Animal Ethics: Animal Hunting Policies

Vincent Lajoie 30/11/2012
Humanities for Social Sciences
Professor: Bethany Or
Words: 1,607
Animal Ethics – Final Essay

One of the most popular yet highly controversial topics surrounding our modern day society is the animal ethics debate over animal hunting policies around the world, but more precisely here in North America. In the past few decades, the modernized human mindset has shifted from the carefree, irresponsible attitude regarding global matters like the environment and animal protection towards a more proactive sense of awareness and protectiveness never seen before. Even though the subject
The animal hunting industry is one of the most lucrative sectors and heavy contributors to the provinces economy. There are nearly 100,000 direct jobs in the hunting sector, not to mention hunting & fishing sporting goods and retail stores and private contractors whose revenues aren’t of public record. Furthermore, the hunting & recreation sector generates one out of every six jobs in outlying regions, and another 1.6 indirect jobs in the rest of Québec’s economy. For close to 250 of the Québec municipalities the hunting industry is the main foundation of the local economy. All of these statistics concerning the economic sector are a glimpse of the jobs that are potentially at stake which would possibly be eradicated should the hunting industry be imposed violations or be eliminated in its entirety. According to the theory of utilitarianism, it is morally wrong to take a decision that would harm more people than it benefits, in this case the thousands of workers that would lose their jobs and the benefiting party would be the animals, who aren’t as capable as humans (Mill 8). Even putting us humans on a pedestal and reducing animals to lesser beings without a doubt sounds cold and cruel at
Humans have now and always needed the use of animals not only for survival, but also to thrive in society. To reinforce this theory, we needn’t look further than our home country of Canada, which was basically founded upon the use of animals with the traditional use of their fur for clothing, their muscle and flesh for food and even for commercial use such as the fur trade in 17th century Quebec. It is apparent that the first settlers in Quebec and the rest of Canada weren’t too concerned with animal cruelty or animal ethics since it was considered their duty, as well as it being morally right to hunt for their survival according to “Kanthian ethics’ ” principle that it is considered right in regards to moral law or the universal maxim. On the other side of the spectrum considering animal ethics, it is said that non-human sentience is not a sufficient condition for moral consideration and should only be extended to those individuals who posses certain levels of intelligence or rationality (Matheny 18). I sturdily believe in this argument, since the world was made for man and man as we know it is a rational animal. The human race is the most important and intellectually advanced living entity on earth, thus we shouldn’t prioritize non-humans needs over ours (Muir 8). This is a prime example of anthropocentricism, where the anthropocentric worldview stipulates that the world revolves around humans and not other