"Factory farming and modern pet keeping can be
seen as two recent, and extreme, extensions of these culturally diverse and historically
persistent patterns of animal care. In factory farming, the value of the animal is
exclusively determined by its material utility to the farmer, and the animals neither
provide nor benefit from nurturing, affectionate interchanges with human beings. In pet
keeping, animals have, almost by definition, no material utility and are kept as a vehicle
for display of affection, nurturance, and dominance. At both extremes the category of
animal, becomes on one hand, robbed of its original significance being reduced to the
status of material object, and on the other, reduced by anthropomorphic thinking to a
parody of the human." A.H. Katcher and A.M. Beck, "Animal Companions: More
Companion Than Animal." In, M.H. Robinson and L. Tiger, Editors, Man &
Beast Revisited. Washington, D.C., 1991. pp.265-6.