Gary Francione, a prominent legal scholar and animal rights activist, has written a new piece for Truthout.org conflating the actions of Michael Vick, Ann and Mitt Romney, and all you people who had a cheeseburger this weekend.
Francione argues that “eating animals is, as a matter of moral analysis, no different from dog fighting.”
He says it’s not medically essential, and we eat them purely for our own pleasure. If people agree that it’s wrong to make animals suffer unnecessarily, he reasons, then simple enjoyment of a nice Porterhouse is not a justification for suffering.
You might as well have swung your dog over your head “like a jump rope” and slammed her to the ground. You might as well have driven full-speed down a highway with your dog strapped to the top of your car while shitting in panic, causing him to seek asylum in Canada at the first opportunity. You bastard.
Is he wrong? In the article, he dismisses the argument that enjoying the violent process is somehow different than enjoying the fruits of said process, noting, “[a]s any first-year law student will tell you, if John has an aversion to violence but wants Joe dead and hires Sally to pull the trigger, John is still guilty of murder.”
While Francione makes some compelling points, nowhere in the article does he address those who raise and kill their own livestock for food. Perhaps you’re even worse? The article says that all animals raised for food are living in terrible conditions, no matter how good you might think you’re doing raising those chickens: “there is precious little difference between conventional battery eggs and ‘cage-free’ eggs, where thousands of birds are, in effect, crammed into one large cage.”
But his overarching argument is an interesting one: “We tell ourselves that death is not a harm and the trick is to do it all “humanely.” But we can’t do it ‘humanely’ and, in any event, death is a harm that we should not impose – however ‘humane’ our treatment and method of execution – if we don’t have a good reason.”
I still don’t know what this has to do with Seamus, though. Unless…UNLESS MITT ROMNEY KILLED AND ATE SEAMUS.
