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It's only an inconsistency from a "vegan" worldview -- it's prerequisite that you see all animals as being total equals that it's inconsistent to butcher one an

It's only an inconsistency from a "vegan" worldview -- it's prerequisite that you see all animals as being total equals that it's inconsistent to butcher one and save the other. On the other hand, a non-vegan worldview likely sees some animals i.e. domestic farm animals as existing (or at least eligible) to be slaughtered and eaten. Upon seeing these ants trapped in an endless cycle of death for no reason at all, and having no clear purpose in the wider scheme of things, it makes sense to want to "correct" the problem. Whereas, there's no problem in eating a steak, as it came from livestock which lived for the purpose of being slaughtered. If the cow were suffering "out of place", the scientists would likely want to ease its pain, while still being able to go out and get a hamburger for lunch.

intarga 7y ago
I'm not arguing for veganism here, but your reasoning seems very flawed. If being born and raised for slaughter makes that slaughter justified, then would it be ok to kill and eat humans if they were born and raised for that purpose? This argument doesn't hold water.
- mijamo 7y ago
  That situation could not occur, for several reasons: - You do not want other human to do that to you, so you do not do that to them. This is the same reason why murder is frowned upon in societies - Humans are animal, and you have a natural empathy towards other human beings. In addition, there would be sexual appetite for the captive, people falling in love etc. which would lead to very problematic situation - Humans seem very dangerous and inefficient to raise for food, they could rebel, and it takes foverer to get from a baby to an adult (comparing to a chicken for instance). I'm pretty sure we would not farm cows if cows were as intelligent and threatening as us and took 15 years to become adult, we would just exterminate them because they would be a threat, or make a peace treaty, just like human societies do.
- spijdar 7y ago
  It's the not the nurture of the thing but the nature of the thing. It's not that the animal was raised to be slaughtered, but that it was "made" to be slaughtered, if you choose to believe that. If I had to try to explain it, I think it's either people have internalized hierarchies about nature "hard wired" intuitively and/or also passed down by culture, where animals like livestock are "meant" to be food. I don't know nearly enough about anything to speculate on which if either is the case. I'm not stating that as fact, or that it's a good thing, only that's what I've observed. Humanity seems to be predisposed to this kind of "you're made to do this", and it's definitely not always good or ethical. But I don't think that it's "inconsistent", if that's what you believe. Unethical, maybe, but not inconsistent.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Humans and animals are not equal. It's simple as that. According to our laws humans have some rights by just being a human. Some animals have rights only because humans like them. Cockroaches have no rights because humans don't like them. Bear which killed human have no rights and will be killed to prevent more deaths, because humans don't like him. Cute kitten have a lot of rights because people like him and will be angry if they find out that someone tortures that cute kitten. Nobody will be angry if some kid tortures cockroach. It'll be disgusting, but that's about it.
  - intarga 7y ago
    > Humans and animals are not equal. It's simple as that. I don't disagree, but if that's the argument, then make that argument, instead of nonsense about being raised for slaughter.
  - ben509 7y ago
    > According to our laws humans have some rights by just being a human. Being human means you can plan things out and recall the passage of time by sharing stories. Language and higher thought make us peculiar in that regard; they give us a past and a future, which is why you're destroying something if you end a human being's life early. For a similar reason, we have rules against causing suffering that apply to animals that can suffer.
- computerex 7y ago
  Obviously it wouldn't be okay to birth and raise humans for the sole purpose of consumption. That's why you don't see humans being raised for consumption.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
This seems like the same logic that says shooting and eating a non-endangered wild deer is less ethical than eating a cow that someone else killed for you. (Which is a viewpoint I've encountered in real life. Basically anyone who is not vegetarian but thinks hunting/hunters are gross.) I would say that many humans have a natural empathy for suffering things, but it can be short-circuited by emotional distance (you never see the cow as anything but a ready-to-cook steak) and social pressure (everyone knows it's okay to eat cows). We're really good at finding moral justifications for things we really want to do. (I am not vegetarian, for whatever that's worth. I admit I have the same emotional/non-logical responses I described here. But I see perfectly civil attempts at debate being downvoted to hell and accused of "virtue signalling" purely for going against groupthink, and that bugs me.)
EGreg 7y ago
I think that the main question is about how animals are killed and how they live until then. To me, slaughtering a cow quickly is not bad because the cow may have had problems in its old age and we are causing one minute of pain vs long years of potentially serious discomfort. Also the animal’s experience is considered pretty limited so robbing the cow of many more years of experiencing life as a cow is not considered very bad. On the upside you get to use the cow’s meat, hide etc. In the animal kingdom, deaths are often far more brutal, including from bacteria etc. so humane slaughter is far better. The problem starts when you have to breed far more cows and keep them in terrible conditions during their lives. Especially how they used to keep veal. To this day I avoid veal out of principle. But it’s also the dairy industry, the National Dairy Checkoff and how cows are forcefully inseminated, the calves taken from them and the cows milked without being able to move. The problem is induced demand and the explosion of number of people on the planet. The farms are not your grandparents’ farms. And cows have it relatively good compared to turkeys and chickens. What’s really immoral is the way they keep these animals confined, cut off their beaks so they don’t peck each other, and let them live in their own dung and stench. The chickens can’t spread a single wing. The way they use antibiotics to both combat the rampant spread of disease in confined conditions (from feces, etc.) and to fatten up the animal has heavily contributed to antibiotic resistance of MRSA strains etc. So there are negative externalities for humans even if you don’t care about animal welfare. We must do something about ending factory farms in the USA. When you are not paying you are the product. Capitalism always selects for the farm with the lowest overhead, though. So we will have to use non-market mechanisms to solve this. Does anyone here have good ideas? Here are some of mine: Regulations (like in Europe) Nonprofit offering farm subsidies and to build vertical space to house animals in exchange for cameras and seizing the farm / fining it (like a government) if violations occur. Make more people lactose intolerant by encouraging interracial marriages with non-Europeans like Asians (far fetched and works only for cows, if it works at all) Impossible burger may be the best thing to get people to switch. Just like Qbix and Matrix.org and Solid and Mastodon need to exist as alternatives for people to switch from centralized systems. Any other ideas?

intarga 7y ago

I'm not arguing for veganism here, but your reasoning seems very flawed. If being born and raised for slaughter makes that slaughter justified, then would it be ok to kill and eat humans if they were born and raised for that purpose? This argument doesn't hold water.

mijamo 7y ago
That situation could not occur, for several reasons: - You do not want other human to do that to you, so you do not do that to them. This is the same reason why murder is frowned upon in societies - Humans are animal, and you have a natural empathy towards other human beings. In addition, there would be sexual appetite for the captive, people falling in love etc. which would lead to very problematic situation - Humans seem very dangerous and inefficient to raise for food, they could rebel, and it takes foverer to get from a baby to an adult (comparing to a chicken for instance). I'm pretty sure we would not farm cows if cows were as intelligent and threatening as us and took 15 years to become adult, we would just exterminate them because they would be a threat, or make a peace treaty, just like human societies do.
spijdar 7y ago
It's the not the nurture of the thing but the nature of the thing. It's not that the animal was raised to be slaughtered, but that it was "made" to be slaughtered, if you choose to believe that. If I had to try to explain it, I think it's either people have internalized hierarchies about nature "hard wired" intuitively and/or also passed down by culture, where animals like livestock are "meant" to be food. I don't know nearly enough about anything to speculate on which if either is the case. I'm not stating that as fact, or that it's a good thing, only that's what I've observed. Humanity seems to be predisposed to this kind of "you're made to do this", and it's definitely not always good or ethical. But I don't think that it's "inconsistent", if that's what you believe. Unethical, maybe, but not inconsistent.
vbezhenar 7y ago
Humans and animals are not equal. It's simple as that. According to our laws humans have some rights by just being a human. Some animals have rights only because humans like them. Cockroaches have no rights because humans don't like them. Bear which killed human have no rights and will be killed to prevent more deaths, because humans don't like him. Cute kitten have a lot of rights because people like him and will be angry if they find out that someone tortures that cute kitten. Nobody will be angry if some kid tortures cockroach. It'll be disgusting, but that's about it.
- intarga 7y ago
  > Humans and animals are not equal. It's simple as that. I don't disagree, but if that's the argument, then make that argument, instead of nonsense about being raised for slaughter.
- ben509 7y ago
  > According to our laws humans have some rights by just being a human. Being human means you can plan things out and recall the passage of time by sharing stories. Language and higher thought make us peculiar in that regard; they give us a past and a future, which is why you're destroying something if you end a human being's life early. For a similar reason, we have rules against causing suffering that apply to animals that can suffer.
computerex 7y ago
Obviously it wouldn't be okay to birth and raise humans for the sole purpose of consumption. That's why you don't see humans being raised for consumption.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

This seems like the same logic that says shooting and eating a non-endangered wild deer is less ethical than eating a cow that someone else killed for you. (Which is a viewpoint I've encountered in real life. Basically anyone who is not vegetarian but thinks hunting/hunters are gross.) I would say that many humans have a natural empathy for suffering things, but it can be short-circuited by emotional distance (you never see the cow as anything but a ready-to-cook steak) and social pressure (everyone knows it's okay to eat cows). We're really good at finding moral justifications for things we really want to do. (I am not vegetarian, for whatever that's worth. I admit I have the same emotional/non-logical responses I described here. But I see perfectly civil attempts at debate being downvoted to hell and accused of "virtue signalling" purely for going against groupthink, and that bugs me.)

EGreg 7y ago

I think that the main question is about how animals are killed and how they live until then. To me, slaughtering a cow quickly is not bad because the cow may have had problems in its old age and we are causing one minute of pain vs long years of potentially serious discomfort. Also the animal’s experience is considered pretty limited so robbing the cow of many more years of experiencing life as a cow is not considered very bad. On the upside you get to use the cow’s meat, hide etc. In the animal kingdom, deaths are often far more brutal, including from bacteria etc. so humane slaughter is far better. The problem starts when you have to breed far more cows and keep them in terrible conditions during their lives. Especially how they used to keep veal. To this day I avoid veal out of principle. But it’s also the dairy industry, the National Dairy Checkoff and how cows are forcefully inseminated, the calves taken from them and the cows milked without being able to move. The problem is induced demand and the explosion of number of people on the planet. The farms are not your grandparents’ farms. And cows have it relatively good compared to turkeys and chickens. What’s really immoral is the way they keep these animals confined, cut off their beaks so they don’t peck each other, and let them live in their own dung and stench. The chickens can’t spread a single wing. The way they use antibiotics to both combat the rampant spread of disease in confined conditions (from feces, etc.) and to fatten up the animal has heavily contributed to antibiotic resistance of MRSA strains etc. So there are negative externalities for humans even if you don’t care about animal welfare. We must do something about ending factory farms in the USA. When you are not paying you are the product. Capitalism always selects for the farm with the lowest overhead, though. So we will have to use non-market mechanisms to solve this. Does anyone here have good ideas? Here are some of mine: Regulations (like in Europe) Nonprofit offering farm subsidies and to build vertical space to house animals in exchange for cameras and seizing the farm / fining it (like a government) if violations occur. Make more people lactose intolerant by encouraging interracial marriages with non-Europeans like Asians (far fetched and works only for cows, if it works at all) Impossible burger may be the best thing to get people to switch. Just like Qbix and Matrix.org and Solid and Mastodon need to exist as alternatives for people to switch from centralized systems. Any other ideas?