A non-obvious issue here is that often these animals are sent to slaughter around 12-24 months when they can live happily up to 25 years.
The general rule was my own synthesis from what little I know of this subject. This study is one of the main sources I used to drive my current understanding. You can also try this search term: "do wild animals die of old age?"
Does anyone actual subscribe to such a belief? Do you?
There are also of course many moral systems that do not value the welfare of other species as highly as that of humans.
We also don't kill them "prematurely". We kill them when it's time to eat them, or else to relieve them of pain.
Also, since we're onto wolves, wolves will kill animals and not eat them (see "surplus killing" article on wikipedia). Conversely, wolves will often eat animals without killing them first. Humans at the very least kill our food before we eat it most of the time.
I'm asking because your comment is about the meaning of the word "necessary" but the same meaning should apply to every other human activity, not just food. But the discussion about necessity crops up about food, in particular.
Also, I understand that the comparison to showers might sound irrelevant to the discussion about the ethics of eating meat, but it turns out it is anything but. I don't want to preempt your opinion, so I'll leave it at that, but I'm not just making a glib riposte to your comment. Despite appearances, this is an important question: how necessary is it to shower?
So then using that same metric to answer your question about showers, I think it’s fair to say that showers are absolutely not necessary. Nice, sure. Perhaps necessary according to social norms, probably. Required for a normal life span with average levels of health? Nah.
cheese_goddess, if I ever get you to see the validity of veganism, or at least cede a point, I’ll die a happy person. I don’t see that ever happening though. You are my HN veganism white whale.
That's creepy stalker behavior - again.
If you have the time and stomach I'd recommend search up slaughterhouse footage. I'll let you judge for yourself what they're feeling in those moment.
And if they don't eat me, I never exist in the first place?
I'd opt to be eaten.
Just seems like the aliens would be better off eating cows...
The fact is if you didn’t exist then you wouldn’t care either way, so it’s a moot argument. The fact that you do exist changes that, not excuses it. Or in other words: we are not doing other species a favour by eating them.
It’s also worth noting that many of the species we far isn’t the natural evolution of that animal. They’ve been bread to be fatter, or more docile etc. Many of the species suffer from health issues due to breeding that their natural cousins do not. The reason a lot of these animals seem suited to farming is because man has bread them that way. This isn’t doing these animals a favour either. It’s purely for man’s own benefit.
The argument around doing them the favor of providing them existence relies on them having a nice life, until the day we eat them. It sounds like you are opposed to them coming into existence because it means they exist in existential agony.
Also that physical agony is a near certainty, by your last paragraph. But that does not seem to be the core of your objection.
The same cannot be said for industrial scale ranching. In fact, I think the production of dairy is typically far more more inhumane than that of beef.
No, I’m opposed to stupid arguments where you justify being a carnivore because you’re somehow doing these creatures a favour by farming them. You’re not. If you’re going to eat meat, and I have zero issues with being a carnivore, then you have to reconcile the fact that what you’re doing is immoral for the animals but you’re doing it for your own personal survival. At least call a spade a spade rather than creating these stupid mental paradoxes where you’re the hero for breeding docile animals and then cooking their flesh.
It’s all about taking responsibility for your actions and respecting the consequences they have.
So basically the plot of the Never Let Me Go. Except you can't really get the blissfully unaware of my predetermined fate thing if the organisms are intelligent.