Fear Factories Response

       Matthew Scully takes an alternative perspective on animal cruelty and factory farming to appeal to the conservative crowd. A self-proclaimed conservative, Scully begins the article by saying that he at first saw the factory farming issue as a very minor problem. He says that PETA activists and other prominent animal rights groups have the viewpoint that human beings have an obligation to treat animals humanely. The author makes the argument that this is incorrect, and is objectionable especially by a religious and conservative crowd. Instead, Scully makes the point that "Human beings in their moral progress learn to appraise things correctly, using reasoned moral judgment to perceive a prior order not of our devising" (110). In other words, it is not our obligation to treat animals humanely. But many conservatives simply ignore the issue, as the one conservative who told the author "I don't want to know". It is instead just and charitable for us to treat animals fairly; human kind is kind by nature, and it is only right to direct our altruism and compassion to animals as well as other human beings.