Because humans are morally distinction from animals, I negate.

Oxford English Dictionary of Law defines: Recognition: is defined as acknowledging existence and enforcing those rights.

Animal rights: Animal rights is a collective noun, which means that the aff must defend all rights all animals must receive. Because we are debating the resolution as a whole, not only a bit of the resolution, the affirmative may not defend a specific right that animals must have. If the negative can prove that granting rights to even one animal cannot fit in this system of morality, they have fulfilled the burden placed on the affirmative by the resolution. To restate what each side has to do to win, the affirmative MUST prove that a. animals can fit in the system of rights, b. prove that there is a unique reason to affirm, and lastly c. that animals should be granted EVERY single right that a human must get. The negative burden is only to show that a. animals cannot fit in the resolution or b. a specific animal should not get rights or that a specific right ought not be given to any animal.
Thus, the affirmative must not only show that there is some sort of right, but it also must show a system in which this system of rights would play a part in. I.E. They have to establish not only why is it good your pet should have rights, but also how they would exercise those rights. Thus the affirmative burden is to prove that animals should be granted EVERY single right that a human must get, and my burden is to show that animals do not deserve all rights or humans and animals are distinct. Because some animals cant do some of the same things as humans i.e. talk, they cant receive the right to free speech. I value justice as implied in the resolution defined as giving each their due. Thus, the value criterion is maximizing societal welfare. For five reasons, 1. Since justice is defined as giving each their due, we can only give everyone what they are due maximizing the overall welfare for everyone. 2. Welfare is the fundamental question of any debate regarding rights since there is no purpose to a right if we cant exercise that right to our own welfare in society. 3. Without societal welfare, there is almost no value to our lives since it justifies discrimination and oppression of people if we do not care about the greater good for our community. 4. The fundamental question of justice is to ensure that due by promoting foundational welfare for everyone in society we can maximize the most of what is to be determine just or unjust.

5. Any debate regarding rights mandates we ensure welfare first, since rights are imposed to ensure that individuals like you my opponent and I are fundamentally well of in a society that we live in. Contention 1: If we were to give animals rights, it would imply that they are obligated to fall under the social contract and community that we as humans live in. Animals cant live under such a community destroying any concept of equality. Professor Wilson writes in 2010
Scott Wilson. University of California Santa Barbara. Animals and Ethics. Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy. January 13th, 2010. http://www.iep.utm.edu/anim-eth/

only human beings can act morally. This is considered because beings that can act morally are required to sacrifice their interests for the sake of others. It follows that those that do sacrifice their good for the sake of others are owed greater concern from those that benefit from such sacrifices. Since animals cannot act morally, they will not sacrifice their own good for the sake of others, but will rather pursue their good even at the expense of others. That is why human beings should give the interests of other human[s] beings greater weight than they do the interests of animals.
Another reason for giving stronger preference to the interests of human beings is that to be important

Contention 2: Giving animals rights would imply that we have to stop testing them for biomedical testing to prevent diseases and create vaccines that will save our lives. We have seen in the past and toward the futures animals are the critical for our survival and equality among humans. Smith an expert on Animal Rights and Bioethics supports the neg
(Wesley J Smith.-2010, A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement, P. 246-249)

animals, they are not the only ones hanging in the balance. Human lives are also at stake. Anyone who enters a hospital or picks up a prescription at the pharmacy makes use of animal testing. Few people consider it trivial to fight diseases such as AIDS, that affect millions. If a vaccine could be developed without using animals, of
Unfortunately for the course that would be preferable. But there are no signs that this stage will be reached anytime soon. Choices must be made Phrasing the issue, as I do here, in terms of our responsibilities to other lite forms, leaves the moral pyramid intact, and may lead to less radical conclusions than phrasing it in terms of rights. The issue of human exceptionalism is not, as De Waal seems to think, merely about feeling superior to butterfliesalthough we are unquestionably a higher life form. And it may seem abstract. Bur it is a matter of crucial importance: How we think about ourselves determines how we acttoward ourselves, each other, animals, and the environment. I believe that if we ever ceased thinking of ourselves as the apex of evolution/creation, the deleterious impact on our society would be profound. After all, if we are merely animals, why should we alone

the animal rights movement is not simply about being nicer to animals. Its adherents, while certainly not monolithic, share a dangerous ideology that sometimes amounts to a quasi religion, the central dogma or which is that domesticating any animal is evil. In this, they are deeply wrong. Human slavery was
bear the sometimes onerous moral responsibilities that we have heretofore assumed along with our privileged status among species? I hope it is now very clear that (and is) evil. Keeping elephants and zebras in properly designed and maintained zoos and animal parks is not. The Rwandan and Cambodian genocides were acts of evil. Humanely slaughtering millions of animals to provide the multitudes with nourishing and tasty food and durable clothing is not. Mengele's lethal experimentation on identical

[as] Testing new drugs or surgical procedures on animals to save children's lives and promote human (and animal) thriving is both morally beneficent and ethically justified. That animal
twins at Auschwitz was truly heinous. liberationists don't see this, and can't even tell the ethical difference between eating meat and murder, means they have no business preaching morality to anyone. For the rest of us who love animals, recognize their nobility, and believe that as human beings we owe them respect and kindnessbut also understand that our obligation to humanity

let us strive continually to improve our treatment of animals as we also promote human prosperity and health. First and foremost, this means rejecting out of hand all moral equivalences between human beings
matters even more and animals, as we embrace with humility and gratitude the intrinsic importance of human life.

Contention 3: Humans and Animals are all morally different. Only humans are able to express rationality and self-consciousness that allow us to undergo thought process to maximizing the overall good for society. Professor Wilson concludes
Scott Wilson. University of California Santa Barbara. Animals and Ethics. Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy. January 13th, 2010. http://www.iep.utm.edu/anim-eth/

The attributes of

possess them because these

rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness confer a full and equal moral status to those that [human] beings are the only ones capable of attaining certain values and

goods; these values and goods are of a kind that outweigh the kinds of values and goods that non-rational, non-autonomous, and non-self-conscious beings are capable
of attaining. For example, in order to achieve the kind of dignity and self-respect that human beings have, a being must be able to conceive of itself as one among many, and

values of appreciating art, and the goods that come with deep personal relationships [that] all require one to be rational, autonomous, and self-conscious. These values, and others like them, are the highest values to us; they are what make our
must be able to choose his actions rather than be led by blind instinct (Cf. Francis and Norman, 1978; Steinbock, 1978). Furthermore, the literature, lives worth living. As John Stuart Mill wrote, Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beasts

the lives of beings that can experience these goods to be more valuable, and hence deserving of more protection, than the lives of beings that cannot.
pleasures (Mill, 1979). We find

Contention 4) Animal Welfare

WE ADVOCATE ANIMAL WELFARE, WHICH IS DEFINED AS SEPERATE FROM ANIMAL RIGHTS: WE ENDORSE A RESPONSIBLE OBLIGATION TOWARDS THEM. http://www.furcommission.com/debate/ Animal rights advocates reject all animal use, no matter how humane. Some have even suggested that
animal welfare reforms impede progress toward animal rights because they improve the conditions under which "animal exploitation" occurs, making it more difficult to stimulate public opposition to animal use. When the interests of humans and animals come into conflict, animal rights advocates put the animals first. PeTA's Newkirk has said, "Even if animal research produced a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." The animal welfare philosophy is fundamentally different from the animal

rights philosophy, since it endorses the responsible use of animals to satisfy certain human needs. These range from companionship and sport, to uses which involve the taking of life, such as for food, clothing and medical research. Animal welfare means ensuring that all animals used by humans have their basic needs fulfilled in terms of food, shelter and health, and that they experience no unnecessary suffering in providing for human needs. Not granting animals rights does not necessarily mean that we have to harm these animals in the way that the affirmative describes. This means that animals do not get violated unnecessarily, we garner all the offense that the affirmative arguments get.

Because animals are rationally different from humans, cannot follow the social contract, and critical to saving our own lives. I negate. Now on to my opponents case.

Now, lets go onto his case: First onto the value criterion:
What distinguishes humans as to have rights while animals not to have rights is is our moral autonomy and legislation, not what the affirmative tries pre empting, rationality. Carl Cohen, 1997, DO Animals have Rights?, Department of philosophy at US MICHIGAN Rationality is not at issue; the capacity to communicate is not at issue. My dog can reason, if rather weakly, and she certainly can communicate. Cognitive criteria for the possession of rights, Beauchamp (this issue) said, are morally perilous. Indeed they are. Nor is the capacity to suffering here at issue, And if autonomy be understood only as the capacity to choose this course rather than that, autonomy is not to the point either. But moral autonomythat is, moral self legislation the point, because moral autonomy is uniquely human and is for animals out of the question, as we have seen, and as Regan and I agree. In talking about autonomy, therefore, we must be careful and precise.

Because the affirmative burden is to prove that all animals have to receive all the rights that humans get, if I as the negative can prove one animal cannot feel pain, you negate.
And, fish cannot feel pain or fear, violating the affirmative standard, because he is not able to successfully defend that all animals feel pain rather than a specific stimulus, you negate. Rajeev Syal, reporter for the newspaper the Telegraph talks about Dr. James D. Rose, Professor of zoology at university of Wyoming, and his research on the ability for fish to feel pain.
Rajeev Syal, London, February 10, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/10/1044725683181.html
Anglers rest easy.

2003,

The

Telegraph,

Fish cannot feel pain, the largest study into piscine neurology has concluded. An academic study comparing the nervous systems and fishes' brains are not sufficiently developed to allow them to sense pain or fear.The study is the work of James D Rose, a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming, who has been working on
responses of fish and mammals has found that questions of neurology for almost 30 years. He has examined data on the responses of animals to pain and stimulus from scores of studies collected over the past 15 years.His

awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex which fish do not possess. Professor Rose, 60, said that previous studies which had indicated that fish can feel pain had confused nociception responding to a threatening stimulus - with feeling pain. "Pain is predicated on awareness," he said. "The key issue is the distinction between nociception and pain. A person who is anaesthetised in an operating theatre will still respond physically to an external stimulus, but he or she will not feel pain. Anyone who has seen a chicken with its head cut off will know that, while its body can respond to stimuli, it cannot be feeli ng pain." Professor Rose
report, published in the American journal Reviews of Fisheries Science, has concluded that said he was enormously concerned with the welfare of fish, but that campaigners should concentrate on ensuring that they were able to enjoy clean and well-managed rivers and seas.Despite the findings of Professor Rose's study, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has invested heavily in an anti-angling campaign, said: "We believe that fishing is barbaric. Of course animals can feel pain. They have sensitivity, if only to avoid predators,