McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

Re:McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu by moab on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:12PM (#25041120)

Well, if you take the time to learn about dairy farming (even in free range dairy farms), you would quickly find out that cows have a natural lifespan of ~20 years, but cows used in dairy farms have an average lifespan of ~6 years. From the perspective of giving entities that we believe are probably conscious and probably feel suffering and pain a fair chance at life, minimizing the amount of dairy and cheese we consume would seem like a good idea. I'm looking forward to a world where lab-grown cheese substitutes are as good as (or better) than the real thing.

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Re:McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu by amanaplanacanal on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:04PM (#25042725)

> a fair chance at life

If you eliminate meat and dairy, those animals won’t have any life at all. The only reason they are there is because humans eat them.

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Re:McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu by sc4les on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:08AM (#25042974)

Haha what. So it's okay to have dog fights since the dogs wouldn't be born otherwise? That's such a weird argument

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Re:McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu by amanaplanacanal on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @10:21AM (#25046897)

I quoted the part I was responding to. I wasn’t making any argument about the larger question as to whether keeping animals is moral.

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Re:McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu by moab on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:47AM (#25043932)

I am sure we would still have some number of dairy cows like the lovely highland cows that this person takes care of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmBYs53quP8

Their population would be greatly reduced, but is having a billion consciousnesses in a mediocre state and potentially suffering somehow better than having a few orders of magnitude fewer consciousnesses that are properly cared for and living more "natural" lives? It is hard to say without getting into the details, but from a high-level utilitarian perspective, one feels that the latter is somehow more preferable, although doing any kind of arithmetic with souls is a risky business.

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Re:McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu by sunwukung on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @11:43AM (#25047930)

not much of a life really is it? That aside, it would make room for the non-livestock animals to live on the planet, reintroduce some biodiversity and create genetic firewalls to stop pandemics going absolutely buckwild.

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