I am not a vegetarian and do not plan on becoming one - but I still want to avoid animal suffering wherever possible. Meaning I would like my meat to have seen the sun and outside and not only on the tightly packed way to the slaughterhouse.
But yes you can argue, that the conventional meat factories are horrible, so being horrible here is allright as well. But I think that is a horrible line of reasoning.
Perhaps if we cannot forbade animal suffering altogether from deontological position, we can just take consequentialist position and tax it like other externalities. That would reduce unnecessary animal suffering while allow necessary.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/standing-committe...
You get one or two orders of magnitude just from the lifespan of animals-- a pig in a factory will spend up to a decade suffering, musks monkeys presumably less than a year.
You get the rest of the orders of magnitude from the number of animals involved.
This is the key factor for me.
And yes, scale matters. To reduce animal suffering on a global scale, the obvious target are the meat factories. That doesn't mean, that avoiding animal suffering here isn't something that should be done as well. And when there was unnecessary testing, it clearly was unnecessary animal suffering.
There is a lot of biomedical research out there killing a lot of animals. Most of it is of dubious utility-- most of the low level stuff can be done in simpler organisms or simulation, lots of it is highly speculative with no applications in sight.
This research has a very high expected return, and it can't be done in simpler organisms. I do agree that it could probably have been done more carefully or more slowly and saved a few animal lives, but I am certain that this is a long long /long/ way from the worst example of this.
I don't see, where I did this. I clearly stated that I eat meat and I know that this means animal suffering. It is all about the relative suffering to me aka avoiding unnecessary suffering or finding better ways (simulations) wherever possible.
"but I am certain that this is a long long /long/ way from the worst example of this. "
And there surely are worse examples. So what? This is about this concrete example. Unnecessary animal suffering to meet some arbitary deadlines. Not to save the world from a pandemic or alike.
"This research has a very high expected return, and it can't be done in simpler organisms."
My question would be, why not use humans? At what point would the "very high expected return" justify this? Never? Why not?
Apes are indeed quite close to us (so are pigs) and I think drawing a line along "with that species really anything is allowed as they cannot speak" to "they can speak, we have to take every caution with them" is just strange to me, or rather plain wrong.
So to be clear, I never said animal testing is never allright. But I do think the reasoning of "anything is allowed with animals" is very wrong.
> My question would be, why not use humans? At what point would the "very high expected return" justify this? Never? Why not?
Very good question! Obviously we are heading into sci-fi territory now, but in a world where all suffering was valued according to some agreed-upon objective metric I would suggest the following:
- yes much more human testing, especially volunteers who are terminally ill/suicidal etc.
- in such a world testing would presumably be much more expensive, so they could afford more complex research substrates that we don't bother with because we can just use animals
- eg. lots of brain organoids and other synthetic experimental substrates
And for the record, I do think such a world would either be some sort of anarchocapitalist chaos or painfully slow to develop. But at least it would be morally coherent!
Joking aside I guess my only real message here is, people who find this stuff disgusting should think about their dinner plates. In my ideal world, we use approximately 50% as much animal testing and 0.1% as many animal food products.
Basically, it is already done, when late stage cancer patients agree to the very latest, risky treatments.
But I would extend it with say, granting death row canditates certain privileges, when they agree for some risky tests. But that is a very grey area with lots of room for turning into dystopia (but you can argue death row prisoners are living there anyway).
Also the problem with proper testing is, that you need healthy subjects which are as similar as possible. So that would mean breeding or cloning humans as test subjects. I fear this is secretly already done or planned, for very promising stem cell research/gene therapies/enhanced babies.
"In my ideal world, we use approximately 50% as much animal testing and 0.1% as many animal food products. "
And in my ideal world, we do not do animal testing at all anymore, but since I have not a working replacement avaiable, your numbers sound agreeable.
Because killing humans to save mice would be a really stupid choice
I don’t understand how these statements can possibly coexist unless you think that the animals you eat are slaughtered without suffering — a bar which is impossibly high, IMO.
I have no problem with that attitude.
But let’s not delude ourselves. As (relatively) wealthy people in developed countries, we’re absolutely fine with people and animals suffering when it lets us have a hamburger or put an iPhone in our pockets.
I killed animals to eat them and I am not bothered by the act, it had to be done. I was raised in a farm in Romania(Easter Europe, poor country ... so your typical american stereotypes will not apply = things were different like my old grandma asking me to kill a chicken (I was maybe 10 or 12).
Andy FYI I am not rich nor using an iPhone or 1000$ phone.
"avoid animal suffering wherever possible"
The slaughtering is not really the problem to me. Cannot be avoided, allright, I can live with that (but there are of course worlds between how the meat I like to eat was slaughtered, compared to the cheap meat from the supermarket, think a deer that died with a clean shot, compared to a animal waiting in stress and panic for hours or days before the slaughtering factory).
And what matters more, are the living conditions the animal had before the slaughtering. Like being outside in the sun and on real grass, compared to tightly locked inside the whole life, literaly living in their own shit.
Don’t get me wrong, that is a 100% valid attitude to have. But don’t pretend like you’re trying to avoid animal suffering whenever possible — because you’re clearly not.
> The slaughtering is not really the problem to me
Also lol at this. Makes it easy to avoid animal suffering if being slaughtered doesn’t count as suffering to you.
Do you believe differently in general?
But you can continue to reduce your creation of suffering in animals by not eating meat.
It’s fine if that’s a decision you’re not willing to make.
But if you say, “I just try to minimize suffering” and then continue to eat meat, you should instead say, “I just try to minimize suffering that I can’t justify to myself.” Otherwise you’re lying to yourself because you’re doing one thing and saying another.
That is clearly implied, isn't it?
There is almost no action, that does not directly or indirectly creates (potential) suffering. Normal agriculture creates a lot of suffering by poisoning the earth and the animals within. But even the most ecological agriculture creates suffering. First, by making a forest to a field. Wild animals and plants had to go away, so that the corn can grow. But yes, growing corn in an ecological way minimizes suffering by comparing it with growing corn in the most toxic way and then feeding it to animals that can barely move, to then feed some fat humans, who can also barely move.
No.