Animal Rights

In his essay "Consider the Lobster", David Foster Wallace makes a case for the rights of lobsters to not have a painful and torturous death for the temporary pleasure of humans. In the specific case of lobsters, the typical animal rights argument is valid but when the identical point is used to span all animals, many issues arise. It is reasonable to feel empathy for any creature being slowly boiled to death or having a it's limbs torn out while it is still alive and breathing. Adopting the notion that the killing of any animal for food is wrong or immoral due to the sole reason of "feeling bad" for the creature, however, is preposterous. Just like every single other animal on earth, human beings need a source of energy to survive. While advocates of animal rights argue that animals should not be considered one, it only takes a slight glimpse into nature to see the contrary. The ecosystem is a hierarchy, those at the top eat those below them and the circle of life continues. 

"Rights" are privileges unique moral human beings. They only have meaning in a moral community, one which clearly excludes animals. The debate is not about whether or not animals should be killed humanely or boiled to death, it is about whether they should be killed by humans at all.