Try no.4 for inspiration!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/sample/db_bass_loopsp01.shtml

I'm upset about Shambo the condemned bullock kept in the Hindu Temple in Wales.  Apparently he's tested positive for TB.  Presumably he's being treated for it and as he's kept in complete isolation anyway - what the hell have they got to slaughter him for?

So tomorrow at 8 a.m., he's going from a gentle, loving, cossetted existence, to be bundled unceremoniously into the back of a truck, taken to the abbatoir, hit on the head and then have his throat cut.  Surely this is completely unnecessary in the circumstances?  It isn't as if he's ever going to mix with any other herds.  We don't slaughter people when they have TB we give them antibiotics!   

I've been a vegetarian for the last 25 years.  It is cruel and unnecessary particularly after the loving way he's been treated up to now.  The way most people treat animals makes me sick.

Why should "sacred" animals have more rights than regular ones?

No they don't.  At least I don't think so.  This certainly isn't true of many primates anyway.  I think most people believe it unlikely for very small animals, but even then they can ascribe definite intelligent to very small creatures (bees in particular, but even some quite small spiders can be QUITE unnervingly calculating).

Animal testing is a weird are for me.  It's not a particularly pleasant sort of research to be engaged in, but at the same time I know its importance, and I tend to respect people conducting experiments on animals.

Did you misunderstand what I said?  I disagreed with the "scientists would have us believe" part; many scientists (Richard Dawkins included) do very much believe that many animals have rather significant capacity for emotional behaviour.


Hmmm.  I don't know if I fully like this reasoning, as it tends to bias people towards the more anthropomorphic animals.  What does a sad squid look like? Does that mean they're not capable of feeling sad though?

I wasn't talking about tests on the emotional capacities of animals, just animal testing in general (I am most familiar with the rather gritty/disturbing area of brain research myself)


Scientists can't say either way yet.  So they don't (at least in scientific journals).  They do, however usually admit that they "don't know", so.  I don't see any problem with trying to *rationalize* emotional behaviour, though.  Surely it's a good thing to know how our emotions (not just animal's) benefit us.  Of course, then there's the rather dubious field of evolutionary psychology, which is a bit wishy-washy (though still quite interesting!).

I simply don't know where I stand on animal testing. It's one of the few things in life I haven't made up my mind about yet. It does seem arrogant and wrong, but if it was my child who was ill, and a drug tested on animals was the answer, I don't think I'd refuse. Obviously testing to make cosmetics is totally immoral, but medicines?

The part about testing using animals that worries me is that test animals are usually picked because a particular aspect of their physiology is similar enough to human that they can be used as an alternative to human volunteers (anybody willing to try this new drug? hands up. We, um, may have to remove parts of you after the experiment, you understand). This often means that large numbers of animals are used to validate the results of a small number of experiments, and are often sacrificed (or preferred euphemism) to obtain tissue.

Granted that the researchers probably have good reasons not to complicate the picture by using the same animals for more than one experiment it still seems callous, to me, that an animal should be used for a single experiment which requires that it be killed.