There's a reason we call it beef and not cow. There's a reason we generally don't serve food in a form that still looks like the animal (most common exception being fish, which people are less likely to see as an emotional being). Meat is delicious and nutritious, and it's easy to avoid thinking about what goes on in the feedlot or the slaughterhouse, so the cognitive dissonance is easy. This is one reason videos exposing inhumane practices are so powerful, even to people who already knew such conditions exist.
How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it? (Of course this is an incomplete picture if you want to consider externalities such as cow farts contributing to climate change.)
> How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it?
If that's a general argument, then the same thing goes for humans, so it'd therefore be better to have a human child and eat it (if it's slaughtered as humanely as possible), than not having a child, right?
Whenever we argue this way about a non-human animal this way, it's worth considering whether we'd feel the similarly of about a human being with similar mental capacities. Otherwise it might just be our speciesism leading us into motivated reasoning.
Of course, part of the problem with the argument is the false dilemma between killing someone and them never having been alive. Additionally the assumption, that it's harmful for someone non-existent to never be brought into existence, is an odd one. If we accept it, birth control would be highly immoral, and rape could often be justified as being in the interested of a potential unborn child... which is actually what's happening here with farmed cows, because they're being forcefully inseminated non-stop, and you're arguing it's for the benefit of the unborn calf.
If we buy this premise, we'd also have to support a hypothetical cannibalistic farming industry rearing captive human children for food, because otherwise those children wouldn't exist.
>How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it?
With suffering and pain out of the way, this would boil down to the question if existing is more comfortable than not existing. The cow needs to exist in order that you can eat it.
Everything in this universe has the laws of nature as a resistance, and molds itself into a form to lessen this pressure (the easiest or viable way). life strives for a more comfortable life, which is also helped by bonding. Aren't emotions always connected to some kind of connection with something, a bond?
The core or main difference between the universe and life itself could be separation vs. union. The universe drifts apart, but life might eventually concentrate in one part of the universe as different species find each other.
How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it? (Of course this is an incomplete picture if you want to consider externalities such as cow farts contributing to climate change.)