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I am almost certain that 100 years from now, almost everyone will look back on the farming of sentient animals in the same way we look back on human slavery. M
by wyager 10y ago
I am almost certain that 100 years from now, almost everyone will look back on the farming of sentient animals in the same way we look back on human slavery.
Meat farming is more or less essential to our standard of living and it's completely socially normalized, and yet there are obvious and compelling moral arguments against it. The same was true of slavery 250 years ago.
As with slavery and the industrial revolution, I suspect improved technology (i.e. tank-grown meat) will eliminate our dependence on meat farming, and its social acceptability will soon follow.
I say this as someone who eats meat from sentient animals, but recognizes that vegans have a uniquely coherent, self-consistent, and compelling set of arguments against the practice.
- chucksmash 10y agoI think a comparison to slavery might be a little ambitious here. There are plenty of other things we presently do to human beings which our ancestors can be cross with us for that are probably higher on the badness scale than eating meat.
- rosser 10y ago> ...probably higher on the badness scale than eating meat. You're kinda making 'wyager's point for him. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as
- chucksmash 10y agoThat's a bit tangential. My point (which I stand by) is that eating meat is almost certainly not the epoch-defining evil in the world today the way slavery was for America in the 19th century. I've made no comment on whether we should or should not worry about it because there are umpteen worse things - just that the early 2000s aren't likely to be looked back on as the decades of the eaters of the flesh. Maybe I'm wrong...
- codezero 10y agoI've been very cynical that this would be true. I really hope it is, and until now, I wasn't sure other people felt the same way I did about it. Thanks for posting this. I'd love to buy you a beer.
- 13of40 10y ago> tank grown meat You know, for less trouble we could just switch to eating the cows when they die of natural causes.
- wyager 10y agoThe meat from old animals does not taste good.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 13of40 10y agoDo you have personal experience with this? I've always assumed that we exclusively eat one or two year old animals because of the needs of industrialized agriculture, like tomatoes that ripen in the warehouse...
- wyager 10y agoYes. Old animals are usually gamier and have worse flavor. An animal that died of old age probably tastes horrible. I mean, think about it; they're not dying because their flesh is in great condition.
- andreasklinger 10y agoand you have to wait (read feed, shelter, pay) twice as long at least
- asciimo 10y agoYou're probably joking, but cattle would live 20-25 years "naturally," as opposed to 12-18 months if slaughtered. That's a lot more grain and methane.
- codezero 10y agoIf we control their every move, is there even such a thing as a natural cause?