Quote:
Originally Posted by starseed
If you will eat a hamburger and you protest the seal hunt, you are a hypocritical ###### bag.
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I disagree with this. You can't lump every instance of people killing animals into the same heap. Would you say that everyone who disagrees with bullfighting and eats beef is hypocritical, or everyone who disagrees with live-skinning of dogs for theirs furs and eats beef is hypocritical?
There's raising a domesticated animal in captivity and killing it for food (beef industry)
There's raising a domesticated animal for fur (rabbits)
There's hunting a wild animal for food (wild venison, much of the fishing industry)
There's hunting wild animals to cull an unchecked population (seals industry)
There's hunting a wild animal and killing it for fur/trophy (also seal industry)
There's raising a wild animal in captivity and killing it for fur (mink or fox)
There's killing an animal simply for entertainment (bull-fighting)
And that's without getting into complications of methods of kill.
But all of these situations are different, and whether the animal is wild or domesticated, whether it's hunted or raised, and whether it's killed for fur or food, and whether it's killed humanely or inhumanely are all valid ways that people can build their value systems for what's acceptable treatment of animals. I'm not advocating one over the other, I'm just saying that they're all valid value systems.
On the other hand, cute/not cute is not a valid reason to differentiate between acceptable treatment of animals, which is why I believe that a lot of criticism of the seal hunt is hypocritical.