So that people can own "pets"

I’m not talking now about puppy mills or rabbit mills, or “irresponsible breeders”. I’m talking about the entire paradigm of breeding animals for our own purposes. When did we decide that it was our right to bring these innocent others into a world that, from their perspective, is cruel indeed? What makes us think that we have any right to buy and sell the lives of other sentient beings, or to make a trade of separating families and selling babies, simply so that people can own “pets”?
~Angel Flinn (June 10, 2010)