The Treatment of Animals

Introduction
Where do animals stand in terms of rights? I mean, we can't talk to them or anything, and if they're not thinking, they could just be receptive automata, so does it even matter if they feel pain or die? On the other hand, some of them are adorable and unless you passed the psychopath test (not a good thing) you'd feel pretty crap about hurting one, so how should we treat them?

Utilitarianism
Applying utilitarianism to the issue of how to treat animals rests on whether we accept Singer's argument that as both humans and animals possess sentience, and so the suffering and happiness of animals should be taken into account when discussing how we should treat animals.

Virtue Ethics
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