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I'd really like to understand these statements - You seem to care about the well-being of the animal while it is alive, but then decide to kill it (or let it be

I'd really like to understand these statements - You seem to care about the well-being of the animal while it is alive, but then decide to kill it (or let it be killed) for its meat. What's the point? You understand that this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed, but you value it being happy. Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

Swizec 10y ago
It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself. Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ... I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die. The more important question is how self-aware is the chicken? Does this self-awareness give it rights? Do rights stem from self-awareness, or from humanness, or is it arbitrary based on a wishy washy feeling of "Hm, that looks too severe. Oh but that other thing, that's okay". Or is how we treat them based purely on how much they can take before the taste becomes too poor for us to bear? Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty.
- bananicorn 10y ago
  Personally, I follow the "rule" of: What you don't want done to yourself, don't do to others. Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive? Sure, one might argue that once you're dead you don't mind anymore, but while being alive, you usually strongly prefer staying that way. It's that simple. It certainly is difficult to determine wheter or not something wants to live, but in the case of chickens we can be fairly sure, as they display somewhat intelligent behaviour, and actively avoid harm.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    > Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive? Sure I'd prefer to stay alive because I'm curious what happens next. But realistically speaking my death is other people's problem not mine. Dying is easy. It's other people that suffer the consequences. Although the process of dying, if drawn out, sounds hella unpleasant. I wouldn't want that part. If we're talking step into the street and get splattered by a runaway 18-wheeler, instant brain death ... fuck it, not my problem. If we're talking 8 months of ineffectual chemo followed by 10 hours of drawing my last breath ... I'd rather just shoot myself. If we're talking normal life vs "eat this pill and aging becomes so slow you will be physically and mentally young well into your 90s followed by death of old age at 140" ... yeah I will definitely take that pill. I'm not sure that really answers your question but there you go. My views on life and death.
- algesten 10y ago
  > Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty. If it was only about avoiding suffering/pain and not the dying, would you be okay with farming children for eating? They will live happy lives pampered and cared for, running around in the backyard until you press a button and child drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die. It's obviously absurd, but you're making that decision with the animals you eat all the time. A chicken (probably) is less self aware than a cow, but we do eat cows. But how do you decide that another being is un-self-aware enough to be eaten? Which takes me back to the absurd. If human meat was tasty (I read it isn't), would someone with downs syndrome be morally ok to eat? How about someone in a vegetative state? If the sliding scale of self awareness is the deciding factor, we might as well eat less aware humans.
  - andrewingram 10y ago
    Yeah. I find that when you really think about the ethics of eating meat, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify a position somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. It's similar to the abortion debate, I've adopted a position (pro-choice) that I can't fully defend. The catch is that the sliding scale isn't a strawman, it's incredibly hard to justify an arbitrary line where one side is okay and the other isn't.
  - corobo 10y ago
    I understand it's an absurd argument but children are sentient and has far more potential than a chicken by being allowed to live out their natural life. If a child grows up and does nothing more than put together a single shoddy chicken coop that lets water in and falls over in a mild breeze it has infinitely out-performed the chicken. People with disabilities are still infinitely more capable than chickens, cows, most any animal we eat. There's also the problem of disease transmission too if you really want to hash out the idea. Most diseases don't transfer between species (at least not in catastrophic ways), if we were eating other humans there would be a lot of new diseases we'd need to fight or die from. See also BSE [1] and CJD [2] as examples of problems that occur through cannibalism. [1] Bovine spongiform encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... [2] Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_disease#Transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_dise... - particularly the "Cannibalism" section of Transmission.
- Qantourisc 10y ago
  We have things that put things to sleep. Anastasia. I don't hear people complain about operations (except those rare cases). The other option would be C4 that should also be painless. Although you could argue that the pieces of brain still suffer for a moment.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> Don't these two sentiments exclude each other? Not the OP, but a meat eater. I think it's obvious for most people that they want to eat meat but they don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. Those two sentiments aren't just not mutually exclusive, they complement each other. I know people who keep animals for their meat- chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and a cow or two. I've seen them really care for, and about their animals, and I couldn't miss the big, loving smiles on their faces when they're around them, particularly the younger ones. I'd call those smiles almost parental. The same people have no compunction about killing those same animals, even the younger ones (that have the most tender flesh). I'd even go as far as to say that some part of the love they feel for those animals may actually come from knowing how they taste. It might sound a bit crazy, but I think it's actually natural to love your food, rather than hate it and wish to hurt it. I also think other animals have similar feelings. For instance: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/apr/07/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-unforgettable-animal-behaviour#img-1 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/apr/07/... [Picture of a lion keeping a zebra fowl alive in the wild]
- bananicorn 10y ago
  Am I so wrong in the assumption, that if someone claims to love something, he won't hurt it? Allow me to put this into a little statement: "I love you, but now I have to kill you, so I can consume you" And they still cause suffering. A mother loses her child (calf), a sister her brother, just because there is someone who wants to eat him/her/it?
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    I'm going to eat bacon. Why? Because it's tasty and I enjoy it. Om Nom Nom. I'm aware that an animal died for my tasty bacon sandwich. I'm ok with that, because I rank the animal's life as less important than my morning. I'm not going to torture an animal because I derive no pleasure from it. Given the choice, therefore, I would rather the pig lived a happy enough life in a field with little pig huts to live in before it was slaughtered. I'm willing to pay more for that to be the case, because I think it's the decent thing to do. I don't love animals in general, heck I barely love any humans...
parenthephobia 10y ago
> this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed You're assuming this as a premise, which I think may be the root of the problem. Plenty of people don't believe that livestock is intelligent enough to comprehend the idea of death, or really anticipate the future in general. How then would it have a desire about future events? > Don't these two sentiments exclude each other? Wanting something to be happy whilst not respecting its autonomy is common amongst humans, so I'd say no. Additionally, killing an animal humanely doesn't cause it to be unhappy, since dead animals are incapable of experiencing emotional states.

Swizec 10y ago

It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself. Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ... I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die. The more important question is how self-aware is the chicken? Does this self-awareness give it rights? Do rights stem from self-awareness, or from humanness, or is it arbitrary based on a wishy washy feeling of "Hm, that looks too severe. Oh but that other thing, that's okay". Or is how we treat them based purely on how much they can take before the taste becomes too poor for us to bear? Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty.

bananicorn 10y ago
Personally, I follow the "rule" of: What you don't want done to yourself, don't do to others. Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive? Sure, one might argue that once you're dead you don't mind anymore, but while being alive, you usually strongly prefer staying that way. It's that simple. It certainly is difficult to determine wheter or not something wants to live, but in the case of chickens we can be fairly sure, as they display somewhat intelligent behaviour, and actively avoid harm.
- Swizec 10y ago
  > Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive? Sure I'd prefer to stay alive because I'm curious what happens next. But realistically speaking my death is other people's problem not mine. Dying is easy. It's other people that suffer the consequences. Although the process of dying, if drawn out, sounds hella unpleasant. I wouldn't want that part. If we're talking step into the street and get splattered by a runaway 18-wheeler, instant brain death ... fuck it, not my problem. If we're talking 8 months of ineffectual chemo followed by 10 hours of drawing my last breath ... I'd rather just shoot myself. If we're talking normal life vs "eat this pill and aging becomes so slow you will be physically and mentally young well into your 90s followed by death of old age at 140" ... yeah I will definitely take that pill. I'm not sure that really answers your question but there you go. My views on life and death.
algesten 10y ago
> Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty. If it was only about avoiding suffering/pain and not the dying, would you be okay with farming children for eating? They will live happy lives pampered and cared for, running around in the backyard until you press a button and child drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die. It's obviously absurd, but you're making that decision with the animals you eat all the time. A chicken (probably) is less self aware than a cow, but we do eat cows. But how do you decide that another being is un-self-aware enough to be eaten? Which takes me back to the absurd. If human meat was tasty (I read it isn't), would someone with downs syndrome be morally ok to eat? How about someone in a vegetative state? If the sliding scale of self awareness is the deciding factor, we might as well eat less aware humans.
- andrewingram 10y ago
  Yeah. I find that when you really think about the ethics of eating meat, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify a position somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. It's similar to the abortion debate, I've adopted a position (pro-choice) that I can't fully defend. The catch is that the sliding scale isn't a strawman, it's incredibly hard to justify an arbitrary line where one side is okay and the other isn't.
- corobo 10y ago
  I understand it's an absurd argument but children are sentient and has far more potential than a chicken by being allowed to live out their natural life. If a child grows up and does nothing more than put together a single shoddy chicken coop that lets water in and falls over in a mild breeze it has infinitely out-performed the chicken. People with disabilities are still infinitely more capable than chickens, cows, most any animal we eat. There's also the problem of disease transmission too if you really want to hash out the idea. Most diseases don't transfer between species (at least not in catastrophic ways), if we were eating other humans there would be a lot of new diseases we'd need to fight or die from. See also BSE [1] and CJD [2] as examples of problems that occur through cannibalism. [1] Bovine spongiform encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... [2] Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_disease#Transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_dise... - particularly the "Cannibalism" section of Transmission.
Qantourisc 10y ago
We have things that put things to sleep. Anastasia. I don't hear people complain about operations (except those rare cases). The other option would be C4 that should also be painless. Although you could argue that the pieces of brain still suffer for a moment.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> Don't these two sentiments exclude each other? Not the OP, but a meat eater. I think it's obvious for most people that they want to eat meat but they don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. Those two sentiments aren't just not mutually exclusive, they complement each other. I know people who keep animals for their meat- chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and a cow or two. I've seen them really care for, and about their animals, and I couldn't miss the big, loving smiles on their faces when they're around them, particularly the younger ones. I'd call those smiles almost parental. The same people have no compunction about killing those same animals, even the younger ones (that have the most tender flesh). I'd even go as far as to say that some part of the love they feel for those animals may actually come from knowing how they taste. It might sound a bit crazy, but I think it's actually natural to love your food, rather than hate it and wish to hurt it. I also think other animals have similar feelings. For instance: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/apr/07/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-unforgettable-animal-behaviour#img-1 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/apr/07/... [Picture of a lion keeping a zebra fowl alive in the wild]

bananicorn 10y ago
Am I so wrong in the assumption, that if someone claims to love something, he won't hurt it? Allow me to put this into a little statement: "I love you, but now I have to kill you, so I can consume you" And they still cause suffering. A mother loses her child (calf), a sister her brother, just because there is someone who wants to eat him/her/it?
- Ntrails 10y ago
  I'm going to eat bacon. Why? Because it's tasty and I enjoy it. Om Nom Nom. I'm aware that an animal died for my tasty bacon sandwich. I'm ok with that, because I rank the animal's life as less important than my morning. I'm not going to torture an animal because I derive no pleasure from it. Given the choice, therefore, I would rather the pig lived a happy enough life in a field with little pig huts to live in before it was slaughtered. I'm willing to pay more for that to be the case, because I think it's the decent thing to do. I don't love animals in general, heck I barely love any humans...

parenthephobia 10y ago

> this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed You're assuming this as a premise, which I think may be the root of the problem. Plenty of people don't believe that livestock is intelligent enough to comprehend the idea of death, or really anticipate the future in general. How then would it have a desire about future events? > Don't these two sentiments exclude each other? Wanting something to be happy whilst not respecting its autonomy is common amongst humans, so I'd say no. Additionally, killing an animal humanely doesn't cause it to be unhappy, since dead animals are incapable of experiencing emotional states.