{{{Boogie on the head of a pin}}}

Here's my *humble* opinion on the issue of animal rights and culling of the stray cats.

I so know I'm going to get flamed/accused of being heartless and amoral again...=) Ah well, here it goes anyway.

First off, animal rights is a load of conflicted mixture of knee-jerk sympathy and really odd logical and philosphical reasoning. Members of the house, yes to animal welfare, but animal rights is simply doing everyone a disservice. With rights come responsibility. One can no more ascribe rights to animals than one can to, say, rocks. Both are simply incapable of fulfilling meaningful (in human terms) responsibilities. Actually, one could ascribe rights more to rocks than animals, at least when you tell a rock to stay put and be a paper weight it will.

Without bringing in religion/theocracy of any from, which in any case is divided on the issue of animal rights, the fact still remains that Humans are in fact and in deed superior to animals. The capacity for rational thinking alone should set us apart from animals and anyone who disputes that has to agree that there's a lot of logical hoops that one has to jump through before animals even look superior to humans. As such, assigning rights to animals on the basis of equality simply cannot work. Instead the most that one can do or achieve in any meaningful/rational fashion is to acknowledge that animals are inferior to humans which gives us at the very least (or most), the duty to care or protect for them should we claim ownership to them. To that end, animal welfare should triumph over animal rights.

Hence, yes to meat. Yes to animal testing. But similarly, only yes to arbatoirs and no to slaughter-houses which needlessly make animals suffer before killing them. Yes to animal testing for medications, at least until better alternatives are available (cellular and virtual systems simply do not cut it as yet, which is why their rightful place is still as a prelude to animal testing) but a qualified no to comestic testing. If w are honest with ourselves, or companies like Bodyshop are, what they mean by against animal testing is that the products are not tested on animals, but the components either are, or are products already previously tested such that they have been proven to have no ill effects on us.

No needless suffering and if we have to kill animals, let it be for a decent rational cause, and let them die with dignity...

p.s. Pity that dignity in death doesn't seem to apply to us does it?

the proxy blogger is highly apologetic that this post is published so late...