The case for not being cruel to animals rests on the fact that this is not in the general human interest, not on the theory that animals have some inalienable natural rights. But the profit system prevents what is in the general human interest being applied.

The short answer is no. But, then, neither do humans.

The idea that humans have inalienable rights inherited from the “state of nature” which supposedly existed before they made a “social contract” to set up organised society is nonsensical. Humans have always been social animals. We wouldn’t have become human if we hadn’t been, since the main features which distinguish us from other animals—tool-making, abstract thought, speech— evolved, and could only have evolved, in and through society.