I’m curious. What is your basis for determining that it is okay to do this to pigs?
Could we also do this to dogs?
Dolphins? Elephants? Monkeys?
Could we also do this to dogs?
Dolphins? Elephants? Monkeys?
We need a better framework for this issue than "where do you draw the line" Vegan Billboard[0].
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If the meat I buy is from someone who mutilated the cow and optimized for maximum pain in the death of the cow then I would not buy that meat.
So there is a spectrum here. Just because we kill animals for food does not mean that it's ethical along the rest of the spectrum of harm.
What if more pain directly correlated with better-tasting meat (or some other tangible advantage, like health benefits or medicinal properties)? I think you'd find many, many people who'd be okay with cows inflicted maximum pain for maximum yum meat, let alone meat that made them healthier than the alternative.
If there's a spectrum here, an instance of that spectrum exists for each individual too. Is it rational to believe we could ever agree on a single universal line on that spectrum for everyone?
Now I know you weren't referring to that.
As far as animal experimentation goes, it's pretty much illegal to do torturous experimentation on animals.
Getting IRB approval is difficult for anything besides normal life for an animal. Yes you can inject drugs into it etc., but pain to the animal plays a very large role in if you'll be allowed to do it.
* My wife is a cancer biologist who maintains and works with mouse models.
> If you replace the animals with humans (eating vs experiments) there is no question which one is more wrong.
Consent is the only issue here. What you're talking about isn't really ethics, more disgust.
Is it forbidden to reverse-engineer to get there faster?
I think the race argument is a bit reductio ad adsurdum. Why is that any different than if you decide to only eat plants? That draws the line at the kingdom classification which is just another human convention. Drawing the line between species seems to have some logic to it at least, given there is a stronger biological definition rather than a contrived race argument. (e.g., we can strictly define a species, in part, by their ability to produce viable offspring)
I seek to avoid causing suffering (I'm an utilitarian, but you don't necessarily have to be utilitarian to try to prevent suffering). Q: What entities can suffer? A: Sentient beings, by definition of sentience. In particular, animals that we usually kill, do suffer (but not necessarily every individual belonging to that kingdom does). Carrots do not (but if in the future we discovered an individual of another kingdom that suffered as much as a pig on a slaughterhouse, I wouldn't eat him either, being there so many other options).
Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer had a chat explaining well this issue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU
I think the assumptions that need to be called out in Singer's argument (and possibly yours, given the little bit in your post above) are 1) we know how to define sentience and 2) we understand the link between sentience and suffering. These points may be a departure from Singer in part because he's making a philosophical argument and not necessarily a scientific one. The science part being relevant to this thread because I think part of the discussion is how strict definitions are necessary to avoid the moral relativism aspect of the conversation.
There doesn't appear to be any scientific consensus on how to define consciousness or sentience. Some, like Sam Harris, define it simply in terms of information processing. In that case, what suffers can get murky fast. Are mollusks more conscious than, say, a venus fly trap? I don't know, but as a layman, I haven't come across a good definition to parse that question effectively.
Even if we have an understanding of sentience, there doesn't seem to be a definition on how this translates to suffering. You seem to imply it is a given that sentience leads directly to the ability to suffer, but I haven't found a good consensus on this either. Some people like Gerald Edelman take the stance that suffering is dependent on complexity of the nervous system, so there's nothing morally wrong with killing lobsters and less complex animals. There's others like Vilayanur Ramachandran who go further and don't think more complex animals like cows suffer because they don't introspectively experience pain the way humans do.
The above is a just a long-winded way of saying that I think we need strict scientific definitions to make some sense of the topic or we'll just be endlessly entangled in relativistic arguments. I'm not convinced we have made sense enough of the problem to define it this thoroughly.
Comparing the acknowledgement of such lines with racism is ridiculous.
Edit: meant to say laissez-faire but I prefer fairy
Someone (or a group of person) fought and convinced other that its in their best interests to make a particular law. For example a law against murder, some people think that its in their best interest to punish people for murder, some other don't.
Regardless what the "true" morality is regarding murder, the one who fight and and can either successfully force or convince other to follow, get to decide what the law is.
But I do appreciate that other people might have different sensibility or empathy with animals