Whence animal rights? Do animals have rights? Just posing the
question is likely to draw reactions ranging from outright scorn
for the idea to very passionate appeals in defense of non-human
living species. It seems to me that this is a crucial question
because of what it says about how we intend to treat the
environment in which we live. Yet, it is a question that opens
up endless avenues of discussion that may not necessarily lead
one towards a simple answer. To begin with, as I have argued in
this column before, 'rights' are not a feature of the natural
world, but rather an entirely human construct. That, of course,
doesn't mean they are not interesting or important. Democracy is
also a human construct, but its existence or lack thereof
affects the lives of billions on the planet. The fact that
rights are a human construct, however, means that we cannot
appeal to the laws of nature to defend any particular viewpoint
about them. One could then construe the idea of animal rights as
reflecting our acknowledgm