People (probably correctly) assume you're not a good faith conversant when you say things like "The only people who would get upset by it are those whose entire

People (probably correctly) assume you're not a good faith conversant when you say things like "The only people who would get upset by it are those whose entire reasoning is emotional and hypocrite virtue signaling." I find that the phrase "virtue signaling" is used almost universally by people who themselves are deeply morally lacking and thus wish to portray other peoples' altruistic and empathetic moral positions as somehow false so they can feel better about their own lack of empathy, altruism, and charitability. Nobody here said that animals have the rights enumerated in the United States Declaration of Independence (which by the way carries no legal weight). In any event, the general postulations as to the issue you present are that ecologies themselves have intrinsic value and we needn't interfere with nature (there is an in fact a debate about this on the environmental side of the aisle). Indeed, "rights" themselves are never absolute and they aren't somehow abstract (again, if you actually engaged with the literature you may be more familiar with debates surrounding how to define rights, whether are only individual, etc). Most rights exist vis-a-vis x or are things that cannot be infringed upon by other rights-bearing actors or the government. Thus an animal can have a right to not suffer at human hands, but such a right is not susceptible to infringement by another animal. This response was more than you deserve.