On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 12:09:29 AM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter wrote:

Rocks cannot suffer. Animals can suffer.

That's true. But since there are laws against defacing rocks, although
rocks, because they can't suffer, can't have rights, then while
animals could have rights, because they can suffer, for animals to
have rights is still not a necessary condition for a law against
cruelty to animals to exist.

That law could have been enacted based on a rationale which did not
involve ascribing rights to animals.

Possible such rationales:

Humans form emotional attachments to animals. Threats to injure their pets, therefore, could be used for blackmail; thus, laws governing the treatment of animals need to be more severe than other laws relating to damage to property in order to more effectively deter such actions.

Animals are living beings that resemble humans. A law prohibiting cruelty to animals gives the authorities the power to intervene when someone with sadistic tendencies begins to practice his arts on animals which are easier targets than humans.

It is sufficiently unclear as to whether animals have rights that at least some voters either think they have rights, or at least that their interests have some value. A law accommodating this belief doesn't restrict individual liberty in a significant way, and so is a useful investment in social harmony, given a diverse, pluralistic society.

So there are all kinds of scenarios under which a society could fail
to acknowledge that animals have rights, and yet enact a law against
cruelty to animals. (Whether or not they do in fact have rights,
however, is too complicated a question for me to really begin to wade
into.)

John Savard