Peterkin

So are all ideals: something to strive for, even if they're unattainable in practice. In this, I am not alone. Some facts regarding efficient land use, environmental and climatic impact, the logistics of preservation and distribution on the scale required by the current, largely urban population are based on available statistics. The ethical questions around factory farming and the methods of agribusiness in general have been in play for some time; I am not the first to find fault there. I did give due consideration to the small-scale exceptions, and made reference to the known existing regulations, which are inadequate to insure a high ethical standard of animal husbandry. None of this was my own invention. The non-ethical component of what tastes good to whom, I thought was open to personal preference. was stated as a fact, and later reinforced as a universal one. I responded in similar fashion. In that sense, I am at fault. Does it? The main motivation of human activity appears - though of course I cannot know this as a fact - to be "I want". Desire, appetite, craving, preference. Desire is not a subject for ethical evaluation; action is. In any case, I have no point to make beyond what's been sufficiently critiqued.

I mean, as I said, meat doesn't taste great to modern humans until it's been cooked and seasoned. Also, we no longer have the teeth or jaws for raw meat. No infant is born craving any food but their mother's milk. After that, what they're fed is what they grow accustomed to. The child of vegetarians has a taste for salads and breads, just as the child of fisher-folk develops an affinity for aquatic foods and the children of hunter-gatherers learned to expect a diet of roots, fruits, nuts, grains, greens and eggs, meat or fish when available. Some tastes are acquired later in life, as we are introduced to unaccustomed flavours. In a cosmopolitan environment, people have opportunities to discover the cuisine of other cultures; in a isolated one, most remain content with what we're used to.

You mean he's been eating meat raw and unseasoned all his life? Wolves do, and like it fine, so it's possible, but hardly universal among humans. I very much doubt any opinion of mine has ever caused anyone to question their preferences. It's okay to hate what I say and mark it down; I don't always like your generalizations but don't mark them down. As in food choices, it's a matter of taste.

A lot of the Blacks voted against the women (in the government, in the workplace, in the voting booth) as did a lot of Hispanics, regardless of the numerous threats a trump regime poses to themselves. Of course, many of the Trump voters also believed him selectively: Sure he'll fix the economy, but he won't really pardon those thugs. Sure he'll get rid of the migrants, but he won't really harm our civil liberties. Sure he'll bring prayer back into our schools, but he's still bound o uphold the constitution. Double-think, amnesias of convenience and selective hearing have been with us since the dawn of civilization. Some periods of history are just crazier than others.

I was, too, for about three minutes. Then I reflected on the conversations I'd had, or seen on videos, and I realize that at least half of the people - not just Americans; it's spreading - have so much access to mass communications, they can only distinguish one voice at a time, think about one concern at a time. Many of those voters were single-issue voters: He'll save our religion. He'll save the babies. He'll lower the price of food. But the biggest one was : He'll save us from the wimmin.

It doesn't, actually. It needs flavouring and cooking to be palatable. The need for nourishment is inborn; food preference is acquired. True, desire is a non-ethical reason - in fact, the main reason - humans eat so much meat, fat and sugar; even if it kills them, it does so slowly and pleasurably. If people keep craving meat, and having obligate carnivors for pets, there is no theoretical limit to the quantity that could be cultured from a single cow or goose. I didn't make that error. I'm supposing that if - IF - the demand for animal flesh decreases, that happens gradually. Since domestic livestock is deliberately bred by humans, as the profit from breeding decreases, so do the numbers of various food animals. Humans would presumably keep slaughtering them as long as there's a market, and some would keep their own private supply of domestic rabbits and fowl. I also don't doubt that, if the commercial value of beef suddenly dropped, some ranchers would just set their herd free on the prairie or in the woods. And some die-hard carnivorous humans would hunt them. Following that hypothetical scenario, a few hardy cattle would escape predators and start an evolutionary tend to revert to their natural version. Goats certainly would; they haven't far to go. Pigs might, too, if the environment were favourable. The same with fowl: sometimes you see a domestic duck or goose among a flock of wild ones, just as budgies and canaries will sometimes escape and join the sparrows. Of course. And we also know that in North America at least, the vast majority of food is produced by agribusiness on immense scales. I've given due consideration and respect to the exceptional farmers and crofters who treat their livestock well. Their prices reflect that extra care, and the chickens are still dead by 10 weeks; the lambs at eight months.) There isn't room for kindness in a factory; it's unprofitable. The raw materials, the product - and very often the human workers, too - are mere commodities. Nothing works as an absolute. It's not an absolute world, nor are any of the biota in it capable of absolute adherence to an absolute rule, nor absolute divergence from its nature. Ethical standards are what we ought to aspire to, not what we can achieve. The argument is that causing pain and distress to other sentient beings is wrong and should be avoided as much as possible.

I don't think any of this matters to Trump. He's not going to be around for the consequences. Whatever is done to the younger henchmen, afterward, won't repair a fraction of the damage they will have done by then.

Astonishing! They're exactly what they looked and sounded like before the election. Only with all the resources and none of the limitations of the institutions and agencies of the Federal government of the largest power on Earth. Like the recession of 2008, nobody could have foreseen this.

The scale of unrelated wrongs hasn't been presented in this thread, and seems rather too large for any single thread. We could compare all kinds of human iniquities as to the order in which each of us would like to see them tackled, but most of them would not be relevant to the diet of the masses. Still, I would like - but do not expect - to see even one of those problems fixed. I'm very happy that some mammals and birds destined for human consumption receive good treatment from their owners; I'm not happy that these remain the exception. If/when the demand for immense quantities of meat, eggs and dairy products ceases, I hope the well-treated ducks, chickens, sheep and cows may continue living in harmony with their human protectors. That is the cherished, forlorn hope.

Pretty much. Some methods are less cruel than others, but none, afaic, are right. I'm citing examples that are not uncommon. We could, if we had the will, phase out animals raised for meat, so that the ones already intended for slaughter are killed as humanely as possible and no more are bred to replace them, while we phase in cultured meat production, especially in cities, close to the majority of consumers. We could, if we had the will, be more effective in closing down puppy mills and preventing the dumping of unwanted pets. We do not have the will, so it won't ever happen.

No, I was responding to dimreepr's comparison to nature. Nature does not set my standard of ethical behaviour. As to whether anyone who is alive would choose non-existence, many humans would, but other animals famously don't philosophize. The [human] ethical question is whether I have the right do decide for another conscious entity how they will live and when they must die. Modern dairy cattle could not survive long in the wild, nor could battery hens. That doesn't mean they prefer their present captivity to taking their chances, or to not having been bred in the first place. Sheltering in tiny cages or a row of narrow stalls? Yes, it's prison. So is a coop in the back yard or a feedlot. Doing the same to our fellow humans is not a particularly apt standard of ethics, either. I'm not trying to force my morality on you.

A short, imprisoned life. Yes, of course farming practices should be better regulated, but they're not. Even if they were, there remain the environmental consequence of raising food animals and distributing the product on the scale demanded by modern consumers.

The OP did that. If you want to discuss all the other unethical, harmful and unsustainable enterprises on the planet, it could take several more threads. But I'm up for that, if you'll bring information. Again, I'm referring to the way most food production is carried out over most of the world for most of the people. I mentioned some exceptions; you mentioned some exceptions - but they are just that - exceptions. Yes. And we have the system we have, which is both legal and wrong. If all the households with chickens eat no turkey, pork, lamb, beef, processed or restaurant meat products, and all the households that 'harvest' deer eat no chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, beef, processed or restaurant meat, that only leaves 109,000,000+ families shopping in supermarkets for packaged meat that's been factory farmed, killed in a slaughterhouse, packaged, shipped over vast distances and refrigerated for protracted periods. In the US alone. And I'm not convinced all those chickens and deer die happy. Oh, lots of Americans also fish. Good idea.

I'd like to read them so I can reconsider. That is, if non-ethical is not a synonym for unethical. Since that's in the thread title... It's referring to the vast majority of meat 'production' in use today. There are small-holdings and crofts that do things differently, but they cater to a tiny up-market minority of the population. There have been other methods - not all of them necessarily ethical - in the last 100 centuries, but I do not consider them relevant today. I'm more than willing to discuss alternative urban lifestyles, though I still don't trust everyone with a backyard to keep and kill their livestock humanely. Most of them wouldn't be allowed to keep livestock anyway, due to zoning laws. Much could be done toward the efficient and ethical feeding of cities, and some interested groups are making remarkable efforts, but I don't see enough of a trend to feed 10 billion ATM. First you'd need legislators to make ethical rules, which isn't likely to happen. Bad actors are unlikely to follow inconvenient rules (or they'd be good actors, no?). Agricultural workers don't make the rules or policy decisions; executives do. And even if nice rules were enacted and nice people lived by them, there remains the logistical problem: getting the meat to the consumers. I don't lump those; I consider them irrelevant. Local sources may be local to a small town, not Hong Kong, Boston and Manchester. The oceans are increasingly warm, diluted and polluted; the fish still safe to eat are 'harvested' by rather horrific methods. Wild game is growing scarcer by the minute and hunters are not necessarily ethical or humane in their methods, while only feeding their immediate family and maybe a local restaurant. The grasslands and forests of the world are already under threat from free range grazing. Yes, a little fraction of present meat consumption is sustainable, if not particularly good for the animals. The bulk of it is not.

That's an excellent conclusion. Reasoning would probably entail supplying factual information o which i am currently ignorant. I made up my mind over a period of years, during which I studied data from all aspects of meat production, human consumption and dietary requirements, land use, agricultural practices, climate and environmental considerations. I didn't decide on the basis of this thread; this has been an on-going debate for a couple of decades.