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I disagree that this is necessarily a consequence of utilitarianism, be it in the original Benthamite sense or the offshoots endorsed by Effective Altruists who extend utility to animals.
For one, I'm very much not a utilitarian, merely a consequentalist, which is a much broader category (I'd go so far as to say most Deontologists are just the same in denial). Of course, I draw the opposite conclusion he does, namely that it's okay to both eat and have sex with non-human animals, even if I don't claim either are morally laudable, merely neutral.
Now this is perfectly true in the case of Singer himself, but I consider a world where prawns and pigeons are given significant moral weight to be abhorrent in themselves, especially when you multiply by total population.
I strongly believe that you're confusing the goal with the outcome in a very important sense.
For the overwhelming majority of human history, and in many parts of the globe, cruelty to animals was believed to be no big deal at all. The average person happily threw stones at cats or watched dog fights, and if you used enjoyment of the same as a heuristic to root out psychopathy, you'd find it to be incredibly useless.
However, when a society has moved in the direction of considering such acts morally reprehensible and simply Not Done by good upstanding folk, is it any surprise that those who still do it aren't "good upstanding folk"? They're clearly abnormal in some regard, since they are either too impulsive or too dumb to consider the consequences of their action, and both strongly correlate with other things we consider bad like cruelty towards humans.
If you declare shaving your head to be a clear sign of Nazism and demand all desist, then many people who would otherwise have shaved theirs don't any more, and voila, finding a skinhead is close to proof of NatSoc sympathies.
The majority of humans start out inclined to be at least a little cruel towards animals, and in most places, they're socialized out of it, and those who persist have something wrong with them. That does not necessarily mean that it's the cruelty to animals that causes psychopathy or sociopathy, for much the same reason that, protestations of ardent vegans aside, the typical meat eater isn't particularly more likely to be a sadistic serial killer.
On a more personal note, I love dogs and find cruelty towards them abhorrent, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it should be banned. I get no pleasure out of tormenting most creatures, and the closest I ever get is when, after concussing but not outright killing a mosquito, I've occasionally in the past torn off its wings and watched it suffer with mild smugness. Or perhaps when I make sure the tics I occasionally pick off my dog die just a little more painfully (do they even feel pain? Doesn't particularly matter) than they could have.
I invite anyone and everyone to demonstrate how I've been less than upstanding in my interpersonal relations or as a citizen, regardless of whatever heterodox views I hold.
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