Haven’t read the posts about McD’s eh?
So you’re saying that meat producers have changed their practices spontaneously? That’s even more ridiculous.
They’ll conduct market research and change their marketing ploys long before they change their business practices. When there was a perception that McDonalds food was unhealthy in the 90s, they just got a bunch of athletes to endorse McDonalds. Did that change the nutritional content of McDonalds food? Not a bit.
How this supports your bizarro interpretation of how the market works and profits are made I cannot begin to guess.
Why don’t you explain how markets and profit work and how it varies from what you see as my interpretation? Because the impression I get from you is that each outlet cares about its customers opinion on the product they receive rather than the fact that the customer will return in order to purchase.
While we might not be choosing to completely ignore animal suffering, we are certainly attempting to lower the worth of animals to benefit ourselves. If we agree that eating factory farmed meat (and therefore the majority of all meat) is unethical, then we should say this and spend our time focusing on the very small minority of meat that comes from “more ethical” sources. I am not aware of anyone who has said that factory farmed meat is unethical.
In other words, you do not believe that something can be inherently ethical?
No one is saying that the animals are not different. What is important, is the reason why being different means we can lower their consideration of interests.
Let’s pretend that when we took the DNA test of women or blacks, that the results showed that they were not humans. Would this have changed anything in your mind? Do they not have the exact same physical responses to pain, regardless of what some test shows? Do they not have the exact same capacity to suffer? Why would belonging to the same species matter? It would not matter.
No one is saying that animals are the same as human beings. What I am saying is that the exact same arguments that were used to try to exploit and take advantage of the slaves are being used to try to exploit and take advantage of animals. We want to only look at the part of the equation that benefits us and either completely ignore the part of the equation that causes them to suffer or at the very least try to minimize the impact of the other side of the equation.
It has been said in this thread that the interests of animals is a sliding scale. Save for the fact that we are using different definitions of interests, by definition, this means that we are at least partially ignoring the animals.
While everyone is free to determine ethics, the point is that we discuss why we determined something as ethical or not. If someone says that ethical egoism is how they determine ethics, I can rationally respond to why this is not a logical conclusion.
Those who are aware of the world include insects all the way to humans. Rocks are obviously not aware of the world. Plants do not have a brain to comprehend the world.
Simply stating, “Because the animals are different”, is not a valid reason for ignoring animals interests. You need to explain the logic behind why “Because the animals are different” means we can ignore part or all of their interests. You have simply refused to explain this. There is no rational reason that we can ignore the interests of animals if you believe that they have the capacity to suffer.
You still seem to be misunderstanding what “interests” means and equating equal consideration with equal worth. We already agree that animals are not worth as much as humans so I will not spend time discussing that point. What we need to discuss is interests. If someone is capable of suffering, there is no moral justification for failing to take that suffering into consideration. Equal “interests” requires us to count the suffering of any other, regardless of their species, with the like suffering of everyone else.
Racists violate equal “interests” by giving more weight to the interests of their own race. Similarly, speciesists give more weight to to the interests of their own species. In both cases, the line of interests in drawn in an arbitrary way. What race or species you belong to is not a rational line for ignoring interests of others. The only rational line is between those who are capable of having interests and those who are not. Namely, between insects and plants.
As stated above, the real arbitrary line is to claim that we can ignore or use a sliding scale of interests because someone is an animal vs a human.
Since birds are not included in the Humane Slaughter Act, over 90% of the animals killed for food are not protected. According to USDA statistics, millions of chickens are submerged in scolding hot water while fully conscious every year. Even the animals who are covered, many times are stunned improperly and have their throats slit while fully conscious. Is it theoretically possible to raise an animal, kill it, and never have it suffer? I guess it’s technically possible. If you agree that factory farmed meat (and therefore 99% of our meat according to Farm Forward/USDA statistics) is unethical, then please make this clear. This would obviously rule out just about any place we buy our food from. If this is the case, then we can discuss whether animals should be exploited for our own gain.
Back in the day, it was a noble thing to want better conditions for slaves. Sure. But why would you set out with the goal of only wanting “better” conditions for slaves? Why support the system at all? I fully admit that this is a temporary measure. But it is just that, temporary. It is impossible to feed our growing population based on humane meat production. We are already looking into what essentially amounts to factory farms on top of factory farms, which is beyond disgusting Catalyst : ABC iview We already have issues with e-coli, salmonella, Avian flu, Swine flu, Mad cow disease, etc. Everything about this is just a disaster waiting to happen. With our current system, it is not really a question of “if”, but a question of “when”. As someone who takes all lives into consideration, I would like to prevent another Spanish flu, for both the animals and us humans.
Your link takes me to an article about lab-grown meat protein products, which is pretty much the exact opposite of factory farming and, in fact, removes and thus solves the issue of animal suffering entirely.
How does that support your case?
This is a very long thread thread and my view may already be represented somewhere in here, but I’ll just jump in.
I don’t think that eating meat in of itself is unethical, it’s situational. I think that the pain experienced by the animals doesn’t outweigh the suffering of starving humans. I don’t think it is unethical to eat out of necessity or lack of other options. But…
If you live in the developed world I don’t think your desire for a good taste outweighs putting animals in pain, especially given the terrible suffering caused by factory farming. They have some sort of limited consciousness and definitely experience pain, so I don’t see how I could justify eating meat myself
I wonder how many who believe eating meat is unethical also fear over-population. And of those that think it is OK to eat meat, what do they think of eating dogs in the far east, and eating horses in France.
- Is it ethical to eat flesh?
- Is the world over populated?
- Is it OK to eat dogs?
- is it OK to eat horses?
My answer would be, without hesitation, 1011. Even though I don’t want to eat a dog. But I would if I were starving.
I’ve always been under the impression that eating th flesh of a carnivore was unpleasant. Maybe it’s a myth I heard, I dont’ know, but that’s always my reaction to the idea of eating dogs or cats, is that it would be disgusting on some very practical level because they are carnivorous.
But aside from that, my feeling about eating dogs or horses or any other animal is the same about eating the animals we do eat: dont’ be cruel. Don’t make them suffer. But once they are dead, they are just meat. We are all just meat once we’re dead, which is why I dont’ have a personal problem with cannibalism. I wouldn’t do it myself because I’m super-queasy and can’t really eat anything I haven’t grown up eating, but I have no moral or ethical issues with it.