If you believe that then you need to stop breeding and training horses
Well I don’t know about your training or horsekeeping methods, but ours do not involve keeping our animals in a situation where they never see the light of day, have no freedom to express any normal social behavior or where they are locked up, unable to move (ever in our case) 24/7. The same cannot be said for meat or research animals.
There is a HUGE difference between caring and responsible pet/animal ownership and the methods used today in research and the meat industry…and I think most of us know this. Nor have I ever seen anywhere where PETA or HSUS have made an effort to ban animal ownership in general. This may be the belief of some of their followers, but it is not their agenda nor has it ever been, as far as I have seen.
And as for what rights animals should have?
Well, it would be nice if they had the right to express normal social behaviors, if they had the right to be able to move around freely for at least a few hours of the day, to stretch their limbs and to express natural behaviours. It would be nice if they were given sedatives and pain killers when parts of their bodies need to be hacked off to prevent them from expressing symptoms of extreme stress (stereotypies). It would be nice if they were treated with dignity and respect , for they deserve at least that if they are to die for something so petty as the momentary quenching of a food craving. It would be nice if they have the right to not be used in experiments that have already been done six hundred thousand times and they should also have the right to have sedation when being opperated on alive. They should have the right so socialize with their offspring and they should have the right to be spared from being caught in leghold traps. I am sure I can think of more such “rights”, but those are a sampling of what comes to mind when I think of what rights animals should have. I am not saying they should all be set free to get hit by cars and freeze to death. Just the basic right to be spared the extreme mental and physical pain that is caused in an effort to do things the cheapest way possible.
God forbid if we granted them these basic rights, these basic dignities…after all, what in the world would we do if we had to pay ten cents more per pound of meat??! Or if we had to stop wearing the dead body of another animal, or if we had to live without yet another brand of mascara. Wow, what a sacrifice, we’d really be suffering then.:rolleyes: