4 ms·

Chickens are stupid and we try not to torture them. Elephants are smart and we steal them from their mothers, chain them up, break their spirits, beat them, et

• chris_wot 9y ago
  Chickens aren't really stupid.
• irrational 9y ago
  You've obviously never spent any time around chickens. They are not stupid by any means. They are able to solve problems, they are social, they have individual personalities.
• blincoln 9y ago
  Have you ever seen how chickens are raised for mass-scale meat production? I used to catch the bus across the street from a chicken-processing plant. They live in cages that are just large enough for the chicken itself, and the cages are stacked quite high, so that except for the top level, all of them are constantly getting waste dumped on them by the chickens further up in the stack. Seems pretty torturous to me.
• kingkawn 9y ago
  As a former rural kid; the idea that chickens are not tortured is a widespread cultural fantasy that has more to do with keeping our impression of the quality and power of our moral judgements intact than anything to do with the lives of chickens. I am not trying to crucify you by any means! I have eaten more than my share of chickens, and have been horrified by the suffering of elephants as well. I am instead participating in this discussion because I think that the way this argument is structured betrays the weakness of our way of conceiving of allowable/forbidden indifference to another creature with which we can also share emotional experiences. Of course we must eat, and there is vast culture around eating animals or using them as tools or entertainers. Still, it doesn't mean we need to justify it with swiss-cheese moralizing about intelligence.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]