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Jeremy Rifkin Essay On Animals

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In one of his most controversial articles, Jeremy Rifkin sheds light on a unraveling case of animal exploitation in the food industry. It comes to no surprise that there would be an uproar of protests at slaughterhouses, farms and corporate offices, yet these large industry stay unaffected as the public has truth of what they are hiding. Groups like Animal Liberation Front, Animal Justice Project, and the Humane Society have all the same agenda; none are opposed to humans hunting for food in the wild, there problem is with animals thinking that they just live on this Earth to just be bred and slaughtered. No matter how many humans we overpopulate, we will always must always share this one and only Earth with these animals.

An interesting point is brought up by Lois Frazier points and proves Rifkin's point of human and animal relationship. With pets, such as dogs, they thrive on love and compassion rather than isolation and obedience. Because of this “man’s best friend” thinking, humans have been able to train and even rely on animals to become more than pets. But why do humans rely on beasts rather than other humans, is it because our compassion tends to soften the animals? It's not humans are too nice to kill animals, we’ve done it before and forced species extinct, but we have learned through trial and error that our care and research can prolong the life of a …show more content…

He concludes that Rifkin is advocating for more animal rights than human rights due to his comment on toys and animals. But this comment was almost taken completely out of context as Stevens says not all humans have access to toys so animals automatically have more rights? This clearly is misleading and Rifkin simply wants these animals that are held in captivity from birth to slaughter to be able to have an outlet of social interaction with inanimate

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In the op-ed piece “A Change of Heart about Animals”, Jeremy Rifkin emphasizes the similarities between humans and animals by providing results on scientific research studies to illustrate that humans should be more empathetic towards animals. In addition, he further explains how research results have changed the ways humans perceived animals and indicates solutions that were taken by other countries and organizations to help improve and protect animal rights. Rifkin provides examples that demonstrate animals have emotions, conceptual abilities, self awareness, and a sense of individualism just like humans. For example, Pigs crave for affection and get depressed easily when isolated, two birds Betty and Abel have tool making skills, Koko

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Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington D.C and author of “A Change of Heart About Animals” (2003), argues in this article that animals are much more like humans than we thought and that we should expand our empathy to our fellow creatures. Rifkin develops his thesis by comparing the similarities between humans and animals. An example of this is in paragraph 11 when he claims that animals show a sense of their own mortality and the mortality of their kin just like humans do. He supports this claim by giving an example of elephants standing next to their dead children for days after they have passed. The author gives that example of the elephants in order to make the reader understands just how aware these

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