Animal rights?!?

I have been reading the news a lot more since starting work (something to do on my lunch, and I thought I might  become more wordly wise) but it is incredibly depressing.

I have been disgusted by a few articles recently, about dogs being killed in horrific circumstances, or animals being smuggled and died in transportation.

I read this and it made me feel awful, and angry.  I'm going to make my point clear before I continue with this - I am not religious, and I do have somewhat strong feelings toward religious people WHEN THEY DO AWFUL SHIT LIKE THIS!  I'm not going to lie and cover up the fact that I consider religious people to be a little odd (crazy sometimes), whatever, you can believe what you want, but I'm not going to be actively hateful toward you and tell you to fuck off, or burn your dog because you go to church every Sunday.  Why do you feel it is ok to destroy an animal because it did what an animal normally does and chew something?!?

My dog once ate a £20 note.  Bummer, but I didn't smack her for it.  She once chewed the carpet off the stairs (because we left her in the house alone for a long time which isn't nice), it's only a carpet.
It makes me wonder if Miriam Smith's nephew tore a page out of the bible, would she kill him?  Beat him to a pulp maybe?  Probably not, but then he would be totally aware of what he was doing - the dog was not, it found something to chew, and it happened to be a book.  A frickin book, I don't give a shit if it was a bible or a gold-leaf-collectible-priceless-hand-bound-with-some-leather-involved-somewhere-on-it-making-it-very-expensive-book - the dog did not deserve to die.

It is these kind of religiously-fuelled acts that make my stomach turn.  Suicide bombers, familys murdering their daughters because she 'dishonoured them', even the people protesting against women having abortions, shunning gays or even worse killing them because they are gay, killing someone or something because 'god' told them to, or will let them off for it because thats what their religion states...  I don't know whether it's because religion makes people go crazy or whether it's crazy people that are susceptible to the brain washing and lovely 'you will go to heaven' promises that become attached to a religion, and give the general religious populous a bad name, but these things don't occur as often (or are not as commonly published) from non-religious or non-crazy people.

I still get disgusted when I hear of a dog getting destroyed for biting a kid - research the situation properly before you condemn the dog.  Or, more recently, 2 rottweilers being killed because they were dragged along by their owner in a car, who didn't realise they were tied to the back of it - and the owner was not charged with anything!  Wreckless driving for one?? Animal cruelty? They should charge people for being fucking stupid, make them do some community service or something at least.

I love animals, but I am not a vegetarian - I would eat any meat if I knew that animal was reared in humane and happy circumstances, and was killed humanely and ideally with none of the animal's parts going to waste (in a perfect world).  Animals have rights, just because they can't talk doesn't mean they can be wrecklessly destroyed.

And don't get me started on smuggling them...