Can anyone explain sport/trophy hunting to me? I can't imagine looking through a scope knowing you're about to end an animals life for "fun" without the thought of it's pain, social bonds or right to exist stopping you from pulling the trigger.
> Mr Guma said smallholder farmers living along the Botswana/Zimbabwe border fence had struggled for years with elephants that regularly invaded their land and destroyed their crop
It's because elephants are currently causing actual problems for rural citizens of Botswana.
It funds conservation, which decreases poaching, which is better for literally everyone involved including the animals and the poachers.
I believe it also tends to be very controlled and directed so the effects can be planned.
Elephants can be a huge, dangerous, nuisance (apparently) to farmers who are trying to have enough food to eat. That’s just one example.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/10/trophy-h...
The money doesn't end up where it should and the oversight is minimal.
The answer is that most people don't care about animal suffering.
That said I try to reduce meat consumption and I buy as clean as possible. Organic makes sense when it comes to meat because of animal welfare and because it tastes much better. I also eat "lesser" parts and I love offal. I believe that when we kill an animal for food we should eat everything and not just the filets and entrecotes.
I agree with you that mass meat production is an atrocity and one of the biggest moral human failings.
There are alternatives, but they don't scale and are obviously more expensive.
If factory meat becomes the only available option I'm out.
The "humans are omnivores" appeal, I think you'd agree, commits the naturalistic fallacy. There are things humans can do, and you might even argue were "designed" to do, that nevertheless we condemn as wrong, like killing, stealing, and using physical abuse to have one's way. Perhaps by "humans are omnivores" you meant that it's more difficult to eat healthy without animal products, which is undoubtedly true, but nothing out of reach or even especially difficult for everyone above a certain socioeconomic status.
If you agree that that part's gone, all that remains is "I like it".
I agree but I'd like to add a disambiguation. Factory farmed meat should be stopped, factory produced meat (i.e. with no live animals as inputs) would be pretty great.
If we could manufacture meat without animal suffering at all that would indeed be pretty neat.
Of course I just picked some at random. I more or less ordered them from things your probably do to things you probably do not. Yet all are things that I can find somebody in the world who will think you are strange.
The point is who are you to pass judgement on the likes/dislikes of others. This is a large world and it is very hard to find objective answers for likes.
If animals spoke in the hunter's native language we'd probably stop hunting or killing them because they could adequately express their fear and anger at being killed against their will. As it is, their running away and animal noises fall on deaf ears.
And yes, I don't eat dog meat (or any meat) for this reason.