In just about every way possible that death is a world apart from what we do to most animals we eat. What we have deemed "humane" slaughter is really nothing else than an attempt to make the word humane devoid of all meaning. I stopped eating meat after seeing how a cow and some pigs from the local organic farm (held as a poster child by the meat industry in my country) were slaughtered.

They were afraid from the first second. The pigs lost consciousness while grasping for air in panic in a co2 gas chamber.

It was awful and nothing short of a disgrace.

New laws and policies promoted by the meat industry has now made inquisitions like mine impossible. All of this happens behind closed doors. I will never trust the industry to fix this. They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into treating animals with respect.

They could have used argon, helium, maybe even nitrogen. Anything else that can lower oxygen concentration without the body noticing bacause it doesn't detect low oxygen levels, just high CO2 levels when you suffocate.

The jury is still out which gas is the best. I hope it'll be resolved before it's my time to go.

In all my experience with dogs (and animals in general), one of the many lessons they have taught me is forgiveness. Both of others and myself.

I felt this way with the first dog I raised outside of my parents house. Things were slow but fast. One day I found a boil on her neck, rushed her to the hospital only to walk out with no answers a mountain of bills. I spent months seeking more answers with new testing. She was still the same old dog, playing with my other dog constantly. She'd do silly things, demand walks and pets, and stomp/parade around the house with her toys. I begged every night that she make it to her tenth birthday. She did, then shortly after her birthday she'd struggle to eat for days at a time and was acting sleepy. On the third day I brought her to the vet and did the deed.

It still hurts remembering her sleepily lay in my lap one last time and watching the life quietly slip away. That was the life I nurtured and the life that guided me to be more of a man every day. A life that demanded evolution and growth out of me in the most compassionate way possible. The vet felt her stomach and said, "Her liver is covered in tumors. You did the right thing." Then I began to reflect; had I been selfish? When I found the boil, was that when I should've done it? What about after all the testing? What about when she'd protest her food for a day? Two? Inevitably, I decided somehow the magical number was three.

The only thing that gives me solace is that I consulted the vet constantly on when was the right time. She'd never directly answered me; that choice was mine, a choice I absolutely feared. The advice that sticks out was, "When the dog you know stops being the dog you know." I know in my life I'll have to do this again and I don't think it'll ever get any easier. There's no right answers to this intersection of life, only wrong and less wrong ones. Love is a very tricky thing, especially with a friend that can't say much.

Note the "you could" part.

You did the best you could, and you obviously learned from your mistakes. Don't be hard on yourself, that's everyone else's job and they don't need the help.

We also don't kill them "prematurely". We kill them when it's time to eat them, or else to relieve them of pain.

Also, since we're onto wolves, wolves will kill animals and not eat them (see "surplus killing" article on wikipedia). Conversely, wolves will often eat animals without killing them first. Humans at the very least kill our food before we eat it most of the time.

I'm asking because your comment is about the meaning of the word "necessary" but the same meaning should apply to every other human activity, not just food. But the discussion about necessity crops up about food, in particular.

Also, I understand that the comparison to showers might sound irrelevant to the discussion about the ethics of eating meat, but it turns out it is anything but. I don't want to preempt your opinion, so I'll leave it at that, but I'm not just making a glib riposte to your comment. Despite appearances, this is an important question: how necessary is it to shower?

So then using that same metric to answer your question about showers, I think it’s fair to say that showers are absolutely not necessary. Nice, sure. Perhaps necessary according to social norms, probably. Required for a normal life span with average levels of health? Nah.

cheese_goddess, if I ever get you to see the validity of veganism, or at least cede a point, I’ll die a happy person. I don’t see that ever happening though. You are my HN veganism white whale.

That's creepy stalker behavior - again.

Does anyone actual subscribe to such a belief? Do you?

There are also of course many moral systems that do not value the welfare of other species as highly as that of humans.

The general rule was my own synthesis from what little I know of this subject. This study is one of the main sources I used to drive my current understanding. You can also try this search term: "do wild animals die of old age?"

If you have the time and stomach I'd recommend search up slaughterhouse footage. I'll let you judge for yourself what they're feeling in those moment.

And if they don't eat me, I never exist in the first place?

I'd opt to be eaten.

Just seems like the aliens would be better off eating cows...

The fact is if you didn’t exist then you wouldn’t care either way, so it’s a moot argument. The fact that you do exist changes that, not excuses it. Or in other words: we are not doing other species a favour by eating them.

It’s also worth noting that many of the species we far isn’t the natural evolution of that animal. They’ve been bread to be fatter, or more docile etc. Many of the species suffer from health issues due to breeding that their natural cousins do not. The reason a lot of these animals seem suited to farming is because man has bread them that way. This isn’t doing these animals a favour either. It’s purely for man’s own benefit.

The argument around doing them the favor of providing them existence relies on them having a nice life, until the day we eat them. It sounds like you are opposed to them coming into existence because it means they exist in existential agony.

Also that physical agony is a near certainty, by your last paragraph. But that does not seem to be the core of your objection.

No, I’m opposed to stupid arguments where you justify being a carnivore because you’re somehow doing these creatures a favour by farming them. You’re not. If you’re going to eat meat, and I have zero issues with being a carnivore, then you have to reconcile the fact that what you’re doing is immoral for the animals but you’re doing it for your own personal survival. At least call a spade a spade rather than creating these stupid mental paradoxes where you’re the hero for breeding docile animals and then cooking their flesh.

It’s all about taking responsibility for your actions and respecting the consequences they have.

The same cannot be said for industrial scale ranching. In fact, I think the production of dairy is typically far more more inhumane than that of beef.

So basically the plot of the Never Let Me Go. Except you can't really get the blissfully unaware of my predetermined fate thing if the organisms are intelligent.

Clearly the burden of proof is not on the animals.

Here is hope that the future realize that the only ethical way to produce food is through methods that neither require land, fertilizers or fresh water. This is also the only way forward if the worlds populations will continue to increase.

Even many of the people who abhor the most to see the death of other animals cannot abstain to admire the beauty of the actions of top predators like tigers/jaguars or octopuses.

Nevertheless, now we are approaching quickly the moment when killing other animals in order to use their body for food or for producing various useful substances is no longer needed, so we should stop this as soon as it becomes possible.

Unfortunately we still need some technological developments for this to become feasible everywhere.

I would like to be completely vegan, but for now there still exist 2 food ingredients of animal origin that I consume, because any equivalent vegan alternatives for them are much more expensive than I can afford.

However, the bulk of the food, which provides most of the energy, can already be restricted to non-animal origins, for everyone, everywhere.

It would be too gross even today for many people if there weren't any people with stronger stomachs around to prepare and partition corpses for them.

Edit: clarified distinction in understood meaning.

Why even take the chance then, other than to show greed and a lack of empathy?

People here use a dozen or so dogs to sniff out wild animals in the bush and chase them down until they tire enough for the hunters to catch up and spear the animal. These hunting parties can take days of hanging out and following the dogs or just one if lucky. Then carrying home giant cuts of meat is the hard part which often requires the hunting party to leave a lot of fresh meat behind.

BTW, I just find it fascinating to be talking to someone from Vanuatu here. HN rocks.

However their extensive past breeding still brings into question their actual intelligence and cognitive abilities compared to their wild ancestor, most animals inadvertently are bred to be significantly dumber during domestication because they are the easiest to handle and control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaur

I don't think it's a feral breed, coming from once domesticated animals, but I may be wrong.