As a side, note, I'd like to point out that you should go vegan predominantly for the moral ethics of killing something for 5 mins of taste pleasure rather than purely environmental concerns (although valid)
> at least we provide a quick and painless death
Without trying to sound like I'm on a pulpit, "quick and painless" is not how I would describe sow stalls. The prevalence of ag-gag laws speaks to this.
This is a subject that I don't have a good answer to, and I eat meat too, but I think we should at least call a spade a spade to start.
> but I think we should at least call a spade a spade to start.
Watching r/natureismetal and David Attenborough documentaries I find myself far more taken aback at the viciousness of some predators (even some trees!) than anything I read in Fast Food Nation, and sections of that book were absolutely disgusting
The moral quandary around factory farms does not generally stem from how quickly abattoirs perform their job, as it is economically prudent to kill livestock quickly. There is not much incentive to treat them well beforehand.
Like, veganism because methane emissions are accelerating global warming? I can get behind that. Veganism because of some dietary need someone has? Sure. But veganism because we are mean to animals? You're stretching it...
You're making the argument that cruelty to penned livestock is fine as the wild is also cruel. It is curious, then, that factory pigs live out just a fraction of their effective lifespan[0] - typically around 10 months. Wild boars have average lifespans measured in years.
There is a lot of nuance between the agricultural extremes we have now and what environmental activists desire, but I think your argument is specious, and the bar for how we treat livestock should probably be higher than "at least we kill them quickly."
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7286991/figure/...
Hardly. I'm simply arguing that some combination of current agricultural practice is little worse than the natural alternative of having to spend one's life constantly on-guard so that they don't become another animal's lunch. And then becoming lunch eventually (and viciously), anyway.
Can our practice be improved? Sure. But the "moral ethics" of "killing something for 5 minutes of taste pleasure" are not so black-and-white. I think your argument is unsustainably idealistic, and that you would deny people their "5 minutes of taste pleasure" because of that idealism
While I have not actually been arguing for any specific changes here, yes - that is the thorn and the true reason ag-gag laws exist. I don't have good answers.
But when I say "call a spade a spade," I mean that we need to admit that the livestock practices of factory farming is something like animal cruelty. Even if, as I again have said, it's a practice perhaps needed today. The scenario can be both.
I do not agree that life confined to a metal crate for 10 months is one better than that of a life spent in open environments for far longer. Pigs specifically are social, active creatures.
Don't force anybody please. As for moral ethics, those are really different depending on where you come from, your current outlook on life, etc. Ethics are not universal. I'm personally 98% vegetarian due to the lesser ecologic impact. It's also healthier, not killing animals, and has a lot of side-benefits. But don't assume the reason you specifically picked will work for everyone.
Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, dairy and eggs still contribute to mass slaughter and suffering so your point about not killing animals on a your stated diet is a bit misinformed.
I agree that male chicks are being massively slaughtered after they hatch in order to get hens. For every male chick that dies, you get more than 300 eggs a year for a couple years. Hens are usually slaughtered too after some time because they get less productive.
My point was mostly that bringing ethics into any topic is something you can't do without acknowledging that people have different views on what's ethical.
At which point is it okay to terminate a chicken? That's a very debatable topic, same as abortion.
What is not up for debate is the carbon impact of various diets. That's quite easy to measure, and much more objective.
At any rate, you're still not explaining why, merely pointing out an inconsistency across animals as a whole. What if it is wrong to eat dogs but right to eat cows? Why couldn't it be so?
One could even claim to be righteously executing the murderous cow because it spends all day maiming and murdering innocent plant matter.
Personally, I can very clearly see that a cow or a dog is concious whereas a plant (if concious at all) is very much further towards unconcious than a human understanding of conciousness. Therefore I opt to reduce the suffering as much as possible.
I would hope if an alien species that was much more concious than we could comprehend were to stumble across earth, they would not cause us suffering and eat us merely because we are not as intelligent as they are.
> Therefore I opt to reduce the suffering as much as possible.
Isn't suffering an unavoidable part of life itself? If this is the aim, then we must immediately kill everything that is alive. That will end suffering the fastest.
This is a bit pedantic isnt it? I would hope you can come to a conclusion which isnt borderline psychopathic
Yes, suffering is an unavoidable part of life which most organisms seek to reduce as much as possible. Given we all have existence bias and presumably dont want to end our lives prematurely, why would you knowingly want to increase it for others? I should have taken the hint from your initial response of "why is killing animals bad" that this would have been a pointless discussion. Why is killing anything bad?
If we want to find the truth, we must be brave and see what conclusions our line of reasoning result in. If our investigation leads somewhere too unpalatable, then no doubt one of the assumptions leading down the path is at fault.
> Yes, suffering is an unavoidable part of life which most organisms seek to reduce as much as possible. Given we all have existence bias and presumably dont want to end our lives prematurely, why would you knowingly want to increase it for others? Why is killing anything bad?
Couldn't this be from ignorance? The same way many people fear and avoid the dentist for a long time even though it brings them far greater suffering than the dentist would, couldn't avoiding death too be running away from something that is ultimately good?
This is an ad hominem fallacy. Mentioning it doesn't serve to invalidate the argument.
Anyhow, I think the point trying to be made here, is that you're arbitrarily drawing the line on what should be allowed to be killed based upon your own personal moral philosophy. What makes you the righteous one to get to dictate where to draw the line? Nothing but pure opinion (and that goes for anyone else too).
If someone murders your dog, no big deal to you? And sure, this dog was YOUR dog, but you would probably still agree that, in general, dogs shouldn't be killed, right? I'm not saying this line of thinking extends to all living organisms, but surely you can acknowledge there's SOME gray area between bacteria and "organism as smart as a human".
Another useful thought experiment: what would aliens who are way smarter than us think of us? Mightn't they think of us as so dumb that our lives don't matter to them? How would you try to convince them otherwise?
It seems like you think this is very obvious, so why is it so hard to explain why? Shouldn't obvious things be easy to explain?