What moral ethics? A natural predator will eat its prey while it still lives, providing a slow and painful death. While I agree that livestock living conditions mostly suck, at least we provide a quick and painless death.
I think you will be hard pressed to assign a positive spin on the treatment of livestock as it stands today. The best take one could reach for is perhaps that it's a necessary evil for feeding the planet right now.
> at least we provide a quick and painless death
Without trying to sound like I'm on a pulpit, "quick and painless" is not how I would describe sow stalls. The prevalence of ag-gag laws speaks to this.
This is a subject that I don't have a good answer to, and I eat meat too, but I think we should at least call a spade a spade to start.
Last I heard the standard practice was that animals were stunned and then dealt a killing blow. Is this not true?
> but I think we should at least call a spade a spade to start.
Watching r/natureismetal and David Attenborough documentaries I find myself far more taken aback at the viciousness of some predators (even some trees!) than anything I read in Fast Food Nation, and sections of that book were absolutely disgusting
The moral quandary around factory farms does not generally stem from how quickly abattoirs perform their job, as it is economically prudent to kill livestock quickly. There is not much incentive to treat them well beforehand.
And my point is that the bucolic pastoral life only exists as created by humans. Everywhere else almost all animals are subject to the whims of the food chain, which can be as cruel if not more cruel than we humans. It's a much wider variation, for sure, but I simply do not understand the moral superiority that animal rights activists feel.
Like, veganism because methane emissions are accelerating global warming? I can get behind that. Veganism because of some dietary need someone has? Sure. But veganism because we are mean to animals? You're stretching it...
You're making the argument that cruelty to penned livestock is fine as the wild is also cruel. It is curious, then, that factory pigs live out just a fraction of their effective lifespan[0] - typically around 10 months. Wild boars have average lifespans measured in years.
There is a lot of nuance between the agricultural extremes we have now and what environmental activists desire, but I think your argument is specious, and the bar for how we treat livestock should probably be higher than "at least we kill them quickly."
Hardly. I'm simply arguing that some combination of current agricultural practice is little worse than the natural alternative of having to spend one's life constantly on-guard so that they don't become another animal's lunch. And then becoming lunch eventually (and viciously), anyway.
Can our practice be improved? Sure. But the "moral ethics" of "killing something for 5 minutes of taste pleasure" are not so black-and-white. I think your argument is unsustainably idealistic, and that you would deny people their "5 minutes of taste pleasure" because of that idealism
> I think your argument is unsustainably idealistic
While I have not actually been arguing for any specific changes here, yes - that is the thorn and the true reason ag-gag laws exist. I don't have good answers.
But when I say "call a spade a spade," I mean that we need to admit that the livestock practices of factory farming is something like animal cruelty. Even if, as I again have said, it's a practice perhaps needed today. The scenario can be both.
I do not agree that life confined to a metal crate for 10 months is one better than that of a life spent in open environments for far longer. Pigs specifically are social, active creatures.
