Bane - "But, by man's
artificial selection of these animals, we may be straying them far from their evolutionary fate."
There's no such thing as "evolutionary fate". Predestination, just like intelligent design, is directly opposed to the very fundamentals of evolutionary theory. Species evolve in response to selection pressures, which can range from predictable (eg. periodic increases in predator population) to completely random (eg. KT-scale asteroid hit).
Being chosen by a sentient species as a useful domestic animal is just another event, maybe predictable, probably not. But the minute that sentient species starts to deliberately breed or genetically engineer their new acquisition to suit their purposes, artifical selection replaces natural selection, and the term "evolution" doesn't really apply anymore.
Of course, a species which is chosen for domestication has higher fitness than one which is chosen for genocide, simply because it will probably produce more offspring.