Thanks for the article. It was interesting and does point out a lot of problems but I don't think it makes a satisfying enough case for all horse riding being a problem.
Most of it hinges on two pieces: the first discusses alterations in the spinal processes (the narrow projections on top) of horses' back vertebrae. The article states,
In 2007, Matilda Homer and colleagues conducted a study with 295 horses who were considered physically sound before the examination. In this study, x-rays revealed that 91.5% of the horses were diagnosed with alteration on the spinal processes. Almost always, the spinal processes of the caudal saddle position were affected. The most frequent results were diminished internal spaces of spinal processes, including changes of the bone structure of the spinal processes [1].
With the implication that this constitutes spinal damage.
But that's not what the study concludes. From the abstract:
In spite of considerable x-ray results some horses show no clinical discomfort. On the other hand alterations on the spinal processes can cause pain and involve problems when riding the horse or make a horse even unridable. In order to being better equipped to assess the x-ray results on the spinal processes, a retrospective study was performed by way of analysis of spinal processes -x-rays of 295 clinically back sound warmblood horses.
[...]
X-ray alterations thus are frequent even among clinically back healthy horses. If alterations occur almost always the spinal processes of the caudal saddle position are affected. Recent court decisions have ruled x-ray alterations not accompanied by clinical symptoms as not being material
defects. Therefore it is worth discussing whether an x-ray exam as part of a general exam at the time of a purchase makes sense at all under these circumstances when x-rays are performed without a clinical suspicion of a dorsal ailment it would most probably be sufficient to perform a singular x-ray of the caudal saddle position allowing for radiation protection.
While the spinal abnormalities, which to be clear are just deviations in shape from horses that aren't ridden, can cause pain, the authors do not assert that they always do or that they even constitute injuries.
The other piece discusses bone fusion over a horse's lifespan in the context of horse racing and concludes that the commonly held assumption that horses are safe to ride once they look like their skeleton is mature is inaccurate, and that they should be ridden only once their skeleton has matured further:
Just about everybody has heard of the horse’s “growth plates”, and commonly when I ask them, people tell me that the “growth plates” are somewhere around the horse’s knees (actually the ones people mean are located at the bottom of the radius-ulna bone just above the knee). This is what gives rise to the saying that, before riding the horse, it’s best to wait “until his knees close” (i.e., until the growth plates convert from cartilage to bone, fusing the epiphysis or bone-end to the diaphysis or bone-shaft). What people often don’t realize is that there is a “growth plate” on either end of every bone behind the skull, and in the case of some bones (like the pelvis or vertebrae, which have many “corners”) there are multiple growth plates.
So do you then have to wait until all these growth plates convert to bone? No. But the longer you wait, the safer you’ll be. Owners and trainers need to realize there’s an easy-to-remember general schedule of fusion – and then make their decision as to when to ride the horse based on that rather than on the external appearance of the horse. For there are some breeds of horse – the Quarter Horse is the premier among these – which have been bred in such a manner as to look mature long before they actually are mature. This puts these horses in jeopardy from people who are either ignorant of the closure schedule, or more interested in their own schedule (for futurities or other competition) than they are in the welfare of the animal.
Horse racing and other activities that pushes horses to their physical limits are clearly unethical and should be abolished. Bits, too, seem fucked up based on what the article described, but they don't cite any sources for that.
But all that aside, even if we assume that, yes, it's always cruel to ride a horse (which I still don't totally buy), horses were just one example. My main point was that the idea that it's inherently wrong to use an animal for any purpose is absurd. If you can't accept that riding a horse can be ok, then substitute dogs or llamas.
It's this line from the piece,
Horses do not exist so we can ride them. Just because we can, and because we desire to, does not mean we have the right to. We do not have the right to exploit any non-human animal for anything.
that doesn't make any sense to me. What does "exploit" mean here and what's inherently wrong about using an animal for a purpose?
The emphasis on us lacking some natural right to use animals for "anything" is, like, classic liberal reasoning.
Copying my other post here because we're having the same argument in two places:
It’s the interests of the animals, not some metaphysical idea of natural rights that should determine how we interact with them. Playing with an animal just for fun, keeping it around because it just makes food or wool which can be useful to us, giving them medical care and intervening in their lives when they need it, observing them, studying them, and so on, when it doesn’t do them any unnecessary harm or run against their interests, is all fine and good.
If it is against the interests of a horse to ride it, which is an empirical claim that has to be answered with evidence, then it is wrong to ride it. If it is against the interests of a chicken to harvest its eggs against or an alpaca to shear its wool, or a dog to guide the blind, or a fish to eat a sick person’s dead skin, then it would be wrong, but those things aren’t wrong merely because the animals are being used for something, to them because they can’t rationally agree to them.
And to add: the notion that it's wrong to do anything to any thinking being without express consent, as your fundamental principle for determining what treatment of them is right or wrong, does preclude ethically giving an animal or child medical care, or any kind interaction that it cannot consent to, regardless of what it is (like, again, petting a dog).
The idea of interests being the basis for the treatment of an animal is a totally separate line of reasoning, which is what I support.
And as for the idea of natural rights being lib shit, it literally is. Natural rights go back to John Locke, the ur-liberal.
Do horses really have a problem with being ridden? I have no idea one way or the other.
A better example might be chickens. They just kinda lay eggs on their own. Outside of factory farming conditions, which are obviously horrible, it seems to me that they could be treated kindly while also being used as a source of eggs. I don't see a problem there.
Or oxen being used to pull plows in farming. It's hard work but I don't think it's necessarily causing them harm if they're not being pushed too hard, so I wouldn't say the farmers who use oxen are necessarily doing something wrong there.
Like, I think the problems is with cruelty, not with just using animals for things on principle.
Do horses really have a problem with being ridden?
Yes, absolutely. Not only is it unpleasant for them, it also causes medical issues.
A better example might be chickens. They just kinda lay eggs on their own
The Red Junglefowl, the natural ancestor of the modern chicken, would lay a handful of eggs per year. Modern farm-chickens are specifically bred to lay far more eggs than they should, which causes medical issues.
I would like to see the citations on all horses being harmed by being ridden. If so, then sure, I guess we shouldn't be riding horses.
Modern farm-chickens are specifically bred to lay far more eggs than they should, which causes medical issues.
Like what? And if so, should we just drive them to extinction?
But this is still dancing around the fundamental issue; is using animals for a specific purpose inherently wrong, or is it only mistreatment that's wrong?
So how about service dogs? They're being used in a very utilitarian way by humans, but I don't see how they're possibly suffering because of that. So who cares?
What about those fish that eat people's dead skin for medical purposes? Alpacas for wool?
I just don't see how using animals for, like, things in general is wrong.
I would like to see the citations on all horses being harmed by being ridden.
https://thehorse.com/14605/equine-back-problems/
Like what? And if so, should we just drive them to extinction?
We should stop breeding animals which have been specifically designed by humans to produce some convenience for humans at the cost of their own health, safety, or comfort, absolutely. I do not like the implication made by your "driving them to extinction" idea. We fucking made them in the first place.
The medical issues these egg-laying chickens face are a question of nutrients. It takes a lot of nutrients to make an egg, obviously. Left completely alone, these chickens will eat their own eggs to regain some of these nutrients. Taking them all away results in chickens facing issues resulting from lack of nutrients, like brittle bones resulting from a lack of calcium, for example.
But this is still dancing around the fundamental issue; is using animals for a specific purpose inherently wrong, or is it only mistreatment that’s wrong?
Breeding animals which have medical issues as a result of some trait you have bred to use for your own purposes is fucking mistreatment.
This is a paper describing different back problems that exist in horses and how to diagnose them. It doesn't say anything about how riding horses always causes spinal damage or whatever. Horse racing being bad for horses and casual horse riding being bad for horses are clearly not the same thing. Taking a stroll down town or whatever on a horse isn't abuse.
We should stop breeding animals which have been specifically designed by humans to produce some convenience for humans at the cost of their own health, safety, or comfort, absolutely. I do not like the implication made by your “driving them to extinction” idea. We fucking made them in the first place.
We would have to intervene in a massive scale to stop them from breeding, and if their existence causes them so much suffering that they shouldn't exist, as you imply, we should also be euthanizing them. I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong (I would agree that that might be the way to go with certain breeds of animals that are real fucked up like Scottish fold cats), but also I am saying it's wrong because:
The medical issues these egg-laying chickens face are a question of nutrients. It takes a lot of nutrients to make an egg, obviously. Left completely alone, these chickens will eat their own eggs to regain some of these nutrients. Taking them all away results in chickens facing issues resulting from lack of nutrients, like brittle bones resulting from a lack of calcium, for example.
So feed them more calcium.
Every species has its own dietary needs. If the chickens need more calcium to lay the eggs, feed them more calcium. It's not like wild animals are guaranteed to have their nutritional needs met.
Chickens clearly don't suffer from just laying eggs periodically, so there clearly isn't necessarily a problem with raising them for eggs.
Breeding animals which have medical issues as a result of some trait you have bred to use for your own purposes is fucking mistreatment.
Ok, so the issue is with mistreatment, not some weird Kantian "using them as a mere means to an end" bullshit like your first post was putting forward.
It doesn’t say anything about how riding horses always causes spinal damage or whatever.
Good thing I never made any such claim.
Do you use this same argument in favor of cops? "Well, not all cops rape and murder black people. Therefore cops are cool and good." Same logic. Fuck that.
We would have to intervene in a massive scale to stop them from breeding
lol you're so fucking stupid
these animals would not exist in the first place without our deliberate efforts to breed them.
if their existence causes them so much suffering that they shouldn’t exist, as you imply, we should also be euthanizing them.
that's a dumb leap of logic and nothing like anything i have ever suggested
Ok, so the issue is with mistreatment, not some weird Kantian “using them as a mere means to an end” bullshit like your first post was putting forward.
The idea that animals exist to be used like objects for our own purposes is one of many thoughts which must be eradicated in a just society.
Riding a horse is treating it poorly. It’s not a pleasant experience. And there’s no way to do that respectfully.
Then,
I would like to see the citations on all horses being harmed by being ridden.
https://thehorse.com/14605/equine-back-problems/
as a response, which described spinal damage "or whatever" being diagnosed in horses.
The claim you made that just riding horses is mistreatment because it causes them medical issues is false.
Do you use this same argument in favor of cops? “Well, not all cops rape and murder black people. Therefore cops are cool and good.” Same logic. Fuck that.
What relation does that even have to what I was saying?
Sometimes people have children and abuse them. It doesn't follow from that that having children is itself abusive.
All cops are bad because of the institutional oppression that they enforce. They're not bad just because plenty of them personally and directly brutalize Black people. There are cops who haven't done that (yet), but they're still bad by virtue of their role in upholding capitalist property relations and white supremacy. The fact that a lot of them also murder black people and that the rest tolerate it is just more bad on top of the fundamental badness.
You clearly don't understand why cops are bad. You have a liberal understanding of the institution of policing that you need to interrogate.
It is literally true that "some of X do bad things" doesn't equal "X is always bad". Riding a horse and riding a horse in a way that hurts it are not the same thing.
lol you’re so fucking stupid
I think you're projecting, bud.
these animals would not exist in the first place without our deliberate efforts to breed them.
Yes, and people are going to continue to breed them (and lots of them will just breed on their own for a long time without us) unless there's a concerted effort to abolish that breeding. You'd need to make the case that there's something fundamentally wrong with breeding chickens to justify that. You haven't.
that’s a dumb leap of logic and nothing like anything i have ever suggested
Eh, you're right about that. You could just sterilize them. Or wrangle every chicken on Earth and keep them all segregated by sex?
Anyway, the problem you pointed out with chickens is that they're bred in a way that causes them to be so unhealthy that it's wrong to make more of them. Since laying eggs is something they do automatically, and that's the cause of the problems you claim exist, you'd have to at least sterilize them to put an end to it.
The idea that animals exist to be used like objects for our own purposes is one of many thoughts which must be eradicated in a just society.
You still haven't made that case. You've only tried to point out specific examples of cruelty. What's wrong with raising alpacas for wool, or service dogs? In both cases we're using them just for our own purposes. Why is that a problem?
All cops are bad because of the institutional oppression that they enforce. They’re not bad just because plenty of them personally and directly brutalize Black people.
Zoos are a fuck. I agree you shouldn’t look at turtles, if they’re in a zoo. I’d take a dog to the vet the same way I’d take a kid to the pediatrician.
First of all, I guarantee turtles do not care as long as their needs are being met and they don't feel threatened, but I wasn't even talking about zoos. If you're arguing that using an animal for any strictly human purpose, that specifically doing anything with an animal solely for your own enjoyment, is wrong, then it follows that it is wrong to observe an animal for your own enjoyment, whether they're in the wild or in a zoo, which is ridiculous.
I’d take a dog to the vet the same way I’d take a kid to the pediatrician.
But what justification do you have for this? An animal or a child cannot consent to this since they aren't capable of it, and they will (and do) communciate their displeasure with receiving medical treatment when it makes them uncomfortable.
These are just repeating the same thing: consent is important and should apply to animals.
But again, this precludes things like treating animal or interacting with them in any way. Petting a dog is nonconsensual, since they cannot make the informed, rational decision to consent.
So it's not an adequate basis for deciding how animals can be interacted with ethically.
You should practice some basic empathy here. We know non-human animals like horses can feel happiness and pain. They’re not mere objects to use, but persons in their own right whose interests ought to be considered and whose boundaries ought to be respected.
Buddy, all I've been talking about is animals' feeling. I'm saying that those are what matter. It's the interests of the animals, not some metaphysical idea of natural rights, that should determine how we interact with them. Playing with an animal just for fun, keeping it around because it just makes food or wool which can be useful to us, giving them medical care and intervening in their lives when they need it, observing them, studying them, and so on, when it doesn't do them any unnecessary harm or run against their interests, is all fine and good.
If it is against the interests of a horse to ride it, which is an empirical claim that has to be answered with evidence, then it is wrong to ride it. If it is against the interests of a chicken to harvest its eggs, or an alpaca to shear its wool, or a dog to guide the blind, or a fish to eat a sick person's dead skin, then it would be wrong, but those things wouldn't be wrong merely because the animals are being used for something, or because they can't rationally agree to them.
This is a terrible standard for evidence, as I’ve already demonstrated. You’ve already been shown multiple times by multiple users here that riding horses is detrimental to their health.
My standard of evidence is literally just evidence. You and one other poster have cited studies, claiming that they demonstrate that riding horses causes them horrible pain and injury, when the studies do not actually demonstrate that as I showed by quoting them directly. You aren't actually engaging with either the source material for your claims or the substance of my arguments; you're just repeating the same nonsense like chickens suffer horribly from laying eggs and no I will not actually prove that just trust me bro I can tell I speak chicken bro and becoming more and more personally accusatory.
Do you have anything to say about interests and rights being categorically different and conflicting ethical principles? How can you demonstrate that animals can ever give informed consent to anything? Is it acceptable to fuck a dog just because it's humping you?
There clearly needs to be a different set of principles dictating how to treat animals, specifically one that centers the interests of all sentient beings, which, turns out, doesn't forbid just using animals for things so long as you don't subject them to cruelty (which reminds me: you still continue to ignore sheep, llamas, alpacas, service dogs, medical animals, and so on, who are clearly just fine physically and emotionally), and doesn't place a naive and absolutist concept of consent at the center of all ethical behavior - one that would, by the way, prohibit both necessary but unwelcome medical interventions and revolutionary violence due to "violating the bodily autonomy" of counterrevolutionaries.
You’re right, they wouldn’t merely be wrong due to lack of consent, but for other reasons too.
I wasn't even addressing consent here; this is another totally separate line of reasoning based on use and objectification, which is totally irrelevant. You just don't like the vibe of it, which, sorry, isn't very convincing.
Rape is itself harmful. This is a stupid false equivalence.
Also, read my fucking post. I'm down with the idea that forcing horses to do acrobatics is fucked, but I don't see any proof that just sitting on them is.
Like, I can carry smaller animals on my back for a while without getting spinal injuries.
And I gotta say I'm not a big fan of you lunatics saying that I'm defending cops and rape just because I don't think the existence of livestock under all circumstances is an atrocity.
Rape is a violation of someone's body, and so their interests.
Petting a dog or riding a horse or shearing a sheep without asking them is not necessarily a violation of their body or a violation of their interests.
Insinuating that it's a justification of rape to say that is pretty fucked.
Animals are not objects to be used for your convenience
I mean I can understand that position if you're treating the animal poorly, but is using an animal for your convenience necessarily wrong?
Like, if someone has a horse and rides it around but treats it well and with respect, is there actually a problem?
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Thanks for the article. It was interesting and does point out a lot of problems but I don't think it makes a satisfying enough case for all horse riding being a problem.
Most of it hinges on two pieces: the first discusses alterations in the spinal processes (the narrow projections on top) of horses' back vertebrae. The article states,
With the implication that this constitutes spinal damage.
But that's not what the study concludes. From the abstract:
[...]
While the spinal abnormalities, which to be clear are just deviations in shape from horses that aren't ridden, can cause pain, the authors do not assert that they always do or that they even constitute injuries.
The other piece discusses bone fusion over a horse's lifespan in the context of horse racing and concludes that the commonly held assumption that horses are safe to ride once they look like their skeleton is mature is inaccurate, and that they should be ridden only once their skeleton has matured further:
Horse racing and other activities that pushes horses to their physical limits are clearly unethical and should be abolished. Bits, too, seem fucked up based on what the article described, but they don't cite any sources for that.
But all that aside, even if we assume that, yes, it's always cruel to ride a horse (which I still don't totally buy), horses were just one example. My main point was that the idea that it's inherently wrong to use an animal for any purpose is absurd. If you can't accept that riding a horse can be ok, then substitute dogs or llamas.
It's this line from the piece,
that doesn't make any sense to me. What does "exploit" mean here and what's inherently wrong about using an animal for a purpose?
The emphasis on us lacking some natural right to use animals for "anything" is, like, classic liberal reasoning.
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Copying my other post here because we're having the same argument in two places:
And to add: the notion that it's wrong to do anything to any thinking being without express consent, as your fundamental principle for determining what treatment of them is right or wrong, does preclude ethically giving an animal or child medical care, or any kind interaction that it cannot consent to, regardless of what it is (like, again, petting a dog).
The idea of interests being the basis for the treatment of an animal is a totally separate line of reasoning, which is what I support.
And as for the idea of natural rights being lib shit, it literally is. Natural rights go back to John Locke, the ur-liberal.
Edit: While we're at it, check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q
Riding a horse is treating it poorly. It's not a pleasant experience. And there's no way to do that respectfully.
Do horses really have a problem with being ridden? I have no idea one way or the other.
A better example might be chickens. They just kinda lay eggs on their own. Outside of factory farming conditions, which are obviously horrible, it seems to me that they could be treated kindly while also being used as a source of eggs. I don't see a problem there.
Or oxen being used to pull plows in farming. It's hard work but I don't think it's necessarily causing them harm if they're not being pushed too hard, so I wouldn't say the farmers who use oxen are necessarily doing something wrong there.
Like, I think the problems is with cruelty, not with just using animals for things on principle.
Yes, absolutely. Not only is it unpleasant for them, it also causes medical issues.
The Red Junglefowl, the natural ancestor of the modern chicken, would lay a handful of eggs per year. Modern farm-chickens are specifically bred to lay far more eggs than they should, which causes medical issues.
I would like to see the citations on all horses being harmed by being ridden. If so, then sure, I guess we shouldn't be riding horses.
Like what? And if so, should we just drive them to extinction?
But this is still dancing around the fundamental issue; is using animals for a specific purpose inherently wrong, or is it only mistreatment that's wrong?
So how about service dogs? They're being used in a very utilitarian way by humans, but I don't see how they're possibly suffering because of that. So who cares?
What about those fish that eat people's dead skin for medical purposes? Alpacas for wool?
I just don't see how using animals for, like, things in general is wrong.
https://thehorse.com/14605/equine-back-problems/
We should stop breeding animals which have been specifically designed by humans to produce some convenience for humans at the cost of their own health, safety, or comfort, absolutely. I do not like the implication made by your "driving them to extinction" idea. We fucking made them in the first place.
The medical issues these egg-laying chickens face are a question of nutrients. It takes a lot of nutrients to make an egg, obviously. Left completely alone, these chickens will eat their own eggs to regain some of these nutrients. Taking them all away results in chickens facing issues resulting from lack of nutrients, like brittle bones resulting from a lack of calcium, for example.
Breeding animals which have medical issues as a result of some trait you have bred to use for your own purposes is fucking mistreatment.
This is a paper describing different back problems that exist in horses and how to diagnose them. It doesn't say anything about how riding horses always causes spinal damage or whatever. Horse racing being bad for horses and casual horse riding being bad for horses are clearly not the same thing. Taking a stroll down town or whatever on a horse isn't abuse.
We would have to intervene in a massive scale to stop them from breeding, and if their existence causes them so much suffering that they shouldn't exist, as you imply, we should also be euthanizing them. I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong (I would agree that that might be the way to go with certain breeds of animals that are real fucked up like Scottish fold cats), but also I am saying it's wrong because:
So feed them more calcium.
Every species has its own dietary needs. If the chickens need more calcium to lay the eggs, feed them more calcium. It's not like wild animals are guaranteed to have their nutritional needs met.
Chickens clearly don't suffer from just laying eggs periodically, so there clearly isn't necessarily a problem with raising them for eggs.
Ok, so the issue is with mistreatment, not some weird Kantian "using them as a mere means to an end" bullshit like your first post was putting forward.
Good thing I never made any such claim.
Do you use this same argument in favor of cops? "Well, not all cops rape and murder black people. Therefore cops are cool and good." Same logic. Fuck that.
lol you're so fucking stupid
these animals would not exist in the first place without our deliberate efforts to breed them.
that's a dumb leap of logic and nothing like anything i have ever suggested
The idea that animals exist to be used like objects for our own purposes is one of many thoughts which must be eradicated in a just society.
You literally did. You said,
Then,
as a response, which described spinal damage "or whatever" being diagnosed in horses.
The claim you made that just riding horses is mistreatment because it causes them medical issues is false.
What relation does that even have to what I was saying?
Sometimes people have children and abuse them. It doesn't follow from that that having children is itself abusive.
All cops are bad because of the institutional oppression that they enforce. They're not bad just because plenty of them personally and directly brutalize Black people. There are cops who haven't done that (yet), but they're still bad by virtue of their role in upholding capitalist property relations and white supremacy. The fact that a lot of them also murder black people and that the rest tolerate it is just more bad on top of the fundamental badness.
You clearly don't understand why cops are bad. You have a liberal understanding of the institution of policing that you need to interrogate.
It is literally true that "some of X do bad things" doesn't equal "X is always bad". Riding a horse and riding a horse in a way that hurts it are not the same thing.
I think you're projecting, bud.
Yes, and people are going to continue to breed them (and lots of them will just breed on their own for a long time without us) unless there's a concerted effort to abolish that breeding. You'd need to make the case that there's something fundamentally wrong with breeding chickens to justify that. You haven't.
Eh, you're right about that. You could just sterilize them. Or wrangle every chicken on Earth and keep them all segregated by sex?
Anyway, the problem you pointed out with chickens is that they're bred in a way that causes them to be so unhealthy that it's wrong to make more of them. Since laying eggs is something they do automatically, and that's the cause of the problems you claim exist, you'd have to at least sterilize them to put an end to it.
You still haven't made that case. You've only tried to point out specific examples of cruelty. What's wrong with raising alpacas for wool, or service dogs? In both cases we're using them just for our own purposes. Why is that a problem?
Seems like kind of a liberal attitude, honestly.
You're so close to understanding
Breeding chickens is not institutional oppression.
Why? Because their suffering doesn't matter because they can't express it the way you can?
Fuck yourself.
No, because it doesn't necessarily cause them suffering.
Jesus Christ you're dense.
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Take your post and replace 'horses' with 'Jews'. Pretty anti-Semitic now, isn't it? Not a good look fam.
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Damn, I guess we gotta stop looking at turtles because they can't consent to that.
Oh, my dog has to go to the vet? Well he can't consent to that so I guess he's just fucked.
Stop anthropomorphizing.
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First of all, I guarantee turtles do not care as long as their needs are being met and they don't feel threatened, but I wasn't even talking about zoos. If you're arguing that using an animal for any strictly human purpose, that specifically doing anything with an animal solely for your own enjoyment, is wrong, then it follows that it is wrong to observe an animal for your own enjoyment, whether they're in the wild or in a zoo, which is ridiculous.
But what justification do you have for this? An animal or a child cannot consent to this since they aren't capable of it, and they will (and do) communciate their displeasure with receiving medical treatment when it makes them uncomfortable.
These are just repeating the same thing: consent is important and should apply to animals.
But again, this precludes things like treating animal or interacting with them in any way. Petting a dog is nonconsensual, since they cannot make the informed, rational decision to consent.
So it's not an adequate basis for deciding how animals can be interacted with ethically.
Buddy, all I've been talking about is animals' feeling. I'm saying that those are what matter. It's the interests of the animals, not some metaphysical idea of natural rights, that should determine how we interact with them. Playing with an animal just for fun, keeping it around because it just makes food or wool which can be useful to us, giving them medical care and intervening in their lives when they need it, observing them, studying them, and so on, when it doesn't do them any unnecessary harm or run against their interests, is all fine and good.
If it is against the interests of a horse to ride it, which is an empirical claim that has to be answered with evidence, then it is wrong to ride it. If it is against the interests of a chicken to harvest its eggs, or an alpaca to shear its wool, or a dog to guide the blind, or a fish to eat a sick person's dead skin, then it would be wrong, but those things wouldn't be wrong merely because the animals are being used for something, or because they can't rationally agree to them.
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My standard of evidence is literally just evidence. You and one other poster have cited studies, claiming that they demonstrate that riding horses causes them horrible pain and injury, when the studies do not actually demonstrate that as I showed by quoting them directly. You aren't actually engaging with either the source material for your claims or the substance of my arguments; you're just repeating the same nonsense like chickens suffer horribly from laying eggs and no I will not actually prove that just trust me bro I can tell I speak chicken bro and becoming more and more personally accusatory.
Do you have anything to say about interests and rights being categorically different and conflicting ethical principles? How can you demonstrate that animals can ever give informed consent to anything? Is it acceptable to fuck a dog just because it's humping you?
There clearly needs to be a different set of principles dictating how to treat animals, specifically one that centers the interests of all sentient beings, which, turns out, doesn't forbid just using animals for things so long as you don't subject them to cruelty (which reminds me: you still continue to ignore sheep, llamas, alpacas, service dogs, medical animals, and so on, who are clearly just fine physically and emotionally), and doesn't place a naive and absolutist concept of consent at the center of all ethical behavior - one that would, by the way, prohibit both necessary but unwelcome medical interventions and revolutionary violence due to "violating the bodily autonomy" of counterrevolutionaries.
I wasn't even addressing consent here; this is another totally separate line of reasoning based on use and objectification, which is totally irrelevant. You just don't like the vibe of it, which, sorry, isn't very convincing.
Rape is itself harmful. This is a stupid false equivalence.
Also, read my fucking post. I'm down with the idea that forcing horses to do acrobatics is fucked, but I don't see any proof that just sitting on them is.
Like, I can carry smaller animals on my back for a while without getting spinal injuries.
And I gotta say I'm not a big fan of you lunatics saying that I'm defending cops and rape just because I don't think the existence of livestock under all circumstances is an atrocity.
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Rape is a violation of someone's body, and so their interests.
Petting a dog or riding a horse or shearing a sheep without asking them is not necessarily a violation of their body or a violation of their interests.
Insinuating that it's a justification of rape to say that is pretty fucked.
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