The controversy generated around the recent statements of the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzon, about how misguided it can be assumed that whoever is part of the government of a nation attacks an industrial sector important to its economy, diverts us from the need to open a calm debate and far from sentimentality about the existence of obligations to other animals.
We live with millions of animals that we mistreat in popular festivals or we kill in slaughterhouses or farms and then eat them. Many defenders of these practices use the indisputable finding that they do not have the reasoning of most human beings to accuse them of not being moral agents (not having the capacity to make moral judgments and take responsibility for their own actions) and, therefore , of not being subjects of law. But they do not explain why the ability to understand what a right is and claim it, as well as make moral judgments, must be necessary for the possession of rights. If that were the case, we could not argue because babies or people with some type of mental disability do own them.
One of the most important findings made in recent decades and which enjoys a broad consensus among the scientific community, is that “humans are not the only ones to possess the neurological basis that gives rise to consciousness & rdquor; (Low et al., 2012). Nonhuman animals they are not unconscious beings quite the contrary, they are capable of experiencing feelings (good and bad) and being aware of a variety of states and sensations such as pleasure and suffering. They are sentient beings. This ability is manifested in behaviors that can only be explained by the existence of this ability: sense of justice in primates such as chimpanzees (Proctor et al., 2013), self-recognition in Asian elephants (Plotnik et al., 2006), or how dolphins mourn the death of their young (Regent et al., 2016), among other.
Nonhuman animals act intentionally to survive and minimize their suffering. They are the type of beings that have (or may have) interests. In fact, many species of animals could not have survived were it not for this ability: sentience is evolutionarily useful.
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Authors such as Henry Salt (1899) or Peter Singer (1975), among many others, have pointed out that those who have the capacity to suffer and enjoy, must be protected against suffering that other individuals can provoke them. In other words, if humans flee from suffering and consider dying to be bad, there is no reason to think that this does not happen among non-human animals. This is why we are obliged to refrain from inflicting pain or suffering on them.
At this point, it is worth asking if maintaining a type of industry just because it generates wealth and jobs is a sufficient reason not to oppose it, especially if there are reasonable suspicions about the effect it may have on the well-being of other individuals, including non-human animals.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com