People should not keep pets

I am going to utilise this round to rebut pro's arguments.Rebuttal #1"As well as the risk to health of the humans, keeping pets can be damaging to animal health. Diseases that can be transferred between animals and humans are called "zoonoses". The list of these diseases is long and varied, and they are often transferred by a subsidiary medium - a parasite like a flea or tick, when it comes to humans getting sick because of the animals."The likelihood of anyone contracting an illness from a pet and vice versa is very slim in modern times. It's 2015, all pets are carefully bred and vaccinated upon birth to prevent these sort of diseases from spreading. If a pet does obtain a disease or illness, then there are multiple options available to the owner to eradicate it. There are thousands of veternarys scattered across the entire UK alone (http://www.vetsdirectory.co.uk...) so if the issue of health does arise in a household where there is a pet, then it's the owners fault and not an problem created by the concept of keeping a pet alone.Rebuttal #2"And if animals don"t really care about morals and whatsoever, why can they become depressed? "Depression is actually pretty common in the animal kingdom and "Many kinds of animals exhibit a classic depression-related sense of helplessness when they can't change their situations"."What has depression got to do with animals and their lack of morals? A pet becomes zoochotic under the circumstances of poor care, not because they've got some form of humanistic morals. Again, the problem of depression among pets is not a problem directly related to the concept of keeping pets but to poor care from their owner. Most owners do take of their animals and so your argument that we shouldn't keep pets because they may become "depressed" is just plain weak. Rebuttal #3"Animals can"t talk, so how do we even know if they want to be with us or not? Maybe we should just let them completely live their own lives."This is a shamefully poor exposition. Animals can talk, just not in our sphere of languages. As I mentioned in a previous argument, most pets do have the opportunity to run free if they wish. Most dogs are let off lead when out and about with their owner and cats are always open to the option of escape through a cat flap or window - but they very rarely do, simply due to the fact that they enjoy their home and owner. They get given proper food, a warm shelter and all the love and affection they need to be happy, so why would they run away?May I just also point out that lsignificant depression among domesticated animals is very uncommon, and a grey area in science at that. Bonnie Beaver, DVM, executive director of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists stated that "it’s rare for dogs to suffer from long-term depression" (http://pets.webmd.com...).Rebuttal #4"And it isn"t only dogs, cats and rabbits that we see people have as pets. It is also seen that someone actually has a monkey, snake or a pig inside."Ok? And what point are you trying to convey here to support your argument?Rebuttal #5"Especially in the case of birds, keeping them as pets greatly limits the experience they would have in the wild. They are born to fly, and they don"t get very far in a case or in a house, do they? And as Monica Engebretsen argues for Born Free USA, "Birds are routinely denied two of their most fundamental natural behaviors " flying and socialization."Birds held in captivity do not feel deprived off their natural activities because they don't know any better. Birds for pets are bred and brought up in captivity and so they have never learned to fly - how can they become depressed over something that doesn't exist in their own minds? Where we depressed before the internet was invented? No, because we didn't know any better. Take a look at this video here: It proves that owners do allow their pet bird to fly around for certain periods of the day in order to grant them that freedom that they may or may not need. It is also worth noting that even though the bird has been granted the freedom to fly around out of the supreme control of the owner, it still returns to the owners hand upon every call. Birds in captivation are totally different to birds in the wild and therefore do not require the same primitive needs. Rebuttal #6"From a basic animal welfare point of view then, many animals which are currently kept as pets are not suited to that lifestyle, and in fact they are often suffering for no other reason than human gratification is reason. We are selfish! Isn"t this enough to stop this from happening?This is also a problem that is growing rather than receding, as zoo vet and government inspector Matt Brash points out: "There is a big problem out there. There are an awful lot of exotics in the country. A lot of them are not being kept properly"."Have you got any examples of animals that are kept as pets that are not suited to the domestic lifestyle? Admittedly, more exotic species such as snakes and lions may not be suitable for the household due to their limited domesticated history, but animals such as dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs have all been bred and domesticated for thousands of years. They don't know the wild lifestyle! They have been genetically programmed over centuries to live with humans. My final point is this: just because a minority of pets are treated badly, doesn't mean that the concept of keeping pets is a negative attrocity as a whole. Most people love their pets, and most pets love their humans. THe problem of poor pet welfare is one caused by a small group of people and should not by the entire pet-keeping population as a whole.I'd also like to ask pro this: what is your solution to the problem that you see as so significant that you wish to prevent people from keeping pets? Shall we just ban the right to ownership over all pets and let them run rampant in the streets?