Comment by iN7h33nD | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iN7h33nD | Hacker News Reader

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You don't live a happy life being raped and having a child taken away at birth so that milk can be produced for humans. All animals cannot live "happy" lives. Demand won't allow it. There is no future where all animals can be happy and the level of meat consumption can stay the same.

So you would choose to live a happy 15 years and then die. Unfortunately most animals that we farm cannot and do not live happy lives, and they don't get a choice. You would more realistically be living to 15 until slaughter with torture, rape, and your children being taken away to further the cycle. Never existing seems better. There is another option though, not raping, torturing, and slaughtering for humans to consume. Humans won't wither away without animal products.

In the not so distant past slaves were given "happy" lives by there owners. They were lesser beings so they should be happy to be alive at all right?

>There is no future where all animals can be happy and the level of meat consumption can stay the same.

I'm not in disagreement with this...just because you're cynical about the future of husbandry doesn't mean I can't be optimistic about it. I'm unsure how repeatedly stating facts about the worst of the current state of factory farming is going to change my mind about how we can potentially lessen demand and migrate production from factory farms through not supporting them. It's actually the exact same concept as becoming a vegetarian but with different expected results.

How will a future where are animals that humans consume leading happy lives decrease demand? Doesn't decreasing demand counter your point about creating more lives being a better thing, since that would lead to less lives?

Even if I was optimistic about farming being able to have animals leading happy lives, it would still ignore many negative factors dealing with animal consumption:

1. The environmental impact from animal consumption would increase if all animals lead happy lives and consumption stayed the same.

2. Dairy products could no longer be produced as that would lead to unhappy animals

3. The sustainability of eating animals, we produce feed for them, and then we eat them. It would make much more sense to only produce feed for us.

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