Hacker News Reader

Comment by blahedo | Hacker News Reader

> It's statistically reasonable to assume any particular animal product, that was bought in a store, in the US, and doesn't advertise any particular affiliation with ethical-treatment or other specialty causes, is unethical.

I think this is roughly what you meant, right? There are lots of exceptions to the totally blanket assertion, although I think the underlying sentiment (as carefully caveatted above) is basically correct.

View on HN

...so it's safe to assume all animal products are unethical.

According to that statement, the ethical value of any animal product is a function of some huge number of variables, and the upper bound on that value is the minimum of that set.

So, it's safe to assume that all animal products you encounter as a human are unethical. Regardless of where you buy them, or what their advertising is, you should assume they are unethical and be very, very difficult to persuade. Anything else is just unsafe.

I agree, and I understood the careful phrasing ("safe", "assume") in the original remark---but given the number of people who apparently didn't understand, I wanted to give a clarified version.

I think the problem with your phrasing is that most humans will interpret it to mean "oh, I can just find something that looks good on any one of these metrics, and then it'll be ethical."

This is why animal welfare-ists exist, and why people think that there is such a thing as "happy meat."

I don't think there's lots of exceptions. In fact, the exceptions are exceedingly rare.

One exception that comes to mind: A cow approaches you and graciously hands you a gallon of milk it excreted from its own udder, expressly as a gift to you.

That's just silly, they don't even have opposable thumbs. It would have to squirt the milk into your mouth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com