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Devil's advocate from the other side: commercial farming and animal slaughter is a messy, ugly business to a lot of people. You could easily film an ethical ope
by ethbro 9y ago
Devil's advocate from the other side: commercial farming and animal slaughter is a messy, ugly business to a lot of people. You could easily film an ethical operation and edit in such a way that people are shocked (shocked!!) that their steaks had eyes and felt pain.
So even without "human health and safety concerns", there are valid reasons for not showing graphic details.
That said, I absolutely think enforcing ethical animal treatment through public pressure on factory farming trumps right-not-to-know.
- cageface 9y agoIf people aren’t comfortable watching animals being slaughtered maybe they shouldn’t eat them.
- riffraff 9y agoPeople should know how the meat industry works but this reasoning seems extreme. I am not comfortable watching women give birth, that doesn't mean I shouldn't have children.
- ch4s3 9y agoThere might be a frequency issue here ;)
- mikeyouse 9y agoI think this is confusing the availability of video with the forced viewing of video. If you're not comfortable watching a woman give birth, you can choose to avoid the many thousands of available videos. You don't have that option with factory farming methods. Nobody wants to watch animals being slaughtered on an assembly line, but they should absolutely have the option to see what happens with their food. I don't think there's any moral room for "It would be disgusting and probably harm their business, so we shouldn't film it."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- paulddraper 9y agoI'm not comfortable watching people changing adult diapers, but I'll visit a nursing home. I'm not comfortable watching people be killed, but I'll celebrate American Independence Day. I'm not comfortable with watching surgery, but I'll undergo surgery. There are loads of things I benefit from that I don't enjoy watching. EDIT: FYI, I have butchered pigs, chickens, and rabbits.
- dbdr 9y agoWould you undergo surgery if there was a more comfortable option with equivalent or better results?
- ycmbntrthrwaway 9y agoYes.
- Kadin 9y agoNone of those arguments really wash. If an industry depends on hiding its typical (or even exemplary!) operations from the general public, because of fear that people might not buy the industry's products if they knew what was involved in its production, that only builds the case for making sure the public knows what's going on. That reaction is basically proof that something the public is interested in, is being hidden. The public interest absolutely trumps some sort of business-model protection. In fact the only exclusions I can think of to that involve trade secrets provisions, but typically there IIRC there are fairly narrow definitions of what can be protected.
- ch4s3 9y agoI believe exacerbating information asymmetry about exchange goods and services is anathema to free exchange goods and services.