Okay. >Are you saying that we can do whatever we like to animals? Technically they can't stop us. But that's probably not the answer you're looking for. Infl

Okay. >Are you saying that we can do whatever we like to animals? Technically they can't stop us. But that's probably not the answer you're looking for. Inflicting unnecessary harm on semi-sentient life forms that feel pain is probably immoral. So while we can do whatever we want, certain things are not moral to do. > Or that we can do whatever we like to animals so long as it benefits humans? Right now current conservation efforts have the irreplaceable property of extinct animals as an axiom. This is, for the moment, true. So we have to measure decisions in something akin to utils. Killing off the zebra to cure somebodies headache probably isn't a smart trade. At the same time we need to be cautious, when we start playing large games with the ecosystem, we incur the risk of large losses. (See: Just about every invasive species introduced as a direct result of human intervention.) Right now one of the large reasons for saving species from extinction is biodiversity. The less biodiversity in the ecosystem, the higher the chance of a key species being wiped out by disease or aggressive predation and collapsing the whole system. (See: Pollinating insects.) Right now the benefit to humans of saving as many species as possible from invisible deaths by our machinations is a net positive. In the future, it may make sense to "upgrade" organisms to give fitness for a particular purpose. This process may involve organisms being out-competed to extinction by GMOs. > Or that we can do whatever we like so long as the benefit is significant? Well right now current meat processing procedures induce great pain to the animals involved. This is an externalized cost that does not show up in consumer prices. Meaning that even though the morally optimal solution would be something like naturally grown animals on a large pasture, the evolutionarily optimal solution ends up being animal death camps. There are efforts to grow meats independent of their traditional hosts through bioengineering, but these efforts have not taken off yet. If successful, they could save millions of animal lives, at the potential cost of the majority of the species. (Or even all of it.) Is that worth it? Is it selfish for humans to "obsolete" an animal it no longer finds useful? We did this to horses. We need to be careful about "benefit". The Soviets drained the Aral Sea in a large irrigation project. [0] This of course resulted in the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem, and is now apparently leading to health problems for the people who live there locally. Was that worth it? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plan_for_the_Transformation_of_Nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plan_for_the_Transformat... tl;dr: Currently the only way to satisfy our demand for meat is to slaughter millions of animals. Because of market pressures, these animals end up dying painfully, or even living painfully. This is not an morally optimal situation and I feel that certain aspects could be improved, with potentially disastrous consequences for the species involved.