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I guess the difference would be though, that without the demand for meat, those cows would likely never have lived at all. 99%+ of all cows alive are used for h

I guess the difference would be though, that without the demand for meat, those cows would likely never have lived at all. 99%+ of all cows alive are used for human agriculture. From the perspective of any living creature, I generally think of existence as a positive good versus non-existence. I know I certainly would rather come to a violent death at a young age than have never been born at all. I think there's a plausible argument that modern factory farming is so horrific that it's worse than non-existence. But a cow raised with a decent quality of life, and slaughtered humanely for its meat does not seem worse for animal welfare than eliminating the entire existence of the cow. (Of course I realize there's ecological and health arguments for giving up meat, but purely talking along the dimension of animal welfare.)

SubiculumCode 5y ago
If we all moved to impossible beef, cattle populations would plummet. However, despite popular perception, for most of its life before slaughter, a cow is raised in large open ranges for grazing, like in the California foothills. Only the last parts of their live do they get put into crowded feedlots for "fattening", which might be described as inhumane. Perhaps, it would lead to the advent of wild cattle in the California hills, as land owners stop caring.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Perhaps, it would lead to the advent of wild cattle in the California hills, as land owners stop caring. Which would be an invasive species.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    indeed. making the thing even more hilarious.
- spicymaki 5y ago
  Two things: Cattle are slaughtered within 1-2 years and they are held in feed lots for 1/3 of that time. Cattle slaughtered for veal are caged and do not live in any humane conditions. I would certainly not want to exist.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    re veal: How many people eat veal these days?
    - daddylongstroke 5y ago
      In the US, not so many. In the rest of the world, quite a lot. It seems this "ethical dilemma" is a US or Western-centric 1st world problem.
babyshake 5y ago
There is a very good argument to be made that the life of cows on factory farms is worse than never existing.
- tomp 5y ago
  There was an article on Slate Star Codex that examined this issue in detail. The conclusion was the opposite - basically that life is worth it even if living in extremely poor conditions - as evidenced by accounts of human survivors of e.g. concentration camps (the majority still wanted to continue living, and even engaged in normal human activities like love and procreation). https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n...
  - retzkek 5y ago
    "Continuing to live" is a very different state than "being brought into existence," and I struggle to see how the desire for the former implies the latter. You can't ask anyone who was never born if they would prefer to have been created, nor can someone who was created observe what it would have been like to have never been born. It's difficult to even conceptualize non-existence!
atweiden 5y ago
Factory farming normalizes extreme violence and exploitation. It teaches humans it’s acceptable to profoundly harm and neglect living creatures for profit. I have to imagine this has highly negative spillover effects on society at large. It’s making our society more depraved than it otherwise would be if we just grew plants for food. Or, consider animal agriculture’s role in deforestation of the Amazon, in massively polluting our planet, and in being a breeding grounds for zoonotic disease transmission, etc. IMO “allowing” a cow to live the entirety of its early life as a confused, neglected, and often tormented slave doesn’t offset a single one of those evils.
tomp 5y ago
I had to scroll 1/3 down the page before finally finding this argument. Simply said, for cows, eating meat means murder. Not eating meat means extinction.
- hawos 5y ago
  Because there would be no efforts to prevent cows from going extinct? What?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
arrrg 5y ago
Do you view the millions of existences prevented by contraception the same way? Those humans also don’t exist for entirely preventable reasons … This seems like an on its face absurd and pointless argument to me. In these scenarios we are basically talking about unborn hypothetical future cows and from that perspective your argument makes no sense at all. Cattle would obviously continue to exist in some form, even with a greatly diminished population – so we are not even talking about extinction. Is the fact that compared to 100 years ago the US horse population shrank by 50% (due to reduced demand) a great tragedy? Obviously not. Obviously. This argument is so weirdly absurd.
- roenxi 5y ago
  You've missed the argument - the argument is we have prevented the existence of millions of humans without blinking, many of whom would probably rather exist. Once we've one that, killing off large numbers of animals is an academic point. Who cares if we kill them by preventing their existence or giving them years of life then killing them? They're the lucky ones who got to be born. If you gave me a choice, I'd rather die and be eaten than never have existed. I would also rather have been born and die horribly (which may yet happen) than be one of the uncountable infinity of humans who never existed to breath the air.
  - dotsam 5y ago
    Is there a quality of life tipping point at which you would rather never have been born? If you were offered a life consisting entirely of pain and suffering, would you accept that? If the quality of life is *not* an issue, we could logically maintain that we are morally obliged to maximise the number of beings brought into life -- however short and horrible that life may be -- because any form of existence is preferable to non-existence. If quality of life *is* an issue, we should strive not to bring beings into existence that are likely to have a particularly low quality of life. The suffering of factory farmed animals may be great enough to say it would be better that they never existed rather than they were born into a short life of imprisonment and suffering.
    - 5y ago
hawos 5y ago
This argument comes up almost every time and it has never made any sense to me. Yes, you would rather live than never have been born. That's because you're alive right now, you can have and express that feeling. Someone who doesn't exist will not care even in the slightest, because they can't.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

If we all moved to impossible beef, cattle populations would plummet. However, despite popular perception, for most of its life before slaughter, a cow is raised in large open ranges for grazing, like in the California foothills. Only the last parts of their live do they get put into crowded feedlots for "fattening", which might be described as inhumane. Perhaps, it would lead to the advent of wild cattle in the California hills, as land owners stop caring.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Perhaps, it would lead to the advent of wild cattle in the California hills, as land owners stop caring. Which would be an invasive species.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  indeed. making the thing even more hilarious.
spicymaki 5y ago
Two things: Cattle are slaughtered within 1-2 years and they are held in feed lots for 1/3 of that time. Cattle slaughtered for veal are caged and do not live in any humane conditions. I would certainly not want to exist.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  re veal: How many people eat veal these days?
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    In the US, not so many. In the rest of the world, quite a lot. It seems this "ethical dilemma" is a US or Western-centric 1st world problem.

babyshake 5y ago

There is a very good argument to be made that the life of cows on factory farms is worse than never existing.

tomp 5y ago
There was an article on Slate Star Codex that examined this issue in detail. The conclusion was the opposite - basically that life is worth it even if living in extremely poor conditions - as evidenced by accounts of human survivors of e.g. concentration camps (the majority still wanted to continue living, and even engaged in normal human activities like love and procreation). https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n...
- retzkek 5y ago
  "Continuing to live" is a very different state than "being brought into existence," and I struggle to see how the desire for the former implies the latter. You can't ask anyone who was never born if they would prefer to have been created, nor can someone who was created observe what it would have been like to have never been born. It's difficult to even conceptualize non-existence!

atweiden 5y ago

Factory farming normalizes extreme violence and exploitation. It teaches humans it’s acceptable to profoundly harm and neglect living creatures for profit. I have to imagine this has highly negative spillover effects on society at large. It’s making our society more depraved than it otherwise would be if we just grew plants for food. Or, consider animal agriculture’s role in deforestation of the Amazon, in massively polluting our planet, and in being a breeding grounds for zoonotic disease transmission, etc. IMO “allowing” a cow to live the entirety of its early life as a confused, neglected, and often tormented slave doesn’t offset a single one of those evils.

tomp 5y ago

I had to scroll 1/3 down the page before finally finding this argument. Simply said, for cows, eating meat means murder. Not eating meat means extinction.

hawos 5y ago
Because there would be no efforts to prevent cows from going extinct? What?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

arrrg 5y ago

Do you view the millions of existences prevented by contraception the same way? Those humans also don’t exist for entirely preventable reasons … This seems like an on its face absurd and pointless argument to me. In these scenarios we are basically talking about unborn hypothetical future cows and from that perspective your argument makes no sense at all. Cattle would obviously continue to exist in some form, even with a greatly diminished population – so we are not even talking about extinction. Is the fact that compared to 100 years ago the US horse population shrank by 50% (due to reduced demand) a great tragedy? Obviously not. Obviously. This argument is so weirdly absurd.

roenxi 5y ago
You've missed the argument - the argument is we have prevented the existence of millions of humans without blinking, many of whom would probably rather exist. Once we've one that, killing off large numbers of animals is an academic point. Who cares if we kill them by preventing their existence or giving them years of life then killing them? They're the lucky ones who got to be born. If you gave me a choice, I'd rather die and be eaten than never have existed. I would also rather have been born and die horribly (which may yet happen) than be one of the uncountable infinity of humans who never existed to breath the air.
- dotsam 5y ago
  Is there a quality of life tipping point at which you would rather never have been born? If you were offered a life consisting entirely of pain and suffering, would you accept that? If the quality of life is *not* an issue, we could logically maintain that we are morally obliged to maximise the number of beings brought into life -- however short and horrible that life may be -- because any form of existence is preferable to non-existence. If quality of life *is* an issue, we should strive not to bring beings into existence that are likely to have a particularly low quality of life. The suffering of factory farmed animals may be great enough to say it would be better that they never existed rather than they were born into a short life of imprisonment and suffering.
  - 5y ago

hawos 5y ago

This argument comes up almost every time and it has never made any sense to me. Yes, you would rather live than never have been born. That's because you're alive right now, you can have and express that feeling. Someone who doesn't exist will not care even in the slightest, because they can't.