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Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
i'm not necessarily talking about the species, i'm talking about the millions/billions of individual animals that are born, raised and slaughtered for consumption. you can't just assume the natural world would have birthed all these animals regardless of our interference
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I could be wrong, but I think that at least with that particular point DwnWthVwls might have been responding to Larehip's post that you were quoting. At least it would make more sense if he was.
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i'm not saying i do expect said changes. i'm a meat eater. i'm saying stop ignoring the fact that we are willing to look the other way when animals suffer and stop making dumb laws based on your instinct to protect cute ****.
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I think we may have covered this a while back when we had a similar discussion in another thread, but would you be averse to laws that treated "pet" animals differently to "food" animals, if they were more logically consistent?
I agree with you about giving animals rights based on their ability to contribute to society. I've seen this discussion in other forms over the years before, and I know that the specifics are pretty hard, if not impossible, to get straight, just as it's difficult with discussions of what does and does not constitute sentience in animals, or at least sentience worth giving at least partial legal rights to (such as with chimpanzees and dolphins). But the basic argument is sound. The entire logical, evolutionary justification for morality and laws is that they make it possible for humans to coexist in society, and passing laws that don't match up to our current sense of morality may lead to confusion and inconsistency, which can affect other areas of society, at least indirectly. Basically, like the long-term, unintended consequences of a legal precedent decided upon short-term logic.
But at the same time, even if pet animals aren't aware of the social contract that humans knowingly abide by, they still provide a service to society---through emotional fulfillment to their owners that isn't likewise provided by food animals---that would be undermined if there were not laws to protect them. So, even if the logic is tenuous and at times contradictory, there is still a viable reason to give them at least some protection that doesn't necessarily extend to food animals.