To eat or not to eat. That seems to be a good rational criterion. If you're not gonna eat them, don't kill them. And of course, causing unnecessary suffering and sadism are morally unacceptable. Those are signs of an immoral character, and not only regarding treatment to animals, but also regarding ethics in general terms. As the great Arthur Schopenhauer said:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Schopenhauer
Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
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However, if we look at their mere existence, there are also certain logical inconsistencies in our attitude towards the animals. Sometimes we accept killing animals as inviduals whereas we think that saving the endangered species of the planet is a moral duty. To be or not be. Or, being more precise: to be "
as an individual" or to be "
as a species". That question isn't clear. Perhaps we must conclude that we humans aren't 100% rational beings. Sometimes it looks as if the will to "save a species" was a kind of "metaphysical concern" to certain people. Why to save a species, if then we kill specimens (perhaps belonging to that species)?
Sometimes those two aspects (individuals and species) are related. One example has come to mind right now: rabbits and lynxes.
Myxomatosis was intentionally introduced in some countries, to reduce rabbit overpopulation. But the disease spread throughout the world, so there've been "collateral damages" in the trophic chain. For example, the
Iberian Lynx is critically endangered, mainly because of lack of prey (rabbits). About to become extinct (only circa 150 individuals in 2005). Fortunately, lynxes are being bred in captivity by biologists now.
OK, I guess now we (almost) all humans want to save this species of beautiful wildcats (only a few hundreds of specimens for the moment), but we didn't mind killing hundreds of millions of rabbits with myxomatosis before.
Conclusion: It seems it's impossible for us (I mean at a global scale) to establish a
100%-logical criterion on this matter.