[yerself]

This is a complex and emotive issue we have touched upon. Here is an excerpt from "The Ecologist" :

Let us suppose that animals do have rights; what follows? Surely, the very least that follows is that it is wrong to kill them, to eat them, to keep them as pets, to make them suffer in any way that is not to their individual benefit – and wrong in just the way that it is wrong to do any of this to a human being. That is what the activists say they believe. But do they really believe it? Are they prepared to say that my attempts to rid my barn of rats are tantamount to mass murder? That people who keep cats are complicitous in serial killing? That my keeping a horse in his stable is a case of false imprisonment? That my digging the garden involves the negligent slaughter of innocent worms, beetles and moles? Which activities involving animals would be permitted, and on what grounds?

Full article here: http://www.theecologist.org/archive_...32&category=88