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.
Then again, we could simply stop farming animals into existence just to slaughter them.
It gets kinda confusing to read the supposed work going into reducing the animal experience from nightmare to just horrorshow and then patting ourselves on the back for it.
It's like reading about someone figuring out how exactly a dog likes to be massaged... before you cut its head off.
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.
> 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.
Most people can only afford cheap food, which means after the novelty period, regular meat will be something reserved for only the very wealthy.
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.
I think this less-more thing is synthetic and pointless. One person stops eating meat, it just reduces the demand and there’s one less cow that suffers, but not in a sense that it becomes happy now. It just stops existing (best case). Is that a win? Hard to tell, cause the question is highly philosophical. Is to not exist better than to exist and suffer? Is suffering of 10M worse than suffering of 100K? Is 100K actually less suffering? One can imagine being a farm cow and being told that there’s 90% less of them than a decade ago, so they must feel 90-ish% better. Complete nonsense. There’s no “total suffering” cause suffering instances are separate in this case and are unable to grasp the scale.
That said, most people would probably prefer if no animals were killed at all.
Yeah I guess that at least skips the murky philosophical waters and has some actual impact rather than patting everyone and everything involved on various parts of an upper body.
> One person stops eating meat, it just reduces the demand and there’s one less cow that suffers, but not in a sense that it becomes happy now. It just stops existing (best case). Is that a win?
I've heard this phrased as "meat is murder, but vegetarianism is genocide".
If humans were to stop eating meat, certain species of animal would go extinct.
That's not true. We would still need food for dogs and cats. And even if not, then we could still keep cows around just for the vibes. We don't eat Tule Elk (anymore). It is still around. In fact it is still around precisely because we decided to stop hunting it to extinction.
> 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.
My pet chickens and ducks had happy, idyllic, safe lives until I humanely slaughtered, butchered, and ate them. I have also slaughtered and eaten lamb and fish.
I care about suffering so I minimize it, maximize well being, and eat meat because it tastes delicious and is calorically and nutritionally dense. I also eat more vegetables than the average person, many of which come out of the garden I work.
I have been afforded a much less idyllic life than is sustainable but I still hope for a quick, inexpensive death for myself.
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.
until a century or two ago this was simply not true. everyone grew up with animals around them and for sure watched them being slaughtered.
people being bothered by that have always been the exception.
> 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).
You seem to think humans are rational if-this-then-that machines but we're perfectly irrational enough to hold two dissenting views at the same time very closely. It doesn't prove much that people like their pets, serial killers also like their own families.
Should we move towards irrationality or rationality? If being rational is marginally better we should move towards that. We want less serial killers in the society.
So pointing out the fact about pets is to force meat eaters to consider their irrationality face to face.
We have done this throughout our evolution. Some people notice the irrational things in our behavior and try to reason with other humans why doing these irrational things is wrong and should be stopped (slavery, racism, etc).
That's what I am doing, and anyone should do. Just accepting the fact that humans are irrational is just accepting the status quo.
I hope to have the discernment to tell the difference between the irrational things I cannot change from the ones I can, and I don't think I'm changing this, so I accept it.
I also think eventually we won't eat animals, just not in my lifetime. Practicality doesn't need to be blind to morality and might also be wrong (it might be faster than I think).
If I had to kill animals to eat meat, I would have zero problem doing so. You’re free to make your own choices, but you’re not going to change anyone’s stance on eating meat with your arguments. Get off your high horse.
You’re entitled to be vegan, going against every bit of our human evolution, without guilt-tripping the rest of us for doing what nature designed us to do. Lions don’t feel bad about eating other animals, and they don’t even care that it scares the prey or causes great pain and suffering. They’d happily gobble up a bunch of baby antelopes, feet first, with them screaming the whole way, if that’s what’s most convenient. Are lions evil?
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 ?
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.
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).
i spent part of my childhood on a farm. i watched rabbits and pigs being slaughtered. and of course we ate them.
recently our neighbors slaughtered a goat that my kids had seen alive just before, and we all ate it. we also eat the chicken from the kids grandparents village home that they saw being slaughtered there.
kids killing animals for no reason are an exception, as are kids refusing to eat animals that they saw alive.
if they weren't we'd all have become vegetarians centuries or even millennia ago.
(slightly related: it bothers me that some people think kids should be protected from experiencing how meat is produced. if you eat it, you should know where it came from)
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 tld: I don’t believe in reducing numbers, because the reduced numbers mean nothing to the animal being slaughtered.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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