HUMAN RATIONALISM
Wesley L Smith’s article, Animal Rights Zealotry Hates Animal Welfare (“Human Exceptionalism” in National Review) is full of unreflective stereotypes and over-simplification. Here’s a much more circumspect account:
Most people will agree (if they are not sadists or psychopaths) that it is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling organism unnecessarily.
(To disagree would be to hold that “it is fine to hurt or kill a feeling organism unnecessarily — e.g., for pleasure or profit.”)
Animal welfare advocates are working to reduce the suffering of animals who are being hurt or killed, regardless of whether it is being done out of necessity or for pleasure or profit.
Animal rights advocates are working to prevent animals from being hurt or killed unnecessarily at all. They feel that all animals (including humans) have the right not to be hurt or killed unnecessarily (i.e., that that’s what it means to say it’s wrong to do it).
The rest is down to what is “necessary.” Most people will agree that necessity has to do with conflicts in vital (survival or health) needs, as between predator and prey, or aggressor and victim.
There are extremists who hold that no animal (whether nonhuman or human, presumably) should ever be hurt or killed, under any circumstances. This is either like saying that there should not be any disease or hunger — or conflicts of vital interest — in the world (a commendable but utopian pipe-dream); or it is based on imagining that if they were attacked by a nonhuman or human aggressor they could or would or should not fight for their lives.
That’s all there really is to it, if you think about it.
Craig, W. J., & Mangels, A. R. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266-1282.
Harnad, S. (2013). Taste and Torment: Why I Am Not a Carnivore. Québec Humaniste 8(1): 10-13