Animals should be given the same rights and protections as humans

I apologize once again for the forfeited round, however, I believe that this should not falter my argument in the least based on the response made by my opponent, let's break down the argument that she put forward that hardly covers anything I talked about. "Humans are meat eater and even with in this premise I would not expect people to stop eating meat. However holding animals captive or butting them in horrible living conditions should be punishable by law."As I did mention before, humans are indeed meat eaters and it's natural that most of them would require meat as my opponent has acknowledged. However, without having presented facts she instead switches to something that's completely subjective. 'Punishable by law'? Why so? It's quite obvious that all she has done up till now is assert her own opinion without even considering putting any sources in nor does she even give her own justification why it should necessarily be 'punishable by law' when a majority STILL eat meat and support the consumption of meat. And since she's against meat consumption what prevents anyone supporting meat by simply saying "It should be punishable by law for anyone to take away our basic human rights to eat meat". Notice how I have stated basic human rights come into play, she doesn't bother to address this at all and no further rebuttal is needed for this.And voters should bear in mind for this FYI, that the only instances where consuming meat was 'punishable by law' was in certain parts in Asia, notably India, where the consumption of beef is banned because of religious opposition and this wasn't even because of the cruelty of animal captivity. Hence there are no other instances where it is punishable by law and voters should keep in mind that this makes her contention theoretical and not practical. [A] "To protect the safety and dignity of the animals. The animals would not need to understand their duties in this because they would have no expected responsibilties."I'm struggling to understand what dignity actually needs in this debate if my opponent is not going to prove the differentiation between them understanding their duties as farm animals and understanding their duties as pets. Once again, these responsibilities do not affect the animals in any way, it has been like that for decades and I have already answered your doubts about the safety of these animals as I have already proved that governments are already taking steps to ensure their protection, but these protection rights are not encompassing the same rights as humans. "They would simply be allowed to remain free from obsessive human influence."Granted, human influence can at some times be quite obsessive because of our requirements for animals, but here's the question, how is obsessive human influence necessarily a bad thing? We have maintained close relationships with all animals alike for centuries, perhaps my opponent is arguing how human influence forced some animals closer to extinction, but that's exactly what I agree on, protection measures are needed for those animals, but that doesn't mean we upgrade that to the SAME RIGHTS as humans, farm animals are in no way endangered, pigs, cows, chickens are all avaliable in vast quantities and there is no reason why same rights should be given to these animals at all. So, I have provided a word-by-word breakdown of what my opponent has said, there is very little to write to address what she said because little to nothing is actually challenging what I was saying and she still sticks to her subjective assertions about how animals should be treated, my opponent really shouldn't have thrown round three away like that by stating that there were no new arguments to address when the irony is that she still has ALL my arguments to address and this is why her argument still lacks in both content, evidence and weight. Sources - [A] - http://indianexpress.com...