Chris Blattman

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Some animals are more equal than others

It’s time to take a look at the line between “pet” and “animal.” When the ASPCA sends an agent to the home of a Brooklyn family to arrest one of its members for allegedly killing a hamster, something is wrong.

That “something” is this: we protect “companion animals” like hamsters while largely ignoring what amounts to the torture of chickens and cows and pigs. In short, if I keep a pig as a pet, I can’t kick it. If I keep a pig I intend to sell for food, I can pretty much torture it.

From Mark Bittman.

5 Responses

  1. And then you have the charismatic megafauna. Someone once had the thought provoking questions of how the world would have reacted in 20,000 chimps, rather than children, had been abducted in northern Uganda

  2. Not to mention sometimes they may be the same animals! As a Peace Corps Volunteer in an Andean country, we heard (possibly urban legends) about people in the US being charged with animal cruelty for killing guinea pigs, which we thought of as “dinner” not “pets”.

  3. “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows” and “Eating Animals” are definitely on my (never ending) reading list.

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