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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

So is there no middle ground then? Is it a simple case of you can't have one without another?

I believe that you can eat meat, provided that animals live in a decent,stress-free environment. I know it's very hard to find meat that carries any sort of a guarantee on it,but at least here in EU "free range" and "organic" mean something that is legally enforceable, so every time I buy chicken/beef/pork that is organic I hope that these animals were kept in good conditions.

I do feel sorry for the American readers,for whom the meat industry is just a massive black box with no way of finding out what is going on - and I genuinely believe that if I lived in America, I would have stopped eating meat too,for that very reason.

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Not all of America falls into the category of being completely ignorant to where their food comes from, or eat food that was raised in factory farms.

Many Americans (in the fly-over states) have access to local butchers that can drive you to the actual field where the animal lived.

We recently bought a side of beef for the family from one of these shops. There are eight within a day's driving distance to me (midwest Illinois). I know the first name of the young man that bottle fed and raised the hamburgers I eat.

A majority of individuals in the communities near my home purchase their meat (beef and pork at least) this way. There are other options for people, they are just more expensive, or are perceived as being more expensive.

Please don't lump the entire country into one box. Do you realize how many people there are in the US, or how very large this country is?

Flyover states have such a low population density that this solution works, however the demand throughout the country is so staggeringly high that it's not at all a viable solution for everyone. That's why the larger meat industries exist, they're the only ones capable of handling the volume necessary.

That means that even less of the country is ignorant about the source of their meat than you would think, but not everyone is in a position to be able to do something about it. Many of us don't have the options available to you, and if we did and we all chose the most ethically sourced options available, the prices would either be astronomically high or the previously ethical source companies would have to resort to less ethical measures to be able to keep up with demand.

By abstaining and choosing plant-based alternatives to meat, we stop factory farming, and we support the humane treatment and dignity of animals.

No, there's no middle ground. Killing is killing.

Would it be moral to kill you if I'd let you live in a decent, stress-free environment before your death?

Would it be moral to raise human children, give them a nice childhood and then kill them before they reach adulthood because they're super tasty then?

I'm not saying I agree (or don't) with GP, just noting that you missed his point.

So, but, that's just ignoring the reality of the world.

Fact is: people eat meat. People will continue to eat meat, that's not something that's going to change (in the short term, anyway). Given that, how can we improve the treatment of these animals?

I feel that equating eating meat with murder is just sacrificing the good for the perfect.

Lets find a way to give consumers better choice. We should be aware of the treatment of the meat we consume (and articles like these are helpful in that sense), and we should be able to make purchasing choices on that basis. We should be able to buy ethically raised / humanely slaughtered meats at the grocery store.

No, you're ignoring the reality of the issue! Whether people eat meat or not doesn't matter. How is "a lot of people do it" even a point?

Slavery was a "world reality" too. Would you have suggested a compromise instead of just banning slavery?

I didn't. You equal animal life to human life, hence your statements like "Would it be moral to kill you if I'd let you live in a decent, stress-free environment before your death?".

I do not find them equal - I find animals worth carrying about, I would like them to have decent lives, but ultimately - they are food and if they are killed quickly and painlessly then I don't have a problem with it.

Not sure if your argument holds.

We're essentially food too, so it'd be okay to kill and eat you.

Well, yes. It used to be OK. In some parts of Africa and the Amazon, it still is.

But human society as a whole has moved on from the practice of cannibalism.

>Not sure if your argument holds. We're essentially food too, so it'd be okay to kill and eat you.

Only we have laws that prevent you for doing so, and a culture that says it's bad. Otherwise, have a go at it.

Canibals, which lack such laws and culture are totally fine with eating other people.

Precisely my point.

Cultures in which this was acceptable did not generally do it to members of their own tribe (in-group). It was only something to be done to rival tribe members (out-group) who were defeated in battle. It was an expression of domination and disrespect to opponents.

(At least in Papua New Guinea - other regions YMMV)

Nothing is ever so black and white. I'd argue that there is a difference between killing an insect and killing a human. The difference, in my mind, is that we think an insect lacks the same capacity for experiencing pain.

Edit: In the US, a lot of how cruelty is valued is based on how alike the animal is to us. Mammals get more attention than birds, which get more attention than fish. There is a hierarchy and I think it's based on how closely the animal resembles us, a part of which is the capacity for pain and suffering.

> we think an insect lacks the same capacity for experiencing pain

Who thinks that? Is it true or you'd just like to think it that way?

It isn't even relevant. We're talking about meat here. Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain and self-awareness. Animals want to live and try avoid death. Even mosquitoes.

We do know that insects are far, far less complicated creatures. The difference between a human brain at 100 trillion or so synapses and a fruit fly at a few million is huge. I'm simply arguing that the necessary level of complexity isn't there for a fruit fly. I'm also arguing that this is more of a continuum than a clear line.

> Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain.

This is what I don't see as a clear and obvious truth. You shouldn't get on my case for throwing something out there without any kind of validation and then do the same thing yourself.

> This is what I don't see as a clear and obvious truth.

So their nervous system and brain pain centers (which look just like ours), the physical reaction to pain, the chemical reaction to pain (stress, releasing adrenaline...) and all the death avoidance... that's just a ploy?

I'm not sure about mosquitoes, but I'm pretty sure meaty animals do feel pain.

>No, there's no middle ground. Killing is killing.

That's a tautology. It doesn't tell us anything.

The real question is, what makes EVERY killing wrong?

Are you wrong for taking antibiotics? If not, why not? After all "killing is killing".

Are you a murderer for killing a mosquito? Why not? Since, you know, "killing is killing".

Should a lion be punished for eating an antelope? Why not? After all, "killing is killing".

Should a man that caught 10 fish be put to prison for life, just the same as a man that killed 10 people? If not, why, since "killing is killing"?

Perhaps you were wrong, and now you see that not all killing is equal?

Using antibiotics is a defensive reaction against an attack. It's not killing if you're legitimately defending yourself (even law considers this situation).

Indeed, you're a murderer for killing a mosquito without a reason.

About the lion/fishing analogies, bringing law here doesn't make sense. Law is an artificial system. Punishment is essentially arbitrary. Both the lion and the fisher are essentially murderers anyway, regardless of their punishment.

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After some downvotes I think I have to say this again: I don't hold these views and acknowledge it's a muddy topic, but you can't ignore these facts! These are legitimate points. I'm just playing devil's advocate here.

My personal opinion is: the lion would eat you. The mosquito would eat you (if it could). That's just how nature works.

But then again, killing another person is just how nature works too, right? I eat meat and will eat meat forever, though I can't help but feel like such an hypocrite for doing so while condemning murdering people.

Not killing people is just an implicit agreement. I won't kill you if you don't kill me. It's not "morally good" or "morally bad", not killing other people is just convenient! The punishment for murder is just the punishment for breaking this agreement.

>But then again, killing another person is just how nature works too, right? I eat meat and will eat meat forever, though I can't help but feel like such an hypocrite for doing so while condemning murdering people.

I fail to see the hypocrisy. You condemn murdering people because a) they are your OWN kind, and b) they have brains capable of writing HN posts.

How about just constraining our moral obligation to just: don't eat/murder your own kind?

Let's get to that first, abolishing capital penalty, war, murder and such, and then we can worry about eating steaks and/or prawns...

You eat plants. This kills the plant.

I think the antibiotic example is quite telling. Let's press it a little further. As you correctly point out, killing in self-defense is considered legitimate by most (but certainly not all) people. If someone pulls out a gun and starts shooting at me, most people would agree that it is morally acceptable to pull out a gun and shoot my attacker. But the legitimacy of that self-defense is limited by the principle of proportionality. If instead I pull out an AK-47 and rake back and forth with indiscriminate automatic fire, killing not only my attacker but also 15 innocent bystanders, pretty much everyone would agree that I acted immorally. The death of my attacker would be in self-defense, but I'd still be on the hook for 15 murders.

That second example is more akin to taking antibiotics. If we accept that killing microbes is wrong, and accept your argument that using antibiotics is moral because it's legitimate self-defense, we have a problem. Antibiotics kill a lot more than just the invading bacteria. So does radiation and chemotherapy. In fact, they kill a lot of microbes who live in a symbiotic relationship with me and live in my body because they help me break down food or fight infections.

The point is, things are a lot more complicated than simply saying that all forms of killing are immoral. At some point we have to accept that there is an ordering of life forms, and killing some of them to save ourselves is acceptable. If we don't, using antibiotics, chemotherapy, radiation, or other similar forms of care crucial to modern medicine is immoral. Once we accept that not all killing is wrong, it becomes an issue of line-drawing.

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