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Comment by jaysonelliot | Hacker News Reader

For me, and I expect a lot of other people as well, the issue wasn't solely the fact that an elephant was shot.

It was Bob Parsons going to Africa in this "Great White Hunter" role, acting as though he were there to help the poor backwards natives who needed the elephant killed to protect their crops.

The reality is that he got a juvenile macho thrill out of the whole thing, from his patronizing handout of gaily colored GoDaddy hats for villagers to his gory video attempting to glamorize himself.

Yes, I love elephants and believe there are other ways to deal with some trampled crops besides shooting them. But the real point was what a lowlife Bob Parsons is, no matter what particular activity he's engaged in.

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Bob Parsons probably recognises he was being somewhat immature when he killed the elephant.

We, however, spare no thought about eating caged animals that were raised to be killed.

What's worse?

     We, however, spare no thought about eating caged 
     animals that were raised to be killed.

We are omnivores and eating caged animals raised to be killed is the perfect compromise. Yes, I personally spare no thought on it.

On the other hand killing wild animals should be considered a crime.

I'm a vegetarian and feel the opposite. I don't have a big problem with hunters, assuming they eat their game. But raising caged animals to be eaten is unnecessary cruelty.

Animals eat animals because they have no other choice, but humans have the knowledge and empathy to live without killing.

We have no natural enemies. We are 7 billion individuals that need to eat.

Cruelty is a human-invented concept. Hunting should be considered a crime because it brings irreversible changes to our planet.

If your concern is feeding as many people as possible, wouldn’t it be best to ditch animals altogether? I would imagine that it’s more energy intensive to go from plants to animals to food than to go directly from plants to food.

(I’m no vegetarian.)

This would be true if livestock ate human food. As it is they mostly eat things we can't, like grass, on land that is poor for agriculture. Feed corn usually just fattens them up there at the end, and I'm all for minimizing that disgusting process.

I'm from Iowa. I grew up around farms.

The idea that most of the meat we eat was once animals grazing on grass has sadly been untrue for a very long time.

Most cows, pigs, and chickens are raised in tightly-packed conditions, and fed things you really don't want to know about. There are grains in there, but a lot of nasty things get mixed in with them.

A lot of land that could go to raising human food instead goes to growing soybeans, corn and grain that are fed to livestock. You're right that we can't just divert the grains from animals to people, but if that land were used to raise human instead of animal food, we'd be able to produce 16x as much food by volume as we do with meat.

I don't understand the logic here. It's okay to kill animals as long as they've spent their entire lives in human-inflicted suffering?

For the record, I eat meat, and I have few qualms about eating caged animals, but arguing it as more humane is beyond perplexing to me.

You can't justify one wrong by saying the average human does something worse. The average human is a vicious, barbaric monster. Both killing wild animals and eating animals from factory farms is wrong.

Did he actually admit any of this or are you just projecting, er assuming?

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