The definition of ethics it may be one of the questions that every moral philosopher have to deal with.

It is difficult to define what it is because it leads us to different opinions. One way to define it, its to ask what are the processes go on in ethical thinking. We have to be clear about what processes are proper to go on in ethical thinking (Square, 1932). A psychological definition about morality is the structural developmental psychologist gives that as the most of people will agree, an action that we can say its morally, its when the action is informed by moral judgment. This definition takes the morality definition back, from which is the level of the action to which is the level of the action (Wren, 1990). The question of morality is of great importance nowadays and is still under

discussion. Some people argue that morality has vanished, whereas others claim it has been completely changed partly due to the changes in human consciousness, core values and attitudes. Nevertheless, morality play important role in society as it shapes the behavioral patterns to follow and t obey. Morality is inborn in everybody, though some prefer not to follow it. Attitudes to morality have been changed nowadays. For example, eating in the streets, short rocks and women smokes is allowed nowadays and considered acceptable (Gert, 2005). Barry Horne, well known activist, had been sentenced to eighteen years in jail of making series attacks that caused a lot of damages. In 2001, after his fourth hunger for animal rights he died and the animal rights organization hailed him as a martyr. The same time with his third hunger strike, Robin Webb, at the Animal Liberation Front, read out one list with ten issued people by an extremist organization for animal rights, the Animal Rights Militia (Hills, 2006). Within the ten names of that list was the name of the Professor of Physiology at Oxford University. The Professor Colin Blakemore had done a lot of research in the vision and the early of human brain. He was a supporter of the experiments on animals and he experiment on them himself. He was a supporter of the essential to the knowledge and medical scientific progress. That made him a usual target for animal rights defenders, like activists and extremists, who they threat him (Hills, 2006).

As we see the animal rights issue is a very emotive subject for some people and o lot of them are able to kill or threat the others and their selfs instead for this purpose. Many of us we eat meat or fish and we wear leather or fur and we use a lot of medicines tested on animals. There is two sides on the debate of animal rights, each one with strong and deeply held convictions, which make difficult for them to sustain a dialogue with meaningful results (Hills, 2006). The one side is that the animals have rights complete equal with human rights. That the animals should be treated like a human will treat to another human. The other side of this animal rights debate, they say that the animals have no rights and that we can treat then any which way we want (Hills, 2006). Among these two sides are the most people, we dont accept either of these two claims. Instead we think that there are moral limits in the way we treat to animals but nevertheless there are differences within humans and animals and those make our treating to them differently. In this essay we will defend a moderate view. Which view the most of us have in the early societies. We defend our rights with the UN Declaration of Human Rights that many countries have signed up and such as a lot of the West and far countries, on each side of the word , have recognize the animal rights equally valuable like the human rights. This is what this essay will talk about. We live in Europe, the continent that since the Second World War showed a public and private interest in animal protection. In the most of the Western European countries we deal with regulations about the production of animal meat, the animal transportation, laboratory animal care, the animal in the zoos, the wild life and the pets animal (Guither, 1998). European Union has laws dealing with the cruelty to animals and the prevention of it since the nineteenth century. After a series of events that took place in Europe since the second World War, with the backup of the formal policies, a promotion about humane treatment of animals with the introduction of laws and regulations and the implementation of them (Guither, 1998). That led us to see that in Europe the animal rights protection is very important. However its a complex process for the European Union to develop animal welfare 2

policies, these processes involves the Council of Europe, the Commission of the European Union, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. After these processes every single member country of the European Union is responsible for implementing the regulations and the rules about the animal rights (Guither, 1998). The European Communities Council for the experimental and other scientific purposes on animals issued its directive for the protection of them. This directive was signed in November 1986 to provide guidelines for all the member countries to uniform their laws. The purpose was to reduce use of animals for experimental purposes to a minimum level, to insure that the member countries will care for the animals welfare and avoid pain, harm and suffering of them (Guither, 1998). According to that directive, animals were to provide appropriate care like food, water and freedom of movement. Every member state would design an authority which will verify that the directive will be carried out. The experiments on animals would be performed by authorized scientists with safety and considered, if it is necessary, the number of the animals in the experiment. If the use of other animals would not be satisfactory, this is the only way for scientists to use wild animals for the experiments. The member countries would keep the numbers and the kinds of the animals used in researches and experiments. This directive among the wild animals, the farm animals like rabbits and nonhuman primates and the pets like cats or dogs, cover animals such mice, rats, guinea pigs, golden hamsters and quail too (Guither, 1998). Like European Union, America and other continents have done work on their laws about animal rights and animal welfare. But the laws sometimes seem not to be enough and some organizations take action to promote and support the ideas of animal rights and animal welfare. As an example Asia have a non-profit organization, ACT Asia. They work on a project to build the capacity of local organization and people working in the field of animal protection. In Asia also have the Animal Asia Foundation which is a Hong Kong based government registered animal charity. Such these organizations there are same thinking movements in every continent n the world. These organizations take place in a world that dont do the acts that have to do and some organizations moved by people fight for some specific ideas, in this case the idea of animal protection. Taking as example Canada, we can see we there is a need 3

for these organizations. In Canada the law requires that animals be used for medical testing, in any which way, but are not required for cosmetic testing. Yet in many cases are still used, particularly to test the ingredients used in cosmetic products. In situations like that organizations and movements about the animal rights protection will act making protests about those issues. We all may think how issues like this, the experiments and the test on animals, will eliminated. Like the medical and cosmetic markets use animals for experiments the same thing psychologist do. Many might not know that a large portion of psychological research involves animals of all typesmonkeys, pigeons, rats, dogs, etc. Psychologists often believe they need animals to perform the experiments that cannot be ethically conducted with humans. But this makes the experiments ethically conducted animals? This idea of a difference between humans and animals is merely a human conception for the advantage of man. No animal should ever be experimented on no matter what the potential gain may be. To inject an animal with the AIDS virus or force animals to breathe in toxic chemicals and watch them suffer and die is not tolerable in any way. Violence against animals is just as severe as violence toward humans. In order for a society to successfully evolve, it needs to reach the highest ethics possible, which is non-violence. As long as humans abuse and kill animals in research, humans will continue to kill each other. According to official United States Department of Agriculture figures,

approximately 140,000 dogs and 42,000 cats die in laboratories in the United States each year, and smaller but sizeable numbers are used in every developed nation Singer (1993, p.119) If we consider this in an ideological way, we may see that there are a lot of similarities in the way we treat to the animals with the way we treat to each other. We take advantage of each other and we use the others not with the way we want, but with the way we need. Our needs and our ambitions many times in our lives are higher than the level of our ethical thinking. So many times, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, we encounter the other people the same way with animals. We

experiment to the others because we want to understand better our lives and our behaviors, no matter the impact this may have. It seems we have this inherent value. We are each of us the experiencing subject of a life, a conscious creature having an individual welfare that has importance to us whatever our usefulness to others this includes all animals which must be viewed as experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own Regan (2007, p.09). But must animals treat like humans? Is it right to think about animal rights completely like we think about humans? This conflict between humans and animals is likely to continue endlessly. Individual animals killed or suffer to death and people hunting or improper treat to them may continue forever. Animals and humans both have an ethical problem but in the other hand have a right to nature. But now let us suppose that a farmer lives on a frontier and needs to expand his activities to unused land not to hunt game or to trap for furs, but simply to cultivate land that has never been used before by humans. Some animals will inevitably be driven out, and some of these are likely to die as a result. It might thus seem, on first thought, that these animals have been deprived of a right of use which is theirs by the rule of prior possession Franklin (2005, p.90). This conflict brings us to see that animal intelligence is not comparable with human minds? In the past there have been many tries to make it clear, to draw a line between human and animal intelligence. We try to see which of our abilities only our privileges are. But many animals have abilities like ours, such the ability of communication, and some animals are able to learn simple human words, animals like apes (Hills, 2006). So may there is nothing that we can do and animals cant. And that make us consider that we have equal values and rights with the animals. But there is not only the conflict between human and animal rights. One question is if all animals are equal. An answer could be this: The ground of moral status is the capacity to feel pain and pleasure. Any animals that can feel pain have moral status: it matters morally when they suffer. Plants and non-sentient animals, by contrast, do not have moral status. The death of a human is usually worse than the death of an animal, because we are typically deprived of more goods by a premature death. The more intellectually sophisticated the animal, the more it misses out on by an early death, 5

and so the worse it is to kill that animal. It is therefore worse to kill a highly developed great ape than it is to kill a mollusk Hills (2006, p.156). The most of us we deal with situations like those a lot of times in our lives. Some of us we may have a pet, or we may work with or for animals. So we are familiar with the idea of animal rights and we all consider if our part to pretend these rights its enough. We may think about the experiments on animals or how much meat we eat every week but it is absolutely wrong to do experiments on animals or to eat them or hunt them? Or because it is wrong or right in our society so there must be the same in other societies different of ours? It is a fact that every continent have laws about animal rights and sometimes similar to each other. But the culture of every single country in each continent is deferent. Some cultures believe in some hardcore values about animal and there priority is to protect them. In some other countries in the other hand there are cultures that uses the animal for their ritual acts, their works or their science and food. So understandably this, we cant have aspirations on any universal concept of animal ethics (Tester, 1991). Nevertheless there are some universal words that can make as consider the above: If an animal can devise a careful plan for obtaining a banana, not now but at some future time, and can take precautions against his own propensity to give away the object of the plan, that animal must be aware of himself as a distinct entity, existing over time Singer (1993, pp.116-7). Summarizing this essay we see that the animal rights in a universal subject that interests and concern one big part of the society. The cultures, the behaviors and the thoughts of every sigle person is the base for a continent to build a structure of laws and practice prinsibles about animal rights. The values and the moral issues of animal welfare are more than the animals we can say. And thats because of the above, the deferents between the peoples and the societies seems to be the only subject that have to consider the experts. Questions about animal conflict human value of life or value of intelligence, questions about the pain, the suffer, the joy and the needs of the animal and if there are the same like humans and questions about the way we treat to 6

the animals and in extension the way we treat to the people in our human societies, questions like those generates the thoughts and the acts about animal rights. Every year millions of animals are killed needlessly. They are tested in laboratories and butchered in slaughterhouses. These people that do such things are not completely wrong for what they do, but wrong for doing it in such mass numbers and in such horrible situations. Animals should be used for testing and in consumption but only under certain conditions. The testing should be for extreme medical reasons that could save lives and prevent mass diseases, living facilities for the animals should be sanitary and habitable, and the slaughter of animals for food should be limited to only enough for what is needed to survive. We need to realize, that in today's society, animals deserve just as much freedom as humans have. Although we are larger in size, we are not superior in status. Animals have been around on the earth for as long as humans, if not longer. Animals play an important role in today's society whether or not we choose to admit it. Like a

newborn baby learning to play with others we must learn to share the planet with animals.

Franklin, J. H., 2005. Animal Rights And Moral Philosophy. United States of America: Columbia University Press Gert, G., 2005. Morality : Its Nature and Justification. London: Oxford Universiy Press Guither, H.D., 1998. Animal rights: history and scope of a radical social movement. United States of America: Southern Illinois University Hills, A., 2006. Do Animals Have Rights. United Kindom: Totem Books Regan, T., 2007. The case for animal rights. 4th Edition, United States of America: University of California Press Singer, P., 1993. Practical Ethics. 2nd Edition, London: Cambridge University Press Square, R., 2006. Meeting of the Aristotelian Society at 55. London: W.C. 1 Tester, K., 1991. Animals and society: the humanity of animal rights. London: Routledge Wren, T.E., 1990. The Moral Domain:Essays in the Ongoing Discussion Between Philosophy and the Social Sciences. Cambridge:The MIT Press