It’s sad you drag people trying to do valuable anti racism, anti homophobia, through the mud of your overtly dishonorable statist and corporatist agenda and utter lack of journalistic ethics, shame!

By the way, where are the pictures of the cat that Marino killed by experimenting on it with a vegan diet? (An incident that makes her a liar when claiming never to have committed a crime as well as a hypocrite.)

It must be a charming photo album.

Animal agriculture uses more water and other resources, and creates more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry. The following article published in the Cornell University News explains further: http://www.news.cornell.edu/re.....k.hrs.html

And as Earth Save explains: http://www.earthsave.org/environment.htm

“It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef ……. 70% of US grain production is fed to livestock.

5 million acres of rainforest are felled every year in South and Central America alone to create cattle pasture.

Roughly 20% of all currently threatened and endangered species in the US are harmed by livestock grazing.
Animal agriculture is a chief contributor to water pollution. America’s farm animals produce 10 times the waste produced by the human population……. (continued)”

———–

Animal research is intended to mitigate the pharmaceutical company’s responsibillity in law suits that follow when drugs harm humans.

What possible justifications could there be? And two wrongs don’t make a right.

————

They don’t have the same level of cognition as average humans, but they experience pain and emotions just like we do. And they have a personal interest in their well being, just as we do in ourselves. The line between humans and other animals is a convenient illusion.

That this is a new field of study is not surprising — because science uses animals, it’s easier for researchers to be unaware of what they’re capable of thinking and feeling. As James Masson explained, the subject of nonhuman emotions is taboo: “When an elephant gets emotional”: http://www.independent.co.uk/n.....21235.html

Nevertheless, some scientists have been willing to venture into forbidden territory:

“Mice in the Sink, On the Expression
of Empathy in Animals” by Jessica Pierce: http://www.environmentalphilos.....Pierce.pdf

From Science Daily:

“New Research Finds Some Animals Know Their Cognitive Limits”: http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....071311.htm

“Rats Capable Of Reflecting On Mental Processes”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....121856.htm

“Evidence Points To Conscious ‘Metacognition’ In Some Nonhuman Animals”:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....172644.htm

Also
“Do Animals Have Emotions? Of course they do!” by Marc Bekoff: http://www.newworldlibrary.com.....fault.aspx

There are more articles available on the web, and books by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson — “The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, the Emotional World of Farm Animals” and several others.

I asked for proof. You gave me names. Obviously you know what I’m talking about.

Self awareness and awareness of physical sensation are two wholly separate conditions. One requires conscious mentation. The other merely requires a functioning nervous system.

While I will never claim that animals involved in research live ideal existences, I believe that researchers attempt to make the animals as comfortable as is possible. Unnecessarily Stressed subjects give false results.

Please, I would be very intrigued to read relevant scholarly articles. And I would be more than happy to change my opinion. Just provide the proof.

Btw, funny thing about dogs and a mirror test — I wouldn’t say my dogs demonstrated self recognition, but they also didn’t bark as they certainly did bark at other dogs. So why not? I don’t know what they were thinking, but it seems they didn’t see the mirror as another dog either.

How would a dog show self recognition in a mirror anyway? How do dolphins and elephants show it? They don’t have hands to point to something as chimpanzees do. I imagine the most dogs could do is show an interest.

I think some scientists are way too arrogant. Because some researchers decided a mirror test was a valid measure of self awareness, nothing else counts? If they were willing to think beyond the lab, they would find other examples of self awareness.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a psychologist who studied nonhuman animals, and found they think and feel a whole lot more than we usually give them credit for. As did Mark Bekoff, former Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who shows nonhumans are emotional beings.

How about the Animal Liberation Front? Is that good enough for you?

Maybe you need to keep looking for those terrorist training camps.

Yup. Because when I show my dog, a beagle/border collie (two of the smartest breeds) a mirror, he realizes he’s looking at himself, right?

Wrong. He looks at it and keeps walking.

If there was a smell, he might think it belonged to him. But there is no self-awareness.

But I’ll give you a fighting chance to prove what I feel are silly ideas. Present to me an article from, say, ‘Nature,’ supporting your position. I think such an eminent journal would be appropriate for such momentous findings.

The ball, as they say, is in your court.

Lab animals experience physical and emotional pain. Indeed, pain relief has often been witheld because it is thought to compromise research. And unlike other animals who almost always kill for survival, most humans have a choice of food. We are the only animal who kills for gratuitous reasons. The history of agriculture shows that human oppression is rooted in the domestication of other animals. In my view, it’s a good idea to “strike the root”.

It is true that animals “give” nothing. Indeed, much research involves taking their lives but in a way that minimizes their pain and suffering with the use of analgesics and anesthetics. Society believes that such work is morally permissible because it has the goal of eliminating the suffering that illness brings to human kind and no other options are available a the present time.

Animal activists may disagree with the ethical or scientific basis of such a position, but if they want to be part of a democratic society where moral disputes are resolved via civil discussion they ought to learn the rules of engagement. Their threats, intimidation and harassment are not to be tolerated any more.

I disagree strongly with their methods, but watch on HSUS video on the way animals are treated, and you will never forget it.

Compassion for animals is common among the good guys, but not among the bad ones. One of the surest signs that a biblical figure is a player in God’s redemptive plan is the person’s decency to the beasts of the field. Humane treatment of animals is seen here with Noah and will be repeated by Moses, Rebecca, Laban, and a host of others. It is not a coincidence that Christ is referred to as the ‘Good Shepherd’.

As St. Francis of Assisi said: “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

After watching some of the videos on the way animals are treated across our society makes one point very clearly – - who are the REAL animals, and it is not of the four-legged kind.

These animals are not sentient. Enough with the lies.