The animal welfare legislation that is discussed in this Dissertation is just a sample of the available legislation from the chosen foreign jurisdictions and South Africa. The chosen foreign jurisdictions were chosen as a lens to gain a needed perspective on South African animal welfare legislation. The legislation chosen for discussion falls within particular categories that are discussed fully in the later chapters.i Despite the fact that the animal rights and animal welfare movements are recorded to date back as far as 500B.C, the majority of jurisdictions throughout the world still consider animals to be property that can be bought, traded, hunted and after they are killed, their remains kept as trophies or souvenirs. Within these jurisdictions (which includes South Africa and the other four chosen foreign jurisdictions – Kenya, India, Switzerland and the United States of America) there is a demonstrated lack of proper enforcement of the animal welfare/animal anti-cruelty legislation, regulations and industry rules, which is made worse by the actions of uncaring, abusive and/or ignorant people. South Africa is no better or worse to the four chosen jurisdictions in that it has similar anti-cruelty/animal welfare legislation. The lack of proper enforcement of this animal welfare legislation in South Africa should be of great concern as many studies have indicated that there is a link between animal abuse/cruelty and ‘human’ abuse. The same studies also indicate that animal abusers are at a greater risk of becoming violent criminals or of committing a violent crime. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has noted that most serial killers in the USA had a history of torturing, abusing and killing animals before they moved on to torturing, abusing and/or killing humans in their adult life. Needed changes to the animal welfare legislation and how people view animals should be made in South Africa to ensure that welfare of animals is protected. For example, the Government could educate people about animal welfare in order to overcome any ignorance that may be the cause of animal pain and abuse, as well as strengthening existing animal welfare legislation. The eradication of ignorance, as well as a necessary change in the current animal welfare legislation, will help to create a real change in how people view and treat i Chapter 5 and 6. [iii] animals. People will come to realise that animals exist in their own right and that they were not created to serve or to be exploited by man.

What criteria can we legitimately use to judge moral worth? What morally relevant differences or similarities exist between human and nonhuman animals? Do nonhuman animals deserve a moral status identical in all relevant ways to the moral status we attribute to other human beings? In our moral deliberations should we regard the interests of nonhuman animals as being of equal importance to human interests? Historically, with a few notable exceptions, questions such as these were either not asked or were answered unjustly, in ways which reflected the strong species bias of the philosophers doing the asking. For roughly the past two thousand years our moral thinking has focused primarily on humanity, with little serious attention given to the idea that nonhuman animals may also warrant moral concern. It was not until the 1970s that the question of moral status for nonhuman animals became a focal point of our moral thinking, and that animal ethics was acknowledged as a legitimate subject of serious philosophical inquiry. This change of attitude towards animal ethics and the issues contained therein was largely inspired by the 1975 publication of Peter Singer's seminal work Animal Liberation, which revolutionized thinking about nonhuman animals both inside and outside academia. Thus, my thesis begins with an evaluation of Peter Singer's case for animal liberation. While I support Singer's overall conclusion that nonhuman animals deserve the same moral status as human beings and that we are guilty of an inconsistency if we maintain otherwise, I see his argument as too limited in some respects to be a totally satisfactory account of why nonhuman animals deserve moral status. I construct a more comprehensive argument for the moral status of nonhuman animals by examining the issue from different philosophical perspectives (specifically, philosophy of mind and phenomenology), using these perspectives where appropriate to engage more deeply with areas of controversy such as the question of killing, morally relevant criteria, differences between the human and nonhuman animal mind, and the question of varying levels of moral significance.