[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

I don't think you are representing what he is saying accurately. He didn't equate killing animals to murder, dog fights and genital mutilation. He was drawing analogies to show inconsistencies in logic. Someone could say it is moral to treat livestock cruelly because they are bread to be livestock, for which he replied, there are countries where it is legal to raise dogs to participate in dog fighting, so does that make it right? If the answer is not then someone is not being intellectually honest or consistent with their reasoning. Just because livestock is our food, doesn't make it moral for us to treat it inhumanly.

For instance, some people would not eat a dog, but they would eat a pig. Why the difference? Studies show pigs are just as intelligent, if not, more intelligent than a dog. Pigs can be just as domesticated to be pets as dogs. Pigs have been used as service animals. Most people would not treat the livestock they eat the way these animals are treated or treat their pets like how we treat livestock, but they are comfortable being ignorant or having someone else abuse the animals for them. Why is that?

Many vegans would prefer that no animals are killed cruelly, but given the choice of having everyone hunt and fish for their own food or factory farming of meat, they would gladly choose hunting. Why? Because a wild deer is a free-range animal in its natural habitat that is able to enjoy its life free of living in a small cage, free of standing in its own feces and that wasn't subjected to breeding techniques designed to make it grow faster than its legs could support it, but we don't live in that world. We live in this world, and I think if you are a person who watches a video like this with these "free range" birds and just shrugs their shoulders and reaches for their next piece of chicken then we have far different morals:

That's what a straw man is. He is taking the argument as to whether it is appropriate to kill animals for food and completely changing the context to something that is easier for him to justify his position. It isn't an analogy to explain something in layman's terms, he is actively using the new context to try to convince people his earlier, and only tenuously related, statement is sound. It is not a cultural thing. It is simply about the diet of humans.