That's actually in interesting (and possibly helpuful) ratio... I've often thought I'd rather only have to kill one animal (cow) for ~200 meals than 100 animals (chickens) for the same number of meals...

An interesting metric for sure, but probably one that oversimplifies the nuances of animal welfare ethics. I'd personally rather 100 chickens experience mild discomfort than one cow meet with prolonged suffering. (Not that this specifically should happen with modern slaughter methods, but as a thought experiment.)

> probably one that oversimplifies the nuances of animal welfare ethics.

certainly.

That's why I only eat blue whale meat.

Suffering doesn't matter to dead things. If you're going to kill something, how much it suffered will be irrelevant the second it dies.

The problem with suffering is not that it has the magical quality of being called 'suffering'. The problem with suffering is that it results in poor decision-making. This means two things:

1. For an individual, death does much more to reduce decision-making ability than suffering.

2. Animals don't usually make good decisions regardless. Especially if they were raised to be slaughtered.

> If you're going to kill something, how much it suffered will be irrelevant the second it dies.

No. Just because something bad that happened is in the past, doesn't make it OK that it happened in the first place. (just to be clear, I am ok with killing animals and eating them, I would just prefer that it be done humanely).

I'm afraid I don't understand the argument you are trying to make with the rest of your comment...

Do you think a cheetah knows anything about speed records? Who's the fastest cheetah? It doesn't matter who the fastest cheetah was because cheetahs don't keep records. And that chicken you ate -- Did someone record how much it suffered? Then it doesn't matter how much it suffered. The point is, if you are willing to kill something -- to erase its state of mind (the majority of its 'record') from existence -- then you're actively making its suffering irrelevant. If someone starts my house on fire, that fact becomes irrelevant when they detonate a nuclear explosion on it.

>Just because something bad that happened is in the past, doesn't make it OK that it happened in the first place.

It is ok that it happened. It's ok that everything in the past happened. It's not ok to forget that it happened, or to fail to learn from it. But killing something is a great big "fuck you" to that thing's memory and learning facilities, so there's quite a lot of hypocrisy wrapped up in thinking that killing something is ok if it didn't suffer.

Suffering and death are bad for reasons. Those reasons provide proportionality to ethical evaluations.

> there's quite a lot of hypocrisy wrapped up in thinking that killing something is ok if it didn't suffer.

I believe this to be your central point? It seems we will have to agree to disagree.

We can just disagree.