This doesn't mean I am unaware of the counter-arguments; disregarding the ones which are essentially just an appeal to tradition, there is still one more I know. To play devil's advocate:
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We have no idea at all what sentience is, and it's entirely conceivable that we're the only ones who really truly have the experience of suffering, rather than just a non-conscious stimulus response mechanism.
By way of comparison, larger current generation AI are of similar complexity to the brains of many of these animals — are those AI sentient?
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Back to my own voice: I often find myself using the {animal brain complexity} ≈ {AI complexity} for the exact opposite purpose, to demonstrate why current AI might well be sentient.
We're not even talking about killing animals for science or the "greater good" when discussing meat consumption.
Animals feel pain and can experience suffering just like humans can.
I think the fact that the suffering in the supply chain is hidden is the main reason it's not a consideration for most consumers.
We can trivially make a machine with the former, and that acts to minimise that sensory input. Does it have the qualia? How might we even be able to prove it either way?
That subjective experience, qualia or whatever you call it, what I meant here by sentience. Given that the term pretty much always leads to discussion like this, I have only myself to blame for forgetting to mention an any of this in the previous comment.
As I understand it, several hog farmers are eaten by their charges every year. Hogs have also been used as a convenient method of disposing of murder victims on numerous occasions over the centuries.
Turnabout is fair play.
I wonder If you knew they were already vegan - would you have provided the same reply.
I personally think this view is problematic and it's why we're ruining the environment. We have a false sense of importance which shouldn't exist and it might send us extinct if we're not careful.'
For example, give me one single reason why we think we have the right to pollute the environment, fill the water ways with tyre dust, chop down the amazon, factory farm?
It's a lack of respect for other things which is the issue.
I think all life is important.
Honestly, I think we're overall pretty doomed. But hey, round and round it goes.
Where do we draw the line? As a human, I have to go on walks to live a healthy, long life. Every time I go on a walk I am crushing many bugs, and occasionally reptiles or their eggs beneath my feet. When I eat food, even plant based, many bugs and worms are necessarily killed in the process. At some fundamental level, human existence is competitive and destructive to other life. Personally, I just do my best to minimize this impact.
In that sense, I wonder if it may be fair to preserve the DNA of victimised animals and clone them somewhere in the future when resources allow, to have a peaceful life.
profit over and over again.
Personally I'd much prefer that we enforced more ethical treatment of livestock over being forced to veganism.
Presumably, reason and society
Life isn't fair.
Applying one's non-universal (even accros its own specy) moral system to other species seems odd to me.
Pain is just the evolutionnary response to avoid self-life threatening situation, nothing else. So at most i would say it makes me root for bio-engineered pig without nociceptors.
Not doing that is the easy path, not the noble one.
My point of view is my moral system apply to my specy only, i dont see a point on applying to other specy (as i already dont apply 100% of my moral system to other human from different culture for which their moral system contradict some point of mine). And i do as such because applying empathy to pig would have for final conclusion that we should bio engineer pig without pain receptors as its the path that for me minimize change (the genus of domesticated pig still get to exists, their suffering is now out of the question, i still get to eat bacon , my neighbor working in a farm still get a job etc. And science get to progress) and it does not need the modern-man-centric "dying is bad" . So being pragmatic , i think that the current status quo is enough waiting for that.
Where ethics come into play is how the animal is kept during its life. And whether we prevent suffering when its time to remove the kidneys and kill the donor in the process. I would speculate that in the interest of good donor organ function, we would make sure the animal does not experience any stress.
Maybe a robot will raise its voice and they become conscious of their wrong doing and they will decide that the best course of action to minimize suffering in their human pet is to end them completely as other solution would always come with a non zero amount of pain
(Have you seen human living in the wild ? So much suffering)
Or maybe you should buy this new breed of human born without nociceptors ? (Its not like the evolutionary need for it is anymore relevant in our robotics world)
I think a big part of the cultural and historical justification of being able to slaughter and exploit animals comes from Noah's covenant in Genesis.
Prior to industrialisation and mass production people ate far less meat in their diets.
Being able to see ourselves, our humanity, in animals seems like a rare and precious quality.
"60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
Yeah, but chickens outnumber them.
I fail to see any more obstacles in sacrificing a pig’s life to give a person in end stage kidney disease a chance to live.
Oh and besides: the numbers would not justify moral outrage either: it is true that there are many people waiting for an organ transplant. However, that number still pales when compared to how many pigs are slaughtered for meat production. It is all but guaranteed that genetically modified pigs bred for organ harvesting would be treated well - unlike their meat producing cousins.
Not to mention that there are perfectly viable alternatives to consuming meat. By contrast, people suffering from end-stage kidney failure have little choice, other than dialysis and waiting for their turn to receive a donor organ (i.e. many years in declining health on the waiting list).
So can we stop the blubber about meat consumption and animal abuse in this context please? We should rather celebrate the apparent progress in addressing a major challenge in caring for people whose organs fail.
Pig heart valves, bovine collagen in grafts, on and on. You just don't know about it.
Evolution.
As I noted below, pigs enjoy eating human beings very much. It's their tough luck that we're smarter than them.
Pigs will also eat mice, snakes, birds, and cute little bunny rabbits.
Only because they can't.
> it makes the holocaust look like a joke.
Umm... okay.
A pig’s lifespan is shorter than that to begin with. So even if you were to equate a pig’s life with that of a human: the added lifespan of the human is more than what the pig’s entire life expectancy is.
But frankly, it bothers me that we are even having a debate about this: a pig is vastly less valuable than a human life. Whoever disagrees with this fundamental premise has his priorities completely wrong.
give just one single concrete argument that this is the case which isn't "because it just is".
That's really how this world works. Except for plants, all other beings are consuming other beings.
Carnivorous plants aside, I've heard trees will extract and use calcium if planted close enough to bones (or vice versa.)
Imagine being pig and realizing your entire existence has been shaped by thousands of years of selection. Unfortunately the sentiment of animal justice is a few thousand years too late. We have literally evolved farm animals into their current form. These creatures have no other purpose than what they have been artificially selected for - human consumption. They have been molded into a bastardization of their former ancestors, their new purpose at the whim of humanity.
I'm mostly rambling, but the main point is that it's not very straight forward. Would it be better if pigs never existed? If we stopped all animal farming tomorrow, how will they survive, where will they go? And I'm not even mentioning morality, which would complicate things even more, especially if one does not believe in a higher power, a.k.a. God.
This is obvious and egregious animal abuse. What is it that puts our wants above those pigs' right to a peaceful life without growing others' (another species'!) organs in their bodies. Presumably to be slaughtered once our organs have developed enough to be harvested? What gives us the right to even attempt that procedure on another living being?