Letters to the Editor
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animals don't have rights? none at all? not even the right not to be tortured in the most perverted way?
If animals have no rights then NO ONE has the right to SET ANY LIMIT AT ALL ON WHAT CAN BE DONE TO THEM BY ANYONE FOR ANY REASON. Since I take it as a given then very few people accept this extreme position the question only remains WHAT SPECIFIC RIGHTS do animals have, or should animals have.
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my opinion on animal rights & China -- clarification
Animals obviously don't possess the right to live. Lacking that, they have no other inherent rights. They essentially have the status of animate object.
People are born with rights. Chattels have the "rights" that their owners give them, if any, on a conditional basis.
I am against inhumane animal slaughter, but it is an issue for local regulation, not international law, and in my opinion, need not be addressed until human rights issues are rectified. Moreover, since animal slaughter in the US isn't always so humane and there is no essential distinction between different kinds of animal (pig vs. dog), how can we judge the Chinese for their cultural practices? This is both patronizing and petty.
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Sigh. I guess I have to say it again.
janken0524 said:
… That has to be the most disgraceful thing I have ever heard of. I am sure their views on human life can not be much different [a]…. You might say it is only a cat or only a dog, but they are a part of many families. [b] [c] … Just the cruel way in which they are slaughtered is way worse than we do our cattle for consumption. [d]
I added the letter organization above. [a] First sentence you wrote is flat-out racist. When I see racism I need to call it out. You go from their attitude towards food to extrapolating and insinuating a lower level of morality than you have. [b] Note that cats are generally not eaten in China so the author has stated a falsehood or mistake. [c] Dogs may be part of someone's families or not. Dogs that are eaten are not part of someone's family and not your family. [d] Dogs used for food are not skinned alive. How do you think a chef would do that to a big Collier? What would be the point? And how is the small-scale butchering of a dog worse than the industrial butchering of cattle? I do not remember reading the author say that the dog at the restaurant was skinned alive anyway…if he said it was, he would be telling another falsehood.
Vickie Soles wrote:
If you knew him [Mr. Kerasote ]… you could not possibly make such unkind, unknowing, judgmental comments… . … No, his story is not "fake." He has travelled the entire world extensively and is the epitome of the word honesty. ... "hey thank you for enlightening us" pat on the back for bringing this TRUE story to our attention?
The author has written comments that were not very well informed. He began the article with an inflammatory anecdote which, with just cursory observation from people who live in China (myself included), rings false. From his experience, the author has extrapolated that Chinese people regularly eat dog (few do, and those that do eat dog only eat it once-in-a-while...usually in the Winter time). One would believe that Chinese people eat stray animals and pets (uh…NO) From reading this article, several readers think Chinese will skin-alive dogs…pet dogs at that. And the reader gets the impression that Chinese people don't have compassion for animals (they love pets and have pets like Americans do). He says dog can be found in restaurants all over the country (not true…and did he go all over the country?) He criticizes how they are butchered without gas or other more expensive means available in the West. He makes a values judgment that because cats and dogs were bred to be friends (they weren't) of humans, killing them is worse than killing cows and pigs (which are sometimes pets in some parts of the world).
Notice in my reply to janken0524 I said the author stated falsehoods. I did not say the author was lying. The story may not be fake, but the authors observations about what he saw were glaringly wrong. There was little "enlightening" about this piece and a lot which can leed people to wrong conclusions.
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if an animal doesn't have a "right" not to be treated in a certain way there is no justification for anyone interfering in how anyone treats it
or are you saying that every culture has a right to make a collective decision to do ANYTHING they want to animals, and no one has the right to pressure them?
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if some people are willing to let other people decide how to treat animals and anything they decide is fine
then there is probably nothing that can be said to change their minds. Obviously people who think there is an issue to be dealt with aren't going to change their minds either.
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Animals obviously don't possess the right to live. Lacking that, they have no other inherent rights. They essentially have the status of animate object.
I don't know what this means, not much, obviously. Condemned criminals don't have the legal right to live but that doesn't mean there are no limits on what can be done to them.
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inherent rights of humans, animals, rocks
Animals obviously don't possess the right to live. Lacking that, they have no other inherent rights. They essentially have the status of animate object.
I don't know what this means, not much, obviously. Condemned criminals don't have the legal right to live but that doesn't mean there are no limits on what can be done to them.
There is no such thing as "inherent rights" for humans, animals, bacteria, viruses or rocks. Human societies, doing their thing, have developed a variety of concepts of inherent rights. Like the foods you love to hate, rights are just "things" that societies spin out in constructing understandings of humans and animals.
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Racists, Racists, Racists
Yet more people coming along and calling the Chinese barbaric. Making stereotypical judgements based on the anecdotal rhetoric of a few activists and writers. OOOH, those CHINESE don't have ANY respect for human life!
If you want to purify yourself, you're going to have to do a lot more than eating only locally grown food and boycotting Chinese products. You'd have to stop paying taxes to a gov't that invaded another country in a pre-emptive war. And that violates the Geneva convention with torture. By those standards, the world should boycott US from hosting any Olympics. And stop buying all of our imports.
What, you protest? YOU'RE not one of those evil Americans who supports torture and animal abuse? Don't appreciate being stereotyped and lumped in with those bad neighbers you dissociate yourself from? Too bad. It kind of sucks to be painted with a simplistic stroke of a broad brush, doesn't it?