Typically, slavery is defended by slave-owners who point to all the "happy", well looked-after slaves. Even some of the slaves themselves feel more comfortable in the familiarity of slavery. I recently listened to a CBC radio show about the capture of children in Africa for the camel-racing industry. The riders are as young as four years old. They are almost starved to keep them light. They are awarded with food for winning and beaten if they lose. The child being interviewed had been rescued by a child-slave rescue Society. He had been returned to his original family, yet he yearned to return to his camel-racing "family"; the family that he had become accustomed to.

I know that some dogs that have lived on a chain most of their lives, sometimes abused, sometimes even beaten, yearn at first to return to the familiarity of their chains. That they do does not justify the chains. That they become happier on the benign chains that I provide, does not justify my benign slavery. It's all slavery. I have written many times that it was the good slave-owners who impeded the end of the idea that human slavery is acceptable no matter how benign it is.

Just as good human slave-owners justified owning humans, every good animal-owner and every happy pet justifies owning animals. That benign slavery of animals is morally wrong is the intellectual hurdle that every animal lover must leap. When enough people make that leap, only then will the law say that animals cannot be owned by humans.