Debating animal rights certainly never is an easy conversation, especially when one side simply dismisses everything as “arbitrary.”
In his latest animal rights editorial, Animal rights extend past dogs and cats (SN 4/13), Drew Robert Winter used that word no less than three times in an attempt to make his staggeringly weak arguments look stronger than the opposing viewpoint by declaring the opposition’s arguments to be moot.
I’m all for healthy debate on a subject, but healthy debate requires considerations of both sides of an issue, which Winter’s column sorely lacked.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t support animal cruelty at all, whether it be committed against dogs, cats, cows, fish or anything else. There needs to be some serious reform in the conduct of slaughterhouses, but the fact that some people mistreat farm animals does not merit a blanket statement such as that all people who eat meat are immoral and hedonistic, which Winter doesn’t outright say but seriously implies.
He calls for humans to stop killing animals for food, because the rights and interests of animals should be considered equal to those of humans. However, his explanation of how these rights are equal is full of holes.
It’s stated that animals have a level of consciousness far greater than an amoeba’s. This is very true, and would be a great argument against treating farm animals like microbes. It does not, however, justify a jump to the conclusion that since cows are more conscious than amoebas, they must be equally conscious as humans.
There is a gap in consciousness between humans and animals (even young or mentally handicapped humans) comparable to the gap between animals and microbes.
One conclusion cannot be justified by another separate and unrelated conclusion. That would make your conclusion pretty arbitrary.
Josh Zimmerman
computer science sophomore
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