Recently, reading the book We Are All Completely beside ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler, I was once more reminded of the question of animal treatment by humans. I always felt somewhat uncomfortable about the notion of animal rights; rights are a human creation and they are applied and thought of in human terms, and I never thought anthropomorphizing other animals is the right way to go. I was never against eating animals; animals do it all the time and we are also animals, even if more successful in the evolutionary scale.
But I do care about human ethics, which implies I care about cruelty. Inflicting unnecessary suffering is wrong and demeaning to us humans. And we do that far too much. Lots of animal experimentation is utterly unnecessary – like for cosmetics and such. And the food industry is just appalling, it makes the blood boil every time I read about factory farms, slaughterhouses and such, especially because they’re so unneeded – humans could do perfectly with much less meat, and a lot of it just goes to waste. Every time I think about it, I consider the ethical thing to do would be to become vegetarian, but I never did. Partly out of self-indulgence (I like meat), partly because I know my attitude wouldn’t make much of a difference, partly because I don’t think eating animals it’s wrong in itself, it’s the suffering inflicted by the food industry I object.
I tend nevertheless to eat much less meat than I used to, and to choose whenever possible products I think were more humanely treated. I know that’s probably not too coherent and maybe insufficient.
And of course I’m opposed to hunting for pleasure, bullfights, cock fights and other such barbarities. Inflicting suffering is wrong, and we know other animals suffer just like us.
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