4 ms·

It's very strange to kill male chicks, I'm eating capon instead of regular chicken nowadays because it has much more flavor and a better bite. If people would s

• carlmr 6y ago
  Capon is considered animal cruelty in many countries, so availability is an issue here. Aside from that I'm not sure how you imagine not killing the birds by eating them?
  • dep_b 6y ago
    I'm simply stating that raising them to eat is better than just gassing them immediately. If you're against eating meat as a principle then it's probably pretty useless. But eating the less wanted meat or produce really helps preventing pollution through overproduction of food that is never eaten. There are many people that think it's more ethical to kill a cow just for it's meat than to eat the meat of a horse, which is never bred just for it's meat. Both capon and horse meat are tastier than chicken and veal.
    • La1n 6y ago
      >I'm simply stating that raising them to eat is better than just gassing them immediately. I think that is more of an ethical debate than a fact. One could argue that most farmed chickens live a life of suffering, and keeping them suffering long is not better than gassing them immediately.
      • dep_b 6y ago
        But the same goes for the chickens that remain to lay eggs.
    • carlmr 6y ago
      I see your point, it was just the wording of "not killing" which I found a bit odd. The environmental argument makes sense, the ethical argument depends on many factors.
    • kgwgk 6y ago
      > than to eat the meat of a horse, which is never bred just for its meat. Maybe you meant to write > the meat of a horse which was not bred just for its meat Millions of horses are raised every year for their meat.
      • dep_b 6y ago
        > Millions of horses are raised every year for their meat. I don't know enough about the numbers worldwide to give you real hard data but the majority of all of the horse meat consumed worldwide is not from horses bred with the sole purpose to breed it for it's meat. I have the idea that it's not more than 30%. Also the horses that are primarily bred for food are for a large part free roaming in places where other cattle simply wouldn't survive. This in contrast to other meats (chicken, veal, pork) that are often raised in factory like environments.
        • kgwgk 6y ago
          "Not the majority" is quite different from "never" :-)
          • dep_b 6y ago
            True, I assumed it was "never" as the exported/imported horse meat I knew was a byproduct of a country that simply had a huge horse culture and a taboo on eating the meat at the same time. But I gathered some information and it seems that there are herds bred purely for consumption. TIL!
    • rsynnott 6y ago
      > I'm simply stating that raising them to eat is better than just gassing them immediately. On what basis, though? From a humane perspective, the quicker you kill a chicken the less suffering it does, and it's not like the culled chicks are ultimately wasted.
  • pizza234 6y ago
    Human ethics are tricky :-) There's a lot more at play than just killing vs not killing. Some types of killing may be acceptable, and some may not. For example meat-eaters, which as you pointed, effectively kill animals, may disagree with other ways of killing - for example movies production or fur coats. The most interesting case I've heard about this subject is in the movie Cannibal Holocaust. Among the other animals, two monkeys have been killed for script purposes, however, they have been eaten afterwards. Which are the ethics of this killing? There's no absolute answer¹ ¹=I'm not implying, just exposing.
• OscarCunningham 6y ago
  Egg laying hens are bred for different traits than the ones for meat. So the male chicks of egg laying hens would probably grow more slowly and to a smaller size than ones bred for meat. Thus their meat would be more expensive.
  • dep_b 6y ago
    I have not considered that, good insight.
  • shalmanese 6y ago
    I've always wondered if you could market this as "vegetarian chicken" under the rationale that eating it doesn't cause an increase in net animal death. It may be more expensive but plenty of things are sold as more expensive for the ethical version. At the end of the day, my suspicion is even most vegetarians don't like being confronted with the realities of egg production.
    • bbarn 6y ago
      > "vegetarian chicken" under the rationale that eating it doesn't cause an increase in net animal death wat
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • isthatsoup 6y ago
      Nope, that's the same faulty reasoning people use to justify purchasing leather. As if making the killing of cows more economical is somehow a good thing, and acting like demand for the product itself isn't going to cause companies to act to meet it and increase net animal death. It's completely naive.
      • OscarCunningham 6y ago
        Right. Weirdly, buying leather actually causes more cows to be eaten (because increasing the profit available causes the price of beef to decrease).
• rsynnott 6y ago
  > If people would simply eat them more they also don't have to be killed. ... Unless you were contemplating eating them _live_, I'm not sure how that works.