Simone Reyes Animal Rights

In the TedX video “Animal rights – birth of an activist,” Simone Reyes speaks on becoming an animal rights activist, and some of the things that led her to do so. She speaks on one of her first encounters with standing up for non-human animals, namely, two bats. A man was about to strike and kill an object in which she could not even make out, and in recounting that moment she states “I didn’t know what this little thing was, but it was pulsating, so that meant it must have had a pulse… which would mean probably a heartbeat, which would mean it could suffer.” (2 min) She later found out that the pulsating object was two bats that had become stuck together and fallen during the act of procreation. Although the pulsating object did turn out …show more content…
Reyes states: “[I realized] that all these labels... like oppressor and bully could just as easily be applied to me, regardless of intent because I was a contributor to industries that viewed animal as nothing more than property and machines.” (5 min) Surely, one could agree that knowingly selling a dog to a man who intends to beat and torture the animal to death is just as morally impermissible as taking the dog’s life with one’s own hands, regardless of the seller’s intent for spending the money. However, if one were to buy chicken nuggets to feed one’s family, and the company inhumanely kills chickens to produce their chicken, I would argue that the situation is significantly more permissible than the latter. In the format of her argument, however, if premise 1 “business X contributes to the inhumane treatment of non-human animals” is true, and if premise 2 “consumer X financially contributes to business X,” then the inference (1,2), “consumer X contributes to the inhumane treatment of non-human animals,” is valid, and thus the argument is sound. To me, this is an example of how an argument can be fully sound and yet, with the degree of variability in situations and contexts, the topic at hand can still be morally