Is animal protection important for society?

If you took the entire budget for animal charities and animal control and gave it to the impoverished, I don’t think it would improve their circumstances much. Better to tackle both problems independently.

I think we should balance between saving animals and people. If you treat animals well but people badly then it isn’t worth it and vice versa.

By casting the question as society vs animals, you are making what some would regard as an artificial distinction. What right do we have to consider humans as superior to other animals? The philosopher Peter Singer says that since animals are capable of suffering then they have rights. When I first saw this argument I thought it was kind of absurd, but after giving it some thought, I can’t think of a way of answering it.

Animal welfare is vitally important to the planet. I would not pit animals against humans. They are both important. Our compassion as a species is at stake.

All life forms deserve to be cared for and protected, I do not feel that humans are ‘superior” to all other life forms. I wouldn’t spend 10k to treat a hamster for cancer but I would make sure it did not suffer either.
Life is life and suffering is suffering whether you were born a mouse or a human.
I also do not feel animals should be enslaved by science either.

Yes, animals have contributed to many medical advances but at the cost of great suffering to them. We don’t need to figure out any more new ways to keep humans alive into infinity and beyond, we need a great die off as it is if this planet has any hope of recovering from the carnage we have already wreaked.

Why not save both?

It’s a false trade-off. Politicians have been handing lying crap dilemmas at the public and getting away with it for far too long. Such as “Social Security is going bankrupt” and treating it as a budget issue when even dotard actor pretending to be president Ronald Reagan said the truth that it had nothing to do with the budget because it’s a separate system. And by the way it’s not going bankrupt. Raising ridiculous irrelevant arguments as if we need to compromise and balance.

“Oh, there are poor people suffering, so let’s not be good to animals.” No, let’s stop letting banks and corporations run our government, stop giving tax breaks to the super-wealthy, and treat everyone (including animals, excluding corrupt politicians and greedbag corporate pawns) well.

How humans treat animals reflects back on themselves.
Right now, over 50 billion animals are murdered by humans every year.
That is the equivalent of over 8000 holocausts.
Every year.

I’m with Noah on this.

No. But living things deserve a level of respect that inanimate objects do not. That is for sure.