, and you've got to make a choice between
[00:33:50] a person and a dog or something like that, then you're going to violate the dog's rights because
[00:33:54] the humans rights are stronger. But that doesn't mean, you know, as you're walking along the street,
[00:33:59] and there's no false choice like that, you just get to kill your dog. So even though there might be some cases where
[00:34:07] you're balancing rights in that way, the idea, the nature of a right, it forbids you from
[00:34:13] using someone as a tool to achieve a social benefit. And we might think that, you know,
[00:34:19] there are lots of really emotive arguments about how much benefit we get from medical
[00:34:22] testing. And I think those are good.
[00:34:25] Those are powerful arguments. Human wellbeing matters a lot. But if we were just focused
[00:34:30] on wellbeing, for example, we could achieve massive amounts of increases in human happiness
[00:34:36] and wellbeing and health in very different ways. So for example, when I was a kid, I
[00:34:41] caught malaria. It's a terrible disease that kills an awful lot of people.
[00:34:46] And the most effective way of dealing with it very often is to buy mosquito nets. They cost a few
[00:34:51] dollars. If we were to spend the kind of money that we spend on animal testing on buying some
[00:34:56] mosquito nets, improving sanitation, ensuring access to clean water and good nutrition,
[00:35:03] we'd have much better health outcomes.
[00:35:05] So, it's a little bit disingenuous, I think, to just focus on, you know, particular medical
[00:35:11] advances as if that's the only way to achieve, you know, great benefits.
[00:35:16] All right, one final question then.
[00:35:18] 10,000, it may be a little less than this, but you know, because this is, I mean, who
[00:35:22] knows, but 10,000 species, let's say that disappear each year. Now, some of them, you know, microorganisms, which perhaps,
[00:35:30] you know, aren't as sentient or aren't sentient.
[00:35:32] You're probably not.
[00:35:34] But where'd you draw the line? You know, it's, and how much of that is because getting back
[00:35:40] to this whole argument about us encroaching on so much more of the world. And so, are we taking away
[00:35:46] the rights of animals like koala bears, for example, or because we're chopping down trees?
[00:35:53] So, do we stop chopping down trees? Do we stop encroaching? Do we put limits on how much of the
[00:35:59] wildlife habitat that we actually invade? Because otherwise that would be an invasion of their
[00:36:05] rights. We're taking away their lives.
[00:36:07] So the answer I think is largely yes, we stop a lot of that thing. But I also think it's
[00:36:12] possible for us to live, you know, to coexist and to live well alongside many of these other
[00:36:20] species in ways that don't violate their rights. So I could imagine perhaps koalas have a protected
[00:36:25] place where their trees are kept safe. And for example, we could, the human communities could
[00:36:32] still go in there and enjoy that space. They might even be able to practice some logging provided
[00:36:36] they then planted some new trees and made sure they were sufficient leftover for koalas to enjoy.
[00:36:42] And if we were going to have to build a road between that space, we would plant a few more trees on the other side of the road and then lay the koalas
[00:36:48] to move over to there. So I think it's possible to live alongside. There are always going to be
[00:36:52] difficult cases, but there are in human existences. We have conflicts between communities and
[00:36:58] individuals in those communities all the time. And we rely upon judges to make decisions and
[00:37:04] politicians to make decisions about how
[00:37:06] to balance the considerations.
[00:37:07] And that's what it should be.
[00:37:08] It should be rights decided in court by judges.
[00:37:10] It should be the basis of our relationship with our own people.
[00:37:14] Well, so constitutional protections, I think, first of all, and then when there are clashes,
[00:37:20] it's up for mediation or courts.
[00:37:22] I mean, you have systems in place that already do this.
[00:37:24] I mean, and I find this quite baffling myself, but there are legal guardians protected in the
[00:37:29] constitution for already for rivers, for mountains, forests, ecosystems in different jurisdictions.
[00:37:37] Some of them in like the Canadian legal system is very similar to ours, and they've managed
[00:37:41] to have those kinds of protections in place where you might have someone constitutionally appointed to represent the interests of all
[00:37:48] the rivers and they will speak on their behalf in a court. If we can do that for rivers,
[00:37:54] I think we can manage it for a chimpanzee.
[00:37:56] Well, there we are. We've reached the point, river rights, vegetable rights and animal
[00:38:00] rights. We seem to...
[00:38:01] I'm crossing... I'm drawing a line of vegetable rights.
[00:38:04] All right. All right. The river rights anyway, or mounted rights too.
[00:38:07] I'm not convinced by those, but yes.
[00:38:11] Keep the veg, can't they? Gonna be able to eat something. Let's keep the vegetables.
[00:38:14] Yes, absolutely.
[00:38:16] Good job, Steve. Thanks for coming on.
[00:38:18] Thank you very much indeed.
[00:38:19] I tell you what, he has got a big job ahead of him.
[00:38:23] I think persuasion-wise you could be right.
[00:38:25] But...
[00:38:26] Massive.
[00:38:27] I mean, he's calling for a massive change.
[00:38:28] Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:29] I mean, first of all, telling everyone...
[00:38:31] I mean, I think a lot of this will just happen anyway through, you know...
[00:38:35] Well, so many people, so many young people are vegan or vegetarian.
[00:38:38] You know, there's kind of...
[00:38:40] That's out there.
[00:38:41] And I think the interesting idea that this could all be legally enshrined is well that's going to be a bigger hurdle.
[00:38:47] Yeah, I think a lot of it is already is. Now, I mean you can't, you know, hurt animals,
[00:38:52] your pets for example. What I thought was interesting, I mean, and we've all got double
[00:38:56] standards in this. When I was researching for this, I looked at a website in the United States
[00:39:02] where it's sort of like talking about experiments on
[00:39:05] animals and actually so it was in Germany. One and a half million mice are experimented
[00:39:10] each year in Germany and 765 cats. So here's me, I was you know wasn't modified at the
[00:39:20] thought of one and a half million mice but the fact that 765 cats and then on this this website has got a picture of a cat having an experiment performed on it with an electrode.
[00:39:29] It's got things bolted into its head and I'm thinking, that's a cat. Why should I care
[00:39:32] more about a cat? Well, obviously, because I've got a cat that I love and almost 4,000
[00:39:37] dogs. There would be many people appalled at the idea of experiments on dogs as well
[00:39:42] because we have an affinity.
[00:39:43] Well, that's the thing. And if you enshrine rights, you have to have rights, you know,
[00:39:47] I think if a cat is sentient then a mouse certainly is.
[00:39:49] Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:50] I don't know, you can't really say it isn't.
[00:39:53] There's a lot, as you say, of double standards and it was interesting also his point about
[00:39:57] how you, you know, that we are encroaching on land, we're encroaching on animal rights too.
[00:40:02] Yeah, well that's what I was trying to make, that maybe we need to hold off but then we
[00:40:06] need to rein in our population growth, which he didn't seem to think was something we necessarily
[00:40:11] needed to do.
[00:40:12] You're keen on that one.
[00:40:13] Yeah, but anyway, look next week, something else is destroying the planet.
[00:40:15] Well this encroachment is all part of it in a way because...
[00:40:18] Well it's destroying the planet isn't it?
[00:40:20] It's how much we rely on fossil fuels and how much more we're going to need and more
[00:40:24] importantly whether the UK should be opening up new oil fuels and how much more we're going to need and more importantly
[00:40:25] whether the UK should be opening up new oil fields and gas fields when we're trying to.
[00:40:29] As the government is intending to do.
[00:40:30] To do, yeah.
[00:40:31] I mean are we, despite everything, full of foreseeable future, going to have to have
[00:40:37] fossil fuels as part of the mix and if we are, is it reasonable that we should take our own
[00:40:42] and put it in? Does it actually make much difference if it comes out?
[00:40:45] But does it?
[00:40:46] And it doesn't even matter where it comes from, does it?
[00:40:47] Because it's an international marketplace and if it's oil, we have to send it overseas
[00:40:51] to unless we're going to start building oil refineries, it's got to be sent overseas to
[00:40:55] be refined anyway, where it goes into the big pool of, you know, international oil.
[00:41:00] And we buy at the international price irrespective of where it comes from.
[00:41:03] I mean, we'll get a bit of money from tax revenue on the line. Yeah, yeah, a bit of jingo isn't really and oh let's open up
[00:41:08] the oil for our own benefit. Yeah and I'd be interested in finding out next week as well.
[00:41:12] Actually how quickly that can happen because I you know I'm hearing members that well you know
[00:41:17] could take 10 or 20 years and by which time it perhaps won't be needed anyway.
[00:41:21] Well I hope that renewables will have replaced a lot of it but.
[00:41:21] it perhaps won't be needed anyway. Well, I hope that renewables will have replaced a lot of it.
[00:41:24] But, hmm.
[00:41:25] So we'll get the way down on this.
[00:41:28] Next week on Y-Curve.
[00:41:28] We'll drill into it, you might even say.
[00:41:30] No drill.
[00:41:31] God, yeah, there we are.
[00:41:32] Thank you.
[00:41:32] I think we should finish on a high and just finish on that.
[00:41:35] We'll see you next week.
[00:41:36] Thanks for listening.
[00:41:37] Bye.
[00:41:38] The Y-Curve.