" protection of animals is our social responsibility " write a note on this topic
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Explanation:
The Development of Animal Ethics and Rights
The awakening of a consciousness of animal rights began as early as the seventeenth century. Diane Beers, an animal rights activist and historian, cites examples of animal rights principles held by the first Puritan immigrants to America.5 Puritan theology accorded sanctity to the realm of animals, but the people felt that the fair treatment of animals was the sole responsibility of their owners. Anyone who did not own a particular animal did not have a right to mistreat it. Further, the Puritans believed that owners of animals had no right to abuse their investment, as this was considered un-Christian and immoral. These principles of animal rights were based on a moral hierarchy that held humans to be more deserving of rights and privileges than animals. The privileges of humanity came, in the Puritan view, from a spiritual, emotional, and intellectual superiority. The Puritans’ initial attempt to curb animal abuse and/or provide animal rights is considered by Beers a great step forward, though limited by its conception of humans as special creatures in the eyes of God.
Animal rights historians often point to the mid-eighteenth century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham as the founding ethicist of the modern animal rights movement. Bentham, known for the utilitarian philosophy that would later become associated with his protégé John Stuart Mill, believed that ethical decisions should be based on what allows the most good or happiness (and least suffering) to the largest number of people. Bentham’s utilitarianism assumed that all human individuals are equal from a moral point of view. In fact, Bentham went further and posited that all living creatures were equal in terms of this principle. This egalitarian principle was influential in the struggles for abolition of slavery and universal suffrage, but also served as a cornerstone of modern conceptions of animal ethics.
In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham stated: “The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny…. The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”6 Bentham’s approach led many citizens to consider for the first time the ethical imperative to limit the suffering of animals. Bentham’s thinking prompted the creation of Britain’s Society for Prevention of Animal Cruelty (SPCA, later the Royal SPCA, or RSPCA), and the adoption of the first laws curbing animal mistreatment in England throughout the 1830s–1850s.
The United States eventually followed the lead taken by England in animal rights, as it had with the earlier abolitionist movements and suffrage movements. The first major American animal rights group, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), was created in 1866 by Henry Bergh.7 This nascent movement was further strengthened by Charles Darwin’s publication of Origin of the Species and the resultant acceptance of the theory of evolution. Darwin’s hypothesis that humans had evolved from primitive life forms gave credence to the notion that humans were not essentially superior to other members of the natural world. The impact of Darwinian theory on philosophy and theology challenged the traditionally held view of a hierarchy among species, according to which humans were superior to other animals. The Darwinian revolution paved the way for a more open-ended approach to rights (for humans and animals alike).
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, activist groups in the United Kingdom and United States promoted the fair treatment of domesticated animals. This activism reflected a broader social trend toward recognition of the need for fair treatment across social and biological categories, and in particular recognized the rights of laborers, women, and children. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), a novel describing the violent and unclean practices of the Chicago meat industry, was notably influential in this regard. The Jungle drew public attention to labor abuses in the meat industry, and also to the horrors of the slaughterhouse floor.