We share our lives and homes with six rescued dogs. Each one, with the exception of one born in a rescue for pregnant dogs, arrived from backgrounds of profound hardship, marked by severe neglect and abuse. We see these dogs as non-human refugees within our family. Our affection for them is immense, yet we hold a firm conviction: ideally, they should never have been brought into existence as pets in the first place.
Our stance is against domestication and pet ownership, as we believe these practices infringe upon the fundamental rights of animals.
The concept of ‘animal rights’ in contemporary discourse has become diluted. Many consider advocating for slightly larger cages for battery hens, or group housing for veal calves before their slaughter, as representing an ‘animal rights’ perspective. This interpretation is largely influenced by Peter Singer, the author of Animal Liberation (1975), often hailed as the ‘father of the animal rights movement’.
However, this attribution is problematic. Singer’s philosophical foundation is utilitarianism, a system that fundamentally rejects the notion of inherent moral rights. He champions actions that minimize suffering. Paradoxically, the supposed ‘father of animal rights’ dismisses animal rights themselves, endorsing incremental welfare improvements like cage-free eggs and crate-free pork – measures promoted by numerous large animal welfare charities. Singer champions animal welfare, not animal rights. His focus is not on ending human use of animals, but solely on mitigating their suffering. In a 2006 interview with The Vegan magazine, he envisioned a future where people primarily consume plant-based diets, occasionally indulging in ‘luxury’ items like free-range eggs or meat from animals reared in species-appropriate conditions and ‘humanely killed’.
Our understanding of ‘animal rights’ diverges significantly, aligning more closely with the concept of ‘human rights’ when safeguarding the core interests of our own species. For instance, the human right to life signifies that an individual’s fundamental interest in living is protected, even if using them as a non-consenting organ donor could save ten other lives. A right serves to protect an interest, irrespective of potential consequences. While not absolute and forfeitable under specific circumstances, a right cannot be dismissed solely for consequential reasons.
Non-human animals possess a moral right not to be exploited purely as human resources, irrespective of ‘humane’ treatment or potential benefits humans might derive from treating them as interchangeable commodities.
When we advocate for animal rights, our primary focus is on a singular, crucial right: the right not to be property. This is foundational because if animals possess moral significance – if they are more than mere objects – they inherently cannot be property. Conversely, if they are property, their existence is reduced to that of things. Consider this in the context of human beings. We universally agree that all humans, regardless of individual traits, possess the fundamental, pre-legal right to not be treated as chattel property. We unequivocally reject human chattel slavery, even though it persists in various forms today. No one morally defends it.
The rejection of chattel slavery stems from the understanding that a human slave is dehumanized, no longer recognized as a person – a being with moral significance. A human slave is relegated to a thing, existing entirely outside the moral community. Any value attributed to the slave’s interests is determined by the owner, who might choose to value them as a family member, or provide only minimal sustenance while inflicting horrific treatment. The slave’s fundamental interests can be deemed worthless.
Numerous laws historically attempted to regulate race-based human slavery in places like the United States and Britain. These regulations proved ineffective because their relevance only arose in conflicts between slave and owner. For slavery to exist as an institution, the slave owner’s will must prevail almost entirely. There can be no meaningful challenge to the owner’s property rights.
This same fundamental issue plagues the context of non-human animals. If animals are property, they inherently lack intrinsic value. Their value is purely extrinsic, determined by us. They possess no rights; we, as property owners, hold the rights to value them. And we might choose to assign them zero value.
Laws ostensibly regulating our use of non-human animals are abundant – in fact, exceeding the number of laws that once regulated human slavery. Yet, mirroring the ineffectiveness of slavery regulations, these animal welfare laws fail to fundamentally protect animals. They become relevant only when human and animal interests clash. However, humans possess rights, including property rights. Animals are property. When legal systems attempt to balance these inherently unequal interests, the outcome is predetermined.
Moreover, the chattel property status of animals ensures that animal welfare standards remain perpetually low. Protecting animal interests incurs costs, meaning those interests are primarily safeguarded only when economically beneficial. Many welfare measures primarily serve to enhance the efficiency of animal exploitation. For example, mandatory stunning of large animals before slaughter reduces carcass damage and minimizes worker injuries. Housing calves in smaller social groups, instead of solitary crates, reduces stress and illness, thereby lowering veterinary expenses.
When animal welfare measures do increase production costs, the increase is usually minimal (e.g., the transition from conventional battery cages to ‘enriched cages’ in the EU) and rarely impacts overall product demand due to demand elasticity. Regardless of how ‘humanely’ animals raised for food are treated, they still endure treatment that, applied to humans, would be classified as torture. There is no such thing as ‘happy’ exploitation.
While the right not to be property is a negative right, not directly addressing positive rights animals might possess, recognizing this single negative right would morally obligate us to reject all forms of institutionalized exploitation. Such exploitation inherently relies on the premise that animals are mere things to be used and killed for our purposes.
It may seem radical to assert that pets are essentially slaves, but this perspective is rooted in our own conventional wisdom about animals. We almost arrive at the same conclusion without even explicitly considering animal rights.
Commonly held beliefs dictate that human use and killing of animals is morally acceptable, but inflicting unnecessary suffering and death is not. The definition of ‘necessity’ in this context is crucial, but it certainly excludes suffering or death for trivial reasons. We recognize this principle in specific instances. The public outrage directed at American football player Michael Vick, involved in a dog-fighting operation in 2007, remains palpable even years later. Why? Because we intuitively understand that Vick’s actions were wrong, justified only by his pleasure or amusement in harming dogs – justifications we deem insufficient.
Many, if not most, people oppose bullfighting, and even a majority within the UK’s Conservative party oppose fox hunting. Why? Because these bloodsports, by definition, lack any genuine necessity to justify the suffering and death inflicted on non-human animals. No one suggested Vick’s culpability would lessen if he were a more ‘humane’ dog fighter. Opponents of bloodsports don’t advocate for making them more humane; they call for their complete abolition because these activities are inherently immoral, regardless of their execution.
The troubling reality is that 99.999 percent of our animal uses are morally indistinguishable from these activities we overwhelmingly condemn.
Our most numerically significant animal use is for food. We kill over 60 billion land animals annually for food, not to mention the trillions of sea animals. Optimal health doesn’t necessitate animal consumption. Increasingly, mainstream health authorities, including the National Institutes of Health in the US, the American Heart Association, the British National Health Service, and the British Dietetic Association, affirm that a well-planned vegan diet is nutritionally equivalent to diets including animal products. Some even suggest vegan diets can be healthier. The claim that we need animal products for health is simply not credible. Moreover, animal agriculture is an ecological catastrophe.
We consume animal products because we enjoy the taste. In this regard, we are no different from Michael Vick, except we typically outsource the infliction of harm. Our use of animals for entertainment and sport is equally unnecessary. The only arguably non-frivolous animal use is in research seeking cures for serious illnesses. While we reject vivisection as morally unjustifiable, even if deemed necessary (a point we consider empirically questionable), its ethical complexities require deeper analysis than the clearly immoral use of animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and other trivial purposes. Considering our conventional wisdom, almost all other animal uses are easily deemed immoral.
The core conclusion is this: whether you adopt an animal rights perspective recognizing animals’ basic pre-legal right not to be property, or adhere to conventional wisdom, the outcome is the same: virtually all our animal uses must be abolished.
To assert an animal’s right not to be treated as property is simply to acknowledge our moral obligation to not use animals as mere things, even if doing so benefits us. For domesticated animals, this implies ceasing their breeding altogether. We are morally bound to care for existing right-holders. However, we are equally obligated to refrain from bringing more into existence.
This includes dogs, cats, and other non-human ‘companions’.
We cherish our six dogs as integral family members. The legal system protects this choice, as we are entitled to value our property as we wish. Conversely, we could legally confine them as guard dogs with minimal human interaction, or take them to a kill shelter. The law safeguards these decisions too. We are property owners; they are property. We own them.
The grim reality is that in the US, most dogs and cats don’t live out their natural lifespan in loving homes. They often experience relatively short periods in homes before being re-homed, abandoned in shelters, or euthanized.
Characterizing an owner as a ‘guardian’ is a semantic shift without legal substance. If you retain the legal right to take your dog to a kill shelter, or ‘humanely’ euthanize them yourself, the label you use is irrelevant. Your dog remains your property. Those of us sharing our lives with companion animals are legally owners, entitled to treat them as we see fit, provided minimal food, water, and shelter are provided. While limitations on ownership rights exist, they are consistent with assigning minimal value to our animal companions’ interests.
The instinctive recoil at the thought of life without beloved animal companions often prompts the question: ‘What if we mandated everyone treat their animals as well as I treat mine?’
The flaw in this counterargument is that even with enforceable regulations mandating higher animal welfare standards, these animals would remain property. We would still possess the right to deem their lives worthless and either kill them or surrender them to shelters where they face euthanasia if not adopted.
One might further argue against killing animals except in circumstances akin to assisted suicide for humans (terminal illness, intractable pain), and advocate prohibiting shelters from euthanasia except when genuinely in the animal’s best interest.
Such a position approaches abolishing animals’ chattel property status, advocating for treatment comparable to human children. But even then, should we continue breeding non-humans as companions?
Our answer remains a resounding ‘no’.
Beyond the impracticality of establishing universal standards for treating non-humans as ‘family members’ and resolving related complexities, this viewpoint overlooks the profound moral issues inherent in domestication itself, irrespective of treatment quality.
Domesticated animals are entirely dependent on humans, who control every facet of their existence. Unlike human children destined for autonomy, non-humans remain perpetually dependent. This is the very essence of domestication – we desire their dependence. They exist in a permanent state of vulnerability, reliant on us for everything vital to them. We’ve selectively bred them for compliance, servility, and traits pleasing to us, often to their detriment. While we might provide happiness in a limited sense, the relationship is inherently ‘unnatural’ and ‘abnormal’. They are fundamentally out of place in our world, regardless of our treatment. This holds true for virtually all domesticated non-humans. Their perpetual dependence makes them, in a very real sense, animal slaves. Some owners may be benevolent masters, but they can never be more than masters.
Some, like Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka in their book Zoopolis (2011), argue that humans also depend on each other, questioning the inherent wrongness of animal dependence on us. However, human relationships involve mutual dependence or interdependence, often based on choice or societal structures designed to protect vulnerable members through a social contract. Crucially, human dependence doesn’t strip individuals of fundamental rights that can be asserted if dependence becomes harmful.
The argument that ‘pet’ animals have a right to reproduce is often raised. However, extending a reproductive right to ‘pets’ logically necessitates allowing unlimited and indefinite reproduction. Concerns about domestication’s end leading to species diversity loss are also misplaced. Domesticated animals are human creations through selective breeding and confinement, not natural species in the traditional sense.
Critics correctly point out that our position primarily addresses the negative right not to be property, not positive rights animals might hold. However, recognizing this single right – the right not to be property – would, in itself, end all domestication. We would be obligated to care for existing domesticated animals, but we would cease bringing any more into existence.
If we truly embraced non-human personhood, we would still need to consider the rights of non-domesticated animals coexisting with us and inhabiting undeveloped areas. But if we possessed sufficient moral consideration to abstain from eating, wearing, and otherwise using domesticated non-humans, we would undoubtedly be capable of determining appropriate positive rights for all animals. The critical first step is recognizing animals’ negative right not to be treated as property. This commitment would necessitate abolishing all institutionalized exploitation that commodifies and controls them.
We love our dogs, yet acknowledge that in a more just world, pets would not exist, nor would fields of sheep, barns of pigs and cows, or egg-laying hen facilities. Aquariums and zoos would also be relics of the past.
If animals possess moral significance, we must fundamentally reassess our entire relationship with them. The central question is not whether our exploitation is ‘humane’ – with all the superficial adjustments to animal-use industries that entails – but whether we are morally justified in using them at all.
