I said it once, I'll say it again.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. We are the superior animals, we can do as we please to the inferior. If we want to eat cows and not dogs, that's our choice as the supreme rulers of the animal kingdom.
If aliens came and wiped us out, enslaved us because they are superior to us, so be it. It's our fault for not evolving or taking the optimal path in the development of the human race, muwahhaahahahahahhahaaha.
Same with healthcare. Don't have it, sucks for you. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. Mwuahahahahahahhahahahaa.
EDIT: Ok, the part about Healthcare was me being a dick. As healthcare in the US is broken. However, I do think some people are just asking for their health problems by becoming big fatties and not exercising and eating healthier. And thus should be punished individually, and not have society as a whole be punished by having to subsidize the cost of their healthcare.
Thanks for defeating your own argument.
What Michael Vick did involves a lot more animal cruelty. Theoretically, there should be no cruelty in slaughterhouses, but granted that there is, it's nothing like dogfighting.
How is there "theoretically" no cruelty in slaughterhouses? Last time I checked, cows didn't grow up thinking "OH BOY I'M GOING TO GET CUT UP FOR PEOPLE TO EAT ME! YAYYYYY!" You're advocating murder, you're just apparently too ignorant to actually see that about yourself.
I think he means something specific by "cruelty" -- like inflicting suffering, etc. The killing is supposed to be painless and instantaneous.
I'd count living in jail as suffering. Told when to eat, mate, etc your entire life, having your children taken away from you, being constantly pregnant so you can give milk, and dying when you're no longer useful (or when you're big enough to eat). I'd definitely call that "cruelty". It's not the way any creature should be brought up.
You're asserting that killing a cow is in the same equivalence class as killing a human. While I do think that this claim has some merit, asserting it and then calling us omnivores murderers isn't going to get you anywhere.
Perhaps calling omnivores murderers is going a bit too far, but calling slaughterhouse employees murderers isn't too much of a stretch IMO.
iago, I agree that there is a bit of a double-standard here, but I agree even more with Ender -- slaughterhouses aren't designed with the intention of causing pain and suffering. Dog fights kind of are.
Perhaps it isn't the intention to cause pain and suffering, but the whole premise behind raising huge amounts of animals for as cheaply as possible, and for the purpose of killing them, does a great job of it.
There should be legal repercussions for animal cruelty in slaughterhouses, just as there are for dog fighting. But dog fighting is worse... so the repercussions should be greater.
iago, I think that you are taking language from human society (words like "murder") and using them in inappropriate contexts. You're transferring the weight of a word in one context to an inappropriate context to magnify your message. For instance, a slaughterhouse employee is not a murderer. Yet you said it "isn't too much of a stretch" to say so. By your definition of murder, every predatory species is a species of murderers. Lions are murderers; so are wolves.
Now, a slaughterhouse employee who treats his animals cruelly is a cruel person. When you said "it is not a stretch to say slaughterhouse employees are murderers," I was confused as to whether you meant every slaughterhouse employee, or only the ones who are cruel to animals. (You can't categorically say all slaughterhouse employees abuse their powers.) But let's assume you meant to say the cruel ones are not a far way away from being murderers. I agree that the association of "evil" with "murder" transfers into this new context. However, there are legal associations with the word "murder". One of these legal associations is "life in jail" or thirty years and upwards. Do you really think a cruel slaughterhouse employee should be sentenced to life in jail, or thirty years and upwards? I agree that they should spend perhaps one or two years in jail, with heavy heavy fines, but thirty years is unreasonable.
What I am criticizing here is a trademark of PETA -- they manipulate language so that they can steal associations and connotations from human society to implant them in the animal world. This is an emotional appeal: pathos. And the way it is used is manipulative and dishonest.
You seem to jump all over what I said, but don't clearly address the points. For that reason, it's sort of hard to respond.
First, I need to ask -- why do you consider dog fighting worse than slaughtering animals for food? For what it's worth, in the US, over 100,000 cattle are slaughtered each day -- that's about 35 million lives being lost each year -- just to feed people something they don't need to eat. Maybe animals aren't the smartest creatures around, but anybody who has/had a pet knows that they have feelings and definitely understand, to some extent, what's happening around them.
Also, I argued that the whole concept of livestock farming and slaughterhouses are cruel, not specific actions within them. Therefore, all slaughterhouse workers are cruel, and people who benefit from it, from my perspective. See my last post for reasons.
As for using the word "murder", I didn't bring up the word, deadly7 did. And I didn't directly call people who kill animals are murderers; rather, I said it wouldn't be much of a stretch (in other words, they aren't defined, but they could potentially be lumped in). I also added 'IMO' after, which should cleanse any sense of wrongdoing or innuendo (to quote an Offspring song).
As to the part about defining lions and lizards and whatnot as murderers, the whole "natural order of things" sort of bothers me, in the sense that it's an easy way to defend using animals for food, and for that reason I've thought about it a lot. My two answers to that are: a) humans are the only animal capable of reasoning about reasoning, and capable of having compassion for other creatures; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is entirely based on that idea. And b) farming isn't the natural order of things, hunting (and moreso, for humans, scavenging) is. For that reason, I dislike hunting less than I dislike the meat industry, although I argue that guns/weapons shouldn't be allowed when hunting.
