I’ve been thinking of showing this video that’s online called “Meet your Meat” to my ethics class.  You can google it.  Basically, it shows videos of how animals are being treated in farms.  They’re confined in small compartments, the chickens are thrown up against the wall, the cows and pigs are hanged upside down waiting to be slaughtered, the pigs and turkeys are literally thrown out of trucks, chickens are being debeaked, cows and pigs are having their tails cut off, and on and on.  It’s pretty brutal.  I only glanced at it.

So here’s my dilemma: I don’t like it because I find it just as bad as what some of the pro-lifers do to the abortion debate.  These pro-lifers bring images of aborted fetuses (which are gruesome and bloody) to make an argument.  Now, to me, it’s not an argument.  They’re trying to appeal to the emotions and appealing to the emotions is a fallacy.  BUT IT WORKS!  That’s the main thing.

So with animals, it’s basically the same thing: it’s not an argument but it appeals to the emotions.  BUT IT WORKS!  However, the disanalogy is that the abortion debate doesn’t rest on what the fetus looks like, but rather the status of the fetus.  With animal rights, the argument does rest on the suffering of animals, so it does seem apt to show the video about the suffering of animals.  Again, this is to present it to my animal ethics class.  What does anyone think?