Animal Rights - how far do you go?

[Louloubelle]

Post of the thread, IMHO.

**my emphasis**

ithangew

an in case nobody believes me

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut010831/nvt10831_18.html

*warning, the link it unintentionally very funny*

 

[Louloubelle]

and just how anyone can take the people who produced this seriously I don't know

 

[Jonti]

"A whale swims free for most of its life," Carr told the National Post in a recent interview. "It can feed hundreds, so less fish have to die.

This sort of thing *really* annoys me.

She should have said fewer, not less.

 

[The Black Hand]

I suppose it's a poor use of the word, since all cows are domesticated these days, but you get my point.

In any case, I wasn't "qualifying" anything, just repeating what I've said here and elsewhere in the past. I just gave an example for people who might have difficulty grasping simple concepts. Like that most the fluffy animals that AR nutters agonise about would die out if we weren't keeping them alive for our own purposes.

People have always had some sort of relationship with animals, and I think it is a perverse view of human nature that thinks animals 'would die out'. There will always be people who genuinely care for animal welfare and do something that means animals will continue, and you are talking about a renegotiation of humans relationship with animals rather than a 'de facto animal genocide' which you appear to wish to bring on.

I know all horses in the world are not domesticated, and I very much doubt it with cows... Your endless efforts to find absolutism are destined to fail you know.

 

[Louloubelle]

People have always had some sort of relationship with animals, and I think it is a perverse view of human nature that thinks animals 'would die out'. There will always be people who genuinely care for animal welfare and do something that means animals will continue, and you are talking about a renegotiation of humans relationship with animals rather than a 'de facto animal genocide' which you appear to wish to bring on.

I know all horses in the world are not domesticated, and I very much doubt it with cows... Your endless efforts to find absolutism are destined to fail you know.

I doubt that domestic animals would die out, but their numbers couldn't be sustained at current levels so what would happen to the surplus animals?

Do you really think that there would be enough animal adopters willing to feed, home and look after all the cows, pigs, sheep and chickens that would be in need of rehoming if they changed from livestock to pets?

 

[Louloubelle]

This is an extremely one sided debate. Nobody has paid attention to animal responsibilities. Surely if animals have rights, they also have responsibilities. The responsibility to educate their young, the responsibility not to act in an antisocial manner, the responsibility to respect the cultures of other animal life.

By that standard many animals are extremely delinquent. Consider the pigeon, for example. It defecates freely in urban areas, spreading disease and leaving unsightly marks on people's cars. The hippopotamus is notoriously aggressive towards other species, including crocodiles and humans, as well as being retromingent. The mosquito and tsetse fly are appallingly antisocial.

How can we respect the "rights" of such animals when they are so pathologically irresponsible??

good post

reminded me of this

http://www.angelfire.com/ms/guineaworm/

Which I thought was a joke until I read this

http://rantingroom.blogspot.com/2006/03/assignment-save-guinea-worm.html

 

[In Bloom]

People have always had some sort of relationship with animals, and I think it is a perverse view of human nature that thinks animals 'would die out'. There will always be people who genuinely care for animal welfare and do something that means animals will continue, and you are talking about a renegotiation of humans relationship with animals rather than a 'de facto animal genocide' which you appear to wish to bring on.

How many people are going to have the resources or inclination to keep a pet cow ffs? Where are they going to keep the cow? In their back garden?

I know all horses in the world are not domesticated, and I very much doubt it with cows... Your endless efforts to find absolutism are destined to fail you know.

I neither know nor care if there are still non-domesticated cows about, it's totally irrelevant to the point I'm making.

 

[rollinder]

and just how anyone can take the people who produced this seriously I don't know

starts wondering if baby brothers/sisters need to be kept away from Daddy too before he starts killing and eating them

 

[Louloubelle]

quotes from Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA

“One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild ... they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV.”
— The Chicago Daily Herald, Mar 1990


“Humans have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth.”
— Washingtonian magazine, Feb 1990


“Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
— PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, in the September 1989 issue of Vogue, Sep 1989


“Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation.”
— Harper's, Aug 1988

“There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.”
— Washingtonian magazine, Aug 1986

source
http://www.activistcash.com/biography_quotes.cfm/bid/456

 

[jæd]

“One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild ... they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV.”

The woman has never been out of a city. The wild is the survival of the fittest: nasty, brutish and if you make a mistake you die. If you out a modern dog or cat out in the wild they would be eaten for breakfast.

 

[jæd]

“Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
— PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, in the September 1989 issue of Vogue, Sep 1989

I wonder if she was HIV+ she'd have a different opinion...?

 

[Louloubelle]

I wonder if she was HIV+ she'd have a different opinion...?

Indeed

After all, humans are bad whereas

 

[Wilf]

I doubt that domestic animals would die out, but their numbers couldn't be sustained at current levels so what would happen to the surplus animals?

Do you really think that there would be enough animal adopters willing to feed, home and look after all the cows, pigs, sheep and chickens that would be in need of rehoming if they changed from livestock to pets?

This point has pretty comprehensively been done on the 'what would happen if we all went veggie' thread. If the majority adopted a non-animal diet, by definition, those animals wouldn't be born. they don't occur naturally - only in response to demand by an industry. If demand dropped, so would supply. There is no 'surplus animals question'.

 

[Yossarian]

Yep, I think the big 'last day of eating meat' BBQ would be more than enough to solve the question of what to do with all those leftover cows and pigs...

 

[Louloubelle]

This point has pretty comprehensively been done on the 'what would happen if we all went veggie' thread. If the majority adopted a non-animal diet, by definition, those animals wouldn't be born. they don't occur naturally - only in response to demand by an industry. If demand dropped, so would supply. There is no 'surplus animals question'.

If we all went veggie tomorrow of course there would be countless animal that would be surplus to requirements

I appreciate and agree that intensive farming accelerates the rate at which these animal reproduce but it wouldn't solve the immediate problem of what to do with all the pigs, chickens, cows and lambs, even if they were all either sterilised or somehow stopped from reproducing*.


*something which many animal rights supporters would consider immoral anyway as animals anyway as animals should be 'free' to live their lives as they see fit unhindered by human intervention.

 

[lights.out.london]

I wonder if she was HIV+ she'd have a different opinion...?

The drugs which saved my eyesight were tested on animals.

 

[subversplat]

The drugs which saved my eyesight were tested on animals.

All drugs are tested on animals. That doesn't go to say that all drugs have to be tested on animals.

 

[lights.out.london]

**shrugs**

Don't care. My sight vs an animal's life? No brainer.

 

[subversplat]

**shrugs**

Don't care. My sight vs an animal's life? No brainer.

Well what a pointless oversimplification, as if there was some sort of golden ratio of animals killed to sight saved; there could be myriad other options for developing all sorts of drugs (even sight saving ones!) but we'll never find them as long as pharmeceuticalists are allowed to go slashing and injecting to their hearts content

Besides, if you really don't care as much as you say, then how about butting out and letting the people that do care get something done?

 

[Louloubelle]

Well what a pointless oversimplification, as if there was some sort of golden ratio of animals killed to sight saved; there could be myriad other options for developing all sorts of drugs (even sight saving ones!) but we'll never find them as long as pharmeceuticalists are allowed to go slashing and injecting to their hearts content

Besides, if you really don't care as much as you say, then how about butting out and letting the people that do care get something done?

Personally I think that there are too many unnecessary experiments carried out on animals. The LD50 tests for cosmetics and dripping shampoo into rabbits' eyes are all terrible and we don't need new cosmetics so desperately to justify that kind of pain being inflicted on animals.

However there is a lot of animal research for medical research that is essential. One of my old colleagues was married to a HIV/AIDS consultant and he used to get death threats regularly, for conducting important research that has extended the lives of people with HIV and AIDS.

No sane person likes the idea of hurting animals unnecessarily and if there were viable alternatives then we should use them but sometimes animal research offers the best chance of helping people to recover from terrible illnesses and in such cases we have a duty to pursue and support it. IMO

I also support stem cell research FWIW

 

[Louloubelle]

The drugs which saved my eyesight were tested on animals.

Your eyesight has been saved?

That's great news, I didn't know

Yay!

And a big thank you to all the animals that gave their lives to achieve this.

 

[lights.out.london]

Well what a pointless oversimplification, as if there was some sort of golden ratio of animals killed to sight saved; there could be myriad other options for developing all sorts of drugs (even sight saving ones!) but we'll never find them as long as pharmeceuticalists are allowed to go slashing and injecting to their hearts content

Besides, if you really don't care as much as you say, then how about butting out and letting the people that do care get something done?

What don't you learn some manners? Butt out?

Who suggested a 'golden ratio'? What? You just made that up? I didn't suggest it, or even imply it.

The grinding and facile oversimplification is yours, thus -

but we'll never find them as long as pharmeceuticalists are allowed to go slashing and injecting to their hearts content

"pharmeceuticalists" you're on a roll, eh? Making up words now. I guess that's far easier than offering a coherent argument for placing non-sentient species on a human footing.

So, let's see (sic) you get something done? Give us your best shot, Dr Doolittle. Or are you going to re-tread the same old, same old?

Let's have something a little more convincing than

there could be

, eh?

 

[obanite]

How can animals have rights anyway? Surely a precondition for having rights is that you can assert them? How's a rabbit meant to assert its right to anything?

The whole idea of 'animal rights' is bollocks.

<runs from militant AR loonies>

How can a human foetus have rights?

How can a 1 year old child have rights?

Fuck off.

 

[Roadkill]

How can a human foetus have rights?

How can a 1 year old child have rights?

Fuck off.

If you don't see the slight difference between a human foetus and a wasp you're too stupid to bother with, frankly.

Why are all AR nutters all rant and emotion and zero thought?

 

[obanite]

If you don't see the slight difference between a human foetus and a wasp you're too stupid to bother with, frankly.

Why are all AR nutters all rant and emotion and zero thought?

Maybe, just maybe, I have thought about my position extensively, and believe that we're not the only important life in the universe, or even on this planet?

Of course I see the 'slight difference' - that's a straw man, and I'm not even an AR activist. Obviously a human is more important to me than a wasp.

That does not mean I have to subscribe to the egotistical view that all other life forms are worthless and I can do whatever I want to them as long as it brings me the slightest benefit.

 

[Roadkill]

That does not mean I have to subscribe to the egotistical view that all other life forms are worthless and I can do whatever I want to them as long as it brings me the slightest benefit.

But nobody believes that. I certainly don't. It might be a handy straw man to take pot-shots at, but it's not accurate in the slightest.

 

[jæd]

That does not mean I have to subscribe to the egotistical view that all other life forms are worthless and I can do whatever I want to them as long as it brings me the slightest benefit.

Who's said that, then...?

 

[chilango]

Who Domesticated who?

I remember watching some documentary once arguing that dogs domesticated humans, not the other way around. That dogs hanging around nomadic camps somehow (I forget exactly how ) pushed humans towards a more sedentary lifestyle and thus eventually towards agriculture...

 

[Tom A]

This is more divide and rule, similar to that aimed at the working class movement, where 'extremists' are left to swing by the liberal left, which ultimately sows division within the progressive movement. There have always been those in progressive campaigns who were prepared to go that one bit further than what is portrayed as the 'respectable majority'. The 'respectable majority' however is a chimera, and I have no problems with those who practiced wild direct action within working class movement history. For example the Rebeccaites or the Luddites...

So you think it's a good thing if graves are being dug up and vivisectionists are getting death threats then, and that condemming such things are divisive then?

Well I have news for you: people who engage in such fucktardedness are no comrade of mine.

 

[Herbsman.]

i letterbomb vivisectionists and punch meat eaters in the face