Animals raised for food, fiber or fur suffer far less than do the equilivant
wild animals.  Humans are "The Tender Carnivore" that nurtures its prey
allowing far more to survive than would be the case in the wild and then
dispaches them with a tenderness seen in no other preditor (macro or micro).
Because of the dining habits of meat eaters, domestic animals far exceed
humans in numbers and provide food from land unsuitable for vegetable crops
(65% of all arible land).

Suffering is the way of life of all wild animals.  Rats are a good example.
Female rats first mate at 5 weeks of age.  After 21 days she gives birth to
a large litter and immediatly leaves the young long enough to mate again.
She is pregnant and nursing for her entire adult life (about 2 years)
producing over 300 young.  Of course very few rats live that long and all
suffer horrible deaths from preditors and disease.
Few if any lab rats ever suffer conditions this cruel.

This willingness as a species to suffer in large numbers makes the rat a
very sucessful species.  Brian Plummer's dog killed 1,290 rats in one day
and when he returned to the same place the next week he could detect no
discernable difference in population.

Agrairian societies and religions teach that human suffering is noble when
it is of benifit to the crops.  They also teach falsehoods about animal
suffering as an excuse to make the animals that compete with the agrairian
crops extinct.  In places where man cannot grow enough crops to feed himself
and must rely on animal foods to survive (such as Tibet) they must bend the
rules.

Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin"
http://www.neanderthin.com