Childhood indoctrination

[Forbinator]

Oh wow. Suggesting that vegans want equal rights for all animals is a serious strawman argument and oversimplification.

To help you understand, let's make an analogy to humans. I believe that all women should have the right to have free pap smears and mammograms as part of their overall health, but I wouldn't campaign for their rights to have free regular prostate exams. The key here is not equal rights, but equal consideration of interests. There is no evidence to suggest that one gender has more of an interest in being healthy than the other, but there are differences between the genders that would mean their rights should not be exactly equal.

What a ???????? argument, a woman is not in need of a prostate exam - therefor this entire analogy falls appart - other than that:

BREAKING NEWS: Women are also humans!!!!

And interests are the thing which build a case for legal rights. - you are simply playing with words.

The whole point was for it to fall apart, to demonstrate the difference between equal rights and equal consideration of interests. As long as you understand that I'm not pushing for chickens to have free public schooling, but that I am pushing for their interests to be recognised by law (interest in living and not suffering etc.) then my argument served its purpose. You say that I'm playing with words, but I'm using words to demonstrate a genuine difference between two ideas. Some people might talk about it as "equal" treatment vs "equitable" treatment. Equal would literally mean we give prostate exams to both males and females, and equitable would mean we give equal consideration of corresponding interests (i.e. the women get pap smears and mammograms, and the men get prostate exams).

A cow has an interest in continuing her existence, as evidenced by her survival instinct, which is measurable by secretion of hormones in times of stress (catecholamines and corticosteroids) just as for humans. There is no reason why this interest is less valid than the corresponding interest that I have in continuing my existence. Chickens have an interest in having a place to dust-bathe (but I wouldn't advocate equal rights to humans in this regard as we don't share that interest) and humans have an interest in achieving a high school education (again, equal education rights for chickens would be absurd as they don't have this interest).

One thing - We are a different species and on top of the food chain.
We understand our world and learned to use and influence it towards being more benefitial for us.

Other than that - you have your personal right to "respect" interests.
But why should you have the right to infringe others rights to food?

Food chain is a human construct. It says "we can eat animals, therefore we should!" We could justify lots of horrible things with that line of thinking. Men are at the top of the rape chain for example. Your statement about using our surroundings to benefit us can be applied to many other species.

As for your right to food, there is plenty of plant-based food available. If animal-based farming is replaced by crop farming, we actually increase the amount of food available, which is important when so many are starving.