It’s odd people talk about ethics here but have no problem torturing and killing pigs so they can eat them.
As opposed to if we experiment on some dead persons liver, if we experiment on his revived brain we might actually be experimenting on a conscious being (human), is what I believe is the main thing here.
Vegans have this bizarre tendency of reducing human ethics to a bunch of incorrect generalizations (i.e. a dog is sort of like a cow, therefore it's "odd" that people eat cows but consider it wrong to eat dogs), and are then baffled that the world doesn't follow their artificial ethical formalism.
Why is it artificial?
Very curious about your reasoning?
Keep in mind that the whole reason pigs were used for this experiment is because they are biologically similar to humans.
The same could be said for almost anything we do with pigs
To me there is a huge difference between killing animals for food and conducting ethically questionable experiments on them. Another bothersome element here is that pigs are super smart and even though they state they are sure the pig(s) never regained consciousness you have to wonder what kind of extreme stress they would have cause if that had not worked out.
Animal research is something that I hope we can do without in the near future. And if we all ate less meat (or none at all) then that would be for the better as well, though ironically that would likely mean that there would be no more domesticated animals kept for food at all except for cows (for milk) and chickens (for eggs).
> Brains rescued from a slaughterhouse had their circulation restored with a system of pumps, heaters and artificial blood.
As you say, they are inextricably linked on the large scale. At least for eggs though, you can definitely patronize small farms that don’t need to employ such aggressive economies of scale.
Until they smell blood. If you ever go into a pig pen and cut yourself the pigs will attack you and probably kill you. Chickens are similar but of course being smaller they attack each other.
People these days more than ever want to anthropomorphize animals they like. But when instinct kicks in many of those animals are, well, just animals.
No one would complain about that. /s
I live in a rural area with lots of farming. A few people I know come from families that raise pigs and no they do not torture them. Even to the point of having a controlled access entry to the barn to prevent disease coming in from the outside (disinfectant tray for shoes).
It's hard work to maintain and raise animals for food farmers aren't going to spend time and effort torturing pigs which are their income. No business person is going to damage their product for kicks. A wheat farmer doesn't drive over his crop and flatten it. Fishermen don't throw dynamite into the water for fun.
At minimum pigs are castrated, transported and imprisoned against their will, and slaughtered against their will. Small, independent or family farmers do take care to minimize suffering. Minimize, not eliminate.
That's not at all the case at industrial farms. Sows are raised and slaughtered in dismal conditions. Gestation crates, forced and early weaning, artificial insemination, etc. Sows raised for slaughter can experience physical abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse in a number of ways.
It's the same as saying that what was happening at Guantanamo bay was no worse than what was happening elsewhere so why all the fuss?
An animal doesn't know if it is being raised for experimentation or food. They are simply being treated cruelly until they are slaughtered. They may even be leading a better life if they are being raised for experimentation than for slaughter. We on the other hand are trying to wipe our conscious clean by rationalizing the reasons behind the slaughter and putting food over knowledge. We don't need to eat meat to survive or thrive, so saying "but it is for food" holds no higher a moral ground than "but it is for an experiment".
And that's the concern, here; torture.