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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

Chickens want things. They want to walk around the scratch the ground. If you make a noise they'll run away from you - they dont want to get eaten by a fox.

Your comment about microorganisms is about 'where to draw the line' and your comment about 'tend to infinity' implies you like the 'appeal to extremes' form of argument.

I'm interested in what we're doing in the world now and I'm happy to suggest where a line should be drawn. I'm not worried about absolutes.

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I say we engineer a breed of Mike the Headless Chickens. Just enough brain stem to stay alive, not enough brain to care.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

Or, Lab grown meat would be a good solution.

edit: Lab grown chicken exists, its just wicked expensive at the moment. Just a matter of time.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/12/2/22125518/lab-gr...

Aren't they still microorganisms at that point? Don't they have hopes and dreams like animals? Or do we not know about either and are drawing a magical line at some point?

I'm comfortable to draw a line in the sand.

Something along the lines of: If its got eyes and an arsehole, lets treat it with some basic respect

Sure, you let me know when we can grow a decent drumstick in a petri dish.

We can do it now, just not at anywhere near competitive scale/cost yet

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/12/2/22125518/lab-gr...

No. A randomly arranged amorphous mass of protein is not a drumstick. There is no bone, there is no skin, there is no cartilage, there is no connective tissue.

Would it not make sense to re-use the circulatory, filtration, energy production, digestive, and excretory systems that evolved over millions of years to locomote chicken flesh, rather than try to re-engineer these systems? Just ditch the brain. If there’s no sentience, what is the ethical difference between this and vat-grown synflesh?

A randomly arranged amorphous mass of protein is all I want from chicken.

I remove the bones anyway.

> Your comment about microorganisms is about 'where to draw the line' and your comment about 'tend to infinity' implies you like the 'appeal to extremes' form of argument.

I would say that's accurate. I think extremes can bring out honest positions in an argument. Where would you suggest we draw a line? How long should a chicken live before we decide to kill it?

We could do a lot worse than go with EU Regulation 889/2008 (i.e european definition of organic)

See Article 12 for poultry. There are details about how they should be kept, density, materials (e.g. straw or turf), lighting conditions, access to perches, access to outside space. Minimum age at slaughter is 81 days.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...

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