Consumption of (parts of) dogs and/or other animals gives potency and love.
If you want to know why, click these links for more information. In the following text we will (briefly) touch upon the prejudice that animals lack certain qualities that people have. 5 dogs on their way to the market where they will be sold to people who will butcher and eat them.
In Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam) people have always kept dogs for consumption.
Lately this practice has started to assume factory-farming-like proportions.
For them this practice is just as normal as eating pigs is for us.
Pigs are more intelligent than dogs, but does that matter?
Do animals have properties such as: intelligence, awareness, pain, language, responsibility, and self-control?
Do animals have relationships, do they have feelings like nervousness, love, anger, guilt, fun, sorrow, fear?
Can animals stand up for themselves?
Do they dream? Can animals think?
Nobody can deny that animals possess most of these traits, and for other traits we have thought up different names, so that they appear to be different.
The affection and care a mother displays for her offspring is called "instinct" in animals, as if to say that animals, like some sort of machines, "display maternal behavior".
Don't be misled: animal behavior toward their offspring is characterized by almost all the same things as human behavior.
Anglers mistakenly justify their animal abuse by denying that fish can feel pain, fear or stress.
Realizing your own mortality
Others think that animals do not realize their own
mortality and point to the phenomenon that animals passively
go to their deaths in the slaughterhouse. Newspapers
regularly publish report about animals that do not want
to die and try to escape. Sometimes these animals receive
a "general amnesty" and are cared for by other
people. It's safe to wonder whether those animals that
passively go to the slaughter aren't consciously choosing
to end their animal-unworthy existence. Maybe the imprisoned
mother animal that bites her young to death is not so
crazy. She is protecting her young from her own faith.
Awareness
Neurologist Antonio Damasio says that only living beings
can have awareness, and that organisms are aware of
themselves and their relationships with the outside
world. The basis for this is the development of a self
in the brain, which is necessary to maintain the image
of the organism. This is a need for self-regulation
and self-representation that is deeply anchored inside
the organism. From this theory we can conclude that
even animals have awareness, and also that computers
will never have it.
Is man superior to animals?
In our history these capacities have been "reasoned
away" by people who found it necessary to place
people above animals. From this self-constructed position
they could justify their immoral behavior toward animals.
They would not have this justification if they had to
recognize that people are basically a species of animal.
Now that humans really no longer need the submission
of animals for their own survival, and are still maintaining
it to reap economical benefits, it's time to give back
to animals what was taken from them: to be equal
habitants of this planet, with the same rights we
allow ourselves.
This article is part of a series on falsities and demagogy.
Some arguments used in debate on the topics in the title simply are invalid.
That goes for pro and contra.
We selected a few of the most rigid arguments from
different situations and placed an appropriate counterargument.
Because a more clear and honest way of reasoning helps improve the circumstances animals live in. Mail us if you encounter other or new (counter)-arguments.
Apart from the specific issues there are the types of
arguments in general.
Fallacies are deliberately or accidentally used in a debate.
So be aware of the principles and the integrity of an opponent.
Click here for tips on how to react to animal-unfriendly behavior of others.
Non-valid arguments (deceptive arguments) for different groups
In our history these capacities have been "reasoned
away" by people who found it necessary to place
people above animals. From this self-constructed position
they could justify their immoral behavior toward animals.