I was surprised, too, that de Waal was so negative towards the idea of animail rights. I was especially miffed at his statement of how insulting it is to compare animal treatment with slavery. Why?
deWaal says on page 77
Here he is saying (if you think backwards in time) that if people who were enslaved collectively refused to become contributing members to the current society and somehow made that decision known, then they should have just remained slaves. Does that make sense? Not to me. The comparison to slavery, in my view, is a comparison of judging a practice that is wrong (1809 - slavery, 2009 - institutionalized animal abuse) to be right because it is what people do. The two have many parallels ... here are two rationalizations that apply to each, off the top of my head.
1. judged to be appropriate because of the economic advantages the practice brings to the owners
2. judged to be appropriate because the object (slaves or animals) are lesser beings and so don't deserve consideration.
When animal rights people make a ccmparison between slavery and animal treatment, I believe they are making a comparison of attitudes utilized to rationalize horrific abuses. Here is a link for a small view into why the comparison is made.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish ... 567.shtmlI
After reading Appendix C, I turned to Peter Singer's comments. He talks about the comparison of aboltion of slavery with animal rights on page 156.
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