Keeping an eye on the advancement of animal rights legislation at the Connecticut General assembly, we submitted the following letter in support of Raised Bill HB5293 – An Act Prohibiting the Use of Wild or Exotic Animals in Traveling Animal Acts.
March 13, 2022
Via email: envtestimony@cga.ct.gov
Re: Please Support HB5293 – AN ACT PROHIBITING THE USE OF WILD OR EXOTIC
ANIMALS IN TRAVELING ANIMAL ACTS
Dear Committee members:
I have resided in Hartford since 1978 and today practice animal rights law from my office in our capitol city. I write to you concerning support of the proposed legislation to ban using wild animals in zoos and other entertainment that involves travel with animals.
Animals surely deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century founder of the reforming utilitarian school of moral philosophy, stated that when deciding on a being’s rights, “The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’” In that passage, Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration with those whose acts affect the animals, or by humans in this instance involving caging animals throughout the animals’ lives merely for human entertainment.
The capacity for suffering is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or higher mathematics. All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same degree that humans do. They feel pain, pleasure, fear, frustration, loneliness, and motherly love. Whenever we consider doing something that would interfere with their needs, we are morally obligated to take them into account.
Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth—a value completely separate from the worth humans may place on them. They believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering, and being caged for life is certainly a condition of suffering. Animal rights is not just a philosophy—it is a social movement that challenges society’s traditional view that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human exploitation.
Only prejudice allows humans to deny others the rights that humans expect to have for themselves. Whether it’s based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species (animals), prejudice is morally unacceptable in our world today.
Where in our moral construct are we justified to unilaterally decide that the lives of others shall be one of perpetual suffering, in complete disregard of their needs, welfare and their right to live under terms humans profess they are so sacredly entitled to themselves?
Humanity will someday come to grips with the insupportable human belief in its superiority over all others. I hope the legislators of my beloved state of Connecticut aim to be on the right side of history, and will do what they can to further the understanding and reality that compassion cannot be restricted to just those who look like them, but that all creatures are entitled to empathy. This is the foundation of the ethics and morals which banning the inhumane treatment of animals in zoos and traveling shows would uphold.
Thank you for your support of this much needed legislation to better the lives of wild and exotic animals in our state.
Regards,
Thompson G. Page
General Counsel
