Given the option between being tortured and killed or merely killed, you’d respond “surprise me”?
No, I’d pretty much respond “Don’t do either, please.”
Merely killed. Heh. Thank you oh benevolent one, for only killng me.
Let’s try again.
You are awaiting execution, a certain death. Given a choice, would you prefer not to be tortured first? Would it be “ridiculous” if others cared about how you were treated, being that you’re headed for a dirt nap one way or another?
Meat consumption is not going to end anytime soon, except in the soggiest wet dreams of slumbering vegans. Given that, I don’t think it’s ridiculous to want livestock to be treated humanely up to the point of their slaughter, and to ensure that is performed as quickly and painlessly as possible. (And I say this as an atheist who finds a well-cooked steak to be a spiritual experience.)
There is nothing inevitable or unavoidable about killing animals to sate ourselves.
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
Meat consumption is not going to end anytime soon,…
[/QUOTE]
Of course not; that doesn’t make it inevitable or unavoidable.
Would you be ok if a bigger, stronger, smarter race of beings killed humans (you) for consumption as long as they didn’t torture you first? But knowing you’re going to die is torture. Maybe you think animals can’t know they are going to die, can’t learn what’s going on in a slaughterhouse. It’s interesting how we treat living beings with lesser brain function.
I’m uncertain where on the food chain the killing of unliving beings begins. Humans kill living animals, vegetables, fungi, etc. Animals do the same, according to their type. Certain plants kill animals; others draw their nutrients from other plants. Humans are not special; we’re simply a mildly smarter and by far a more tool-laden type of animal.
What living beings draw their living entirely from non-living sources?
They have no clue. If you think otherwise you’re wrong.
I said “living beings with lesser brain function.” Plants don’t have any brain function. There are plenty of species that live entirely off other living entities without brain function.
I am neither wrong nor right, for truly, like you, I don’t know. But I can make observations and deductions. If a rabbit can’t know I’m going to kill it, why does it scramble away when I approach? A Squirrel? Hell, even cockroaches do this. Why does a herd of gazelle flee when they spot a leopard on the African plains?
What’s the difference? Seriously, plants are living beings. What has the presence or absence of a brain got to do with it?
They’re all evolutionarilly designed to be prey. They run from a predator. Humans are predators.
Are you OK with gazelles being eaten by leapords?
The immediate issue is torture. A plant, without a brain, cannot register pain, discomfort, or torture like an animal can.
If there is no difference, why complain about torturing pigs while ignoring the horrible torture carrots suffer chilling in a refrigerator waiting to be eaten?
I’ve seen very few people in this thread acceptant of torture of the animals that are their food. Pain, discomfort? Certainly I would expect that an animal being slaughtered experiences pain and discomfort.
A gazelle being captured by a leopard probably experiences pain and discomfort too. Your point?
zoid claimed that slaughterhouse animals don’t know they are going to die. I then asked why many animals flee when they are approached by other species’ if they can’t know they are going to die.
[QUOTE=Frank]
I’ve seen very few people in this thread acceptant of torture of the animals that are their food. Pain, discomfort? Certainly I would expect that an animal being slaughtered experiences pain and discomfort.
[/QUOTE]
The point is: how can someone complain about the torture an animal may suffer in a slaughterhouse, but accept why the animal is there in the first place–to be killed–as the OP seemingly does?
Why then, do they flee?
I certainly accept that the cow, or sheep, or pig, or goat, in the slaughterhouse is there to be killed for my food. If necessary, I would do such killing myself. I prefer not to, but I will, if I have too.
Yet, I’ve no interest in torturing that animal. The adrenalin rush ruins the meat.
Likely because they think they’re going to die and don’t want to.
[QUOTE=Frank]
I certainly accept that the cow, or sheep, or pig, or goat, in the slaughterhouse is there to be killed for my food. If necessary, I would do such killing myself. I prefer not to, but I will, if I have too.
[/QUOTE]
And I accept that many people feel this way. But I can’t then take them sincerely when they complain about the treatment of those animals. They don’t care if the animal lives but they care how the animal lives? I don’t get it.
[QUOTE=Frank]
Yet, I’ve no interest in torturing that animal. The adrenalin rush ruins the meat.
[/QUOTE]
Now there’s a practical argument against torturing slaughterhouse animals, much better than “Let’s feel sorry for these animals up to the point where they’re killed so I can fill my belly.”
They don’t - that’s my point. Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?
I’ve seen a great many cows walk right up to the guy holding the bolt gun like they were expecting to get a treat.
Other animals like chickens simply run whenever you approach them, being prey animals it’s a natural reflex. They cannot distinguish this particular time you grab them to kill them from the dozens of times they’ve been grabbed for other reasons like to be inspected to determine their health.
Look - I’m not advocating mistreating animals. I think it’s a worthy goal to harm them as little as possible. But he fact of the matter is these animals are really fucking stupid. They have no idea what’s coming.
That shouldn’t be terribly hard to reconcile. Most people can manage to be omnivorous without being sadistic psychopaths.
Hell, even if you are intimately familiar with slaughtering livestock and consider it a necessary part of the process of putting food on the table, the perfectly normal impulse is try to manage this without causing undue suffering.
Many years ago, from time-to-time I was tasked with slaughtering one of the chickens we raised for food. (With a sharp knife - the hatchet and stump thing isn’t very practical.) I was shown the proper technique several times before I had to do it myself, and still got a dressing down on my first attempt because (in spite of instruction) my cut was too tenuous and the bird suffered more than it needed to.
I was also vegetarian for ten years (mainly because all my friends were and it was just convenient) so I get the viewpoint… but it isn’t realistic to think that by-and-large anyone who is opposed to wanton abuse of animals is going to adopt a vegetarian diet to avoid being responsible for their slaughter, and there’s nothing contradictory about considering an animal a source of food and yet still having an ethical opposition to its torture.
I have absolutely no qualms about a chicken giving up its life to wind up in a tasty vindaloo. That is as natural as rain. It is a total fallacy to believe that in order to include meat in their diets, people have to be insulated from the reality that a living thing lived and died so that we could it its flesh. The idea that it’s contradictory to eat meat and still condemn the unnecessary suffering of livestock is absurd.
Even when the knife is in one hand and the bird is in the other, it’s normal to do everything you can to make sure the animal doesn’t suffer. The cut takes an instant, and the lights quietly go out for the bird in about two seconds. You’re going to spend the most time reassuring the bird and calming it down to the point that it nice and placid when you cut its throat.
Of course if that’s not your direct experience, it’s still normal to expect that the person who is responsible for slaughtering the animals whose meat will find its way to your table does it in a humane way. Do you honestly believe that in order to maintain the same sort of diet that comes with the genetic heritage of being a member of an omnivorous species you have to be some sort of amoral psychopath?
But that’s trained into them.
Or at least it used to be - not sure how modern slaughterhouses work but back in the day, whenever animals were taken out of their cages and into the slaughter pen, they were led along by the Judas goat. Which was a goat that never got slaughtered.
The other animals got used to seeing it, smelling it, watching it lead other animals away etc… and when it came to be their turn they “knew” that it was OK because they’d seen it happen dozens of time and the Judas goat always came back. No need to be afraid, this is all routine.
And then they got a maul to the face, that’ll teach them to trust goats.
True I suppose. The cows now are just so used to people they don’t fear them. But really that’s my point, they have no idea what’s coming. It was suggested that they are aware they’re about to be killed. They aren’t.
That’s actually a good example, but not the way you think it is. Cockroaches fly away from light and movement (well, air flow) because they cannot but - the stimuli itself dictates the behaviour. There’s no “thought” process involved: it’s simply data in, action out. You can spray a cockroach with canned air ten thousand times, it will move away ten thousand times. It can never “get used” to being sprayed, because that’s not how it’s wired to.
I suspect chickens are very similar. They might have a central brain, but they’re not brainiacs on the nerd parade. These are animals that can be drawn into tonic immobility by drawing a line in the sand in front of them, you understand.