> Not all animal slaughter is overly cruel Sure, but no animal wants to die. No matter how you kill it, you're still harming it. > there are local farmers tha

> Not all animal slaughter is overly cruel Sure, but no animal wants to die. No matter how you kill it, you're still harming it. > there are local farmers that do care about the methods used to slaughter their animals The problem is that farms like that are exceedingly rare, and I think that their existence is mostly used as a mental cop-out to avoid feeling bad about the animal products one consumes. By exceedingly rare, I mean that factory farms produce (in the USA) [1]: * 99.9% of meat chickens * 97% of egg-laying hens * 99% of turkeys * 95% of pigs * 78% of cattle I've also make a bunch of points relating to the natural lifespans of animals, the issues with modern breeds, and whitewashing of animal farming practices in my other comment [2]. If animals were to be raised for their products (meat, eggs, dairy, wool) in ways that do not contribute any excess cruelty to their lives - i.e. letting them live out most of their natural lives, giving them space, good food, loving care, and not raising modern breeds that suffer from their over-engineering - I would expect said products to cost an order of magnitude more than what you typically find at the grocery store these days. Odds are your "free-range" eggs that cost 30% more than the cheapest ones aren't it. If you want to consume animal products, go ahead. But, face the consequences of your diet, and acknowledge what you are paying others to do - without imagining the magical "cruelty-free" farm. That was the point of my post: that while in theory you can have wonderful farms with happy animals, in practice they don't exist. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1018840 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237599