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.
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."
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7286991/figure/...