> Stop ascribing human-like emotions and awareness to other species. Well, take a monkey, orca, elephant, dolphin, etc. and it would be hard not to. Sure, many

> Stop ascribing human-like emotions and awareness to other species. Well, take a monkey, orca, elephant, dolphin, etc. and it would be hard not to. Sure, many farm animals fall below that level, but they're not bugs either. Many mammals have some basic language, care for their young, give distress calls, migrate, find shelter, etc. which seems to indicate at least some level of future planning whether innate or not. And many intelligent mammals have been seen grieving the dead or rescuing animals from danger. > In free range "captivity" they suffer less. It's as simple as that. Yet philosophy courses still exist... Because it's not as simple as that. For some, life is more than just the reduction of suffering. And there are a million other ways to answer "why we exist" or "how we should live". For animals, we don't know. I think it's absurd to say we're giving them a better/easier/happier life on a farm or out in the wild. We don't know. Taking zoos as an example though (which is a similar form of captivity, except they don't kill their animals), most people don't think it's a better life, except in the case where the animal is so weak, sick or unable to care for itself that it couldn't hunt in the wild. Tons of prey animals are reintroduced to the wild, without concern that they might be eaten (some will), but in the hopes that many will survive and reproduce. So, I guess if your goal is to ensure that the most number of animals lead a somewhat confined life away from predators until they're done growing, farms make sense. If your goal is to ensure that animals get to experience life in their native habitats including the ability to mate and get eaten, then farms aren't so good.