37 Animal Rights and the Implications for Business
37 Animal Rights and the Implications for Business
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain rising concerns about corporate treatment of animals
- Explain the concept of agribusiness ethics
- Describe the financial implications of animal ethics for business
Ethical questions about our treatment of animals arise in several different industries, such as agriculture, medicine, and cosmetics. This section addresses these questions because they form part of the larger picture of the way society treats all living things—including nonhuman animals as well as the environment. All states in the United States have some form of laws to protect animals; some violations carry criminal penalties and some carry civil penalties. Consumer groups and the media have also applied pressure to the business community to consider animal ethics seriously, and businesses have discovered money to be made in the booming business of pets. Of course, as always, we should acknowledge that culture and geography influence our understanding of ethical issues at a personal and a business level.
A Brief History of the Animal Rights Movement
Rhode Island, along with Boulder, Colorado, and Berkeley, California, led the way in enacting legislation recognizing individuals as guardians, not owners, of their animals, thus giving animals legal status beyond being just items of property. Many U.S. colleges now teach courses on animal rights law, there is strong support for granting fundamental legal rights to animals, and some attorneys, scientists, and ethicists dedicate their careers to animal rights.
The animal movement started in the late nineteenth century when the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was formed, along with the American Humane Association. The American Welfare Institute and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) were established in the 1950s. The first federal animal protection law, the Humane Slaughter Act, was passed in the 1950s to avoid unnecessary suffering to farm animals (ten billion of which are killed every year). The most important U.S. law forbidding cruelty to animals in laboratory settings was enacted in 1966; the Animal Welfare Act requires basic humane conditions to be maintained for animals in testing facilities. Finally, in the 1970s and 1980s, the modern animal rights social movement emerged. It has led to an increased awareness of animal ethics by consumers and businesses.
However, despite significant progress, research using animals for product testing continues to be controversial in the United States, particularly because improved technology has offered humane and effective alternatives. The use of animals in biomedical research has drawn slightly less negative reaction than in consumer product testing, because of the more critical nature of the research. Though animal welfare laws have ameliorated some of the pain of animals used in biomedical research, ethical concerns r