> Because if "pain" and "emotions" are felt pretty much in the same way by animals and humans (for which there is more and more evidence on that as we learn how

> Because if "pain" and "emotions" are felt pretty much in the same way by animals and humans (for which there is more and more evidence on that as we learn how the brain works), why would it be moral to inflict pain to animals but amoral to inflict pain on human beings ? Without being an antispecist, I surely agree with that. It would have been indeed a great thing to start with writing some kind of animal rights chart, or even a global "life rights", that would include human rights (and which would probably leads to questions like "how much is it ok to takes from nature" or "when taking animal life for food, how to do it respectfully"). But I don't think that's what this government had in mind. I may be wrong, of course, but it seems to me they had more anthropological considerations about apes than considerations about animal suffering, or else, they would have proposed some kind of general animal law.