Animals deserve a good life without suffering from psychological, emotional and physical pain due to human decisions and lifestyle. They need rights, just like us.

    Animal rights is a law that defends the liberty of an animal to be free and to live its life. Their life is supposed to look just like a baby’s life; eat, sleep, play and pee/poop. Not eating bad food, not sleeping well and being killed.

   The movement of animal rights is not to put animals at the same level as humans, but to recognize that we have to respect them. We can’t just continue to eat and kill them without knowing what is the impact of our habits. 

    How can we help animal rights?

    To help with animal rights we will have to gradually modify our habits like hunting and eating meat. Take for example fishing, most people now practice catch and release and have a minimal impact on the fish stock.

 But that is not just about small things like that, it’s about complex activities according to a BBC’s article  like;

• No experiments on animals
• No breeding and killing animals for foods and clothes or medicines
• No use of animals for hard labour
• No selective breeding for any reason other than the benefit of the animal
• No zoos or use of animals for entertainment

    The best way to inform people about animal rights is to talk about it in newspapers, publicities, and educate our population. People have to know what is going on in the world and what is the impact of all their habits.

      A representation that we can figure in our mind is that a cat or a dog deserves the same respect as a cow or a pig. You probably don’t imagine baking your cat on the grill and serving it to your family, it’s the same with farm animals. According to Mercy for Animals: “Pigs are actually considered the fifth-most intelligent animal in the world—even more intelligent than dogs—and are capable of playing video games with more focus and success than chimps!”

    That’s why there are many people considering veganism as a valid option. After all, there are many alternatives to feed. Still, it will be difficult to implement these changes. We will have to compromise and make good decisions and research. The best way to be completely vegan is to put in place the rights of nature. “the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structures, functions and evolutionary processes,” according to Ecuador’s Constitution.

Gabrielle Dugal