[quote="thomas"]I promote veganism and animal rights because I don't want the animals to suffer.
But we, as humans , suffer.
In my opinion it makes no difference why somebody is suffering. So some time ago I started thinking about wild living animals.
Their suffering is something that seems almost completely ignored or forgotten by most animal rights activists. In my opinion it is one of the most important concerns. For a simple reason: there are much much more animals in the wild than in factory farms.
Are you aure about that? There are literally bilions of animals slaughtered in "factory farm" operations due to the beliefs that we hold .... that protein must be had by animals. Because there is the belief that one's protein must come from animals ... we end up farming them in untold numbers ... many more than could possibly be be harvested from the wild.
And nature is cruel. Animals in the wild suffer from many things like predation, disease, parasites, injuries, cold, starvation, stress and more. Many animals give birth to hundreds or thousands of offspring hoping a few of them live long enough to grow up fully.
Nature is nature. It is our interpretation that makes it cruel or not.
And humans also live a so called cruel life whereby babies die. In a way, it is not cruel at all. Nature is nature and our interperation of it deems it cruel or otherwise. It is an interpretation.
So what could be done to help them? Helping farm animals is relatively easy, go vegan and convince others of doing the same. But nature is very complex and very few people care about the suffering of wild living animals.
Wild animals? Not the issue! That there are farm animals is natural, in a way. It's just that "meat" is promoted for breakfast, lunch and dinner as a 'cultural norm' ..... as if "animal meat" is the WAY to get one's protein. This is a cuiltural f##k up! It's easy. It's convenient, and it tastes good. It's also how many of us provide a livlihood. But is it ethical?
So I think the best thing we can do today is to promote the idea that they also need our help (at least within the animal movement) and that helping them also belongs to animal rights. And then scientists, ecologists, biologists and other people will deal with that question and find the answers.
Do we need a movement of any kind? Must we rely on scientists, biologists, or animal rights people? Can we not find the answers for ourselves? There is an industry that is hell-bent on insisting that we all have bacon and sausages for breakfast. They are the people whose livelihood depends on bacon for breakfast and steak for dinner. They will, of course, fight you.
Our ethics concerning humans and human rights do not end with the abolition of slavery, so why should our ethics concerning animals?
Because animals do not construe their predicament in the same way that humans do. They do not consider themselves as slaves .... as we do. But we are ethical beings and the act of eating is not immoral or amoral. We must consider what we eat.
We sometimes eat animals because it is necessary... but to insist on eating animals as a dietary "must" is simply not true.
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