> How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our

> How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it? If that's a general argument, then the same thing goes for humans, so it'd therefore be better to have a human child and eat it (if it's slaughtered as humanely as possible), than not having a child, right? Whenever we argue this way about a non-human animal this way, it's worth considering whether we'd feel the similarly of about a human being with similar mental capacities. Otherwise it might just be our speciesism leading us into motivated reasoning. Of course, part of the problem with the argument is the false dilemma between killing someone and them never having been alive. Additionally the assumption, that it's harmful for someone non-existent to never be brought into existence, is an odd one. If we accept it, birth control would be highly immoral, and rape could often be justified as being in the interested of a potential unborn child... which is actually what's happening here with farmed cows, because they're being forcefully inseminated non-stop, and you're arguing it's for the benefit of the unborn calf. If we buy this premise, we'd also have to support a hypothetical cannibalistic farming industry rearing captive human children for food, because otherwise those children wouldn't exist.