Cruelty to animals

What is your view about this issue?

Also (since i expect most or all are against it) where do you base this position?

Recently some person i had to take out of my facebook feed kept posting image after image of animal abuse. By this i do not mean abuse of domestic/stray pets, but the killing of animals which are used for food.

I think that most people are against cruelty to pets, but in favor/neutral of exploiting farm animals. Again i would like to ask how you justify that.

This issue has come up periodically in this forum, but maybe this time it can lead to some better discussion without flaming

As for me, i am not against the killing of farm animals, and their general exploitation, as long as it remains as humane as possible. I am well-aware that this is not always the case though, but think that it is the lesser of two evils, to keep using those animals for human benefit.
As for pets, i am against cruelty towards them, although i do not really agree that people who damage those creatures are bound to graduate to harming other humans.

Cats are cute and cuddly and I like them. Abuse to cats will not be tolerated.

Farm animals... are not cute and not cuddly, but ARE delicious.

I'm not against meat for food. But I do think that it should be handled without unnecessary cruelty. But to harm an animal just to harm it, I think that should be treated very harshly. People who do that are dangerous to people as well.

Nope!

Do you extend emotional attachment to pets which aren't yours, and moreover even to stray dogs/cats?

I know that a minority of people worldwide do kill stray animals, and seem pathologically against them. Maybe (with or without realizing it) they sometimes view them as a symbol, as in a wonderful short story by Guy De Maupassant about an old horse that gets abused to death by a peasant, because the peasant reasons it is a useless being and unworthy of being taken after...
Other kill stray animals due to the latter being seen as pests, which is quite a different argument.

But both do not extend emotional attachment to pets which do not belong to them.

Cruelty to animals is not cool. So sayeth The Fonz, and so it is written.

Serious response: hunting is an inevitable part of nature. Wild animals that we do not kill will eventually meet some other painful fate. Farming, however, is a different story. No matter how well we treat farm animals, the fact is that they are still slaves, and whereas wild animals have a fair chance of escaping a hunter, enslaved ones have no influence over the time or means of their demise.

"A dog looks up to a man. a cat looks down on a man. A pig looks a man straight in the eye and sees his equal." - Winston Churchill

My view is that it's bad, except for cruelty towards rhesus monkeys. They're the devil.

I'm more uncomfortable with people taking off the legs of spiders than I am of people taking off the legs of rhesus monkeys. I have no idea why. No, I don't think it's normal.

G-Max said:

hunting is an inevitable part of nature. Wild animals that we do not kill will eventually meet some other painful fate.

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Dieing is an inevitable part of life. People that we do not kill will eventually meet some other painful fate.

contre said:

My view is that it's bad, except for cruelty towards rhesus monkeys. They're the devil.

I'm more uncomfortable with people taking off the legs of spiders than I am of people taking off the legs of rhesus monkeys. I have no idea why. No, I don't think it's normal.

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Is there any down-to-earth reason or just you hating their guts for nothing?

Repulsion? It's not fear and not quite disgust. I don't think they're gross or something.

I'm really not quite sure.

Of course, cruelty to monkeys is still wrong and evil, it's just my reaction is completely devoid of emotion.

contre said:

taking off the legs of spiders

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Now that's just mean. Spiders make excellent pets, especially the large furry ones that eat crickets and stuff.

SiLL said:

Dieing is an inevitable part of life. People that we do not kill will eventually meet some other painful fate.

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Only if they choose to. They are also free to sprinkle phenobarbital into their Jello shots, or have their bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen, or whatever, and if their fate is a painful one, it will most likely be at least partially of their own making.

SiLL said:

Is there any down-to-earth reason or just you hating their guts for nothing?

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Maybe he was raped by a rhesus monkey...

Moderator Action: Stop the trolling, seriously do stop the trolling. This comment even in jest is utterly unacceptable. - ori
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

They do have a pretty mean face with all that red skin. Like they ask for trouble.

G-Max said:

Only if they choose to. They are also free to sprinkle phenobarbital into their Jello shots, or have their bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen, or whatever, and if their fate is a painful one, it will most likely be at least partially of their own making.

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Your response causes my brain to twist, so I just shoot another satire:
To be picked on is an inevitable part of human society. People I do not pick on, someone else eventually will.

I can do this all day

Kyriakos said:

I think that most people are against cruelty to pets, but in favor/neutral of exploiting farm animals. Again i would like to ask how you justify that.

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There are few logical justifications; most justifications are strictly emotional. There's no logical reason why a cow, a horse, and a dog's life should be viewed differently in terms of what we can and cannot do to a food animal beyond the economic impact that keeping such an animal around will provide. Instead, the reason why we treat these animals differently is because of our emotional relationship with them. We develop social, emotional relationships with our "helper" and "pet" animals. Helper animals are those animals we keep around for the usefulness as beasts of burden or task animals, such as horses and sheep dogs. Pet animals are those animals that we keep around strictly for emotional and social reasons, such as most cats and dogs. Most pet animals developed because they were originally helper animals.

Notably, helper animals generally provide services and help that could be performed by, or directly assists, other humans. A sheep isn't generally considered a helper animal despite the fact that it might be raised for wool or milk rather than meat; a horse is a helper because it can directly assist a man in plowing a field.

In contrast, we don't generally have a problem slaughtering livestock animals for the consumption of their meat.

We have a simply different attachment to helper and pet animals than we do to livestock that we raise for consumption. Even animals within the same species can be viewed different based on their uses; a bull isn't generally slaughtered for meat because it provides service through studding or as a plow animal, but a cow can be slaughtered for meat.

You could make the case that there's an economic reason why helper animals aren't consumed for food, but I think you'll find that the emotional reasons provide a stronger more against consuming those animals than the economics dictate.

People can be awesome in their ******ation.

Dude man. Is that real? I had to laugh and shake my head with a disgusted expression on my face at the same time.

Apparently yes. I swiped the image from an i09 article.

Hey, it was a murderer....

SiLL said:

To be picked on is an inevitable part of human society.

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Uh, wrong. "Picking on" people is a cultural phenomenon, not something that's hard-wired into our biology.

SiLL said:

Dude man. Is that real? I had to laugh and shake my head with a disgusted expression on my face at the same time.

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It's not the only time a non-human has been put on trial for a human crime, either.

G-Max said:

Uh, wrong. "Picking on" people is a cultural phenomenon, not something that's hard-wired into our biology.

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Alright, "inevitable" is too strong. But did you at least get the point I am making here?

No. I'm talking about a situation in which an event that will happen exactly once, regardless of whether we make it happen or not and regardless of whether it produces a benefit or not, is made to happen in such a way as to produce some benefit. You're comparing it to events that can happen more than once or not at all, and which can rarely (in your first example) or never (in your second) provide a benefit regardless of how they happen.

I'm not opposed to using animals for food, but they are just treated so horribly on farms, I try to avoid meat, specifically mammals. I am less cautious about eating poultry, as they aren't as conscious as mammals.