We ban the killing of pandas but allow the killing of pigs, who are demonstrably smarter. Welfare and rights both struggle with this cognitive dissonance. Rights solves it (all have a right to life), but society refuses to enforce it.
At the bottom rung is —sadistic, unnecessary harm universally condemned (and increasingly criminalized). At the top rung is Total Liberation —the abolition of all forms of animal ownership, use, and exploitation. We ban the killing of pandas but allow
The rights position, most famously articulated by Australian philosopher Peter Singer (in Animal Liberation , 1975) and legal scholar Tom Regan (in The Case for Animal Rights , 1983), argues that animals are not property. They are "subjects-of-a-life" with inherent value, irrespective of their utility to humans. At the bottom rung is —sadistic, unnecessary harm
We need both. We need the welfare advocate who improves the slaughterhouse to reduce the seconds of agony. And we need the rights advocate who refuses to enter the slaughterhouse at all, holding up a mirror to our deepest contradictions. They are "subjects-of-a-life" with inherent value