Sandy, FWIW - Greger is right about the bison. Bison were considered a "supply store" for the indigenous population, and that is why the government hired buffalo hunters.
I want to explain (to all) the vehemence of my earlier replies.
As late as the early 1970s, state courts in the US were still defining married women as chattel.I married at the end of that decade; I would have to do a longer search than I'm willing to do, to find out if I was ever legally chattel. If not, it was a very close scrape.
My point being that I have been uncomfortably close to having my inherent rights legalized away from me on the grounds, basically, that He Who's Got, Decides Who Doesn't. Therefore the idea that one group of people/beings decides who does and does not have rights -- it makes my skin crawl.
Because if you can do that, then forget all that garbage about "inherent rights," because there aren't any. The only rights that exist are the ones you are granted by those higher on the ladder than you.
A large number of the posters on this site are white male Americans who have never had to consider the possibility of being, to all extents and purposes, owned by another human being. I will tell you that it is a difficult thing to take lightly. We are unlikely to share a perspective here.
I am not only touchy about this on my own behalf; if you have a companion critter you've been in the position of curtailing their rights and you know how uncomfortable it can be to think about.
So I will drop my argumentative stance, but I would ask that the arguments you use be carefully examined for possible dangerous parallels. As I said earlier, it is too easy to re-define what is human, and what is lesser - as you can see by looking at the status of women in countries other than this one.
