According to Singer "‘Equality for Animals’ from Practical Ethics", we should consider when eating animal flesh is a luxury rather than necessary. So Eskimos must kill animals for food but eating sharp fin soup is a luxury.
In factory farms, animal may lead to miserable lives so that the cost of production can be made as low as possible. Human should balance the cost of production and welfare of animals.
-Anthony Lam Wai Man
For the factory farm scenario, as we would finally kill and eat the products (animals) by seizing their most important property (life), I can't find any reason of improving the product's pre-end life because killing will come at the end.
回覆刪除So, as long as we eat (kill) animals, talking about animal welfare is not rational and self-deceiving.
Indeed, an animal sooner or later will die, no matter it is because of illness, senescence or being killed. How come an improvement of the welfare of the animal would turn meaningless should its life be ended by killing? Suppose a person (bearing in mind humans are also animals) is about to be killed by a tiger. The life of the person could be ended in either one of the following two ways: (1) The tiger bites and breaks the person’s neck causing an almost instant death of the person; or (2) The tiger tortures the person by piercing off the skin and flesh of the person small pieces by small pieces before giving the person a final and fatal bite. Now imagine that you are the person. Are you telling me that you consider that these two different ways of death would mean nothing different to you, simply because the tiger would finally kill and eat you up anyway?
刪除Even animal is not human being, it still reserve some right as a form of life.According to Singer, "our concern for others ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities they possess". If human can kill all other animal as they wish, this will lead what white people had done to the black before.
回覆刪除However, according to Roger Scruton, "only humans have duties and therefore only humans have rights". I think, we should question if animal have duties or not.
回覆刪除First of all, for me, I think Roger Scruton's argument is invalid because Humans' duties are different from Animal's duties. We cannot critique Animal by using our Human law. For instance, monkey cannot be accused of stealing, if they "steal" things in a public park or supermarket.
I think Animal have duties to the Natural World, but "Animal duties" is different from our Human duties. In general, Human duties is defined as Human law.
We, Human and Animal are all under the sun, Human should have similar duties to Animal duties.
But, I am not sure what it is...it may be "balancing the world"...
Sorry, if Roger Scruton really has said that "onlu humans have duties and tehrefore only humans have rights" then he is wrong!
回覆刪除If a person does something as a matter of his (her) duty, he (she) cannot and should not look for reward. Having a duty does not imply that rights should be granted in return.
Please do not take life as an instant event. All lives, short or long, should be taken as processes. As long as there is a time duration or sense of time period, there is a process with the life from birth to death.
Whether it is a farm life or country life, it means a certain unique process. If man is the designer for farm life and even country life in country parks for animals, man certainly owe duties to such animals to ensure the animals' life processes should be decent, humane, and sustainable! Duties means duties, meaning due care and diligence, otherwise man should let animals go back to wilderness.