Oooh, not with my current ethics, but interesting thought experiment.
A lot of people respond to the "why is it ok to eat these animals" question with, "because chickens/cows/turkeys are dumb." Following that logic, it's ok to eat people with a low enough IQ, or mental handicaps, no?
The argument maratd gives thus is a justification for eating animals that are not smart enough to to look at our behaviour and decide whether or not we're fair based on whether or not we also eat animals.
But it explicitly rules out cannibalism (or eating intelligent aliens).
He's not saying it's okay as long as you don't get eaten he's saying "as a human, I do not want to get eaten. Therefore, I do not want to inflict this on other humans either".
"smart enough to to look at our behaviour and decide whether or not we're fair based on whether or not we also eat animals"
Yes of course an IQ number is a ridiculous way to draw a line; moving on.
'Animal' is a logical measure but 1. who cares about sea sponges and 2. it's not universal, what if aliens show up.
Drawing the line at creatures that are intelligent enough to draw this same line is a very clean and clever solution to the problem. Anything with minimal critical thinking skills is saved. Any dumb brute is fair game.
Another way of going about it would be to allow/disallow in aggregate, not in specific cases. AKA all humans or no humans. In which case it wouldn't be allowed even with a braindead person.
And you could say that being part of a species gives you special moral standing if other members of your species have the attributes required for it, even if you don't personally have them, but it would be a completely arbitrary thing to say.
But it still gives a misleading impression when someone hears you ate "a human".
That is absolutely not testable by our current means, not for any rigorous definition of knowledge. There are numerous instances, for example, of mothers of one species nursing the young of another species. Sometimes even of predator mothers nursing prey young. So, prima facie, assuming a reasonable definition of "fairness" it would seem that a vast number of species are capable of exhibiting this trait, including many of the ones you eat.
Second, it's also completely arbitrary. Why test for fairness? Why not ability to generate a profit on the stock market, or to do square roots, or tie shoes? It's a stupidly chosen metric that, at its heart, embodies circular logic -- choose a human trait, and then apply a human-centric test (which we don't even do by the way) to see if the species can be eaten. What do you expect the result would be? Even dolphins can fail this exam.
The bottom line is, your criteria is arbitrary and untestable. And it cannot even be applied consistently, as you would have to admit the consumption of severely encephalitic fetuses and the like -- which is something only a person arguing an abstraction could endorse. No socially well-adjusted person can seriously admit that they want such a thing to be permissible in their civilization.
However, prepared correctly with enough heat, possibly also frozen beforehand (that's what works on pork), I hear humans can actually be quite tasty.
It's seen as a bit of a social faux pas in our society though, so you might want to find a different society first if you'd like to enjoy tasty humans.
Are you honestly this much of a relativist?
I've also grown up knowing that cats and dogs are not for eating. And yet, even just a hundred kilometers away, I hear Italians eat plenty of cats and even consider it normal in some areas.
Maybe surprising (or not), but I find people who farm/hunt/fish to be the more intelligent kind of people when discussing food and ecology. Sure there are people who just want to exploit things for money, but many others do have a understanding for maintain a balance with nature.
One answer I have received to the question about "why is it ok to eat animals", was that the ecology balance in nature would break down if humanity suddenly stopped eating meat. Not only have we forced our self to be part of almost everything, but our actions have cemented us to a central position. Farmers has chased away predators to the point where hunters are needed to maintain balance in many forests. Some lakes are so polluted with nutrients, that you need to maintain fishing just to keep some species from extincting other less common fish species.
This doesn't address however why breeding animals for meat is fine. This is speculation, but some local farmers might say that as long the animal can live a happy life, then why shouldn't we eat them. The farmer job is to maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys, and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate size. If they do that, then morality should be on their side.
maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys,
and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate
size
- Have their beaks burned off because they live in crowded conditions where they will attack and main / kill each other.
- Are sorted male from female as chicks, where the males are then immediately killed in bulk. The 'industry standard' way to do this is to put them all in garbage bags to suffocate them, or to toss them all into a wood chipped en masse[1].
[1] Note: Even the chicks sold to people raising chickens in the city go through this process. E.g. in Portland, you can only raise 6 hens on your property. Roosters are not allowed.
In England the standard way is to gas the chicks. Killing off the males is a problem for dairy cattle too. Cows produce milk to feed their young.
Beak trimming is normally reserved for egg laying birds. (Meat birds are slaughtered for meat before pecking becomes much of a problem).
| In England the standard way is to gas the chicks
| Killing off the males is a problem for dairy
| cattle too
Dairy cattle males may not be suitable as commercial veal, like not all sheep breeds are suitable as meat sheep.
If they are suitable, then you've got to deal with either raising them from birth as white veal or, allowing them a bit more freedom in movement and food, as rose veal.
Just to add another animal to the mix, the same problem can be seen in dairy goat herds in countries where goat isn't consumed by the majority of the population.
It might be added, that in Europe, farmers get subsidies from the European union, and thus can keep the flock in rather low size and still earn a living on it. It is still a rather small income however, so many local farmers now days only supplement their earning with cows/chicken/eggs/sheep, and their main income comes from something else.
Same goes for male chicks. Those that aren't eaten (keeping the flock happy and appropriate sized), are observed closely when they reach mature age. If they don't fit well with the flock, they get bartered with a other farmers with an male from their flock. This was often the first step in handling an fight between two males that fought aggressively over dominance of the flock.
Sure, there will always exist bad apples in the world, and people should try avoid those. In the past, it was a strong asymmetrical information problem for buyers. Hopefully, with more information sharing and systems where buyers can rate sellers, we might get improvements where local suppliers that treat their animals well are encouraged.
There are different breeds that are raised as layers and for meat. Layers have been bred to produce more eggs than normal, and meat birds to produce more meat than usual. Layers are not raised for meat. But farmers do need to fertilize and hatch a certain number of eggs to continue to get new generations of layer hens. Somewhere around 50% of those are males. If you're lucky, you can keep 1 rooster for 6 hens, and even that is pushing it. Those numbers just don't work.
I know that many small farmers and families with small flocks already get their hens from large hatcheries. I would like to know what happens to that minority of male chicks that are hatched on small farms though.
This is what I'm going to hell for.