BasilBoy wrote:Although I was aware of the inhumane and disgusting treatment of animals by humans, I had not seen it portrayed so completely and poignantly as in Earthlings.
There's a hint of religious fervor in the way you speak -- humans treat animals "digustingly." By whose measure though? Yours?
What is your source for animal rights??? Aren't you anthropomorphizing animals?
Where do you draw the line? Maybe Wildrose is ok with humane farms, maybe you'd find that disgusting. How do you guys decide this, what is it based on, what gives you the right.
I know the official PETA / vegan position is animals can't be used for anything -- that means half the world's people would starve because they need animal labor to farm. That means blind folks wouldn't be allowed a guide dog. See how silly this gets? I'm not sure how hardcore vegan you are, but if you're towing the Vegan Society line then basically you want to take away other peoples' right to use animals. What gives you that right, to take my rights away?
Homo sapiens has been eating and using other species for hundreds of thousands of years. The cows you see on the farm, they don't even exist in the nature, those were bred by people for that purpose. There is no Elsie the Cow in the wild. I just don't see the moral problem here, we have simbiotic relationships with other species on what do you base your moral objection to that? Again, "vegans" are not for humane farms they are for ceasing all use of animals. Including service dogs for the handicapped, including rats and fruit flies used in research.
Maybe you aren't actually a vegan -- I should back up and ask you, can you eat honey? Would you eat an egg, or a slice of cheesecake? If eaten in moderation there's no health reason why you can't have an egg or a bit of honey. If you are a strict vegan, and you won't touch honey or eggs and you won't wear leather then essentially this is a moral philosophy for you. So explain that to me, how does eating an egg violate a chicken's rights, and also where do chickens derive rights from and who who decides what rights chickens have. I know the answer, of course -- animals only have whatever rights human society gives to them, since rights only exist in the mind of homo sapiens. There are no "rights" in nature.
In the West, we already have laws against animal cruelty -- but if you want to shut down ALL ranches and even organic "humane" farms, if you want to take away my right to eat honey or wear leather shoes or a blind person to have a guide dog -- you need to explain WHY.EDIT: just to clarify, I'm arguing against he extremes of veganisn -- if you say you're a "vegan" then that's a particular term and there is a Vegan Society and they're against all use of animals. But actually I do care about animals, I recongize it's not rational, but still I care. I hate it that they eat dogs in Asia. To me that's digusting. To those cultures, it's not. Horse meat is taboo for me, just plain wrong, but I think they still eat it in France.
I hate it that they eat primates in Africa, but to them that's their culture. I don't like hunting marine mammals for any reason, but I recognize I have no rational reason to dislike that if they're not endangered --
this is all cultural, what's ok and what's not. So basically vegans want to drag us to the extreme end of animal rights --
no meat eating at all, no eggs, no dairy, no leather, no service dogs, no ox to pull a poor 3rd world farmer's plow, no scientific research on animals.
You have to give me RATIONAL reasons for such an extreme philosophy, not emotional / religious / ascetic reasons.