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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

We don't slaughter animals because we think they don't mind dying, we slaughter them because we've outsourced the mass killings to people who don't mind doing it, and a steak looks enough unlike a cow that we don't think that it used to be alive.

Basically, if we had to slaughter our own cows, I doubt we'd be eating as much meat.

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I can tell you've never lived in the Midwest, or maybe just not outside of a city. People have dedicated chest freezers for wild game that they keep full all year. Opening of hunting and fishing seasons are huge deals.

I've never lived in the Midwest, because I'm not American, but I grew up in a small village where we had to decapitate our own chickens. I never got over the discomfort at taking another life.

People adapt very easily. If you were trapped on a mountain, you'd likely butcher a cow with the rest of your soccer team. Don't judge everything through the lens of plenty. If you're American, it might be an exercise that becomes useful soon.

If I were trapped on a mountain, I'd likely butcher my soccer team. That's kind of the entire point, that I don't need to be slaughtering cows.

* People ate plenty of meat when they had to slaughter the animals themselves.

* Hunting is quite popular.

* Every adult that eats meat is quite aware of what goes on to bring it to his table.

So I would disagree. We slaughter animals because that is what they are for, it is why they are farmed, and we want the resulting products. I like my leather shoes and jacket and belt. I like a steak. I like a chicken curry. It doesn't concern me at all that cows and chicken and lambs die to make that happen. They are knocked out first, so it is quite humane.

We haven’t had an evolutionarily relevant reason to stop. If sentient alien life looks like a chicken we’d stop eating chicken. If pigs get any smarter we’ll have to stop eating them. We’ve already mostly stopped eating cats and dogs in most western countries. For me, personally, I view it as a 3rd or 4th tier problem. We’re not solving world hunger for another 2 centuries so I put it out of my mind. If I’m going to solve a “food problem” it seems cruel and irresponsible to solve the food’s problem.

"We’re not solving world hunger for another 2 centuries"

Why two centuries? Deaths from famines have already dropped precipitously in the last three generations or so. Today, if there is a problem with food, it is usually a logistical problem, not a problem with food availability/cost in general, and half of the world has a problem of eating too much.

Anyway, two centuries is a long time. Two centuries ago, electricity wasn't a thing yet.

I don't think solving hunger is a problem of quantity. It's a political and systemic inequality problem. I don't see those being adequately managed for at least 200 years if ever.

But then you should call the thing to be solved "problem of good governance" instead, and that is something that indeed may take centuries. Bad governance will manifest itself in a multitude of problems that have no intrinsic organic relationships amongst them, and I am not sure if it makes sense to split them into sub-categories.

In the past, hunger was quite often a quantity problem. If a period of bad weather hit Medieval Europe, there wouldn't be any practical way how to import food for the entire continent from, say, India.

In this sense, hunger is being solved.

Have you ever killed an animal with your own hands?

> Every adult that eats meat is quite aware of what goes on to bring it to his table

> They are knocked out first, so it is quite humane

Those two statements contradicts themselves: most of the chicken aren’t knocked out, or failed to be. It’s however easier to finish your dish if you don’t bother evaluating agroindustrial marketing material (and the cute kid’s farm you saw when toddler)

Same happen with "caws eats grass", "this fish was sustainably catch because the label said so", "that chicken had a mn happy life because it’s an organic one".

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