7 ms·

>I'm not against eating chicken mainly because of this experience. I don't understand your reasoning there. To me, whether it's ok to eat an animal should depe

• StavrosK 14y ago
  Oooh, not with my current ethics, but interesting thought experiment.
  • pyre 14y ago
    Another interesting though experiment: A lot of people respond to the "why is it ok to eat these animals" question with, "because chickens/cows/turkeys are dumb." Following that logic, it's ok to eat people with a low enough IQ, or mental handicaps, no?
    • Swizec 14y ago
      It's not okay to eat people because cannibal populations develop spongiform encephalopathy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
      • eurleif 14y ago
        So it's ok for the immune population mentioned in that article to eat people?
        • maratd 14y ago
          Eating people is bad because it creates an environment where you might get eaten yourself.
          • eurleif 14y ago
            So it's ok to eat people as long as you only eat people who belong to a group which is different from you in some way?
            • stephencanon 14y ago
              It's ok to eat people, but you won't want to once you've seen what they eat and how they live.
            • vidarh 14y ago
              No. If you eat people that are different, then other groups of people might want to eat you because you are different, so an environment where eating any people is ok creates an environment where you might be eaten yourself. The argument maratd gives thus is a justification for eating animals that are not smart enough to to look at our behaviour and decide whether or not we're fair based on whether or not we also eat animals. But it explicitly rules out cannibalism (or eating intelligent aliens).
              • eurleif 14y ago
                If I find a homeless person in an alleyway, ask him about his friends and family, and he tells me that no one knows or cares that he's alive, it's ok to eat him, as long as I don't tell anyone about it?
                • pyre 14y ago
                  I think the parent was explaining why "don't eat humans" exists as a social faux pas.
                • StavrosK 14y ago
                  No. What the gp is saying is basically the categorical imperative. "It is bad to eat people because I don't want to live in a world where I could be eaten (me also being people)". He's not saying it's okay as long as you don't get eaten he's saying "as a human, I do not want to get eaten. Therefore, I do not want to inflict this on other humans either".
        • Swizec 14y ago
          Well we generally share susceptance to the same diseases and parasites as humans, so it's a bad idea to be eating them. However, prepared correctly with enough heat, possibly also frozen beforehand (that's what works on pork), I hear humans can actually be quite tasty. It's seen as a bit of a social faux pas in our society though, so you might want to find a different society first if you'd like to enjoy tasty humans.
          • eurleif 14y ago
            >It's seen as a bit of a social faux pas in our society though, so you might want to find a different society first if you'd like to enjoy tasty humans. Are you honestly this much of a relativist?
            • StavrosK 14y ago
              I don't see a problem with eating humans, if you want to and they/their families are okay with it. Killing humans is what is unethical.
              • eurleif 14y ago
                Right, killing is what I was talking about. This thread started with someone mentioning the morality of "eating chickens", and I just copied that phrasing.
            • Swizec 14y ago
              Well I can't really tell, I've grown up knowing that eating humans is bad. It's just the way it's always been. I've also grown up knowing that cats and dogs are not for eating. And yet, even just a hundred kilometers away, I hear Italians eat plenty of cats and even consider it normal in some areas.
            • jessedhillon 14y ago
              You're witnessing firsthand the stupidity people concoct when they are operating under cognitive dissonance.
    • cdcarter 14y ago
      Let's get to the softer side of Singer an the utilitarians. "It's alright to eat an animal if they were raised in a healthy and suffering free environment and killed with as minimal pain as possible, essentially giving them a life with more pleasure and less suffering than their life in nature. Plus, you get to eat them."
    • belorn 14y ago
      People rationalize, so comments like "something that is dumb is fine to eat" is basically their mind trying to find something to say when they should had said "I do not know". Maybe surprising (or not), but I find people who farm/hunt/fish to be the more intelligent kind of people when discussing food and ecology. Sure there are people who just want to exploit things for money, but many others do have a understanding for maintain a balance with nature. One answer I have received to the question about "why is it ok to eat animals", was that the ecology balance in nature would break down if humanity suddenly stopped eating meat. Not only have we forced our self to be part of almost everything, but our actions have cemented us to a central position. Farmers has chased away predators to the point where hunters are needed to maintain balance in many forests. Some lakes are so polluted with nutrients, that you need to maintain fishing just to keep some species from extincting other less common fish species. This doesn't address however why breeding animals for meat is fine. This is speculation, but some local farmers might say that as long the animal can live a happy life, then why shouldn't we eat them. The farmer job is to maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys, and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate size. If they do that, then morality should be on their side.
      • pyre 14y ago
        In this day and age: maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys, and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate size is practically non-existent. E.g. even "free range/cage free" chickens: - Have their beaks burned off because they live in crowded conditions where they will attack and main / kill each other. - Are sorted male from female as chicks, where the males are then immediately killed in bulk. The 'industry standard' way to do this is to put them all in garbage bags to suffocate them, or to toss them all into a wood chipped en masse[1]. [1] Note: Even the chicks sold to people raising chickens in the city go through this process. E.g. in Portland, you can only raise 6 hens on your property. Roosters are not allowed.
        • DanBC 14y ago
          > The 'industry standard' way to do this is to put them all in garbage bags to suffocate them, or to toss them all into a wood chipped en masse[1]. In England the standard way is to gas the chicks. Killing off the males is a problem for dairy cattle too. Cows produce milk to feed their young. Beak trimming is normally reserved for egg laying birds. (Meat birds are slaughtered for meat before pecking becomes much of a problem).
    • StavrosK 14y ago
      Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "eat your vegetables". This is what I'm going to hell for.
    • Dylan16807 14y ago
      No, because even a highly handicapped person is capable of pieces of higher thought. They have an intact brain, after all. More or less the only way to remove them from the 'human mind' category is if they are completely braindead. In which case, sure it's okay to eat people that are already dead from natural causes.
• njharman 14y ago
  > I mean, is it ok to eat people who are jerks? It's the death that's required to eat them not the eating itself. And yes, I feel much less bad when jerks die vs non-jerks.
  • eurleif 14y ago
    Feeling less bad when someone dies is not the same as thinking it's ok to kill them.
• kamaal 14y ago
  >>To me, whether it's ok to eat an animal should depend on whether it can experience suffering Oh! When you get infected by a micro organisms do you kill yourself or do you take antibiotics. And what about mosquitoes? Plants? Besides to survive as a human you have to kill something.
  • jessedhillon 14y ago
    Jesus Christ what a dumbshit comment. You quoted him correctly, then failed to apply what you quoted, at all, to the words you wrote. Do you think bacteria suffer?
• fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
  > is it ok to eat people who are jerks? Of course not! But there are a few people for whom I wouldn't shed a tear, if they were devoured by a giant chicken.