Well, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To s

Well, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To speak of "anthropomorphizing" animals is a bit outdated... as the primatologist Franz de Waal puts it, people who use that term are in "anthropodenial". Today's biologists and ethologists largely acknowledge that at least higher animals are sentient beings, with consciousness and a full complement of complex emotions and reasoning ability. You can argue that humans are on top in overall cognitive abilities, but it's really only by degree, not by fundamental kind... our cognitive machinery is only bigger than most other animals', not really different. As for your statement that animals' feelings "don't matter", well, why not? Not too long ago humans of one skin color said that the feelings of other humans of another skin color don't matter. Then we made some progress, and now to say that is considered barbaric. And many humans today are beginning to think it's time to make some more progress and realize that non-human animals' feelings also do matter.