bootsie wrote:
The only moral equivalency I was referencing was that cows and chickens and pigs feel pain and suffer in basically the same way that dogs and cats do, and as a society, we've deemed that these latter animals deserve legal protection from the kinds of abuses that factory-farmed animals suffer every day. That.... is a contradiction.
It's a good argument but hardly a solid fact. I'd say the current laws against animal cruelty stem more from the emotional relationships humans have formed with their pets than a consensus on their level of consciousness. The distinction between animals as food and friends might be illogical but it's deeply embedded in our racial memory. So you're still dealing with a gray area.