imals have the five freedoms: freedom from hunger, thirst, fear, suffering and freedom to perform behaviour in their natural repertoires. The latter refers to the range of behaviours that animals perform if unrestricted, like grooming, grazing, roaming, flying, nesting, spending time with other animals of the same species, digging, burrowing and so on.
This all sounds straightforward enough. But in fact, given the way we currently keep and use animals, translating the five freedoms into practice is extremely challenging. This is especially true of the freedom to perform behaviour in their natural repertoires. For example, intensive farming (from which the majority of European meat and dairy produce still comes) is premised on the
restriction of natural behaviour, so that food the animals eat is turned into food for humans with maximum efficiency � without 'wasting' any of it by allowing animals to move around.
Interestingly, the use of animals in research falls short perhaps most consistently with regard to this freedom as well. While the UK research industry is, in the main, conscientious about limiting suffering with the use of anaesthesia, the majority of research animals are kept in barren cage environments, in isolation from other animals of their own kind.
Rights protect the five freedoms
It is still true, in general, that humans routinely inflict pain and suffering on animals, across a whole range of different contexts. Including those in which there is a genuine commitment to 'decent treatment'
This is where the concept of rights comes into its own. The term 'rights' is used in a variety of ways, but the core idea is that a right is like a protective fence around an individual. To say that an individual has a right is to say that there are certain things that may not be done to that individual, regardless of the benefits that might result from doing so. Rights protect those things that are fundamental for the animal (human or otherwise) to lead a life of basic quality. Thus, human rights are typically held to include education, for example, as well as the rights to life and freedom from persecution of various kinds. Animal rights would protect those things established as fundamental to good animal welfare � the five freedoms.
Combine the idea of animal rights with that of the five freedoms, and we have a powerful interpretation of what the decent treatment of animals, in any context, should actually involve. Assuming that we are going to carry on using animals, then those animals should enjoy freedom from hunger, thirst, fear and suffering, and freedom to perform behaviour in their natural repertoires.
Objections to animal rights
There are vociferous opponents of extending rights to animals. A common argument against the notion is that rights go with responsibilities. In other words, a person can't be given rights unless they can be held responsible for respecting the rights of others. Animals cannot be held responsible; therefore animals cannot have rights. But rights are not withdrawn from humans who, for whatever reason, have a restricted capacity for responsibility (for example, human babies are granted rights). So why should they be withheld from non-human animals for the same reason?
The capacity for responsibility should, in any case, be irrelevant. Given that rights are granted to protect fundamental quality of life, the prerequisite for having them is, surely, the capacity to have a quality of life. This has to do with the capacity to experience pain and pleasure or, put more broadly, to experience life as fulfilled or frustrated, as going well or as going badly. This is a capacity that humans and many other animals share, and it can be present whether or not a creature has the capacity to take responsibility for their behaviour.
A different sort of objection to the notion of animal rights is that granting them will have far-reaching practical implications. This is undoubtedly true. A fundamental feature of rights is that they are not to be traded off against benefits. If animals receive rights to the fi