What is your stance on animal rights? Hundreds of millions of animals die in laboratories each year, millions are euthanized, and over 10 billion are killed each year (in the US alone) for food. Is this ethically justified? Can anything be done to the food industry or will we always be slaughtering animals? Please express your thoughts.

The Doctor wrote:What is your stance on animal rights? Hundreds of millions of animals die in laboratories each year, millions are euthanized, and over 10 billion are killed each year (in the US alone) for food. Is this ethically justified? Can anything be done to the food industry or will we always be slaughtering animals? Please express your thoughts.

My problem isn't with killing animals, but with how animals live. Nature is a far more callous killer than any slaughterhouse, it's how the animal is made to live before the death that matters. As for experimentation, I have to admit I'm torn.

Ilovelucy wrote:

The Doctor wrote:What is your stance on animal rights? Hundreds of millions of animals die in laboratories each year, millions are euthanized, and over 10 billion are killed each year (in the US alone) for food. Is this ethically justified? Can anything be done to the food industry or will we always be slaughtering animals? Please express your thoughts.

My problem isn't with killing animals, but with how animals live. Nature is a far more callous killer than any slaughterhouse, it's how the animal is made to live before the death that matters. As for experimentation, I have to admit I'm torn.

I absolutely agree with you but I think that since we have such a higher capacity to reason we should be able to find ways to survive without having to kill animals. The act of killing in itself is a bad concept, so if we can avoid it and survive we should. That's why I brought up the question whether we will always be slaughtering animals. The population is skyrocketing upward and there are more and more hungry mouths to feed, so the likelihood that this situation will improve is doubtful in my opinion.

The Doctor wrote:

Ilovelucy wrote:

The Doctor wrote:What is your stance on animal rights? Hundreds of millions of animals die in laboratories each year, millions are euthanized, and over 10 billion are killed each year (in the US alone) for food. Is this ethically justified? Can anything be done to the food industry or will we always be slaughtering animals? Please express your thoughts.

My problem isn't with killing animals, but with how animals live. Nature is a far more callous killer than any slaughterhouse, it's how the animal is made to live before the death that matters. As for experimentation, I have to admit I'm torn.

I absolutely agree with you but I think that since we have such a higher capacity to reason we should be able to find ways to survive without having to kill animals. The act of killing in itself is a bad concept, so if we can avoid it and survive we should.

The way I see it, a free range animal that has been well looked after over its whole life and has a quick and relatively painless death has had a better life and death than any animal that has lived an existence of constant vigilance against predators and a slow and painful death preceded by a terrifying ordeal. I see no ethical wrong in killing animals. However, most of the meat trade does not abide by the idyll that I have just illustrated. Part of the reason why is because the dirty end of the industry is kept out of view and we do not have to make it part of our cultural existence.

That's why I brought up the question whether we will always be slaughtering animals. The population is skyrocketing upward and there are more and more hungry mouths to feed, so the likelihood that this situation will improve is doubtful in my opinion.

Plus, eating too much meat can cause health problems, especially the processed variety. I guess I stick by what I said above, better awareness has to be raised about the industry. Perhaps it should be compulsory to teach children about where meat comes from as well as the health issues as part of their education. Previous cultures have treated meat as a luxury to be enjoyed on occasion, whereas in these days of surplus and mass production, animals become a commodity and unhealty, unethical meat products are in big supply for very cheap prices.

We must kill life to live. There is no alternative for us. (We cannot digest minerals in the earth.)

However, that doesn't mean we should be torturing other animals for sport. I'll even go so far as to say that rights should be contingent upon sapience, and that some other animal species deserve political autonomy.

The Doctor wrote:What is your stance on animal rights? Hundreds of millions of animals die in laboratories each year, millions are euthanized, and over 10 billion are killed each year (in the US alone) for food. Is this ethically justified? Can anything be done to the food industry or will we always be slaughtering animals? Please express your thoughts.

I think there's a distinction between torturing animals and killing them for food. Of course it's ethically justified, if illogical that we consider some animals pets and others food. But that's our society.

ILoveLucy wrote:Previous cultures have treated meat as a luxury to be enjoyed on occasion, whereas in these days of surplus and mass production, animals become a commodity and unhealty, unethical meat products are in big supply for very cheap prices.

It's not just previous cultures. I have some (very distant) relatives and acquaintances in Egypt, and the whole concept of vegetarianism elicits a night-universal "WTF?" reaction in almost all Egyptians. Meat is an expensive and relatively infrequent treat: the very idea of giving it up entirely freely, willingly and voluntarily just doesn't compute. Their situation now is what in was in most Western nations until relatively recently, historically.

Prof. Faust wrote:We must kill life to live. There is no alternative for us.

True, but vegetarians and even vegans do this - plants are living organisms after all. The bottom-line factor isn't life but sentience, the possession of self-awareness and the capacity to experience negative physical and mental states such as pain and fear. It's a point which is obvious to the point of being trite, of course, but it seems to need stating and restating because in any discussion of animal rights/vegetarianism sooner or later - and usually sooner - somebody will chip in with what they must think is the novel and highly original observation that plants are alive too. "Won't somebody think of the cauliflowers?"