Submitted by ANIMAL RIGHTS MALTA’S BLOG

Fabian Borg, from the hunter federation (FKNK)’s education committee (no less!) writes a letter in today’s The Times which he entitles “Hunters, dogs, birds and rights”.

Mr Borg writes:

“Kenneth Cassar of Animal Rights Malta (The Times, April 1), while conceding that a dummy is no exact replica of a live bird, proceeds to get lost once more over his own argument, not mine, about the ‘rights’ of dogs.

Anyone looking for the ‘rights’ of dogs will discover they have none. If they had, they would have not only responsibilities, but also the means of protecting their interests. Mr Cassar himself unwittingly confirms this by stating that ‘rights are means of protecting interests’. Since dogs do not have the means to protect their own interests, people have to assume responsibility for their protection and welfare. It is, therefore, a question of animal welfare, and definitely not of non-existent animal ‘rights’.

And so we go back to where this correspondence all started: Danica Rosso’s letter. Assuming she is a law-abiding licence holder, it is the lady who has a right and a responsibility to hunt with her dogs. The ultimate satisfaction for her and her dogs is to engage in a real hunt, not half of one, or just as unsatisfactory, a dummy ‘hunt’. At this point let me say I have no time to waste on an explanation, particularly for someone who expects dogs to have ‘wings to hunt high-flying birds’.

Since Mr Cassar puts ‘dogs and birds on an equal footing’, it follows that birds have no rights either. Therefore his argument that a bird’s right ‘trumps’ a dog’s right to hunt is null and void”.

First of all, let me explain once again (since some people apparently need to be spoon-fed to grasp a very simple statement), that when I said that rights are a means of protecting interests, I meant just that - that rights are means of protecting interests.

Mr Borg says that “dogs do not have the means to protect their own interests”. That is precisely the reason why dogs depend on our recognition of, and respect for, their rights. For one to claim that those who do not have the means to protect their own interests do not have rights, leads to the conclusion that in moral questions, might means right, and that those who cannot protect themselves adequately, might as well rot, as will be explained further down.

Mr Borg says that dogs have no rights, the reason being that if they did, they would have responsibilities and the means of protecting their interests.

This argument is both fallacious and dangerous, and would deny any rights to the most vulnerable humans.

Two examples that immediately spring to mind are the rights of human infants and the rights of the severely mentally disabled. Since these have no responsibilities, Mr Borg’s logic, if applied consistently, would deny these two categories of humans any rights.

The only speciesist excuse Mr Borg would have to come up with to grant these two categories of humans any rights would be simply to claim that they are humans. But this simply begs the question: why do humans have rights?

And to stress the point once again, to claim that they do so because they have responsibilities (or intelligence, or whatever) would deny rights to the most vulnerable humans. To deny rights to non-human animals and concede them to humans who are in a relevantly similar predicament is simply speciesist and prejudiced.

Mr Borg says that since non-human animals do not have the means to protect their own interests “it is, therefore, a question of animal welfare, and definitely not of non-existent animal rights”.

Once again, since human infants and the severely mentally disabled do not have the means to protect their own interests, Mr Borg, to be consistent, would have to claim that in their case, to respect them is only a matter of charity, since, according to his logic, these would also have no rights.

Mr Borg says that licensed law abiding hunters have a right to hunt. If he is speaking of legal rights, then I will most certainly concede this. However, when opposing hunting, I am not speaking of legal rights, but of moral rights (which precede legal rights). Laws change. Moral rights don’t - they are universal and are discovered, usually through philosophy and scientific understanding, and not created. Hence, changes in public opinion often precede change in laws - a case in point being the abolition of human slavery.

Since human infants and the severely mentally disabled both have rights despite having no responsibilities, there is no unprejudiced and just reason for someone to deny rights to non-human animals who also have an interest in living and not suffering, despite, also like human infants and severely mentally disabled humans, not being capable of protecting their own interests from other humans.

Far from being null and void, the animal rights view is the only view that gives adequate protection to all beings, particularly the most vulnerable, including of course the most vulnerable humans.

And by the way, I’m still waiting for an answer to my question as to how dogs hunt high-flying birds without the aid of guns or wings. I take a non-reply as meaning that since dogs are no exception to the laws of nature, they simply cannot hunt high-flying birds unaided by human hunters. But who knows? Mr Borg and his “education” committee might surprise me with an alternative intelligent reply, after all.

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