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Yes, it made me think about animals panicking so much before slaughter that they often have heart attacks. And dairy cows who have their babies slaughtered who

Yes, it made me think about animals panicking so much before slaughter that they often have heart attacks. And dairy cows who have their babies slaughtered who cry for weeks. Maybe these are apocryphal stories, but we are very much trained to believe we shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals. I hope that we are able to grow meat in a way without suffering as soon as possible.

ridgeguy 2y ago
The scientist M. Temple Grandin is known for her great contributions in the field of mitigating pre-slaughter animal panic. She is autistic. Her methodology included walking the chutes used to direct cattle to slaughter and working out in great detaiL mods that would reduce their stress. I've heard her interviewed a few times. She's extraordinary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
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  - xp84 2y ago
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    - jeremyjh 2y ago
      Societies have the ethics they can afford to have. Lions aren't really in a position to do anything else. I'm not vegan but...I get it.
    - laidoffamazon 2y ago
      Lions are quite dumb, Humans are very smart and can be vegan or vegetarian because of civilization and economic specialization. Unrelatedly, elephants are quite a bit smarter than lions and herbivorous, as are many primates!
      - Dalewyn 2y ago
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      - mulmen 2y ago
        Orcas are considered to be very intelligent but they hunt and kill for sport.
        kacesensitive 2y ago
        The intelligence gap between lion and orca is much slimmer than orca and human.
        deleted 2y ago
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        moi2388 2y ago
        Have you met the average person? I would highly contest this claim. Let an average person alone in nature and they’ll starve within a month
        mulmen 2y ago
        That's longer than an Orca will live in a Wal Mart.
        dotancohen 2y ago
        If we're swapping biomes I think that the naked human would starve in the open ocean in three days. If he didn't drown in three hours.
        mulmen 2y ago
        Open ocean sure but I can see orcas from my house. The average person is still going to know to swim to land and forage for food, even if they fail. But orcas won’t have the first idea how to navigate self checkout. Why is the human naked? Does the Orca get pants? What are we talking about?
    - zcrossing 2y ago
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    - b5n 2y ago
      Do you and a lion possess the same degree of executive function? Plant based diets are: - more affordable - better for the environment - healthier - avoid/reduce cruelty (livestock and human) If you want to eat meat, fine, but the comment you replied to is innocuous and not "guilt-tripping" anyone.
      - em-bee 2y ago
        on a global scale more affordable may be true. unfortunately on an individual level in many places it is not. where i am meat is cheaper than the nuts and other vegetables needed to replace it, and those here that can't even afford meat from time to time end up with a rather poor diet.
      - AlgorithmicTime 2y ago
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    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      There’s no such thing as “going against evolution.” Vegetarianism is as much a valid part of evolution as any other behavior any animal exhibits. I think if lions regularly bred into existence billions of antelope, confined and tortured them for the entirety of their existence, and then ate them, yes, a lot of people would view that as pretty evil, even while acknowledging such a creature is probably incapable of the moral calculus that (some) humans are.
      - meiraleal 2y ago
        > I think if lions regularly bred into existence billions of antelope, confined and tortured them for the entirety of their existence that's exactly what they do. Lions will remove other predators from their territory and indulge themselves eating as much food as they need.
    - realce 2y ago
      > going against every bit of our human evolution, without guilt-tripping the rest of us for doing what nature designed us to do If nature designed for this, then why do people feel any guilt at all?
      - mulmen 2y ago
        To prevent over-hunting to the point that prey becomes extinct? I'm not having a hard time imagining how shame could be an evolutionary advantage.
      - wruza 2y ago
        Do they? It’s city dwellers who never seen prey and feel guilt. Regular hunters just skin the carcass and think where to store it. Guilt is a social emotion that leaks into areas which are not clearly separated in an experiencing mind.
        realce 2y ago
        > do they? Yes, it's plainly obvious that some people feel some guilt for eating meat. Regular hunters != industrial-level slaughtering. There are plenty of "regular hunters" who only eat meat they kill themselves. This is like saying if I cut down a single tree on my property I should also support the clear-cutting of the rainforest.
        wruza 2y ago
        Rainforest is not a good analogy, imo. It presumably is an important part of an ecosystem and also sort of a nature’s museum. Farm animals are absolutely synthetic and barely play any positive role in ecology. So if you cut a single farm animal, I don’t see why 8 billion others shouldn’t do that or should feel bad doing it. All that said believing no animals should get slaughtered. If we do it to some, could as well do to many. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642138 tld: I don’t believe in reducing numbers, because the reduced numbers mean nothing to the animal being slaughtered.
    - pulkitsh1234 2y ago
      For a long time humans did not breed animals for the sake of eating them, they used to hunt (just like a lion). No one was guilt-tripping anyone in those days (I hope), as we had to survive (not thrive). The situation has changed completely in the modern world. We have created meat factories, forcefully torturing millions of animals daily, and have somehow agreed upon what animals to kill and not to kill. A lion will kill anything that moves (as long as it is not poisonous), are you willing to kill (and eat) any animal under the sky? What about pets? Do you think they suffer any kind of pain and suffering ? If yes, that's the same way any other animal you eat (regardless of intelligence) feels when being slaughtered. One more question to think about: A young child (in a modern urban world) will be more comfortable plucking and eating fruits from a tree ? OR killing a pig -> draining blood -> cutting it into pieces -> cooking it to eat it ?
      - vasco 2y ago
        People don't care about people as long as they are out of sight and you're trying to get them to care for non humans that are even further from sight.
      - vivekd 2y ago
        Having seem children play I think many in would be quite comfortable killing a pig and draining it's blood if they could. You see children chasing pigeons - and I don't think it's just to hug them if they catch one. I say this without commenting in favor of either side of this debate which I am undecided on and reading with interest. But I think it's important not to shy away from the reality that cruelty and the desire to kill are very much a part of human nature from the beginning. And that applies no matter where or how we are brought up.
        pulkitsh1234 2y ago
        Sure, but what about eating? What you mention is a typical destructive behavior noticed in kids and a tendency of violence/killing which even adults have. Key point here is: will they also eat the bird after killing it? Is the killing done here for the sake of eating ? or for the sake of enjoyment/destruction (whatever other reason).
    - serf 2y ago
      >Are lions evil? lions aren't consciously deciding against a rationally plausible alternative, they are eating what is available. similarly human cannibalization stories generally center around the concept that the people driven to such actions are given no sensible alternatives (airplane crash in a snow mountain comes to mind) -- so we don't presume they were evil, we presume they were desperate. lions lack the intelligence and forethought to see the consequences of long term decisions. We as humans have gauged and measured the effects of ranching on our environment, the effects of meat consumption on our physiology, etc. so, to answer your question : If the lion was able to empathize and relate to the suffering of the prey, if the lion was able to relate its' actions to the destruction of its' environment, if the lion had sensible alternatives that avoided long term consequences while still satiating hunger, if the lion could accurately forecast the future and STILL decide upon the destructive course of action... ...yes, an argument could be made that that lion might be evil.
    - wruza 2y ago
      Life and predators are absolutely evil, because their mode of operation is not in any way related to ethics or doing what’s good. And what’s good is usually opposite to what’s convenient or naturally-obviously available to survive. That said, you personally don’t add much to this global effing mess that the life is by eating some low mass meat per year. You also don’t subtract much by avoiding it. One predator out-eats you 20-50x easily on meat. And many humans can’t or barely can afford meat. The ethical problem has systemic and economic roots and doesn’t relate to personal ideology. Being vegan but doing nothing systemic is pretty useless imo. The whole privilege of going vegan bases on living in a society that does all that to animals as a consequence and a requirement of its function.
    - bmitc 2y ago
      It's the scale at which we do it at that is very disturbing. If you haven't, I recommend watching Samsara. Humans are pretty disturbing.
    - pazimzadeh 2y ago
      you mean the guilt that nature designed us to have?
    - simgt 2y ago
      As others have said, there is no such thing as going against evolution. Unless you want to put paracetamol, central heating, microwaves ovens, sneakers and smartphones in that bucket too. Or even all of our modern food, given that the crops have been selected by our civilisation for centuries. Usually the same ones who argue that we're separate from nature when it's about building motorways and single family homes to park two SUVs, are also the ones explaining that we should be more like lions in a savannah. Seems inconsistent, at best.
    - vixen99 2y ago
      Guilt-tripping? We've got reasoning abilities and in the main can act on our decisions. Nobody guilt-trips any sentient being since they can't be guilty if under duress. If after all this we still do whatever it is we do that we conclude is reprehensible, we should not blame someone else for reminding us of the logic we ignored.
    - globular-toast 2y ago
      Ah, so you want to be a lion? But I bet you don't want to be treated like an animal. So which is it? Are you an animal or are you human?
      - xp84 2y ago
        I have some possibly shocking news for you. Humans are animals. Pretending we're very special and that everything we do is automatically "bad" is silly. Some things that are very good for humans overall is bad for competing species. Everything in moderation, of course, but I'm not shedding a tear for cowkind that they get slaughtered a lot. Cows would undoubtedly set up a system much like this if they were smart carnivores and we were dumb herbivores. (And many of them would hand-wring (hoof-wring?) about it due to that smartness. It's just part of the package.)
    - samuelbalogh 2y ago
      > going against every bit of our human evolution you're saying this typing on a _computer_ - how does that fit into human evolution? IMO humans evolve in an ethical standpoint as well and tend to want to cause the least amount of suffering possible as we evolve. That is why we have medicine, don't usually own slaves, don't hit children, and don't abuse animals.
  - honeybadger1 2y ago
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  - mystified5016 2y ago
    Practicality. To put it bluntly, the majority of humans do not think it is immoral in principle to kill and eat an animal. After all, that's how biological life just is. At an individual level, you can choose to think it's wrong but you do have to simply accept the fact that not everyone agrees, and very likely there will always be someone who disagrees. To most people, killing an animal for food is not a problem conceptually. Causing undue and unnecessary suffering is a problem for pretty much everyone with a functioning moral system. But given that mass farming will not be stopping tomorrow, would you rather the animals suffer more? Or is less suffering better? Should we actively torture the animals on the way to slaughter or maybe not? All that aside, if we stopped farming tomorrow, a billion or two people would have to stop eating. So we do the least worst thing and give the cow a pat on the head before we grind it up. That said, most people would probably prefer if no animals were killed at all. Once cultured meat starts producing at the required scale, industry farming will probably end very quickly.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Cultured meat is a long, long ways away, unfortunately. I suspect economic, environmental, and ethical factors will push people away from meat long before cultured meat replaces it. Well put argument though!
    - pulkitsh1234 2y ago
      > The majority of humans do not think it is immoral in principle to kill and eat an animal This is wrong, the majority of humans may think that way because they don't have to kill any animal personally, they are disconnected from the "killing" part of the whole equation. Let's see how many people eat and kill animals (i.e. hunting) once we remove meat factories. Another counterargument is: pets. Somehow all meat eaters gasp on the idea of eating their pet, so they are not morally okay to eat an animal (as you claimed). > Or is less suffering better? Ask yourself, how would you like to die? After listening to music you love? getting massages? OR being hurled up a thousand other humans in a small room? The fact is you are dying, your neck will be cut off, and it doesn't matter what you did before it, how is listening to peaceful music before dying less of a suffering? It is like saying that concentration camps should have been more "humane", they should have cared more for prisoners before killing them to reduce their suffering. Death matters the most for any living creature, all of us (humans + animals) are primed to avoid it. So, we need to take a path where we are reducing overall deaths, not a path where we are reducing pre-death suffering. What you can say is, "I don't care about suffering; I just need meat." That would be a more logically correct statement than claiming that you care about reducing their suffering.
  - samuelbalogh 2y ago
    Church - it's rare to read a sane comment like this on HN. The world we constructed is pure hell for around 80 billion animals.
- GrantMoyer 2y ago
  Temple Grandin designed more efficient killing machines to streamline and reduce the costs of industrial scale slaughter.
- myvoiceismypass 2y ago
  Extraordinary? She invented a machine to hug cows before they get bolted in the head. We’d be better off not making animal slaughter the core of the American diet.
  - xp84 2y ago
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  - jeremyjh 2y ago
    So here is a person who has reduced suffering for animals. And your idea is...what?
Daub 2y ago
As someone who has worked on farms i can verify that such things happen. I personally witnessed sheep behaving exactly as decided in The Silence of the Lambs. Our sheep were famously noisy and certainly were used to being moved around in lorries but when the abattoir lorry turned up you could almost smell their fear. I also witnessed a cow storm through four fences in order to be reunited with her calf. The irony: The farm was run by vegetarians and as the only meat eater it became my responsibility to oversee any time an animal was taken to slaughter. This simultaneously put me off meat eating and vegetarians.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  Why are the cows taken away from the calves, especially dairy cows? Just curious.
  - rafaelmn 2y ago
    Because you want to get the milk.
    - cowfriend 2y ago
      Almost this. The better answer is because we want to get ALL the milk. So instead of letting the mother cow nurse her calf for the first few months and then start taking her milk for our use, the more "modern" practice is to separate the calf immediately. Which means if you are drinking milk, you are drinking it from seriously depressed cows. I wonder how this contributes to our culture's growing mood of depression? see i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-ask-when-cows-and-their-calves-separated-rise-ethical-milk-vegan https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-ask... or just google dairy cows separate from calves
      - csomar 2y ago
        The real crime is that alternatives are expensive due to how our new economy is structured. I personally prefer oatmilk (oatside) to dairy milk. However, it’s too damn expensive that I find myself only drinking it from time to time. Now how is a vegetarian milk more expensive than a full cycle of cow milk (cows are too burdening to maintain) you might ask?!? My guess is that we are seeing something along the lines of EVs. Instead of making these healthier alternatives mainstream, they are being sold as a status symbol for the rich and making them unaffordable to the common man. Here waiting for my chinese oat milk.
rednafi 2y ago
It’s the same as how soldiers were trained to de-anthropomorphize their enemies.
kibwen 2y ago
> we are very much trained to believe we shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals We shouldn't anthropomorphize animals. Instead, the point here is that emotions are not anthropic; humans do not have a monopoly on emotions. Which is to say, we should be sure not to think that "grief" means the same thing for an orca that it means to a human; yet naturally animals do grieve in their own ways. (Heck, "grief" doesn't even mean the same thing for all humans!)
- cowfriend 2y ago
  yeah, the funny thing about the anthropomorphism debate is that supposedly the thing that makes humans different from (other) animals is our "advanced" brain, i.e. language, civilization, etc. in other words, all the ways we have to manage emotions, and all of our "non-emotional" functioning. So we have somehow evolved to be able to better manage emotions. Ok, so if we grant all of that, then haven't we just said that emotions are common to animals? So then how is it anthropomorphising to say that animals have the traits which we've just said define animals, whereas what makes humans special is that we have 'risen above' mere emotion?
  - Shorel 2y ago
    Not really common to 'animals' in general, for example reptiles only have the very basic instincts of eat, reproduce, fight. Insects don't have emotions, they barely have hyper specialized sensors as brains. However, emotions efficiently direct behaviours in mammals. They enact immediate and persistent responses. We can say without much doubt that emotions in mammals are similar to our own emotions. The big unknowns are animals further away from us, which are demonstrably intelligent, like birds and octopuses.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      How do you know insects don’t have emotions? Bees have been shown playing. Spiders have REM sleep.
      - 2y ago
neom 2y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=rat+not+eating+after+death+of+rat+site:www.reddit.com&sca_esv=cefaafe02d65fc56&sxsrf=ADLYWIKBHs_8EiPwv13nsvmcOfmo5agj7Q:1736394726542&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-7_W23ueKAxV8TjABHbsrOHMQrQIoBHoECDcQBQ&biw=1732&bih=961&dpr=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=rat+not+eating+after+death+o... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772408524001303#:~:text=Remarkably%2C%20following%206%20days%20of,future%20research%20in%20this%20field https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277240852.... I've kept rats for a long time, I don't know why, but I do know they change behaviour for a period of time once one dies.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Video of scientists getting a laugh response from tickled rats. https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/eavesdrop-on-ultrasonic-rat-giggles/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/eavesdrop-on-ultras...
  - neom 2y ago
    Rats are the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jo_EG7XqZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jo_EG7XqZQ :D
encoderer 2y ago
Love animals but “grown meat” has proven to be very gross.
bamboozled 2y ago
In my opinion, this is why hunting is ethically superior. Almost nothing dies peacefully in the wild, it's either massive long term suffering, or being mauled by dogs, bears or big cats, strangled by pythons etc. A skilled hunter can choose an adult animal without kids and take it fairly humanely. Sadly, we all have to die somehow. Hunters and fisherman generally have great respect for nature and the environment, which is important.
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  As a vegan I agree with that. However not all huntings are great, especially when conducted for fun instead of meat. Perhaps your already know the famous footage of new-head of NRA struggling to kill an elephant : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56923507.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56923507.amp (He says he gave later the meat to the villagers. I guess they ate it but I’m not sure they requested it in the first place)
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    I mean, that seems silly, I wouldn't hunt an elephant, I only hunt for food and elephants aren't on the menu. That is just senseless violence in that video.
mrtksn 2y ago
That's why I can't wait for lab grown meat becoming a thing. I love meat and my understanding is that its healthy and necessary product but i also have nothing but respect to vegetarians.
- kbelder 2y ago
  I've wondered why, instead of trying to lab grow meat (which I think is decades off, due to various problems), we just don't try to breed dumber, unfeeling, cows.
  - andy_ppp 2y ago
    “Breeding psychopathic cows seemed like a good idea until they took control” seems like a very weird comic book plot line or something :-)
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    That's something that I was also thinking about. Maybe because we can't fine tune cows stupid enough to not to feel remorse for slaughtering but intelligent enough to breed, eat, take care of the calfs? Probably, at scale, it's not viable to take care of animals who can't function independently.
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    can't help to think about Brave New World where they basically do that for inferior-cast humans. A great read. I recommend the sequel Brave New World Revisited Those looks like to be the full texts (didn't verify): https://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html https://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/
samuelbalogh 2y ago
why should we wait for lab grown meat if we can go vegan right now?

ridgeguy 2y ago

The scientist M. Temple Grandin is known for her great contributions in the field of mitigating pre-slaughter animal panic. She is autistic. Her methodology included walking the chutes used to direct cattle to slaughter and working out in great detaiL mods that would reduce their stress. I've heard her interviewed a few times. She's extraordinary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin

hombre_fatal 2y ago
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- xp84 2y ago
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  - jeremyjh 2y ago
    Societies have the ethics they can afford to have. Lions aren't really in a position to do anything else. I'm not vegan but...I get it.
  - laidoffamazon 2y ago
    Lions are quite dumb, Humans are very smart and can be vegan or vegetarian because of civilization and economic specialization. Unrelatedly, elephants are quite a bit smarter than lions and herbivorous, as are many primates!
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
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    - mulmen 2y ago
      Orcas are considered to be very intelligent but they hunt and kill for sport.
      - kacesensitive 2y ago
        The intelligence gap between lion and orca is much slimmer than orca and human.
        deleted 2y ago
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        moi2388 2y ago
        Have you met the average person? I would highly contest this claim. Let an average person alone in nature and they’ll starve within a month
        mulmen 2y ago
        That's longer than an Orca will live in a Wal Mart.
        dotancohen 2y ago
        If we're swapping biomes I think that the naked human would starve in the open ocean in three days. If he didn't drown in three hours.
        mulmen 2y ago
        Open ocean sure but I can see orcas from my house. The average person is still going to know to swim to land and forage for food, even if they fail. But orcas won’t have the first idea how to navigate self checkout. Why is the human naked? Does the Orca get pants? What are we talking about?
  - zcrossing 2y ago
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  - b5n 2y ago
    Do you and a lion possess the same degree of executive function? Plant based diets are: - more affordable - better for the environment - healthier - avoid/reduce cruelty (livestock and human) If you want to eat meat, fine, but the comment you replied to is innocuous and not "guilt-tripping" anyone.
    - em-bee 2y ago
      on a global scale more affordable may be true. unfortunately on an individual level in many places it is not. where i am meat is cheaper than the nuts and other vegetables needed to replace it, and those here that can't even afford meat from time to time end up with a rather poor diet.
    - AlgorithmicTime 2y ago
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  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    There’s no such thing as “going against evolution.” Vegetarianism is as much a valid part of evolution as any other behavior any animal exhibits. I think if lions regularly bred into existence billions of antelope, confined and tortured them for the entirety of their existence, and then ate them, yes, a lot of people would view that as pretty evil, even while acknowledging such a creature is probably incapable of the moral calculus that (some) humans are.
    - meiraleal 2y ago
      > I think if lions regularly bred into existence billions of antelope, confined and tortured them for the entirety of their existence that's exactly what they do. Lions will remove other predators from their territory and indulge themselves eating as much food as they need.
  - realce 2y ago
    > going against every bit of our human evolution, without guilt-tripping the rest of us for doing what nature designed us to do If nature designed for this, then why do people feel any guilt at all?
    - mulmen 2y ago
      To prevent over-hunting to the point that prey becomes extinct? I'm not having a hard time imagining how shame could be an evolutionary advantage.
    - wruza 2y ago
      Do they? It’s city dwellers who never seen prey and feel guilt. Regular hunters just skin the carcass and think where to store it. Guilt is a social emotion that leaks into areas which are not clearly separated in an experiencing mind.
      - realce 2y ago
        > do they? Yes, it's plainly obvious that some people feel some guilt for eating meat. Regular hunters != industrial-level slaughtering. There are plenty of "regular hunters" who only eat meat they kill themselves. This is like saying if I cut down a single tree on my property I should also support the clear-cutting of the rainforest.
        wruza 2y ago
        Rainforest is not a good analogy, imo. It presumably is an important part of an ecosystem and also sort of a nature’s museum. Farm animals are absolutely synthetic and barely play any positive role in ecology. So if you cut a single farm animal, I don’t see why 8 billion others shouldn’t do that or should feel bad doing it. All that said believing no animals should get slaughtered. If we do it to some, could as well do to many. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642138 tld: I don’t believe in reducing numbers, because the reduced numbers mean nothing to the animal being slaughtered.
  - pulkitsh1234 2y ago
    For a long time humans did not breed animals for the sake of eating them, they used to hunt (just like a lion). No one was guilt-tripping anyone in those days (I hope), as we had to survive (not thrive). The situation has changed completely in the modern world. We have created meat factories, forcefully torturing millions of animals daily, and have somehow agreed upon what animals to kill and not to kill. A lion will kill anything that moves (as long as it is not poisonous), are you willing to kill (and eat) any animal under the sky? What about pets? Do you think they suffer any kind of pain and suffering ? If yes, that's the same way any other animal you eat (regardless of intelligence) feels when being slaughtered. One more question to think about: A young child (in a modern urban world) will be more comfortable plucking and eating fruits from a tree ? OR killing a pig -> draining blood -> cutting it into pieces -> cooking it to eat it ?
    - vasco 2y ago
      People don't care about people as long as they are out of sight and you're trying to get them to care for non humans that are even further from sight.
    - vivekd 2y ago
      Having seem children play I think many in would be quite comfortable killing a pig and draining it's blood if they could. You see children chasing pigeons - and I don't think it's just to hug them if they catch one. I say this without commenting in favor of either side of this debate which I am undecided on and reading with interest. But I think it's important not to shy away from the reality that cruelty and the desire to kill are very much a part of human nature from the beginning. And that applies no matter where or how we are brought up.
      - pulkitsh1234 2y ago
        Sure, but what about eating? What you mention is a typical destructive behavior noticed in kids and a tendency of violence/killing which even adults have. Key point here is: will they also eat the bird after killing it? Is the killing done here for the sake of eating ? or for the sake of enjoyment/destruction (whatever other reason).
  - serf 2y ago
    >Are lions evil? lions aren't consciously deciding against a rationally plausible alternative, they are eating what is available. similarly human cannibalization stories generally center around the concept that the people driven to such actions are given no sensible alternatives (airplane crash in a snow mountain comes to mind) -- so we don't presume they were evil, we presume they were desperate. lions lack the intelligence and forethought to see the consequences of long term decisions. We as humans have gauged and measured the effects of ranching on our environment, the effects of meat consumption on our physiology, etc. so, to answer your question : If the lion was able to empathize and relate to the suffering of the prey, if the lion was able to relate its' actions to the destruction of its' environment, if the lion had sensible alternatives that avoided long term consequences while still satiating hunger, if the lion could accurately forecast the future and STILL decide upon the destructive course of action... ...yes, an argument could be made that that lion might be evil.
  - wruza 2y ago
    Life and predators are absolutely evil, because their mode of operation is not in any way related to ethics or doing what’s good. And what’s good is usually opposite to what’s convenient or naturally-obviously available to survive. That said, you personally don’t add much to this global effing mess that the life is by eating some low mass meat per year. You also don’t subtract much by avoiding it. One predator out-eats you 20-50x easily on meat. And many humans can’t or barely can afford meat. The ethical problem has systemic and economic roots and doesn’t relate to personal ideology. Being vegan but doing nothing systemic is pretty useless imo. The whole privilege of going vegan bases on living in a society that does all that to animals as a consequence and a requirement of its function.
  - bmitc 2y ago
    It's the scale at which we do it at that is very disturbing. If you haven't, I recommend watching Samsara. Humans are pretty disturbing.
  - pazimzadeh 2y ago
    you mean the guilt that nature designed us to have?
  - simgt 2y ago
    As others have said, there is no such thing as going against evolution. Unless you want to put paracetamol, central heating, microwaves ovens, sneakers and smartphones in that bucket too. Or even all of our modern food, given that the crops have been selected by our civilisation for centuries. Usually the same ones who argue that we're separate from nature when it's about building motorways and single family homes to park two SUVs, are also the ones explaining that we should be more like lions in a savannah. Seems inconsistent, at best.
  - vixen99 2y ago
    Guilt-tripping? We've got reasoning abilities and in the main can act on our decisions. Nobody guilt-trips any sentient being since they can't be guilty if under duress. If after all this we still do whatever it is we do that we conclude is reprehensible, we should not blame someone else for reminding us of the logic we ignored.
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    Ah, so you want to be a lion? But I bet you don't want to be treated like an animal. So which is it? Are you an animal or are you human?
    - xp84 2y ago
      I have some possibly shocking news for you. Humans are animals. Pretending we're very special and that everything we do is automatically "bad" is silly. Some things that are very good for humans overall is bad for competing species. Everything in moderation, of course, but I'm not shedding a tear for cowkind that they get slaughtered a lot. Cows would undoubtedly set up a system much like this if they were smart carnivores and we were dumb herbivores. (And many of them would hand-wring (hoof-wring?) about it due to that smartness. It's just part of the package.)
  - samuelbalogh 2y ago
    > going against every bit of our human evolution you're saying this typing on a _computer_ - how does that fit into human evolution? IMO humans evolve in an ethical standpoint as well and tend to want to cause the least amount of suffering possible as we evolve. That is why we have medicine, don't usually own slaves, don't hit children, and don't abuse animals.
- honeybadger1 2y ago
  [flagged]
- mystified5016 2y ago
  Practicality. To put it bluntly, the majority of humans do not think it is immoral in principle to kill and eat an animal. After all, that's how biological life just is. At an individual level, you can choose to think it's wrong but you do have to simply accept the fact that not everyone agrees, and very likely there will always be someone who disagrees. To most people, killing an animal for food is not a problem conceptually. Causing undue and unnecessary suffering is a problem for pretty much everyone with a functioning moral system. But given that mass farming will not be stopping tomorrow, would you rather the animals suffer more? Or is less suffering better? Should we actively torture the animals on the way to slaughter or maybe not? All that aside, if we stopped farming tomorrow, a billion or two people would have to stop eating. So we do the least worst thing and give the cow a pat on the head before we grind it up. That said, most people would probably prefer if no animals were killed at all. Once cultured meat starts producing at the required scale, industry farming will probably end very quickly.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Cultured meat is a long, long ways away, unfortunately. I suspect economic, environmental, and ethical factors will push people away from meat long before cultured meat replaces it. Well put argument though!
  - pulkitsh1234 2y ago
    > The majority of humans do not think it is immoral in principle to kill and eat an animal This is wrong, the majority of humans may think that way because they don't have to kill any animal personally, they are disconnected from the "killing" part of the whole equation. Let's see how many people eat and kill animals (i.e. hunting) once we remove meat factories. Another counterargument is: pets. Somehow all meat eaters gasp on the idea of eating their pet, so they are not morally okay to eat an animal (as you claimed). > Or is less suffering better? Ask yourself, how would you like to die? After listening to music you love? getting massages? OR being hurled up a thousand other humans in a small room? The fact is you are dying, your neck will be cut off, and it doesn't matter what you did before it, how is listening to peaceful music before dying less of a suffering? It is like saying that concentration camps should have been more "humane", they should have cared more for prisoners before killing them to reduce their suffering. Death matters the most for any living creature, all of us (humans + animals) are primed to avoid it. So, we need to take a path where we are reducing overall deaths, not a path where we are reducing pre-death suffering. What you can say is, "I don't care about suffering; I just need meat." That would be a more logically correct statement than claiming that you care about reducing their suffering.
- samuelbalogh 2y ago
  Church - it's rare to read a sane comment like this on HN. The world we constructed is pure hell for around 80 billion animals.
GrantMoyer 2y ago
Temple Grandin designed more efficient killing machines to streamline and reduce the costs of industrial scale slaughter.
myvoiceismypass 2y ago
Extraordinary? She invented a machine to hug cows before they get bolted in the head. We’d be better off not making animal slaughter the core of the American diet.
- xp84 2y ago
  [flagged]
- jeremyjh 2y ago
  So here is a person who has reduced suffering for animals. And your idea is...what?

Daub 2y ago

As someone who has worked on farms i can verify that such things happen. I personally witnessed sheep behaving exactly as decided in The Silence of the Lambs. Our sheep were famously noisy and certainly were used to being moved around in lorries but when the abattoir lorry turned up you could almost smell their fear. I also witnessed a cow storm through four fences in order to be reunited with her calf. The irony: The farm was run by vegetarians and as the only meat eater it became my responsibility to oversee any time an animal was taken to slaughter. This simultaneously put me off meat eating and vegetarians.

bamboozled 2y ago
Why are the cows taken away from the calves, especially dairy cows? Just curious.
- rafaelmn 2y ago
  Because you want to get the milk.
  - cowfriend 2y ago
    Almost this. The better answer is because we want to get ALL the milk. So instead of letting the mother cow nurse her calf for the first few months and then start taking her milk for our use, the more "modern" practice is to separate the calf immediately. Which means if you are drinking milk, you are drinking it from seriously depressed cows. I wonder how this contributes to our culture's growing mood of depression? see i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-ask-when-cows-and-their-calves-separated-rise-ethical-milk-vegan https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-ask... or just google dairy cows separate from calves
    - csomar 2y ago
      The real crime is that alternatives are expensive due to how our new economy is structured. I personally prefer oatmilk (oatside) to dairy milk. However, it’s too damn expensive that I find myself only drinking it from time to time. Now how is a vegetarian milk more expensive than a full cycle of cow milk (cows are too burdening to maintain) you might ask?!? My guess is that we are seeing something along the lines of EVs. Instead of making these healthier alternatives mainstream, they are being sold as a status symbol for the rich and making them unaffordable to the common man. Here waiting for my chinese oat milk.

rednafi 2y ago

It’s the same as how soldiers were trained to de-anthropomorphize their enemies.

kibwen 2y ago

> we are very much trained to believe we shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals We shouldn't anthropomorphize animals. Instead, the point here is that emotions are not anthropic; humans do not have a monopoly on emotions. Which is to say, we should be sure not to think that "grief" means the same thing for an orca that it means to a human; yet naturally animals do grieve in their own ways. (Heck, "grief" doesn't even mean the same thing for all humans!)

cowfriend 2y ago
yeah, the funny thing about the anthropomorphism debate is that supposedly the thing that makes humans different from (other) animals is our "advanced" brain, i.e. language, civilization, etc. in other words, all the ways we have to manage emotions, and all of our "non-emotional" functioning. So we have somehow evolved to be able to better manage emotions. Ok, so if we grant all of that, then haven't we just said that emotions are common to animals? So then how is it anthropomorphising to say that animals have the traits which we've just said define animals, whereas what makes humans special is that we have 'risen above' mere emotion?
- Shorel 2y ago
  Not really common to 'animals' in general, for example reptiles only have the very basic instincts of eat, reproduce, fight. Insects don't have emotions, they barely have hyper specialized sensors as brains. However, emotions efficiently direct behaviours in mammals. They enact immediate and persistent responses. We can say without much doubt that emotions in mammals are similar to our own emotions. The big unknowns are animals further away from us, which are demonstrably intelligent, like birds and octopuses.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    How do you know insects don’t have emotions? Bees have been shown playing. Spiders have REM sleep.
    - 2y ago

neom 2y ago

https://www.google.com/search?q=rat+not+eating+after+death+of+rat+site:www.reddit.com&sca_esv=cefaafe02d65fc56&sxsrf=ADLYWIKBHs_8EiPwv13nsvmcOfmo5agj7Q:1736394726542&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-7_W23ueKAxV8TjABHbsrOHMQrQIoBHoECDcQBQ&biw=1732&bih=961&dpr=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=rat+not+eating+after+death+o... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772408524001303#:~:text=Remarkably%2C%20following%206%20days%20of,future%20research%20in%20this%20field https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277240852.... I've kept rats for a long time, I don't know why, but I do know they change behaviour for a period of time once one dies.

sitkack 2y ago
Video of scientists getting a laugh response from tickled rats. https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/eavesdrop-on-ultrasonic-rat-giggles/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/eavesdrop-on-ultras...
- neom 2y ago
  Rats are the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jo_EG7XqZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jo_EG7XqZQ :D

encoderer 2y ago

Love animals but “grown meat” has proven to be very gross.

bamboozled 2y ago

In my opinion, this is why hunting is ethically superior. Almost nothing dies peacefully in the wild, it's either massive long term suffering, or being mauled by dogs, bears or big cats, strangled by pythons etc. A skilled hunter can choose an adult animal without kids and take it fairly humanely. Sadly, we all have to die somehow. Hunters and fisherman generally have great respect for nature and the environment, which is important.

aziaziazi 2y ago
As a vegan I agree with that. However not all huntings are great, especially when conducted for fun instead of meat. Perhaps your already know the famous footage of new-head of NRA struggling to kill an elephant : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56923507.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56923507.amp (He says he gave later the meat to the villagers. I guess they ate it but I’m not sure they requested it in the first place)
- bamboozled 2y ago
  I mean, that seems silly, I wouldn't hunt an elephant, I only hunt for food and elephants aren't on the menu. That is just senseless violence in that video.

mrtksn 2y ago

That's why I can't wait for lab grown meat becoming a thing. I love meat and my understanding is that its healthy and necessary product but i also have nothing but respect to vegetarians.

kbelder 2y ago
I've wondered why, instead of trying to lab grow meat (which I think is decades off, due to various problems), we just don't try to breed dumber, unfeeling, cows.
- andy_ppp 2y ago
  “Breeding psychopathic cows seemed like a good idea until they took control” seems like a very weird comic book plot line or something :-)
- mrtksn 2y ago
  That's something that I was also thinking about. Maybe because we can't fine tune cows stupid enough to not to feel remorse for slaughtering but intelligent enough to breed, eat, take care of the calfs? Probably, at scale, it's not viable to take care of animals who can't function independently.
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  can't help to think about Brave New World where they basically do that for inferior-cast humans. A great read. I recommend the sequel Brave New World Revisited Those looks like to be the full texts (didn't verify): https://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html https://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/ https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/

samuelbalogh 2y ago

why should we wait for lab grown meat if we can go vegan right now?