full point wrote:I can handle gazelles being taken down by hungry hyenas, cows being strung up by their innards, even monkeys having their brains exposed but there's something about watching dogs (cats even) getting treated badly that is too much.
Fucking kills me.
It "fucking kills" me too. We bred these animals to trust us and live with us, and since we're the ethical beings in this relationship, we do have a social and moral obligation to them. I understand the need for animals in research, but it's profoundly distressing that there is so much inhumane treatment and unnecessary pain and loss in the process.
The problem is, since industrialization, we have lived in a society that's very utilitarian in its thinking and worldview, and thus the inherent value of living beings of any kind is highly contingent upon how they can be utilized for society's benefit. Further, the end justifies the means, and so cruelty and inhuman conduct gets rationalized as acceptable or even necessary if the end product is seen for the greater good. Ethically obliging notions like dignity and compassion don't really factor into the utilitarian mindset - these things are seen as purely subjective, and thus unobliging and dispensable in the grander scheme of things.
So unfortunately, things like this aren't so isolated. They are simply symptomatic of a vastly larger societal problem.