ABC of animal rights (2)

Alfred Zammit states (February 17) that the propagators of animal rights, including myself, are frequently good at "illogical reasoning".

It is not surprising that he takes this view when the only argument he mentions in answer to my words that humans must treat animals with "respect and dignity" is the killing/hunting of animals by other animals. Can we justify our maltreatment of animals by natural hunting instincts? Is this what Mr Zammit refers to as logical reasoning?

Does respect and dignity boil down to killing only? The list of obscenities by humans against other animals in general is endless, and this is before we start discussing the treatment of animals for human consumption. Just mentioning habitat destruction is enough to realise that humans are creating havoc in nature.

Do the crocodile, cheetah and fox mentioned in Mr Zammit's letter destroy the environment they hunt their prey in, the same environment on which their existence depends? Only humans are short-sighted enough to do this, and thus the statement attributing "uncontrolled logging, pollution of oceans..." to humans "acting at the level of foxes" is completely inaccurate. Not even chimpanzees, that share 98 per cent of their genes with humans, were capable of doing this.

You can only attribute this destruction to humans lifting themselves above other animals, and in the process displaying uncontrolled egoism.

Furthermore, animal rights are only required because of the sustained egoistic mentality adopted by humans in the last couple of hundred years, that has degraded nature in general to a point where many species of wild animals have either become extinct, endangered or else treated as pests.

If this weren't the case then there would be no place for this polemic.