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Animals themselves cannot plead their cause, and those who plead it for them have no obvious financial or other selfish interest in the issue, although many may have “vested” their emotions in it. When we turn to special gain from maintaining existing practices, special loss if they were to be changed, we find a large number of groups whose views might be discounted. Butchers, furriers, hunters, cattlemen, chicken farmers, scientific experimenters on animals would, unless compensated, all have to suffer significant personal loss if we were to change our practices. They cannot therefore be expected to see the moral issue without the distortion of special interest. The scientists might claim that in their case their own interest coincides with a universal human interest, but I think the butcher and the furrier could make a similar claim (en) |
