That's before you get into the fact that we don't give animals a choice in the matter. They can't opt out of our protection and their eventual slaughter. We presume that it's acceptable to agree to that bargain on their behalf.
Like I said, it's a thought experiment, but it's one that leaves me uneasy with the consequences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
Are you familiar with it? Obviously, it's not quite the same, but this was the first thing that came to mind from your comment.
The second part doesn't follow from the first.
People have largely the same nervous systems and largely the same brain structures (AFAIK), and yet they react quite differently to pain and in the extremes they react exceedingly differently to the suffering of others.
Do you think that sows when they crush some of their piglets by lying on them behave how a human mother who accidentally sat on and crushed their own child would? Many animals eat their own offspring seemingly without any response one could term emotional.
You're anthropomorphising.
Now pigs are an interesting species and I wouldn't be personally surprised to find that they show some response which could be deemed a form of emotion.
Just because an animal exhibits herd behaviours, eg wariness when a member of the herd is wary/alert, doesn't mean they are empathising with that other animal.
>Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. //
The question is whether there is an internal pain that matches the external one. If I program a robot to exhibit pained behaviour and to scream when it's stabbed, then stab it, would you consider that robot to be in pain? The external reaction isn't necessarily linked to an internal feeling. Someone who refuses to leap to such a conclusion IMO is acting logically.
It's so analogous to the days when people debated as to whether black people should be enslaved for their own good, or whether they were too stupid to mind being enslaved [see e.g., 1], that it would be farcical if it wasn't so fucking sad. Who else, one wonders, might not feel pain? Autistics? Mutes? Republicans?
[1] Plous, S., & Williams, T. (1995). Racial Stereotypes From the Days of American Slavery: A Continuing Legacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25(9), 795-817.
That's two non-sequiturs in one sentence. I'm pretty sure there exist lifeforms that have a nervous system without an analog of pain. (Hint: If you want to defend your argument, start by defining "pain".) And it's quite egregious to just assume that there exist only one kind and quality of pain in all living animals. (Again, start by asking yourself how to rigorously define "pain".)
> They also suffer emotional pain, not just physical. Kill a pig in front of another pig and he/she is going to be terrified.
If at all, that's just an argument not to kill pigs in front of other pigs (unless the emotional pain is a desired outcome).
Seriously, who are some of you people?
One day he goes out and shoots one of the pigs to slaughter it. Before he can get the dead pig out of the pen the other pig comes running over and starts eargly licking up the blood up of his brother from its dead body.
They may be smart, but we should not anthropomoprhize to the point that we imagine them having the same kind of empathy and self-consciousness as us.
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...
(For those who dislike clicking through 10 pages, or want to save to pocket or similar)
Focusing on cognitive skills to make ethical judgments is incredibly flawed when you think about it for more than 2 minutes. Specially when you add companion animals into the equation, given that pigs seem to have higher cognitive abilities when compared to dogs[1].
[1]http://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
Are the laws new?
In humans, while forms of suffering like loneliness, depression can be bad, pure physical pain can itself a terrible thing. For instance severe torture for 10 minutes can be worse than months of depression.
Now even if cognitive aspects are diminished in animals, the physical senses are active and often much more sharp(birds eye sight, dogs hearing).
So, what we can do is independent of whether we are eating animals or not, is to recognize this fact that animals can suffer, and ensure that factory farms which deal with billions of animals atleast stop some of the more terrible forms of animal cruelty (dunking birds in hot water while still alive).