Comment by Arnt
7 years ago
In one case, the animal is born for the purpose of being eaten.
In the other, the animal is wild, and is imprisoned by an unintentional trap.
I don't see how you can compare the two?
7 years ago
In one case, the animal is born for the purpose of being eaten.
In the other, the animal is wild, and is imprisoned by an unintentional trap.
I don't see how you can compare the two?
Not just born, but raised and cared for, sometimes quite painstakingly (in traditional agriculture).
I'm not vegetarian but are you arguing that effort put into raising an animal gives you more of a right to slaughter it?
If everyone in the world becomes vegan, what exactly do you think is going to happen to all of those domesticated cows, sheep, and chickens? Are people going to continue raising them as pets in the same quantities, out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not -- they would basically go extinct.
I think that on the whole, I think that having a reasonably comfortable and safe life and then being humanely slaughtered for food is better than not existing at all. So while I'm definitely ethically against "industrial" meat production that treats live animals like meat-generating machines, I think that raising animals in reasonable living conditions before killing them to eat is perfectly ethical.
(Whether we have the resources to raise them is a different question; I'm resigned to the fact that eventually we'll all be on plant-based diets for planet sustainability reasons.)
28 replies →
That raising an animal for slaughter is permitted.
You can't separate those two; the choice doesn't happen between the raising and the slaughter. Farmers don't breed animals and only then consider whether to slaughter them, the choice happens earlier.
So the argument is that letting an animal see the light of day on condition that it'll be slaughtered at the right age is a valid thing to do. (Digressing: my own opinion is that it depends on how the animal gets to spend its time on earth. But that's just my opinion, not really relevant to the argument.)
To some extent, yes. I'm not saying it should put that over your own moral line, but I definitely think that sacrificing an animal you cared for is more acceptable than hunting a wild animal, for example.
Consider the relationship between ants and aphids. Ants care for aphids and they survive because of ants. But ants have also been known to physically tear wings off of aphids to prevent them from flying away!
And of course, farming is far different than hunting and fighting, which ants do as well.
Statistically, food animals are far more likely to be raised in hellish factory farms than in the traditional bucolic pasture or chicken run. I don't actually think raising animals for meat is immoral, but causing unnecessary suffering to improve the bottom line is.