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Then why don’t we just anesthetize animals before slaughtering them? Seems like it would take care of your concern.

• sjy 6y ago
  The same reason anaesthesia doesn’t make it okay to kill humans. There’s lots more on this in chapter 4 (“What's Wrong with Killing?”) of Singer’s Practical Ethics, if you’re interested.
  • briefcomment 6y ago
    What’s the difference between an anesthetized animal and a plant? We literally call brain dead mammals “vegetables”.
    • bjoli 6y ago
      Well, if we are to follow the parent's mention of Peter Singer, you could go check out just about any source of preference utilitarianism. Briefly: An animal has a conscious will to live on, a preference so to say, and those preferences are the basis of moral consideration. A plant lacks those kinds of preferences (lacking any brain activity - what we can see are mostly just hormonal cell responses and such; things that all living cells have) and thus the plant in itself is not worthy of moral consideration.