2 ms·

I am against animal cruelty,I give a shit. But there is an explanation for this. We eat animals that eat stuff we don't value. Cows eat grass, chickens eat gr

by jayski 3y ago

I am against animal cruelty,I give a shit. But there is an explanation for this. We eat animals that eat stuff we don't value. Cows eat grass, chickens eat grains we don't want, etc. This is for efficiency, if we wanted to raise lions for food we would first have to raise another animal for the lions to eat. Same thing with dogs, cats, etc. I guess the main exception is fishing,for example Tuna or Salmon. But in this case those fish eat other smaller fish that we don't value. You also don't (normally) see people have a pet tuna.

johnea 3y ago
I have a hard time following your logic here. It's not cruel to kill an animal, chop it up, and eat it's burnt dead body, as long as it eats something you don't want to, or can't eat? I'm pretty sure to the animal, there's no difference in being killed for one reason versus another. I will agree with you, on something I think you're trying to say: it's less cruel to kill a wild animal that has lived in it's own environment, birthed and raised it's own young, and been predated by a human. It's more cruel to artificially enseminate and raise animals in pens to be fed through an industrial scale meat grinder without ever having lived it's own life. In general all of the arguments for eating other animals rest on "other animals do it". Which is not a completely vacuous argument, but it also has to be taken with the agreement that we haven't really progressed beyond the behavour of other mammals. It's a tacit agreement that we're still an unevolved violent primate species. Which is undoubetly the case. I also eat some dead animals, I also drive a petro fueled car. I consider both of these things primitive and unevolved. I continue to try to correct both of these at every opportunity. Acknoledging the problem is the first step to correcting it. Otherwise, we're just offering excuses for our bad behaviour.
- jayski 3y ago
  I think we're very close to being on the same page. I am against raising animals inhumanely to maximize profit. I do my best to only eat chicken or meat that is free range and ethically raised. Of course that can be difficult and opens other conversations. My point is, the reason humanity generally prefers to eat cows over dogs, is not necessarily because we are hypocrites who want one animal to be a family member and another to die. It's because (moral issues aside) it's a lot more efficient to eat cows than dogs. Following my previous example, imagine we wanted to raise lions for food. Lions can eat (among other things) sheep. So to raise lions you first need to raise many sheep, take care of them, graze them, breed them, etc. A lion can eat hundreds of sheep for many years before it's big enough to slaughter and eat. This is inefficient. So we logically decided to just eat the sheep. Sheep eat grass that we don't want so it costs us nothing to feed them. As an atheist that believes in evolution I believe we are just another animal. If its moral for a wolf to hunt and eat a deer it should also be moral for us. To say otherwise is to get into religious territory where we are somehow divine and not just a slightly smarter ape. I 10000% agree we have gone past the point of just hunting. There is no moral justification for caging 100 chickens in a small space, pumping them full of hormones, killing them as soon as they are viable to eat. That is torture and no other animal (AFAIK) engages in that behavior.

by jayski 3y ago

johnea 3y ago

I have a hard time following your logic here. It's not cruel to kill an animal, chop it up, and eat it's burnt dead body, as long as it eats something you don't want to, or can't eat? I'm pretty sure to the animal, there's no difference in being killed for one reason versus another. I will agree with you, on something I think you're trying to say: it's less cruel to kill a wild animal that has lived in it's own environment, birthed and raised it's own young, and been predated by a human. It's more cruel to artificially enseminate and raise animals in pens to be fed through an industrial scale meat grinder without ever having lived it's own life. In general all of the arguments for eating other animals rest on "other animals do it". Which is not a completely vacuous argument, but it also has to be taken with the agreement that we haven't really progressed beyond the behavour of other mammals. It's a tacit agreement that we're still an unevolved violent primate species. Which is undoubetly the case. I also eat some dead animals, I also drive a petro fueled car. I consider both of these things primitive and unevolved. I continue to try to correct both of these at every opportunity. Acknoledging the problem is the first step to correcting it. Otherwise, we're just offering excuses for our bad behaviour.

jayski 3y ago
I think we're very close to being on the same page. I am against raising animals inhumanely to maximize profit. I do my best to only eat chicken or meat that is free range and ethically raised. Of course that can be difficult and opens other conversations. My point is, the reason humanity generally prefers to eat cows over dogs, is not necessarily because we are hypocrites who want one animal to be a family member and another to die. It's because (moral issues aside) it's a lot more efficient to eat cows than dogs. Following my previous example, imagine we wanted to raise lions for food. Lions can eat (among other things) sheep. So to raise lions you first need to raise many sheep, take care of them, graze them, breed them, etc. A lion can eat hundreds of sheep for many years before it's big enough to slaughter and eat. This is inefficient. So we logically decided to just eat the sheep. Sheep eat grass that we don't want so it costs us nothing to feed them. As an atheist that believes in evolution I believe we are just another animal. If its moral for a wolf to hunt and eat a deer it should also be moral for us. To say otherwise is to get into religious territory where we are somehow divine and not just a slightly smarter ape. I 10000% agree we have gone past the point of just hunting. There is no moral justification for caging 100 chickens in a small space, pumping them full of hormones, killing them as soon as they are viable to eat. That is torture and no other animal (AFAIK) engages in that behavior.