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I have no problems with killing and eating animals. There are 1.5 billion cattle on this planet. Elephants, however, have been hunted from a population of 5-1
by wheels 16y ago
I have no problems with killing and eating animals. There are 1.5 billion cattle on this planet. Elephants, however, have been hunted from a population of 5-10 million a century ago to around 600,000 today and are now a threatened species. Do you really not see the difference between one and the other?
- xiaoma 16y agoNo, I'm not sure if I do. The pain cattle feels is no less pleasant than that elephants experience. The lives they lead in captivity so that we may eat them are almost certainly hellish compared to those that elephants live. In essence not only are they killed, but they're bred and forced to live torturous lives just for the purpose of being killed. How exactly does a greater world-wide population of one's species lower the value of one's life? Is it based on some cutoff beyond which extinction is assured? Or is it linear?Does maximizing the number of species on the planet really trump all concerns of suffering? If so, this logic would also somewhat weaken the value of the life of a dog (300 million) in comparison to that of a cat (200 million)? And what about the value of your life or mine? There are 6 billion of our species. Personally, I find it very hard to justify both eating animal flesh and outrage at animal killing. On occasion, I have an uneasy feeling that centuries from now humanity will look upon our current practices in a similar way as we look upon slavery... or cannibalism.