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For me, the act alone of killing an animal isn't immoral. However, I think that modern intensive farming is immoral.

It's one thing to go out and hunt an animal to provide for yourself, I used to be a hunter myself, or to have a goat or some chickens in your back yard to provide for you and your family.

I think that the concept of raising entire fields and barns packed full of animals who are raised to be slaughtered to provide entertainment for people is morally wrong.

Eating meat in the quantities we do as a western society is simply entertainment. It goes far beyond what we need to eat to survive or even to be comfortable.

I'm not actually a strict vegetarian on that note. I actively try to avoid eating meat, but if I need to eat and there is nothing vegetarian available, I will eat meat. I don't think that eating meat is an absolute moral wrong, but I do think that the way we eat meat as a society is wrong.

Well, there is significant cognitive dissonance in my experience as a meat-eater and ostensible utilitarian. Mammals and even fish feel pain.

I don't have a problem with killing necessarily, given that (painless) death isn't objectively a bad thing. At any rate, meat livestock exist for their meat, so in the words of the Life of Brian: "You came from nothing and go back to nothing. What do you lose? Nothing!"

But, most modern meat production is not exactly kind, and the idea of what the cow went through haunts my every bite of deliciously prepared roast. No matter how amazing the roast is, it does not offset the horrible life of the cow that brought the roast into existence.

Hunting serves a valuable ecological purpose in many areas now, due to the elimination of apex predators. Thus, I think that is justified much of the time. It's also vastly less cruel than factory farming. Likewise, I think humane raising and slaughtering of lifestock like you describe is fine. I think it is important to avoid pain or fear as much as possible, however.

I don't wanna get in a philosophical thicket here, but gotta note that I don't think it's entirely accurate to say that meat livestock exist for their meat. That may be the reason that humans raise them, but from the animals' perspective, they exist for their own purposes. Their lack of ability to exercise freedom and volition doesn't negate their intentionality.

Can you exist for your own purpose if you have no authority over your own existence? Farm animals exist because of their owners, therefore they exist for their owner's purposes alone, no?

Couldn't disagree more with this sentiment. Do prisoners and slaves exist for their captors' purposes alone?

I can understand an argument to the affirmative, but it is completely contrary to my way of thinking.

To quote Hamlet : "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space"

or Hawking : "In my mind, I am free."

I think you are misunderstanding the parent poster: livestock animals would not exist but for their owners. So, for humanely-raised and nobly-killed animals: the choice (made by humans) is an animal with a benign, perhaps even happy existence, followed by a peaceful death vs. not existing at all. (Obviously not true for factory farms.)

It’s definitely not an ironclad argument: children also exist only because of their parents, but (our modern) society does not grant parents the right of life or death over their children at will.

This is like saying people brought from Africa for slavery wouldn’t have procreated, produced offsprings and successfully survived if it wasn’t for their necessities supplied by their owners.

^ exactly. To me, the notion is odious that individuals born into exploitative circumstances [be they human or otherwise] forfeit their volition / consciousness as a result of those circumstances.

Rousseau : "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

I have no idea who's down-voting you, but you are absolutely right.

To find acceptable the exploitation of animals while finding immoral the exploitation of humans, you must believe that animals differ from humans in some fundamental ways!

Comfortable, caring bondage is still bondage, and we should not forget that.

Assume there were powerful aliens Zondors who defeated humans fair and square. It turned out Zondors loves human meat. So they built human farms where they keep them in cages until they become teens with nice soft meat. They barely provide square feet per human, feed them nothing but corn, inject with all kind of hormones and so on. Then they take ripe humanity of the cage holding from the neck, cut them open while still they were still alive and screaming, harvest meat and cook it right in front of other caged humans in various different art forms and enjoy it while having some Zondorian entertainment. This happens years after years, decade after decade and millions of humans purely exist to be food for Zondors.

How do you feel now?

Humans don't make good farm animals. We take years to fully develop and over a decade to reach puberty (almost two decades if you want safer pregnancies). We're omnivorous so feeding us will be more expensive (probably enriched corn/soy based meals) and over many more years. We're also not that big even if we were bred for size -- keeping stocky bulky humans with a good meat to fat ratio, discarding slender ones and fattier ones (unfortunately the same features that made my yoruba ancestors the stallions of the slave trade, would probably make us the wagyu of the Zondor haute cuisine).

The Zondors must really like the taste of human meat if they think it's worth it.

It also wouldn't work because if you have enough humans in one place under harsh conditions, rest assured a rebellion is in order.

Humans have sapience. Cows don't.

Cows should still be treated humanely and only have one bad day (when they're slaughtered) since they're clearly capable of suffering, but ignoring the difference is a little dishonest, intellectually.

I can't wait for the impossible burger to hit grocery stores.

> In liberal society today many equate killing an animal to violent murder.

I kinda feel like it's seen as the opposite--a very controlled thing that has been industrialized to a huge scale.

> If you spend time around hunters or farmers, they have much more complex relationship with animals than most urban dwellers do.

I don't think it's these hunters and farmers who are running CAFOs.

You believe that we have the teeth of a predator? That seems like a wild leap. Have you ever tried to eat the flesh off of an animal raw? I don't think your teeth or jaw would be capable. Where are your claws to aid you?

Apes eat raw flesh. You may be be overestimating the toughness of raw meat.

Plenty of people eat blue steak, sushi, and uncooked shellfish by choice. Additionally, having to do a lot of hard chewing not only strengthens jaw muscles significantly, but also your jawbone strength and size.

But the steak was cut off from the corpse already. Have you tried biting through a cow hide with your teeth to get to that steak? The fish was already filleted with a knife etc.

Humans are so superior in our intelligence we have figured out how to make knives and cook food.

This is irrelevant. I'm simply stating that we don't have the teeth of a predator. I'm very surprised to be downvoted for this on HN where people take pride in their scientific awareness.

No answers, only downvotes. Typical HN ignoance and remaining in conditioning

I think there's also value in recognizing that animals can suffer. It is (in my opinion) a moral question whether or not to support systems that create animal suffering.

I'm mostly vegetarian - I'll eat meat when it is offered in a social situation or buy it myself to cook for a special occasion when I know the source is a place where the animal was likely to have "only one bad day" - the day it was slaughtered.

Back to the article - I think lancing a fish' brain to kill it immediately follows that spirit. As you say - understanding what it means to give it a good life and good death.

In which important ways are animals different from humans? I'm not trolling, I'd like to see your perspective.

This is a fair question, but I don't know if I have the time to give a well-thought answer. I'm not the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about animal ethics. I just thought it was important to point out the perspective of many people where it tends to differ from the stereotypical HN user.

Keep in mind that the idea that animals are not fundamentally different from humans is a breathtakingly recent idea in human history. One of the key reasons Darwin's theory was so despised initially and still today by a scary number of people is because it put humans and animals on the same plane.

A crude answer to your question is that we're smarter and more dangerous than animals and bigger and stronger than many of them. If a fish could eat me, it would. But instead, I'm able to eat it, so I do.

I also think a human life is worth more than an animal's life. If I ever find myself in some contrived scenario where I can save a bus full of people or a bus full of cute fuzzy puppies, I'm saving the people, with zero hesitation or regret. Even if bus A only has a single person and bus B has like a thousand puppies.

This doesn't mean that I think animals lives' are worthless. (My vet bills the past few months are sad evidence of that.) We should do what we can for them, and cooperate with our non-human companions on Planet Earth when we can. But part of being a living thing is also competition, including competition for the most precious resource — the calories locked up in our bodies.

Thanks for your detailed response!

> Keep in mind that the idea that animals are not fundamentally different from humans is a breathtakingly recent idea in human history.

We haven’t yet all understood the proper moral conclusion from that - that we humans and all animals suffer and can experience pain. Also the relative timeline of Darwin's ideas is irrelevant as their have been advocates for animal rights since Pythagoras.

> A crude answer to your question is that we're smarter and more dangerous than animals and bigger and stronger than many of them. If a fish could eat me, it would. But instead, I'm able to eat it, so I do.

What do you mean here by crude? You're probably smarter than a baby and the mentally handicapped, would it be ok to kill them? Or people who are bigger and stronger don't deserve more rights than the weak.

> I'm saving the people, with zero hesitation or regret.

This is a false dilemma fallacy. I.e. what happens in an emergency doesn't justify what we do day to day. Another way to see it is that if bus A has strangers and bus B has your family, choosing to save your family doesn't excuse killing strangers in the day to day. Choosing to save a human over an animal does not excuse the needless killing of animals every day.

> This doesn't mean that I think animals lives' are worthless. (My vet bills the past few months are sad evidence of that.)

But you probably wouldn't kill and eat your pet. That's because cultural conditioning tells people which animals to eat, and which to have as pets. I'm sure you've heard about the Chinese eating dogs. If you find that repulsive, ask why it's then ok to eat a pig, which is more intelligent and aware than a dog. Also consider the aspect of familiarity - someone might have a pet pig while continuing to eat pigs because their particular pet is familiar and close to them. This is analogous to xenophobia - if something is distant, it's ok to treat it differently. This is morally inconsistent.

> Cows are routinely commodified—undergoing forced impregnation, painful mutilations, and separation from their calves shortly after birth. Dogs, meanwhile, receive special treatment and veterinary care as pets. [1]

> We should do what we can for them, and cooperate with our non-human companions on Planet Earth when we can.

Yes, which is why everyone who is able should be vegan. There is no physiological need for animal products, so there is no need to take away another sentient being's right to live. We are out of survival mode. It is no longer necessary for our species to kill to survive. As humans we have the amazing gifts o awareness, intelligence and moral agency which we should use to reduce the suffering of all beings - human and non-human.

> But part of being a living thing is also competition, including competition for the most precious resource — the calories locked up in our bodies.

For humans, calories from plants will always be more efficient than calories from an animal.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism

Doesn't all this come down to whether an individual (or culture, or society) views humans as fundamentally different from non-human animals?

You are replying point-by-point to another poster, of course, so your post shouldn't be expected to fully cover your perspective on this, but you only mention "humans and all animals suffer and experience pain" as evidence for non-distinction. That strikes me as a little sad -- surely there is more to life and more to the human (and animal) experience than pain and suffering?

The "pain and suffering" usefully separates some living things (animals?) from others (plants?), allowing us to continue surviving without only eating fruits. But why is that the line?

Couple other points:

> ...everyone who is able should be vegan. There is no physiological need for animal products, so there is no need to take away another sentient being's right to live. We are out of survival mode. It is no longer necessary for our species to kill to survive. As humans we have the amazing gifts o awareness, intelligence and moral agency which we should use to reduce the suffering of all beings - human and non-human.

This doesn't necessarily follow. To be intentionally provocative: just because we can avoid taking away another sentient being's right to live, doesn't mean we should. Reasonable people disagree on, e.g., the death penalty, incarceration, and other avoidable, intentional harms inflicted on other humans.

Plus, if there were such a physiological need, would you be ok with killing animals?

> For humans, calories from plants will always be more efficient than calories from an animal.

Not strictly "always" -- there are ecosystems where the peak efficiency is "land grows grass" -> "animals eat that grass" -> "people eat those animals". (People, unfortunately, can't eat grass.)

> What do you mean here by crude?

I just mean not super well-thought out or expressed. The answer itself is crude.

> I'm sure you've heard about the Chinese eating dogs. If you find that repulsive, ask why it's then ok to eat a pig, which is more intelligent and aware than a dog. ... This is morally inconsistent.

No, it's not. This is something a lot of vegans don't seem to understand.

By declaring something "inconsistent", you are saying pigs and dogs are equivalent.

But they are obviously not the same. Pigs have curly tails and many dogs do not. Dogs are furry. Pigs and dogs have many differences.

So you have an implicit definition of "equivalent" that is really "equivalent for properties that I declare meaningful". You imply, for example, a person's cultural history towards an animal is outside of the properties that are allowed to matter.

But that set of properties is itself a choice. Eating pigs and not dogs isn't universally inconsistent, it's only inconsistent given some set of choices around which aspects of them you care about. When you claim other people are inconsistent, what you really are is oblivious to the fact that they consider some properties of animals important that you choose to ignore.

There had been lot of theories but to every theory there had strong counterpoint found. For example, speech, language and math was considered unique to humans but several animals have been found to speak, have elaborate language and even do counting and addition. Then there was belief that animals can’t do counterfactuals, for example, making decisions based on simulating what-if scenarios but that also has been proven false. My take is that there is no fundamental lack of ability in animals but the fact that those abilities are a magnitude or two lower than humans and animal species tend to specialize on very specific abilities.

There is book written on this subject that argues that most fundamental human abilities not yet seen in animals is building nested scenario such as telling a fictional story and desire to share knowledge among each other:

https://www.amazon.com/Gap-Science-Separates-Other-Animals/d...

> My take is that there is no fundamental lack of ability in animals

Yes I agree.

> building nested scenario such as telling a fictional story and desire to share knowledge among each other

This doesn't justify human dominion over non human animals [1], because there are humans - infants and the severely mentally handicapped - who also lack this ability.

[1] It's not explicit that you're arguing for or against this, but I just want to make my point clear.

I think it can be morally wrong for a wolf to eat a chicken. I don't expect good morals from a wolf, so I'm not surprised if a wolf eats a chicken, but normally the wolf doesn't own the chicken. The chicken belongs to somebody else. Granted, it is rather difficult for a wolf to purchase chicken, but theft is still wrong.