Sure, we all know since Descartes that animals are robot-like objects, have no feelings and no emotion and should be treated as such. So, let's make sure the Law does not take in account any of the discoveries related to emotion and pain in animals, and let's keep business as usual and feel good about it.
Wow, over-reaction, much? Look, I could go on and make several well reasoned arguments about how animals are not human but clearly it would be wasted on you.
Just a quick question, but once you have given Chimps human rights and said Chimps go on and kill and eat other apes/monkeys, as they commonly do in the wild - would you have them up for murder and cannibalism charges with appropriate punishments?
OK, maybe I took your comment the wrong way. Sorry about that. The way you wrote your comment gave me the impression that you were saying animals are not worthy of compassion, but if that's not the case then it's all good.
Human rights for Chimps. Definitely no. If you give them rights, you need to make sure they abide by the same laws that humans abide by. If one 'tells' a chimp to steal something, will the human be punished? He could as well say, "I told him to jump off the cliff, but he didn't do that right? Why are you punishing me for this". I mean, I know this sounds ridiculous but humans have known to be clever to exploit every possible loop hole in wording or spirit of the law - case in point, the patent system.
I would argue that if we are to give chimpanzees human rights then we may as well start enforcing building codes for beavers and ants. What is unnatural (law) does not necessarily work for those the animal kingdom. It should not be forgotten that animals have a certain level of rights to coexist with us on Earth but at the same time it does a disservice to humanity to treat them as our equals.
It's certainly honorable to want to give rights to animals and it wouldn't be a "wtf" moment if they declared they wanted animal rights (or chimpanzee rights in that case) based on current human right.
But granting human right to chimpanzees is not saying animals have the same rights than humans. It's saying chimpanzees are humans. We can debate on how apes are different (if at all) with humans, but we should not forget that what NZ government was basically saying is that they're not different.
I guess the discussion starts from "human rights" because there is no established "animal rights" anywhere in the first place. I'm not saying I agree that they should have human rights.
I dont think "rights" is the right word to begin with, but "compassion towards other species" would be a good place to start with, and reflecting about how "moral / ethical" it is to inflict pain willingly on other species.
Because if "pain" and "emotions" are felt pretty much in the same way by animals and humans (for which there is more and more evidence on that as we learn how the brain works), why would it be moral to inflict pain to animals but amoral to inflict pain on human beings ?
> Because if "pain" and "emotions" are felt pretty much in the same way by animals and humans (for which there is more and more evidence on that as we learn how the brain works), why would it be moral to inflict pain to animals but amoral to inflict pain on human beings ?
Without being an antispecist, I surely agree with that. It would have been indeed a great thing to start with writing some kind of animal rights chart, or even a global "life rights", that would include human rights (and which would probably leads to questions like "how much is it ok to takes from nature" or "when taking animal life for food, how to do it respectfully"). But I don't think that's what this government had in mind.
I may be wrong, of course, but it seems to me they had more anthropological considerations about apes than considerations about animal suffering, or else, they would have proposed some kind of general animal law.
Sums up your position ?