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Comment by hwbehrens | Hacker News Reader

If pigs (or any animal) broaden the compatibility to other organs, what are the ethical implications for raising them with the intention to harvest their organs, if any?

On one hand, we already raise pigs to kill and eat routinely, and (mostly) people don't care - is this any different than say, buying a pig heart at the market to eat?

On the other hand, it does somehow feel different to me, perhaps because sharing organs somehow humanizes the pigs by emphasizing our similarity? I'm not entirely sure from where my hesitation stems.

I'm curious if anyone else read this story with mixed reactions.

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> On one hand, we already raise pigs to kill and eat routinely, and (mostly) people don't care - is this any different than say, buying a pig heart at the market to eat?

Yes, in that it's morally superior to eating meat. Eating meat is mostly a nutritional luxury, but needing functioning organs is not. I'm a meat eater, but I imagine there are a number of vegetarians who would be okay with this sort of organ harvesting process.

Of course, if we end up able to grow organs in a lab environment instead of inside an animal, that's probably better for all involved.

A (somewhat?) vegan perspective.

I've teetered on staying committed to veganism for ethical reasons, and have spent time on and off with vegan diets. I don't at all think (nor do I think most vegans think [see disclaimer]) that pigs are worthy of equal moral consideration as humans. I, along with most humans, think that pigs as well as other animals are worthy of some level of moral consideration. Most would be rightfully outraged at the torture of animals for fun, for instance.

Vegans take it a small step further, the moral consideration of a pig outweighs the pleasure provided to our taste buds by consuming their flesh. The prior two examples of consumption and torture, while vastly different, are also on a whole different level than raising pigs to save human lives. If you agree that pigs and humans are NOT morally equivalent (which is most people, including most vegans [see disclaimer],) then I think you are committed to the idea that it is imperative to raise and kill pigs to save human lives.

[Disclaimer: neither vegans or non-vegans are monoliths. There are countless ethical, religious, and practical frameworks one will employ to arrive at any particular ethical position.]

A bit off topic but you seem level-headed and I've been wondering about this for a while: what's your vegan "endgame"? The way I see it, the "vegan utopia" would get rid of all small family farms (even strictly milk/egg ones) -- where animals are given all the food they need, have access to good medical care, are sheltered from predators, and are able to reproduce and nurse offspring -- and replace all that with... a couple animals scrapping it out against the brutality of raw, unfiltered, natural selection? I wouldn't want that for myself, and I don't know of any vegans who have opted into that lifestyle either. So what gives? Why is the vegan "morally correct" thing to force onto animals the opposite of what we collectively opt into as humans? (Plenty of people say they want to "escape from it all" and go live in the woods, but to actually commit to that for any amount of time is... rare.)

> The way I see it, the "vegan utopia" would get rid of all small family farms (even strictly milk/egg ones) -- where animals are given all the food they need, have access to good medical care, are sheltered from predators, and are able to reproduce and nurse offspring

This is, like, the most charitable interpretation possible of the current state of farming for meat.

Certainly large scale factory farms should be avoided at all costs. But animal husbandry is an ancient art that a good number of small family farms still practice. They're the ones I'm referring to here. Also note I'm specifically referring to egg/dairy production as opposed to meat production.

There are many ancient arts that got lost as time progresses. Not sure if we should fear changing our ways. I've drastically reduced my meat consumption in an effort to help with climate change. The end game for me is for, some time in future, meat consumption to be seen as something old fashioned that no one does anymore. Like wearing a top hat.

The only reason I'm not 100% vegan/vegetarian is because, since most people aren't, it restricts a lot the number of dishes you can eat. Specially when you go out in a restaurant. But, if more people would be vegetarians, I'm sure that would change.

> This is, like, the most charitable interpretation possible of the current state of farming for meat.

It is charitable to call it charitable. Almost all meat, eggs, and dairy comes from factory farming. The small farms that people like to tell themselves they eat from are a literal rounding error [0]. You only get that if you go to the actual small farm itself or eat out at a very expensive restaurant.

- If you buy a meat sandwich from the corner store...factory farming

- If you buy a burrito from a restaurant...factory farming

- If you buy eggs and cheese at a diner...factory farming

- If you buy milk from the grocery store...factory farming

You can tell yourself you only buy from small farms, but there is a 99% chance [0] you are eating factory farmed animal products. Sorry to break it to you.

[0] https://thehumaneleague.org/article/what-is-factory-farming

You don't get to do that in a discussion, just act like the main thing being lost would be only the nicest thing on your 'side'.

> animals scrapping it out against the brutality of raw, unfiltered, natural selection

Farm animals are bred by humans, not taken from the wild, so you wouldn't be introducing any new animals to the wild, to "deal with brutality". You'd simply not bred new animals to live in farms.

Also, I think even small family farms practice male chick culling, so it's not really a great status quo.

Right, instead of a large biomass of generally happy “farmed” animals you have a small biomass of incredibly stressed “natural” animals. It’s not obvious to me that that’s as clear of a win as vegans would have me believe.

Industrialized farming is worlds different from these idealistic "small family subsistence farms." The hypothetical world in which one might be able to raise animals ethically as a food source isn't the same one that can have massive businesses turning a profit from supplying animal meat to millions of people. I don't think a business could survive in a market economy while treating their animals humanely. The cost would simply be unimaginable.

Most people who oppose the torture of animals and are sufficiently educated with how industrialized farming works face either discomfort and cognitive dissonance to some degree, or feel inclined to make a change (whatever that may look like.)

As far as the difference between living in the wild and living in industrialized farms, I think allowing animals to live in the wild is vastly more ethical than the misery that awaits them on factory farms. Of course, the current generation of livestock should never be returned to the wild. The "end game" would be the cessation of breeding of these animals.

> I don't think a business could survive in a market economy while treating their animals humanely. The cost would simply be unimaginable.

It'd be quite easy to survive if there were enough people who cared about the well-being of animals and experienced sufficient economic stability to make consumption choices that don't necessarily maximize calories/dollar. Unfortunately those people tend to eschew animal product consumption all together, resulting in your (correct) analysis that the number of animals living in misery on factory farms is dramatically overtaking the number living at harmony on family farms.

I don't buy from factory farms, but any time I go to a local store or farmers market and see a good local cheese, I buy it. I've visited many of the farms personally and have never seen a situation where it didn't look like the animals were living their best life. To shut those farms down, kill off their bloodlines, and replace them with... a way smaller number of slightly different looking ruminants spending their whole existence feeling (rightfully) frightened for their life upon any external stimulus? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And that's the "ideal" case, in reality it's far more likely that the farm will be bought up by some big commercial entity willing to cut more corners than that the good fertile accessible land will simply be yielded to the wild. [1]

[1] "as average farm size has increased, the number of individual farms in the United States has decreased." https://www.statista.com/statistics/196106/average-size-of-f...

Even "small" farms have a number of practices that the average person would find appalling if they became aware of them. There's a place for graphic descriptions of these activities intended to upset and dismay "non-vegans" but I don't think that place is a tech board. If you are curious as to what these practices are, looking up videos/practices related to modern dairy production that are popular even on small dairy farms or male chick culling might be a decent start, PETA also has plenty of resources available. (I'm sure there are some really tiny family-owned farms that don't employ these practices.)

Aside from this, farms, like all industries, follow the "tendency towards monopoly" where ever larger players will consolidate, merge, and buyout their competition to maximize their collective control of the market share. I think as long as there is a market for animal products, that market will be overwhelmingly captured by large industrialized farms. It's precisely the most upsetting practices on factory farms that keep costs low enough to make products accessible to working class Americans.

Eat all the bacon you want, get heart disease, get new heart, eat more bacon.

Classic platform lock-in strategy.

It's pigs all the way down

A documentary called South Park showed just that in this episode: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Bar_(South_Park)

Same pig supplies the heart AND the bacon.

> what are the ethical implications for raising them with the intention to harvest their organs, if any?

We slaughter more than 100m pigs per year in the US for food. I don’t think a few more million are going to cause a moral dilemma.

It's vivisection, but hopefully less painfully/traumatically than some slaughterhouses.

There isn’t any propofol at slaughterhouses

Yeah, those experiment animals are so lucky...

What about growing human organs in pigs? Like the pigoons from Oryx and Crake.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1177

Then you have the reverse problem of the pigs rejecting the human organs, I suppose.

I guess you could immunosuppress the pigs until maturity, then transplant the organ?

Killing a pig to save a life of someone dying is very different than killing a pig so someone can have pork chops for dinner.

Don’t you know? Humans are pigs. /s

Interesting and wild hypothesis. http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html

In the book Treason, people are bred for spare parts.

A Planet Called Treason, right?

Yow. Surprised to see it mentioned here, or, well, anywhere.

"I'm curious if anyone else read this story with mixed reactions."

Definitely.

There are the whole experimentation and vivisection angles that makes it potentially more abusive and agonising than slaughter, especially under the usual commercial incentives, weak jurisdictions etc. The headlines will inevitably come.

If they were raised for organs rather than meat for consumption, we'd likely treat them better. Not only because of the emotional causes, but because they'd probably be worth a lot of money so the investment would be greater to keeping them alive.

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