It's emotional appeal, regardless of how it compares to the video.

One does not get the choice between their grandmother and a monkey, nor does one get the choice between a pig and a starving child. This type of discussion is not that literal. It's not a realistic argument to make.

Narsrim, your criticisms of Fyler for being content to take antibiotics (which, incidentally, is a false dichotomy as modern pharmaceutical companies do not all perform/require cruel animal testing, at least in the UK) and yet disapproving of cruel animal testing in the future are quite dubious. It isn't inconsistent to use technologies developed for war during peacetime.

The difference between bacteria and dogs is also hardly fragile - dogs have advanced minds capable of meaningful suffering whereas bacteria do not. (I don't know enough about the scientific details of fly, leech etc. neurology or psychology to comment here but you might be able to make the case that they aren't complex enough to experience things like stress.) The difference in terms of what it becomes morally acceptable to do these animals is non-negligible if suffering matters at all. If suffering DOESN'T matter then there is no reason I shouldn't go lighting cats on fire for the fun of it (also absurd) so let's skip that part.

I sympathise with what seems to be your disbelief that "all creatures are equal" is anything more than an emotional cliche, but even if it's fair to treat human benefit as more important, not everything in keeping with those priorities is justifiable, especially given real alternatives either already available or in sight.

I do wish the video gave more facts on just how common this treatment is.

For those who claim it's just extreme situations used as propaganda, do you have any reasoning behind it? I know someone said they've done papers on animal cruelty.

Sorry Shiri, I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about and/or you are just misinformed. This information is public and readily available posted by both the USDA and British Home Office:

Yet again, according to the video this doesn't matter (did you even watch the video or are you just commenting?). They do not draw a difference whatsoever by orders of intelligence. According to the video, all earthlings are equal. Earthlings are defined as any living creature that inhabits the Earth.

Well, I suppose I can choose what to make of the fact you didn't respond to any of the other points I made while I check out that source to see if I am in fact misinformed (which is possible.) Note that most of that info is meaningless as the stats out on animals that ARE used (and it doesn't even say what kinds of experiments are involved) have nothing to do with the products where animals aren't used...obviously.

EDIT Ok, or you're double posting for some reason. I don't know what this "yet again" is but you make that case yourself...it matters!

Name 10 antibiotics, preferably from different classes that were developed without any form of animal testing. It's not possible, but let's see you try!



These are all for medical research. It's clearly not possible to list the tens of thousands of different types of experiments. However as a general rule, all of the animals were euthananized because that's general medical policy. You don't set mice free that you injected cancer cells into, for example, as it could be exceptionally deleterious to the wild species should they get out.

From the source you yourself quoted (specifically the British home office website:



EDIT:


Ok, one of us is misreading the other's post cause from here it looks like this was a complete non-sequitur to the post of mine you quoted preceding it...EDIT again: Ok, I see how it fits now. It still matters that they don't suffer more than they have to though, and it also matters that there are alternatives. Oh yeah, and just because someone else in this thread mentions an argument the video neglects it doesn't mean it's somehow nonapplicable.

According the video (which you apparently didn't watch) all beings that inhabit the Earth are Earthlings. All Earthlings are "equal." I'm making my argument based upon the topic of this thread: Replying to Earthlings. They do not draw any difference between an invertebrate versus a vertebrate versus a fungus.

I'm fully aware of how regulated animal testing is because I have worked in research labs performing animal testing. My point is that animal researching HAPPENS and it is NECESSARY.

EDIT:

It's also completely true that modern day antibiotics are developed through animal testing. All of them.



And this was said earlier. The point, however, is that the video, Earthlings, suggests that ANY form of animal testing for ANY reason even for a greater good is wrong. I disagree with that statement. I don't think animals should be treated in a cruel fashion, but as the video points out, some experiments are cruel by virtue of the fact that an animal has to die of cancer or what not. It's not the goal of the research, but it does happen.

Well, I've never done any research on it, and don't have any data or facts to provide for why I believe it is a propaganda film full of extreme situations. I base that judgment on the film itself. The over emotional narration. The lack of the very facts you just wish they'd provided. The fact that they didn't mention anything about humans who DO treat animals well. The fact that only the negative aspects of things like animal testing were shown without any data on modern regulation that exists or the real benefits that come from it. Heck, even the way it was edited and shot was done to take every advantage of the horrible things it showed.

The movie was so one sided and so emotional, it was obviously propaganda.

Like I said: Not all pet owners are irresponsible, letting their animals breed and tossing them on the street. Not all animal trainers are cruel. Not all farms are factory farms. Not all zoos are crappy.

The very fact that the movie didn't mention that, tried to paint EVERYONE in the same light as the people in the movie, that it said 'humans are' instead of 'some humans are' makes it propaganda. Yes, there were lots of things in it that need to change, but the irritation I felt at being lumped in with a-holes just because I happen to enjoy meat and have owned dogs (who were spoiled rotten and loved like members of the family and I DARE anyone to say I was 'subjugating them' or whatever the ) because those people were human and I happen to be human too, kinda overshadowed them in my mind at least.

This kind of proganda has been around for ages - it's where the very term muckraker came from: Teddy Roosevelt's condemnation of the first "expose" journalism, ala Sinclair's The Jungle - a novel about, novelly enough, the sins of the meat and slaughterhouse industry. I always find it amusing that the formative subject of this avenue of journalism remains probably the number one topic to "expose" to this day. It implies that the very groups doing the "enlightening" are failing drastically in their task.

To address the last page of discussion: It's rather absurd to equate free-range, organic farming, or hermetic laboratory testing, to insensitive people (probably with social or developmental issues) harming animals for their own sick pleasure, or to mass-farming and the squallid conditions the desire for a profit brings about. The former two are not cruel, they are not torture, and they are not done for simple callow pleasure. Farming can (and is) done in humane, efficient and respectful ways, and all animal testing that is legal in the USA has very high demands placed on it.

I'll give two personal examples, to show my own relations to these issues.

First, I had a job for a while working in MEM (molecular and experimental medicine) at TSRI. Basically, a genetics lab. We were studying a very serious, late onset genetic disease that essentially was alheizmers of the heart. 2% of African Americans have this condition - their heart unravels on them. We were working to pinpoint where, exactly, the "bad" DNA was in the genome as well as ways to suppress it, and that meant lots of experiments, using lots of variables and lots of test groups. Because the disease only manifests late in life, we needed test subjects with a similar genetic makeup to humans, but with a far more attenuated lifespan. We, of course, used mice.

I'm not sure what the public imagines goes on in science labs with animal testing, but it's far less macabre than the PETA-esque mind rabidly makes it out to be. For live testing: simple injections and withdrawls, just like you get at the doctor's office. For terminated subjects: instant, painless euthanization (with mice, most common is to separate their head from their spinal column - it's a single jerk of their tail, instant death, and paralyzes at the same time, so there is no pain, even if the researcher messes up).

tl;dr - animal testing is humane and hardly Dr. Moreau

Second example, and this one is for all the bleeding heart, I'm-a-Vegan-cause-it's-cool-to-be-so-compassionate types. I spent several months travelling with nomadic herders in Mongolia - we birthed, raised, milked, fed, castrated, combed (mmm for cashmere), bandaged, cleaned (at one point, disinfecting and cauterizing a wound infected with maggots/potential flystrike) killed and ate a variety of animals. The raising was done with a professional sort of affection (they knew the temperments of the individual animals and so on, but they never considered them pets), and when we slaughtered them, it was quick and done through a process intended for least trauma and pain to the animal (knock them unconscious with one sharp, concise blow, small incision in the chest, pinch aeorta, within moments they are dead). There was no enjoyment or relishment of the "murder" - and the meal, in the heart of the tundra, leagues from civilization, was both needed and enjoyed, without waste or decadence.

It's entirely possible to give livestock a good life, and just because they are eaten at the end of it does not make it wrong - these species exist because they are part of the human diet's staple. It's not wrong, it's not right, it's history. Shall we eradicate entire species, because they are cute when babies and killing them is wrong? I'd think extinction would perhaps be worse, but that's really your only other option. Domestic animals have no place in the natural ecosystem, save their use by man; they have been bred to diverge so much from their original ancestors that they have gone through speciation. I doubt people will want to pay to house sheep, cows, goats and pigs, merely to retain them as pets.

tl;dr - You can raise, slaughter and eat livestock, and do it in a humane way.

Overall tl;dr - Propaganda to exploit sentimentality and shock the audience glosses over the fact that domesticated animals exist because of humans, and, in mostly all cases are treated humanely, through their life/death. Perhaps it makes me callous to see the ending of their lives as simply something that happens, but it does not make the process cruel or sadistic.

My main problem with videos like this (other than that they are propaganda and mention nothing about the people who DO help) and the people behind it is that they, frankly, seem to have no solutions. California passed a ballot initiative regarding the minimum space chickens should have; ballot initiatives like these would certainly help regarding the treatment of chickens, cows, and other farm animals. There are animal cruelty laws designed to prevent actual cruelty to animals in the US, and laws to prevent exotic animals from being kept as pets and mistreated or released into the wild (of the backyard) by owners who have decided that Sally the Alligator has gotten too big for the bathtub.

I believe the senate is set to consider the Primate Safety Act, which has already passed in the US House of Representatives. The problem, when these regulations already exist, is one of enforcement: for hundreds of thousands of pets in a given city, there may be 50 or 100 people trained to handle animal cruelty cases; not all cities and states allow police officers to function in this capacity without being "animal cops".

Most of the "documentaries" about modern zoos or with segments about zoos are problematic, because they were created by people who have big gaps in their understanding of what it is that zoos do. Accredited zoos don't exist solely so that visitors can come look at the animals and go home. The people who work for zoos are conservationists, and the bigger, well-connected zoos don't just run their facilities: they run research and conservation projects. Some have upwards of 500 field projects, scattered across the globe. A zoo is a tiny tiny tiny portion of what the organization that owns it is doing in terms of research and conservation.

And even if they didn't have those field projects, the bit about animals being better off in the wild is only true if those animals are not subject to poaching, human encroachment upon their territory, and yes, natural predation in the wild. If an elephant from Zakouma (in Chad) could speak and understand a human language, and you told him or her "You're way better off here than in some zoo!", s/he would laugh at you.

Just FYI, that isn't the method that causes the least amount of trauma or pain.



This ballot initiative is cause for much controversy. Many say that farming will stop in California if neighboring states or Mexico don't adopt similiar laws.


What ever differences exist between spiders/flies/termites and cows/pigs/sheep, also exists between cows and humans. It's the old joke.. I'm not a vegetarian because I don't like killing animals, I'm a vegitarian because I REALLY HATE those damn vegetables!

Things have to start somewhere; it's up to citizens in other states to continue the push.

I also have many things to say about why we should import less in the way of essential food products from foreign countries, but that's another topic entirely.

Right, but those california ballots are mainly being proposed by the same sort of people who make the Earthlings Video. So I just wasn't quite sure which direction you were trying to argue. It has been the push to say that animals are equal to people that made them want to pass laws so about cage sizes, in an attept to greatly raise the price of food from animals, so as to cause people to not want to do that anymore. type of thing. (sorry I'm sik right now)

It wouldn't work. I like meat way to much to give it up just cause it's expensive.

Okay...this post may seem a smidge off-topic, but just a smidge. It doesn't have to do with the Earthlings video and/or animal cruelty directly, but rather my reaction to it.

And my reaction to it can be summed up in two words: self-torture.

I haven't even watched the video, but even the mere mention of the topic is enough for me to feel almost suicidally depressed. I know the video will be enough to make me feel like the most horrible being in existence on planet Earth and that the only way to redeem myself is to not exist anymore. I haven't even watched it and already I feel that way.

Okay, so I do feel something on the topic of animal cruelty and veganism, I do feel compassionate enough to try to help, but it seems like the only way I can is by radically altering my lifestyle to be an absolute vegan and fight for this 24/7. If other people can do this, well, more power to them, but I've got enough on my plate and swirling around in my mind as it is, and now I have to give up one of the few things that makes me happy in this world - the things I eat - in order to even feel decent again?

The world just seems like it has impossible standards for one to be truly good. I want to be a good person. I want to believe I'm a good person. But no matter how hard I try to be good, there's always thousands of miles more to take, an incredible amount of suffering and torture I must endure, and seemingly an infinite amount of things I must do to even qualify as a good person.

How much does it take? What more do they want? When will it end? Probably never. I can't afford to feel this way anymore. I can't take this.

My apologies for hijacking this thread, but I had to post this in order to preserve my own sanity.

You have to find your own standards. Don't let somebody else's skewed perception of things influence you. Propaganda films like this are made specifically so you feel like crap untill you adhere to the extremist philosophy they are touting.

You have to come up with your own definition of good, with morals and ideals you personally believe in.

"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? If they screamed all the time for no good reason we might."

What do you mean IF?