Absurd Attitudes
When a lion rips a gazelle apart to feed upon it, that animal dies certainly a very painful death. Would the lion starve to death, that would be painful for him too.
Evolution has favored the survival of the fittest, avoiding suffering was not a part of it.
With the cat in the garden and the birds killed by the cat, it is the same. Nobody is responsible for the lion's killing instinct, but the whoever lets a cat run free is responsible for the suffering of the birds.
In Germany it is against the law to kill a healthy cat or other pet animal in any way, even a veterinarian is not allowed to put him to sleep. But nobody cares about the sufferings of the half dead birds, whom the cat brings into people's houses.
Is there a fundamental difference between a rabbit, a cat and a rat? They are all mammals and not too big. They all suffer pain, when treated cruelly, they all do not know, what is happening to them, when they are painlessly and fast killed. Rats are poisoned and trapped as vermin, rabbits are killed and eaten. But if someone has the bad luck to have a cat deliver a litter of half a dozen on their premises, they have a lot of trouble. If they kill the kittens themselves, they break the law, abandoning them is cruel and against the law, therefore the animal asylums are full with pets, that people cannot keep, or who have been found and abandoned. It costs a lot of money. Principally, there is nothing wrong with this, if there were no humans living in misery anywhere on the globe.
But today I read in the newspaper, that a German supermarket chain pays 11 (Euro)Cent per hour to the workers in sweatshops in Bangladesh sewing trousers to be sold for cheap. With such an income, they can only dream of the luxury life of a dog or cat in a German animal asylum, provided with healthy food and medical care.
Animals should not have suffering afflicted on them, but what about the poor people in Bangladesh? If all stray and unwanted animals would be painlessly put to sleep, and animal asylums be closed, there would a lot of money be available for much more humane purposes, either for supplying some basic needs for the people in Bangladesh and other poor countries or paying them fair wages for their labor.
People buy the cheap clothes from the sweatshops and contribute to the death by starvation of many people in Bangladesh, but cry in outrage about people killing pets.
It is absurd and it is an indirect form of racism, when German dogs are considered to deserve better care than the people from third world countries.
Humans need more protection than animals, because they suffer much more, they consciously experience their suffering. Animals suffer hunger and sickness only in the moment of occurrence, humans additionally suffer the emotional pain of knowing, what comes, of fear in advance, of hopelessness, of emotional pain. As long as the resources are scarce, humans should be cared for first, in priority over animals.
