Animals and Rights.

As long as they are put down [u]humanely[/u], then it's cool with me. Just look at Temple Grandin. She's a prime example of an Animal Rights Activist with a lot of common sense.

What is this? The Socialist Nation of Nature?

I too have had hard time justifying my desire for meat. Here are some points I'd like to bring forth: 1. We need to eat. The whole need for a justification for eating meat is because we have started to compare ourselves with animal and started to grant them some "human rights". I think this should work both ways. As animals have the right to eat meat in order to stay alive so should we. After reading that, the token vegans among us will say "But we DON'T HAVE TO eat meat!". To that I say: "tigers can eat tofu too". 2. What is a good life and what isn't? Is a bad life better than no life at all? There are 2 possibilities. Either the cow you'll eat gets born, has a decent life on cow standards and gets to be eaten by you OR it won't be born in the first place. The reason we have cows, chicken and pigs is that we eat them. If we would all stop eating meat they would go extinct. Well, we'd perhaps still eat eggs and drink milk(if that isn't immoral too then?) but the cows and chicken producing the fore mentioned products would still die naturally and what is the difference in that to having them to die for food in the first place?

I believe it's okay to kill livestock (for a good reason), but not domesticated animals. It's also not okay to torture either.

Killing livestock is fine. Domesticated animals, not so much. Torture is never okay. /stance.

I honestly only find necessary hunger as any justification for killing anything. I'd describe your position like this: "I think it's a shame to kill a good looking animal, because they are aesthetically pleasing, and interesting. But less attractive animals are perfectly fine for killing, because they are less interesting/fun to look at." And you're right, your opinion does kind of suck. Mostly because, there is no supreme ruling of what animals are interesting and cute and which animals are not. You might think something like the mountain goat is ugly, but I might think that they're pretty neat animals.

I think its okay to eat animals for food and test them for scientific purposes. But I think we should draw the line at using animal testing to test stuff like cosmetics, which aren't as beneficial to humanity as food or science especially when they have other methods to test cosmetics to see if they're safe.

The "Animal Farm" endgame comes to mind but only because I recently read it.

Animals are food and food gets eaten in the end. Who cares what happens to them when they're on the journey to my plate?

Aside from the legitimate reasons to kill an animal (self defense, food, fishing, accidental road kill, etc), killing animals is pretty bad. Like the kind of people that murder their neighbor's pet cat(s) for no reason or just because they hate cats. Those dou­chebags should rot in jail.

As some people have already stated. Theres only a few legit reasons on why you would need to kill an animal. Food, To end their suffering, protecting yourself/property. I enjoy hunting and fishing. Both of which, I'll choose my kill carefully and when I do kill, I eat the animal and use as much of it as possible.

Dolphins kill Porpoises for rip apart Porpoises for fun.

Animals have he right to be tasty.

My opinion on animals has really changed over the years. I grew up hunting and not particularly caring about ethical or moral treatment of animals. Having dogs started to really clue me in on the idea that animals have more feeling and intelligence than I ever gave them credit for. Biology classes and naturalist documentaries shifted my opinion even more, and now after getting into the subject and reading up extensively on evolution and primatology, I try not to make a distinction between us and animals anymore. I guess I take a utilitarian view of animals. We are designed to eat both meat and vegetables. Meat is a far more efficient source of calories that make our large energy diet possible. There is no point in denying that we are predatory animals and some are resigned to be our prey. So, I do accept that it is simply the lot in life of some species that they will be food for us. That is what domesticated farm animals have evolved to be. Docile, fast-growing variants of animals. I prefer they are treated well during their life, but realize and accept that they will become food before their natural end. That's how the food chain works, and that's how it has to be. However, I have come to morally oppose the killing of animals for any sort of sport or entertainment, and oppose the destruction of natural wildlife or habitat for trivial reasons. The more intelligent the species affected, the stronger I feel opposed to it. Morals are driven by empathy, and all mammals are hard wired to be empathetic. However, that empathy is limited only to those we can relate to. If you can convince yourself that animals are emotionless automatons driven purely by a genetic code, you likely won't have any empathy towards them. Once you learn enough about them to see how much like us some of them really are, the more empathy for them you will feel.

I don't believe in unnecessary suffering and killing of animals.