In your opinion, what is the worst act/example of animal cruelty in the world today?

Factory farming.

I would have to say eating animals isn’t very kind treatment.

When I saw photos of dog and cat meat markets in China on the internet, it was disgusting and upsetting. Some say it’s not different than the way we treat farm animals here, but at least, here, we have regulations for minimum standards. In China they have nothing. If you google dog meat markets China, you’ll see photos and it will stay with you. I really should not have viewed the pictures, as it kind of traumatized me. In some cases they skin the animals while they’re still alive (barely alive, but alive). They bend the dogs’ legs backwards behind their backs so the dogs cannot go anywhere. It must be excruciating. Totally disgusting.

I’m kind of biased towards animals, so I can’t pick just one thing because I think it’s all pretty much equally bad. I also know that I eat meat, so maybe I’m not as passionate as I think, but I still have a very soft spot that an adult human probably couldn’t reach lol.

Speaking of China, the whole killing tigers because they are supposed to be magic and give you better boners is pretty fucked up.

Another vote for factory farming. Institutionalized and invisible cruelty is still cruel, and factory farming affects billions of animal lives.

People who get pets without any clue how to take care of them and become overwhelmed and leave them with the “shelter” to be adopted.

Cruelty is also coming from those who have a lot of issues in their life and take it on the pets because they are weaker.

The massive slaughter of dolphins documented in The Cove.

The story of Twiggy the pitbull puppy that was starved to death. (Any pet that isn’t properly taken care of). It’s a recent local story where I live. The owners have been found and are now in jail.

The extermination of all the Roosevelt elk and kaibab mule deer on Santa Rosa Island at the end of the year. In the name of conservation.

@nikipedia got it. Seriously, if you don’t feel any guilt eating a McDonald’s hamburger, you are either incapable of guilt or just ignorant of where your food comes from.

All of it, the whole nine yards!

Factory farming.

Billions of animals being tortured for their entire lives so humans get slightly cheaper Mcnuggets and big macs.

I also think it’s important to distinguish between killing animals (which can be humanely done) and the conditions that animals are forced to live in for their entire lives. I have little problem with quickly killing chickens. I have a big problem keeping chickens in cages so tiny that they cannot physically move for their entire lives, and cutting their beaks off so that they don’t peck each other to death in distress.

Slightly off topic…

Bullfighting is actually much worse than what you see. Before the bull even goes in to the ring, it is often tormented so it will be angry.

Furthermore, when the bull is stabbed with the long sword, it very rarely kills the bull. The idea is to drive the sword in to the creatures heart, but you would need surgical precision to do that, most of the time the bull is just badly stabbed and it then takes it hours to days to die. Some times they even take the animal away and torment it some more as it dies. Workers will often pour vinager or other such thing on the bull’s open wound, why I don’t know, I just know they do.

The insitutionalized things like farming or bullfighting don’t bother me as much as random acts of cruelty by individual humans, like the video of that kitten in the bathtub that was set on fire, or that US Marine that threw a puppy off a cliff.

At least the nice thing about the internet is that when tards post things like this to the internet, people are incensed enough to scavenge, glean information, or outright hack in order to get them handed over to the police.

@sinscriven: “The insitutionalized things like farming or bullfighting don’t bother me as much as random acts of cruelty by individual humans” This is fascinating to me. I get the impression that many people feel this way. Could you elaborate? What makes the individual act worse than the systemic torture of an entire industry?

@tom_g : Mentality and or intent, mostly. Factory farming is done out of pragmatism and maximizing profit; Bullfighting is an entrenched and accepted tradition. Both can be considered cruel, but they’re not done with intended malice.

But for a person to do the examples I made above, are vicious acts for no logical purpose. These people are sociopaths.

@sinscriven – Interesting. Thanks for following up. So, you’re saying that factory farming is amoral in a way, while the acts of individuals on the internet are immoral?

Is it possible that the real difference is that you don’t see the factory farm stuff on the internet (yes, I know it’s there), but the individual cases get more play because they are sexy?

@tom_g : I think you put it succinctly, yes.

But I think things like bullfighting are sort of a gray area, in my opinion. It’s not a bad thing to go to a NASCAR race, but one would be a bit of a jerk to go if what they really want to see is someone crash, or in this case to see a bull murdered.

How about we all agree that any animal cruelty, whether factory farming, individual acts, bullfighting, or any torture of animals are equally horrible and disgusting? (can’t we all just get along?_)

@sinscriven – What about the scale of the suffering? Does that play into this at all?

And regarding intention – If I owned a company, hired immigrant workers, and beat them in order to maximize their productivity and my profit, would that be less troubling to you than if I beat my wife because I was a sociopath who enjoyed seeing people in pain?

Yeah, I agree with @tom_g. I don’t buy the “amoral” argument against factory farming. In a way I think the fact that it’s done for profit makes it worse.

Sociopaths are sociopaths, they can’t help what they are. I almost feel sorry for them. The human beings who run agribusinesses and the consumers who buy 95% of the meat and eggs on sale? They should know better; they are capable of empathy with the animals being tortured on a mass scale; they just choose to ignore it for convenience.

To say nothing of the sheer difference of scale.

There are so many and they all make me sick to the stomach. I love all animals but dogs have just a tiny bit more of my heart. @jonsblond‘s link made me cry.

@tom_g : Of course scale matters. You’re implying that because I don’t have the same reaction to both that I care less about it. I’m only talking about what gives me the most visceral reaction, and I take exception to cruelty done by malice, much in the same way people think there’s a special exception to ‘hate crimes” over “regular crime”.

They’re both negative things, but sometimes the intent of the crime causes a different reaction. To me, personally indifference to suffering does not affect me the same way contempt for life can. But they still both upset me. I still think all who cause crimes of either stripe should be punished equally.

@poisonedantidote That’s awful. I just don’t know what drives “people” to want to do that to a bull? Why do people get a kick out of torturing a big bull? What’s the rationale behind this “spectator sport” as they call it?

@MRSHINYSHOES The “matador” gets to prove how manly he is by taking on such a dangerous beast. (ignoring the fact that 99% of the time its just a controlled execution)... the others are just sick in the head, or missing some key component in their humanity.

I have seen it with my own eyes before they closed the bull fighting ring in my area down for good. Men in theor 40’s torturing this half dead animal on the floor, with their little toddlers looking and laughing at the noises the bull makes. ... I know, it sounds like something out of a nightmare.

With any luck bull fighting can’t go on for any longer than 20 years or so. People are starting to protest it.

@poisonedantidote I hope it becomes extinct soon. It’s such a stupid spectacle——to prove one’s manliness, but I read that even an 11 year-old boy is killing bulls in the ring! I don’t remember the kid’s name, but when people cheer on a kid for committing such senseless cruelty, what does that say about our world?

I think it also has to do with the “enjoyment” of seeing someone defeat something bigger and stronger than the matador himself, and when people get in on the action to torture the beast, they get a kick out of knowing they are denigrating a big and threatening thing. To me, it’s sick. But why the “fun”? What’s so fun about it?

@MRSHINYSHOES It’s interesting you mention the 11 year old kid.

See, killing a bull in a ring does not prove how much of a man you are at all, it does not even require that much skill. Bulls are not too clever, all you have to do is wave a kape at them and they will go for it, as it runs past the side of you and you move out of its vision, you stab it.

Yes, bullfighters some times get hurt, but really, it’s so rare. You will find plenty of videos online of a bullfight going wrong, but you will find millions and millions more videos of just bulls being stabbed to death.

As for the “fun” of it, for the spectators, I think the majority just want to see a bullfighter get killed in the ring.

@poisonedantidote It’s a culture of violence. All cultures engender elements of violence in some of its traditions, and the Spanish bullfight is one of them. I hate how proponents of bullfighting try to rationalize it by arguing it’s part of tradition, part of the rich history of Spanish culture. Just because it’s tradition doesn’t make it right.

Yes, there’s an 11 year-old boy who has been killing bulls in the ring since he was 6 (?). It’s terrible. I think the kid almost got killed once, but I don’t remember the details. It’s stupid when newspaper headlines glorify it, as if it’s an amazing feat for a young boy to kill a bull. We got to change people’s mindset about such barbaric things.

I think the worst is the apathy and ignorance towards animal extinction and habitat destruction. Other cases may be worse in human terms and individual suffering, such as some industrial chickens.