ANIMAL RIGHTS BILL 1 - Tom Regan speaks.

What would animals do with Animal rights?

I minimize animal suffering by making sure that when I take an animal I do so with the most lethal option available to me, with the minimum chance of a wounding.

Hunting squirrels, I go for head shots so they die instantly. Bird hunting I use dogs to make sure they are recovered quickly and if still living, quickly dispatched. With deer, I go for reliably lethal shots.

But they have no RIGHT to such treatment. It is my essential compassion that dictates that I minimize suffering.

I see. Do humans have rights, or do just follow the same principle of compassion with regard to them?

Good question. Do humans have rights?

If humansd have the right to our moral consideration, then surely at least some animals must also have that right. I cannot conceive of how moral rights could be conferred simply on the basis of biological species.

Also, where do you get your fruits and vegetables? If you're so averse to agricultural practices that have the side-effect of killing animals, then I'm interested to hear your answer.

That wasn't the question. Do humans have rights.

I have no aversion to eating agriculturally produced foods. I just like to point out the hypocrisy of vegans lecturing me about hunting, & forcing them to face the fact that they kill more animals than I do.

*I* originally asked *you* that very question, and you just repeated it. What do YOU think? Do humans have rights?

Also, if they really cared about endangered species, they would encorage them to be farmed for their meat and fur. How many farmed animals are rare?

Not to mention that by making farmed clouded leopard skins available, you would collapse the value of the poached skins. Reducing the incentive for killing them in the wild.

Establish a breeding population which can be returned to the wild, and destroy the illicit market in their skins in one fell swoop.

Frarress wictoly.

We killed them because they killed people? I was under the impression that wolves tended to avoid people. Can you provide some evidence for your argument? What I said comes from the essay "Thinking Like a Mountain" by Aldo Leopold. Wolves killed deer. Hunters wanted to hunt the deer. Hunters killed the wolves.

Our history of early settlement and colonization is rife with accounts of humans being killed by various predatory animals. It is also quite possible that we killed them to reduce competition, but I have not read about that.

Wolves are not stupid however, and as our weaponry improved they learned to avoid us. Today you can go to Yellowstone and witness them taking down prey (I have personally seen them take elk twice while cross country skiing in Leopold Canyon).