Animal Rights, Welfare, and Abuse: A Comprehensive Overview

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of animal rights and welfare, addressing the challenges faced by animals today and the importance of ethical treatment. It defines animal welfare, emphasizing the human responsibility to care for animals, and discusses the principles and policies that guide animal welfare, referencing governmental regulations and the veterinarian's oath. The essay explores the freedoms essential for animal well-being and the reduction of animal abuse, including negligence and cruelty. It also distinguishes between animal welfare and animal rights, clarifying that animal rights entail moral and legal entitlements, while animal welfare focuses on the community's role in protecting animals. The conclusion highlights the significance of animal welfare principles in understanding animal challenges, reducing abuse, and promoting a more compassionate approach to animal care.

Running Head: ANIMALS RIGHTS
ANIMALS RIGHTS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

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Introduction
In simple words the animal welfare refers to the concept of relationship between people and
animals. The human being is responsible to care the animal world with proper care from the
humanistic lens. From the psychological perspective, animal welfare refers to the physical and
emotional state influenced by the environment where both the animals and human being are
surviving. No matter how the world is becoming disciplined for animal welfare, in some cases
people need to adhere to the ethics and law for the wellbeing of the animals. Milburn (2017)
mentioned that, domestic animals are the hard workers to provide the human being with many
things to enable a healthy and prosperous life. The human being expect to be well paid after
performing tough role in their professional lives. Similarly, the animals only need support and
care from the human being just to live within the community (Naiaonline.org, 2020). The paper
firstly aims to define the principles and policies of animal welfare in terms to address the
challenges faced by the animal world today. Secondly, the paper will also demonstrate the role
of animal welfare to avoid the animal abuse. Finally, it will also demonstrate the difference
between animal welfare and animal rights.
Discussion
The challenges faced by the animals today are recognized by the professionals from the
field of farming, ranching, trainers of animals, breeders, and animal scientists. The summary of
animals’ welfare policies and principles are mentioned in the following section with accordance
to the documentation of United States government regulations. The veterinarian’s oath should be
consistent for the benefits of human and animals covering the purposes of companionship, fiber,
work, food, recreation, and exhibition (Peters 2018). The decisions regarding caring the animals
and their welfare should be formed with proper balance of the scientific knowledge and

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professional judgment considering the ethical and societal values. On the other hand, there are
five types of freedom mentioned with proper consideration of animal welfare. These freedoms
are dedicated for – hunger and thirst, discomfort, injury or disease, and fear and distress
(Lubinski, 2020). The human concern for animal includes close detention of the housing systems
of the recognized setting and appropriate care taker.
On the other hand, the improved plan for animal welfare, helped to reduce the rate of
animal abuse covering the entire world. The forms of animal abuse includes negligence and
deliberate harming with cruel activities. Negligence is considered as a sort of animal abuse as it
is often observed that the pet owner is neglecting the pet unintentionally (Bradfield, Bennett and
Gillett 2018). Another form of animal abuse is showing overtness of cruelty towards the animals.
It may include torturing, beating or maiming the animals. This can result into severe injury and it
also disturbs the mental health of the animals. Death of the pet can also be observed as a result of
continuous suffering from depression. Hence, the policy and principles for animal welfare can
reduce the growing rate of cruelty on the innocent and faithful animals.
It is worth mentioning in this regard, that animal rights and animal welfare are not same.
According to the definition of animal rights it can be said that, the set of rules for which an
individual is entitled morally or legally (Freund et al. 2016). Legal rights refers to the law set by
the recognized government body for protecting any particular group. On the other hand, animal
welfare is the community where the people claim to be the protector of animal rights.
Contrasting the concept of animal welfare principles, the rights of animal tenets oppose using the
animals for any purpose irrespective the nature of the owner. Quoting from Aristotle’s Golden
Mean, welfare is the desired concept between two extremes among them one is the excess and
the other one is the deficient (Lubinski, 2020).

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Conclusion
In conclusion, it is worth to be mentioned that, the above discussion provides a clear idea
about the importance of animal principles to understand the challenges faced by the entire animal
kingdom. Secondly, animal welfare plays an important role to reduce the animal abuse that can
be observed in various forms. Animal welfare can improve the communal mindset to make the
pet owner understand about the effect of unintentional negligence towards their pet. Finally, the
different notion of animal rights and animal welfare is also successfully drawn within the
discussion. Rights are the set rules the animals are entitled and animal welfare is the group of
people spreading the awareness about animal rights.

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References
Bradfield, J.F., Bennett, B.T. and Gillett, C.S., 2018. Oversight of research animal welfare in the
United States. In Laboratory Animals (pp. 15-68). Academic Press.
Freund, L.S., McCune, S.E., Esposito, L.E., Gee, N.R. and McCardle, P.E., 2016. The social
neuroscience of human-animal interaction. American Psychological Association.
Lubinski, J. (2020). Animal Legal and Historical Center. Michigan State University College of
Law.
Milburn, J., 2017. Robert Nozick on nonhuman animals: Rights, value and the meaning of life.
In Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues (pp. 97-120). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Naiaonline.org (2020). What is Animal Welfare and why is it important?. [online]
Naiaonline.org. Available at: http://www.naiaonline.org/articles/article/what-is-animal-
welfare-and-why-is-it-important#sthash.tgCxHZJI.dpbs [Accessed 28 Feb. 2020].
Peters, A., 2018. Rights of Human and Nonhuman Animals: Complementing the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. AJIL Unbound, 112, pp.355-360.