{"id":2020,"date":"2013-04-05T21:34:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T19:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/can-we-deprive-animals-of-the-right-to-live\/"},"modified":"2013-04-05T21:34:32","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T19:34:32","slug":"can-we-deprive-animals-of-the-right-to-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/can-we-deprive-animals-of-the-right-to-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Can we deprive animals of the right to live?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry_content\">\n<p>Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his notebooks: \u201fThe time will come when people like me will think of the murder of an animal just as they think today of the murder of a man.\u201d And George Bernard Shaw said, \u201fAnimals are my friends, and I don&#8217;t eat my friends.\u201d It&#8217;s not a matter of denying that there are differences in intelligence between animals and human beings, and that relatively speaking a human life is worth more than the life of an animal. But why should the right to live be the prerogative of humans alone?\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAll living beings want happiness and try to avoid suffering. To assume the right to kill animals by the billion all the year round (10 billions of them are killed yearly just in the USA), therefore, is no more than the law of the jungle. Just a few centuries ago, the trade in \u201fblack gold,\u201d slaves from black Africa, was considered acceptable. These days, there&#8217;s still slavery in India, Pakistan, the Sudan; children are sold to work in factories or in the fields, and young girls for prostitution. But elsewhere, generally speaking, slavery is seen as an abomination.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWhat do people do when they&#8217;re exploited or oppressed? They get organized, form trade unions, protest and rebel. Animals are incapable of any of those things, so they&#8217;re exterminated. This ought to be completely rethought.<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his notebooks: \u201fThe time will come when people like me will think of the murder of an animal just as they think today of the murder of a man.\u201d And George Bernard Shaw said, \u201fAnimals are my friends, and I don&#8217;t eat my friends.\u201d It&#8217;s not a matter of denying&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthieuricard.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}