[SQueeeeeL]

I love the mentality of a lot of people. I feel like free market extremists would literally buy and sell anything from anyone in the world and be like 'listen, all I did was SELL nerve gas to the general, I never intended for him to use it on that ethnic minority group.'

[4ad]

Nerve gas kills people. If the distinction between humans and non-human animals is not recognized, I am afraid all arguments will fall onto deaf ears.

[LeifCarrotson]

There's a distinction, sure, but it's not infinite.

Would you shrug your shoulders and say "they're not humans" when confronted with an animal abuser torturing intelligent family pets? I hope not. The intelligence of some non-humans, like great apes, is pretty incontrovertible. People are familiar with the social and emotional capabilities of dogs, but pigs and cows are surprisingly similar.

On the other hand, would I get up on arms if you squished a mosquito, or if a starving person ate a fish? If you ate a tomato? Of course not, that's ridiculous.

Somewhere on that spectrum is a point where we can evaluate the morality and the utility of killing male chickens to make egg farming more profitable.

It's critical to allow society to understand that part of the system that produces eggs in sterile styrofoam packages for 99 cents is a shredder that turns chicks into cow feed. People who do not understand the food industry cannot make informed choices about what to consume, and people supplying that demand cannot be expected to universally buck incentives.

[wizofaus]

Yes, there's a distinction, but we obviously see non-human animals as being more similar to humans in terms our moral obligations than we do non-living matter, and generally the closer to being a human-like, the more we care about how we treat it. A baby chicken can literally bond to humans, follow us around, and interact with us in various ways. If that isn't enough to grant it as being deserving of ethical/humane treatment, I don't know what is.

[RGamma]

The 1000 IQ aliens cannot arrive quickly enough to cure us of this hubris.

[midoridensha]

I'm looking forward to them destroying the Earth with us on it to build an interstellar bypass, and then telling us that our feelings on the matter aren't important because we're lesser beings.