Arguments Against Dog Fighting

On January 2015, a report came out saying that over the past three years, on average every year, there were one thousand nine hundred animal cruelty cases (Statistic Brain Research Institute). Of those reported cases, nine percent were from animal fighting. Dog fighting is a major moral issue across the nation. Dog fighting is the act of forcing dogs to fight to the death in a pit or box for the enjoyment of their owners and the public. The argument against dog fighting could be explained through the fact that dogs are moral agents as in they are autonomous, they make decisions, virtue ethics, the owners are not being virtuistic by participating is raising these dogs to fight and utilitarianism, dog fighting does not promote the greatest amount

Dog fighting does neither. The number of people who participate in dog fighting is about ten thousand and the suffering of the dogs is not eliminated it is lifelong. In dog fighting, one could argue that these individuals are speciesists. Speciesists believe their actions are justified because humans are the superior species. Peter Singer, a utilitarian and animal rights speaker, argues against speciesism, that one species is superior to another. He states that “all the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.” Animals, which include dogs are our equals as humans as in everyone has the same interests in not suffering, animals do not want to be put through any sort of pain and neither do humans. Given a scenario where a human child is slapped it will in some way inflict pain upon them, if a dog is hit with the same amount of force it will also feel an amount of pain. Animals and humans feel pain, not in the same way, but this just means they are capable of suffering as humans are. Thus the dogs in the dog fighting lifestyle have the same right as all animals and humans to not be subjected to a life of suffering, humans are equal to them in this