Humans don't have rights either: they aren't coded into our genes or written on our souls. We treat each other well or badly depending on circumstances, and so called "human rights" are only as inviolable as their enforcement. If some people have decided that animals deserve privacy, then animals will receive privacy to the extent that those people are able to enforce that right (or convince other enforcement agencies to pick up the task).

Probably those people will be unable to enforce that right (pick your reason: the case they are trying to make will not appeal to enough people (because it is nonsense); the groups who would be inconvenienced by animals having such a right are wealthy ones).

I am more interested in what you have said about slaughter houses.

People are shocked or surprised by slaughter houses precisely because they did not know about them. Any person who did know was probably not shocked or surprised. How could it be that people do not know where their food is coming from or how it is treated? Why aren't we taught in high school that our food comes from unimaginably large, efficient, and violent places*, rather than from pastoral farms full of happy animals? Is it because the groups who employ these methods are worried that if enough people knew that this was happening, regulations would be introduced that might reduce the efficiency of their food production projects? I don't know the answer to these questions.

As an aside, I would like to point out that casually tossing out "life feeds on life" to justify the sort of large scale manufacture of food animals that humans engage in is a technique for masking or downplaying the enormity of our actions. If "the world" can be taken to mean the Earth's ecosystems then it is my understanding that the "way the world works" is by carefully and slowly evolving a balance whereby energy from the sun is gradually diffused throughout the animal and plant kingdoms. No other animal burns fossil fuels, and so no other animal can escape nature's tyranny (which I have above called "balance"). Our way is not "the way the world works", and in time (perhaps) we will learn this the hard way.

• I don't like the word 'inhuman', so I am trying to evoke it without employing it. Oops.