The central meaning of freedom for rights and respect

Respecting animals, what does that mean in practice?

Dictionaries describe "to respect" in different ways. According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English it means, among other things, "to be careful not to do anything against someone's wishes". Other dictionaries speak of taking someone seriously, accepting someone as they are and treating someone or something with consideration.

It sounds so easy: to accept someone as they are. For animals, many people and some laws add that they have an intrinsic value. But what does it mean to "respect the intrinsic value of the animal"? And how can we know what an animal wishes?

Ask 100 people if they respect animals and they will all say yes. Ask the same people for a definition of respect and they will not get much further than the descriptions above. But if you present them with 100 situations in which animals are used in different ways, there will be little agreement on whether the people involved show respect.

For example: when the beaks of hens are trimmed to reduce the damage done by aggressive pecking, is that a lack of respect for the hen? It is an infringement of the animal's physical integrity, but how serious is it? Or when the tails of piglets are cut off to prevent the pigs from biting each other's tails later on, is that a lack of respect for the young animal?

The word respect is easily used, but for many people it is no guideline for reaching the same decisions in how we treat animals. Hence the proposal to define respecting as "keeping the middle ground between being involved and keeping enough distance". As in etiquette, it is about being interested in the other without prying into everything.

Respect has everything to do with observing the limits of your own freedom and that of others. Give others, animals included, enough space to be themselves. For farm animals this means: give them an environment in which they can behave naturally. Give an animal the space to roam in a meadow and there is no need to cut off beaks or tails.

The central meaning of freedom

When we look at our systems of law, we do apply the right to freedom to ourselves. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states in article 3: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". Anyone who reads the classical human rights and imagines granting animals equivalent rights will find that this is quite possible. All we have to do is let the animal be free, within much wider limits than now.

That this is possible was already shown by the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights, proclaimed at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on 15 October 1978. It has no legal force and was never adopted by UNESCO or the United Nations, but it puts it clearly. Article 4: every wild animal has the right to live free in its own natural environment. Article 5: every animal of a species that traditionally lives with humans has the right to live and grow at the pace and in the conditions of life and freedom proper to its species. Any change to this pace or these conditions imposed by humans for profit is contrary to this right.

When an animal is not allowed to behave freely and naturally, this is a form of animal abuse, however well it is cared for. Breeding sows spend weeks or even months in crates in which they cannot even turn around: a painful example of violating their freedom of movement. Article 9 of the Universal Declaration says that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary detention. What crime has the fattening pig committed that it must spend its life with far too many animals in a space that is too small and unhealthy? As with humans, this leads to boredom and aggression.

Another example: article 5 of the Universal Declaration protects people against cruel treatment and thereby their physical integrity. Clipping the teeth of piglets or castrating them, in many countries still without anaesthesia, could well be called a violation of this right. Separating cow and calf immediately after birth is a way of treating them as objects. The function of the calf is to start the milk production of its mother. After that it is made ready for slaughter as quickly as possible.

Just as with humans, animal rights should be guaranteed by the same two concepts: freedom and equality (for all animals). The fact that an animal's behaviour is determined even more by its nature than by free choice does not diminish its right to freedom.

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