Animal Rights

How do you feel about animal rights. Should they be harvested and experimented on?

What bothers me is how stupid cows, pigs, and chickens look. They are practically asking to be eaten.

Zoos are sad seeing animals in captivity. Most of the animals are pampered but it's not natural. A captive girarrfe after generations won't be able to handle being returned to the wild.

Some dogs and house pets have better living condition than people. I'm all for animal rights but we need to take care of humanity before donating to Sarah McLachlan.

What do you think about eating animals, zoos, and donating to animal charities?

I'll only speak about charity.

If you're saving a life I'm cool with it, doesn't matter if it's a human or animal. Some prefer humans I prefer animals but no matter what you choose you're saving a life.

I condemn people who support charities that do not save lives.

I feel we should recognize that animals are also capable of suffering, and we should try to reduce that to the best of our ability.

When it comes to farm animals, their treatment can be very inhumane, especially in the more industrial farms. Eating meat isn't necessarily wrong (in absence of alternatives), but that's no reason to treat animals so poorly while they're alive.

Some animals live better in captivity, some don't. I don't think it's wrong to remove them from their natural habitat, that's naturalistic fallacy. But being caged can result in lower life expectancy and lower quality of life. Animals like that are better off in a conservation programme or safari. Some animals actually live better in captivity, though.

As for donating to animal shelters, I agree, there are people who are more deserving. However, I'm not going to stop people from using their own money the way they like, and there are worse ways to spend that money.

They have the right to get in my belly

I'm not against eating animals and using them for products, but needless suffering is cruel. Furthermore, I prioritize easing humans suffering over animal suffering, but I'm not completely hardened to them either - that typically goes for charity as well. I adopt my pets from shelters, but when giving money to charities/charitable causes I typically provide to human causes as a matter of opportunity cost.

I'm an omnivore, but here's my personal twist on this. I have pretty long hair, past my shoulders now (cut 15 inches off mid-last year when it was to my butt). I feel like having hair this long is an absolute luxury, so I'll only use hair products that are cruelty free. I do my research on companies to make sure they are not "frauds" when it comes to that (ie. if they sale in China, there is a requirement the products there on tested on animals, even if in the US they are not).

1) I'm all for harvesting and experimenting on animals if it's going to save lives (either human or animal lives) and it is done in an ethical and environmentally sound way. For instance, if the purpose is merely to harvest them for food then I'd be against torturing the shit out of them since they could be harvested for food in a way that doesn't include the torture. Or, I might be okay with harvesting some relatively common animal and doing some legitimate scientific experiments on them (that involve removing them from the gene pool). Things might change if we're talking about a species on the brink of extinction. If the species in question is on the brink of extinction and removing that animal for experimentation results in it being removed from the gene pool, then there had better be a damn good reason for that experiment.

2) The thing about zoos is that a lot of animals in zoos aren't fit to ever be released anyway. So, the choice is either keep them in a zoo or just kill their asses. In some cases, killing their asses is the most humane thing to do. After all, zoos do need money and many rare large animals are VERY expensive to properly house. If the zoo doesn't have the funds to provide a decent standard of living, and if the animal can't be released into the wild, and if there's no one else willing to adopt or care for such an expensive animal, then sadly, the best thing is to humanely kill it.

At this point I'd like to remind people to consider things before getting such pets. Burmese pythons were pretty popular, and also iguanas. The thing is, they get BIG and potentially dangerous. A lot of people buying those pets just were not at all prepared for what they'd grow into. So the pet eventually becomes huge and unmanageable and dangerous, and people decide to get rid of it. Problem is, zoos won't take them. And while it's easy to get rid of a SMALL burmese python, there aren't a hell of a lot of people willing to take on a 20 foot long python that could easily kill them. That's how you end up with a lot of dead animals. Right now, Sulcatta tortoises seem to be a popular thing. You can get babies for $200 a pop. That might sound steep, but game consoles and cell phones commonly cost more than that and just fly off the shelves. So someone buys a cute little baby sulcatta tortoise for $200. Problem is that this is like, the third largest tortoise on Earth and can get over 200 pounds. At that size, they're unmanageable for most people. But, again...zoos won't take them. Most people won't take them for free and certainly don't have the means to care for them. The ones who do have the means to care for them and the desire to have them probably have all that they need and don't want any more (after all, those babies have to be coming from somewhere).

But on the other hand, if someone (a zoo or otherwise) does have the desire and means to properly care for an animal that can't ever be returned to the wild, then I see no problem. Sure it can't go back to the wild, but if it's getting a happy life in captivity then I don't see the need to just kill it.

3) As far as charities go, I'm fine with it. Are human rights more important than animal rights? Sure. But it's not as if the advancement of human rights is linear with respect to the amount of funds donated to human rights. For an analogy, let's say that some scientists are trying to cure cancer and some scientists are trying to save the pandas. Putting the panda scientists onto trying to solve cancer isn't gonna necessarily get cancer solved any quicker. That just means that now no one's going to be doing ANYTHING about the panther issue. This isn't like in some kind of strategy video game where you're allocated a set number of Charity Points to distribute between different categories, but transferring points over results in an equal gain in a separate category. In real life, doing a minus 5 on shields doesn't translate into a plus 5 on armor or stamina. If someone wants to do a plus 5 on "animal rights", and they think that their contribution to animakl rights is actually going to have some effect on animal rights, then let them spend their charity points on animal rights. Deciding to say "screw the animals" and using their charity points on cancer instead isn't necessarily gonna get cancer solved any quicker.

I just think it's not our right to abuse animals for our benefit... whether that's keeping pigs in stalls where they can't move or hens forced to live in cages their whole lives to produce eggs or animals used for cosmetic testing etc. I understand that we have to eat, but that doesn't mean an animal needs to suffer.

An animal is not on this planet to serve us and has evolved on this planet just like us. Yes we are at the top of the food chain but we are also smart enough to know better (well usually).

Free range is the way to go atleast I know my sunday roast had a walk before it ended up on my plate.

Also support conservation.

We should determine the rights of animals not through the perspective of our societies, but through the perspective of saving this planet. What injunctions best preserve the planet, the ecosystem, is how we must decide what rights be given to animals. Of course, there are ethical considerations too, but those are a question of preserving our own psyche, and not desensitizing ourselves to cruelty inflicted on what we must preserve -- a separate enterprise.

@MrGeezer: There's no reason to pay extra cents for cage free chicken eggs. Caged chickens get tortured but we don't witness it. Zoos are humiliating if animals have that emotion. Reptiles and spiders are underrated I want one. It's like people shouldn't quit their day job to research cancer so yeah animal charity doesn't hinder human charity.

No they should not be harvested the way we currently do it, and this actually has more to do with my concern for human eating habits and health.

Experimented, sure, its really the only way we advanced medicine and what not. But there definitely needs to be limitations.

AND1SALTTAPE seems to be more on track, wild animals that make up our ecosystem is what we really need to start protecting and being concerned with.

Limit or eliminate suffering. I am a human being and thus a biological omnivore, so I have no qualms about eating them, but I don't want them to suffer in death. Animal experimentation is a grey area for me. Without it, we wouldn't have had certain medical discoveries, but sometimes I wonder about the methods certain scientists use, and what it could be doing to them.

Lions and dogs always go for the neck which cracks their pray's spinal cord making their death instant. I seen a cow get their skin pulled off alive then drained of blood, who are the real animals!

Its a little silly to be against testing products on animals. But take supplements and life saving/improving drugs that some point or another. Had to be tested on animals and undergo human trials. Also dissecting animals and deceased humans for that matter. Are vital to our advancements in medicine. And the training of new medical field workers. Which some organizations like PETA (in regards to animal dissecting), are against.

I don't think an animal generally speaking. Should be valued over a human life. I'm for having pets, so long as they're taken care of. And I do eat meat.

If it's for food, I don't think it matters. You shouldn't abuse them though. I don't think they deserve to suffer either. I know it's not backed by science, but good meat doesn't come from a sad animal.