Welfare reforms and the whole “happy” exploitation movement are not “baby steps.” They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction.
There is no moral distinction between fur and other materials made from animals, such as leather, which also is the result of the suffering and death of sentient beings.
We cannot talk simultaneously about animal rights and the ‘humane’ slaughter of animals.
An aim of an argument should be progress, but progress ultimately means little without victory.
There is no ‘need’ for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet.
There is no morally coherent difference between fur and other animal clothing, such as leather, wool, etc., just as there is no morally coherent distinction between meat and milk or eggs.
The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.
Being vegan is not just a matter of being ‘kind’ to animals. First and foremost, it is a matter of being just and observing our moral obligation to not treat other sentient beings as things.
We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong – and possibly more morally wrong – to consume dairy.
We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we an use and kill for our purposes.
We should take good care of the domestic animals we have brought into existence until they die. We should stop bringing more domestic animals into existence.
We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.
Who I’ve been is not as important as who I’m becoming.
If an animal has any rights at all, it’s got the right not to be eaten.
It costs us so little to go vegan. It costs animals so much if we don’t.
Veganism must be the baseline if we are to have any hope of shifting the paradigm away from animals as things and toward animals as nonhuman persons.
Vegetarianism as a moral position is no more coherent than saying that you think it morally wrong to eat meat from a spotted cow but not morally wrong to eat meat from a non-spotted cow.
Domesticated animals such as dogs and cats are vulnerable and entirely dependent on us for all of their needs. They live very unnatural lives because they are not part of the human world and they are not part of the animal world.
When it comes to animals, we suffer from moral schizophrenia.
To say that a sentient being is not harmed by death denies that the being has the very interest that sentience serves to perpetuate. It would be analogous to saying that a being with eyes does not have an interest in continuing to see or is not harmed by being made blind. The Jains of India expressed it well long ago: “All beings are fond of life, like pleasure, hate pain, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear.
We must abolish, and not regulate, animal exploitation. The abolition of animal exploitation requires a paradigm shift. It requires a recognition that violence against the vulnerable is inherently wrong. It calls for a revolution of the heart.