Everyday exploitation
Every day, humans exploit and kill animals for many purposes: food, clothing, testing, entertainment. If the victims were human, this would be seen as horrible. With animals, it's seen as normal.
To justify this difference, people use many excuses. This chapter sums up the main ones and the answers to them. In the full version, they appear as "objection and answer" boxes.
The most common excuses
- "They're not human." This just repeats the conclusion without explaining why species would matter.
- "Humans have a soul or dignity." That can't be proven, and it doesn't explain why an animal's pain would count for less.
- "Animals can't reason or talk." Neither can babies or some people with disabilities, and they still matter.
- "It's natural." What's natural isn't necessarily right.
- "It's tradition." Many traditions have been unjust.
- "An authority approves of it." What counts is the reasons, not who says it.
- "Ethics is a human thing." Those protected by ethics don't need to know how to do ethics, just as a patient doesn't need to know medicine.
- "Everything in ethics is relative." That line doesn't justify any practice.
What they have in common
All these excuses fail in the same place: none of them has anything to do with being able to suffer. And that's what matters for knowing whether it's wrong to harm someone.
In short
- There are many excuses for treating animals differently.
- Each of them has clear answers.
- None shows why an animal's pain would count for less.