'Animal Rights' is an empty philosophy, and here's how farmers can expose its weaknesses to the light of truth: A Truth in Food conversation with author Wesley J. Smith

Award winning author Wesley J. Smith's latest book, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement, offers animal agriculture a carefully crafted and brilliantly argued critique of the flawed ideology and dangerous tactics of the animal liberation movement behind much of today's criticism of "factory farming."

A Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute, a consultant to the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Smith offers a bulletproof defense of animal agriculture based on the unique importance of human exceptionalism. Precisely because humans are placed above animals--whether through divine right or by natural law is immaterial--only humans and humans alone are capable of making decisions to protect the welfare of animals, as well as decisions to use them as we see fit. The bioethical foundation of his defense of animal farming works exceptionally to deflate the sanctimonious violence of today's animal rightist by reflecting back upon them the whithering light of their movement's underlying, and fatal, ethical contradictions.

Required reading for anyone interested in beating the animal rights movement on its own terms, Smith's book is put into context through this 30 minute interview with Truth in Food's Kevin Murphy.