It just requires recognizing livestock as a different class of animal from a pet.
And really there is a lot of support for the livestock industry to kill animals in as humane a way as possible.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

there have been cases where people have done terrible things to human babies too.

i personally believe that it's immoral to domesticate animals.

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~0000~

Don't confuse me with the facts.

But there is no real difference. Pigs are nearly as smart as dogs (smarter than some), and cows that are handled frequently become very social and affectionate. Certainly chickens have as many nerve-endings as a songbird. Etc...


There is a lot of TALK about more humane slaughter, but it doesn't keep prices down. Every time there's a scandle involving sick livestock being dragged to the knacker, or still alive when they're being skinned, the FDA gets blasted for a few, Congress vows to get tough, and everyone follows the news over a steak dinner. Conditions will improve when the consumer votes with their wallet, but don't hold your breath. In the meantime, the next generation is learning not to care either. I apologize if I come across as a bleeding-heart hippocrite (I am), but at least I admit it. Change follows awareness.

I suppose I tend to think of animals as occupying some sort of gray area between resource and sentient being. I'm pretty anthrocentric in my views.
So I think of animals in terms of what they mean to us.
The reason killing a pet is bad is because it indicates a certain kind of malevolence not found in the killing of livestock, pests, or game. But some of it is conditional. I wouldn't think so oddly of a person who eats a family pet because he has no other food.

But what I really consider animal cruelty is frivelous killing of animals... for fun or something like that. Of course some may view hunting and fishing that way, but sportsmen rarely have sadism in mind and generally make use of the animal's body for food.
And torturing is always evil and sadistic. I can't come up with any exception to that rule.


Well it is one of those things people are seperated from and never think about... especially when adversarial to costs. But if it's given enough attention, they might start caring.
I have no problem eating an animal, but I prefer that animal be given no more suffering than necessary.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

I'm probably one of the least sensitive people when it comes to animals. I don't see any problem with killing them in humane ways, I don't loose sleep at night over the amount of animals that have died so I could live, ect.

But animal abuse is senseless and produces its own evidence in being wrong. We as a society do need to kill things to survive, but we don't need to abuse things, or make their exisistence painful.

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Woodrow Wilson

Factory farming gives a clinic on suffering to every animal that goes in. The number of slaughterhouses that employ truly humane practices are very much in the minority (kosher/some organic). Many of the accepted industry practices encompass activities that look very much like torture. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here (sorry, I couldn't resist), but I'm not sure there's a huge gulf separating the killing of sentient beings for nutritional needs that can be filled in other ways, and the killing of sentient beings to satisfy emotional needs that are best left unfulfilled. I think its safe to say it matters very little to the animal what our reasons might be for taking it's life. It only knows it's life is ending.

That was painful.

Well, one strange thing about domestic animals is that they would likely be extinct if not for our use of them as food. Cattle cannot be released into the wild and expect to survive. They will be lucky to be wolf food... else they'll likely starve.
One odd thing is that their success in survival by evolving alongside us as our domestic animals (beginning as a symbiotic relationship of sorts) is that huge cattle herds are now a major danger to the environment- the methane they release being a major greenhouse gas... and the waste produced by livestock being an environmental issue all its own.

Hell, a lot of our domestications have helped the animal do well, but doomed environments where we've failed to keep control.
Look at cats, one of the least domesticated animals (hardly different from their wild ancestors). They evolved into hearty and efficient predators in a harsh desert environment. They hit paydirt by entering urban areas and forming a symbiotic relationship in which they feasted on vermin (who largely depend on us) and scraps, giving us the reduction in vermin (thus reduction in disease and food loss) and companionship/luxury status (social benefit).
All well and good and quite a nice relationship... unless they go feral.
Cats are such efficient predators that they can destroy ecosystems if released in large numbers. The Australians- whose ecosystem was largely shaped by its lack of predators- is discovering this most harshly.

Cattle are a bigger problem.
The main reason we need to cut down on meat is not heart disease or humane treatment.
It's to reduce the demand for cattle and shrink the sizes of the herds- which pose great environmental danger as they grow.
So ironically the reduction in demand of meat... is also the reduction of the survival chances of domestic livestock.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Figure out a way to turn liquified cattle dung into gasoline. Problem solved.

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Theodore Lamar Heiks
BA, History/Political Science, Western State College of Colorado, 1984
MBA, Entrepreneurship/Marketing, City University of Seattle, 1993

I once heard somewhere the most dangerous animal on earth is human

I have always been an animal lover right now I'm without a pet , my dog passed away be a year Aug. 6th dies from old age just layed down one day went to sleep and didn't wake up.

My question is how far should this go?
It's not like we don't know that experiments are being done on animals everyday, and although some maybe bad it's legal.
Now I'm not saying that all animal experiments should stop.
Perhaps if humans were more aware of how animals help the human race.
Not just through police dogs, but dogs that can actually warn an epeleptic of a seizer, or dogs that lead the blind, or find drugs, there have been caces of a pet that actually prevented a family from burning with their house.
Some may not remember the Russian dog that orbited the earth long before the first human.

Bottom line we humans owe animals a lot even the farm animals without which
A lot of meateaters would starve to death.