> its hard to draw a distinct line that my belly has more justifaction to their life than much more valuable scientific progress.
Ironically enough, I'm vegetarian and keep a snake. He is a Ball Python, and not a particularly good eater, so I feed him live rats. Doing this can truly makes me sad as Rat's death is sometimes... prolonged, and sometimes Rat is friendly and smart. But Snake needs to eat whole animals, while conversely I can get by just fine on beans and rice. Keeping and feeding Snake is very–philosophically enlightening(?)–I can't quite grasp the words for it–but it acts as a reminder of the natural order of life, and a reinforcer of why I think of animals the way I do. Snake is a simple, reptilian killing machine[1] juxtaposed by rats who often are smart, curious, capable critters, yet Snake must eat rats or he will starve.
It seems you understand this, but you can't realistically develop new products for human use on any type of a time scale that most people would be happy with, and the amount of human happiness those products enable, especially through longer, healthier lives to share with family, and the literally billions of lives affected, makes testing on animals a worthwhile evil, at least to me.
I've been party to this(your) view before, typically when I defend animal testing and someone points out that I'm vegetarian with confusion and outrage, both mild, and proceeds to remind me that I often cite animal welfare as a significantly motivating factor in my diet. So I guess my comment is to say that I think it comes at least partially from a place of not being close enough to death. We hide away slaughter houses and even import immigrants to work at them, meat comes to us in plastic packages often with specific names that further us from the animal that much more. Indeed, I know that if I had met the cow that produced the cheese that I so love and keeps me from becoming a vegan, I would refrain much more than I do.
But that is just me, I've met plenty of people who raise pigs named porkchop, bacon, and babyback, or a cow named Angus, and while they don't slaughter the animal themselves, I have no doubt they would. They just really love meat and don't have the same reverence for animals that I do, but most of them feel the same way about my (lack of) religion. Different strokes, live and live, it takes all kinds~
[1] I must admit Snake gets curious sometimes wishing to escape and explore, and it makes me sad that I can't let him act upon those wants because it wouldn't be in the best interest of his welfare.
Ironically enough, I'm vegetarian and keep a snake. He is a Ball Python, and not a particularly good eater, so I feed him live rats. Doing this can truly makes me sad as Rat's death is sometimes... prolonged, and sometimes Rat is friendly and smart. But Snake needs to eat whole animals, while conversely I can get by just fine on beans and rice. Keeping and feeding Snake is very–philosophically enlightening(?)–I can't quite grasp the words for it–but it acts as a reminder of the natural order of life, and a reinforcer of why I think of animals the way I do. Snake is a simple, reptilian killing machine[1] juxtaposed by rats who often are smart, curious, capable critters, yet Snake must eat rats or he will starve.
It seems you understand this, but you can't realistically develop new products for human use on any type of a time scale that most people would be happy with, and the amount of human happiness those products enable, especially through longer, healthier lives to share with family, and the literally billions of lives affected, makes testing on animals a worthwhile evil, at least to me.
I've been party to this(your) view before, typically when I defend animal testing and someone points out that I'm vegetarian with confusion and outrage, both mild, and proceeds to remind me that I often cite animal welfare as a significantly motivating factor in my diet. So I guess my comment is to say that I think it comes at least partially from a place of not being close enough to death. We hide away slaughter houses and even import immigrants to work at them, meat comes to us in plastic packages often with specific names that further us from the animal that much more. Indeed, I know that if I had met the cow that produced the cheese that I so love and keeps me from becoming a vegan, I would refrain much more than I do.
But that is just me, I've met plenty of people who raise pigs named porkchop, bacon, and babyback, or a cow named Angus, and while they don't slaughter the animal themselves, I have no doubt they would. They just really love meat and don't have the same reverence for animals that I do, but most of them feel the same way about my (lack of) religion. Different strokes, live and live, it takes all kinds~
[1] I must admit Snake gets curious sometimes wishing to escape and explore, and it makes me sad that I can't let him act upon those wants because it wouldn't be in the best interest of his welfare.