Nuh-uh. At chicken 'rights' I draw the line. Since we are trying to 'educate' people here and 'spread the word' after all...
Welfare, sure. Living things deserve to be treated well. All of them. Welfare deals with quality of life... Food, housing, water, treatment for injury or disease, gentle handling, painless death, etc. Animal welfare supposes a quality of life.
Animal 'rights' is a different beast. Rights supposed inalienable rights as desired and established as autonomous creatures. Animal rights is often in antithesis to animal welfare.
Right suggests an inalienable autonomy that animals do not have, nor should they. You cannot own something with rights. Even children in their limited understanding have rights as assigned and defended by the state.
You cannot own a dog if the dog has rights. You cannot eat a chicken that has rights. Animal rights is in antithesis to all animal ownership. Even the biggest supporters and advocated for animal rights acknowledge this. Groups like PETA who support animal rights openly make their mission statement clear:
"We believe that it would have been in the animals' best interests if the institution of “pet keeping”—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as “pets”—never existed." - PETA
(Please note that these organizations often believe this so strongly that they often advocate for the death of animals before ownership and act on these beliefs.)
This is not acceptable. Ownership of animals is a two-way street. Both parties benefit, ultimately. Animals often gain a genetic diversity, a secure population and a quality of life unattainable in the wild. Humans gain the benefits that the animals bring - food, companionship, work, etc.
To suggest that animals cannot be owned is to suggest that they must be wild. To suggest that all animals be wild is to suggest that every prey be mercilessly taken down by predators and begun to be eaten while they are still alive. To suggest that all animals be wild is to suggest that injuries go untreated and result in a long painful death. To be wild is to starve in the winter, glut yourself in the summer, live in fear of predation or where your next meal comes from. Life in the wild is unkind and uncertain and the ONLY option for animals with rights.
Indeed, giving 'rights' to dogs, cows, domestic chickens and more is to ultimately subject those species to genocide. To be unowned is death for many of those animals. They literally evolved exclusively to live with us and under our care.
So since you're busy 'educating' people, you may want to consider WHAT you are trying to educate people ON.
Quality of life for domestic animals?
Or some misguided agenda that says a farm life is more cruel for a cow than death itself?
Cause one of those is going to fly on a website full of pet and livestock owners, who enjoy and love and have a mutual benefit with their animals, much better than the other. :T
(Not that we didn't totally see this sort of moralistic posturing hashtag coming from this post.)
I 100% believe in animal welfare. No animal deserves cruel treatment. But animal rights is not what it sounds like a lot of the time.
