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Comment by JamesBarney | Hacker News Reader

I think one benchmark should be would "is this animal be better off to have never been born than the conditions we let it live in?"

And a second is "how much better or worse is this animals life compared to a similar animal in the wild?"

My personal opinion is anything that doesn't meet the first benchmark is evil. Anything that is between the too is in a gray area. And anything past the second I don't need to feel too concerned about, or I'd describe it as ethical husbandry.

It's clear that there are plenty of chickens whose lives are soo terrible that don't meet the first benchmark and their extinction would be preferable to their current experience

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The first one is easy. Nearly every animal would be better off not being born. Not many animals have an easy fun filled fulfilling life. Most of them spend their days hungry and scared, and their last day is often being eaten alive or some other miserable death.

The second is also easy. Nearly every animal that is farmed has a much better life as livestock than as a wild animal. Want your last day to be a bolt through the brain after getting to gorge on food for weeks, or chased down and your guts ripped out and eaten while you're pinned down in terror?

> Nearly every animal that is farmed has a much better life as livestock than as a wild animal.

If you were a non-human animal, which life would you prefer?

https://vimeo.com/130694373

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wkPMUZ9vX4

Hey I'm all for making agriculture humane and to end needless suffering. I'm just saying there's got to be a point on the ethical scale where farmed animals are better off than they would have been in nature. I live around massive cattle operations, and they are absolutely in every way possible better off than a bison wondering the Serengeti. If only because they can drink water whenever they want and never fear a giant croc will drag them into the water to be drowned.

And yes, pig and chicken operations like that should be stopped.

> and they are absolutely in every way possible better off than a bison wondering the Serengeti

Why is that, though? I would reckon that most animals on the Serengeti (not Bison, mind you) live out their average lifespan. Sure, some percentage of them are eaten or die to drought, but there is a reason that their average lifespan is 15--20 years, or whatever it happens to be. Compare that with the 5--6 year average lifespan of a factory farmed animal. It is hard to give you a more detailed argument without understanding the real reasons behind your value judgement.

Interesting take that whipingnout all eXAa

That first metric is highly subjective. There is a growing movement of anti-natalists that believe that having children is immoral, because being born a human is worse than never having existed, and people can't consent to their existence.

I don't think we'll be able to move beyond subjectivity for the morality of this, but I do think we can be more precise.

Such people, when met in real life face to face, inevitably remind me of Aesop's fable concerning a fox who wanted grapes but couldn't reach them.

Interesting. We tend to feel the same way about those who disagree with that premise.

It hardly matters. The ethics hold, or they don't.

In the case, the fox did get to the grapes and verified that they are indeed sour.

The only obvious solution I can think of is every human having a piece of land big enough to support a small farm enough to feed the whole family.

A cow, a goat, chickens, sheep, whatever you want, managed by the family, free range, decent life before being slaughtered.

That seems like it would fit those benchmarks quite well.

It's how it was done in the past, people were self-sufficient when it came to food. Big agriculture companies could provide food for the people and these animals, so they would still exist and be profitable.

The problem is that land is limited, and spreading out would just result in extremely inefficient fuel usage, with all the pollution that entails.

Plus, some would say it would be a pretty inefficient use of man hours, although I think it would be a better, more "natural" life for humans, as well.

>It's how it was done in the past, people were self-sufficient when it came to food.

Everything I've read or heard says there was quite a bit of malnutrition and hunger.

Modern technology exists now, though. Back then there was no electricity, no medicine, pesticides, combustion engines, etc.

I know people who have chickens, ducks and vegetable gardens and work full time - indeed, only possible because they simply buy animal feed and have an automatic irrigation system.

It's still and extra hour of work a day, though, not counting harvest and slaughter time.

Of course, that's nowhere near enough to cover their needs.

But in this context, simply getting rid of the garden and having just an animal farm, while buying everything else from big farms makes a lot of sense.

You still get enough food, you still eat eggs and meat, and the animals live happier, longer lives.

Being self-sufficient with food was also what people did for the longest part of their days. I wouldn't want to go back there.

Plus regular famines and accompanying social unrest.

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