[np422]

Most of us here on hacker news can afford to buy real food such as grass feed beef/lamb, forage egg/chicken, etc

Seems like a more natural evolutionary correct way to get our food rather than some kind of franken-meat grown i lab.

Every autumn I buy a lamb from the farmer living next to my father, I kind of like it when I can watch my food being happy before I eat it.

[rickycook]

most of us in hacker news aren't most of the world.

also, "natural" is a kind of ridiculous term. plenty of food additives are natural, but that doesn't make them good. also plenty that are unnatural aren't all bad.

medicines are highly "unnatural", but they save lives. why is food any different?

given how quickly we're heading toward a world in which we don't have the land area to be able to feed our population (and by "heading toward" i mean we already don't and it's getting worse), grass fed anything is totally unsustainable. lab grown meat, or lab vegetables might be our best option, and i'd go with that over a tortured chicken any day

[ArtDev]

Open-ocean fish farming will have a dramatic impact on food production, once we get some technical challenges out of the way (storms mostly).

The biggest problem is that its inefficient to feed meat animals grain. Instead we should be farming lots of insects for human and animal food!

Lab grown meat is a nice idea, but I don't see how it can scale.

[ericdykstra]

> medicines are highly "unnatural", but they save lives. why is food any different?

Many medicines also cause more harm than they provide help. Just look at the history of drugs that have had to be taken off the market due to crippling or deadly side effects just to treat some mild cold symptoms or something equally minor.

"Natural" is not at all a ridiculous term. It can be made ridiculous when things like "natural flavoring" aren't any different from "artificial flavoring," but I will take natural (or at least human incrementally improved over generations and generations) over artificial (top down diet science-ing) any day.

[Aaron1011]

> Many medicines also cause more harm than they provide help

How many is 'many'? 50%? 25%? Or simply 'more than zero'?

> but I will take natural (or at least human incrementally improved over generations and generations) over artificial (top down diet science-ing) any day.

I assume that you would prefer an 'unnatural' vaccination to the 'natural' disease it prevents. If so, which categories of 'natural' do you prefer?

[stinos]

grass feed beef/lamb, forage egg/chicken ... I buy a lamb from the farmer living next to my father

As far is 'happy cow' goes, there still can be a huge difference between both cases in how they live and die. Firstly, a 'grass fed' or 'forage chicken' label can cover a whole lot of different things. I don't know which country you're from, whether those are the official definitions nor what they mean. But I do know countries where something like 'forage chicken' depending on exact translation and law doesn't even mean they ever saw any daylight or living plants in their life. Just that they got like 1 square meter to live on instead of 1/4. But it doesn't end there. Take the grassfeeding: even if it actually means they could range free on nice green fields, from the moment production starts being all about the money and goes into the direction of industrial-scale it is unfortunately not unlikely their last hours on the way to and in the slaughterhouse were stress, torture and immense pain. Refer to e.g. the recent (very graphic) movie which popped up in Belgium where you could see what goes on in a slaughterhouses processing thousand of pigs a day and how far it deviated from what the laws for it prescribe.

[bananicorn]

I'd really like to understand these statements - You seem to care about the well-being of the animal while it is alive, but then decide to kill it (or let it be killed) for its meat. What's the point?

You understand that this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed, but you value it being happy.

Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

Not the OP, but a meat eater. I think it's obvious for most people that they want to eat meat but they don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. Those two sentiments aren't just not mutually exclusive, they complement each other.

I know people who keep animals for their meat- chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and a cow or two. I've seen them really care for, and about their animals, and I couldn't miss the big, loving smiles on their faces when they're around them, particularly the younger ones. I'd call those smiles almost parental.

The same people have no compunction about killing those same animals, even the younger ones (that have the most tender flesh). I'd even go as far as to say that some part of the love they feel for those animals may actually come from knowing how they taste.

It might sound a bit crazy, but I think it's actually natural to love your food, rather than hate it and wish to hurt it.

I also think other animals have similar feelings. For instance:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/apr/07/...

[Picture of a lion keeping a zebra fowl alive in the wild]

[bananicorn]

Am I so wrong in the assumption, that if someone claims to love something, he won't hurt it?

Allow me to put this into a little statement: "I love you, but now I have to kill you, so I can consume you"

And they still cause suffering. A mother loses her child (calf), a sister her brother, just because there is someone who wants to eat him/her/it?

[Ntrails]

I'm going to eat bacon. Why? Because it's tasty and I enjoy it. Om Nom Nom. I'm aware that an animal died for my tasty bacon sandwich. I'm ok with that, because I rank the animal's life as less important than my morning.

I'm not going to torture an animal because I derive no pleasure from it. Given the choice, therefore, I would rather the pig lived a happy enough life in a field with little pig huts to live in before it was slaughtered. I'm willing to pay more for that to be the case, because I think it's the decent thing to do.

I don't love animals in general, heck I barely love any humans...

[hamax]

If someone enjoys torturing animals for fun do you feel fine legalizing it?

Dog fights used to be very popular, but for some reason most people find it unacceptable even though those dogs probably had/have better lives than most farm animals.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Am I so wrong in the assumption, that if someone claims to love something, he won't hurt it?

In principle, maybe. In practice, we're really good at dealing with contradictory and even conflicting emotions.

For instance, in the past people used to beat up their kids to teach them things. Today, we generally don't- but that's not because we love our kids any more, or less. We just find it unproductive.

So, yes, it's perfectly possible to dearly love an animal and want to eat it- because, after all, that's why we keep farm animals in the first place: to kill them and eat them (and also for their milk, wool, eggs etc). The relationship that makes us love animals is the same one that makes us kill and eat those same animals.

Edit:

>> A mother loses her child (calf), a sister her brother, just because there is someone who wants to eat him/her/it?

If we didn't do that something else would. Animals kill and eat each other all the time and most of them die when something else eats them.

Of course we're special- but even in our specialness we can only subsist on food that is alive- if it's not a calf, it's an egg that cold have hatched into a chicken, or a fruit that could have grown in a beautiful plant. Calfs and lambs can scream and run away but a cabbage is no less alive.

[Dylan16807]

> Am I so wrong in the assumption, that if someone claims to love something, he won't hurt it?

Not directly relevant to farm animals, but how many married couples don't have fights? I don't think that assumption is right.

And when considering raising and killing an animal vs. never having any animal at all, consider the quote "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all".

> And they still cause suffering. A mother loses her child (calf), a sister her brother

Unless you have the cure to aging, that's going to happen no matter what. In fact, slaughtering means that more of them die at the same time and don't have to go through this suffering.

[Swizec]

It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself.

Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ...

I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die.

The more important question is how self-aware is the chicken? Does this self-awareness give it rights? Do rights stem from self-awareness, or from humanness, or is it arbitrary based on a wishy washy feeling of "Hm, that looks too severe. Oh but that other thing, that's okay". Or is how we treat them based purely on how much they can take before the taste becomes too poor for us to bear?

Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty.

[algesten]

> Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty.

If it was only about avoiding suffering/pain and not the dying, would you be okay with farming children for eating?

They will live happy lives pampered and cared for, running around in the backyard until you press a button and child drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die.

It's obviously absurd, but you're making that decision with the animals you eat all the time. A chicken (probably) is less self aware than a cow, but we do eat cows.

But how do you decide that another being is un-self-aware enough to be eaten?

Which takes me back to the absurd. If human meat was tasty (I read it isn't), would someone with downs syndrome be morally ok to eat? How about someone in a vegetative state?

If the sliding scale of self awareness is the deciding factor, we might as well eat less aware humans.

[corobo]

I understand it's an absurd argument but children are sentient and has far more potential than a chicken by being allowed to live out their natural life.

If a child grows up and does nothing more than put together a single shoddy chicken coop that lets water in and falls over in a mild breeze it has infinitely out-performed the chicken. People with disabilities are still infinitely more capable than chickens, cows, most any animal we eat.

There's also the problem of disease transmission too if you really want to hash out the idea. Most diseases don't transfer between species (at least not in catastrophic ways), if we were eating other humans there would be a lot of new diseases we'd need to fight or die from. See also BSE [1] and CJD [2] as examples of problems that occur through cannibalism.

[1] Bovine spongiform encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

[2] Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_dise... - particularly the "Cannibalism" section of Transmission.

[andrewingram]

Yeah. I find that when you really think about the ethics of eating meat, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify a position somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. It's similar to the abortion debate, I've adopted a position (pro-choice) that I can't fully defend. The catch is that the sliding scale isn't a strawman, it's incredibly hard to justify an arbitrary line where one side is okay and the other isn't.

[ArtDev]

Personally, I draw an arbitrary line between fish and chicken intelligence.

This is true for most people except that pigs are smarter than dogs and many people won't eat dog meat.

Relative intelligence is difficult to measure. Would I eat a person if they were actually dumber than a chicken?

In a survival situation, not having a choice, sure. I would eat the dumb person before the smart dog. That is a strange thing to say though..

[bananicorn]

Personally, I follow the "rule" of: What you don't want done to yourself, don't do to others.

Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive? Sure, one might argue that once you're dead you don't mind anymore, but while being alive, you usually strongly prefer staying that way.

It's that simple.

It certainly is difficult to determine wheter or not something wants to live, but in the case of chickens we can be fairly sure, as they display somewhat intelligent behaviour, and actively avoid harm.

[Swizec]

> Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive?

Sure I'd prefer to stay alive because I'm curious what happens next. But realistically speaking my death is other people's problem not mine.

Dying is easy. It's other people that suffer the consequences.

Although the process of dying, if drawn out, sounds hella unpleasant. I wouldn't want that part.

If we're talking step into the street and get splattered by a runaway 18-wheeler, instant brain death ... fuck it, not my problem.

If we're talking 8 months of ineffectual chemo followed by 10 hours of drawing my last breath ... I'd rather just shoot myself.

If we're talking normal life vs "eat this pill and aging becomes so slow you will be physically and mentally young well into your 90s followed by death of old age at 140" ... yeah I will definitely take that pill.

I'm not sure that really answers your question but there you go. My views on life and death.

[Qantourisc]

We have things that put things to sleep. Anastasia. I don't hear people complain about operations (except those rare cases). The other option would be C4 that should also be painless. Although you could argue that the pieces of brain still suffer for a moment.

[parenthephobia]

> this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed

You're assuming this as a premise, which I think may be the root of the problem. Plenty of people don't believe that livestock is intelligent enough to comprehend the idea of death, or really anticipate the future in general. How then would it have a desire about future events?

> Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

Wanting something to be happy whilst not respecting its autonomy is common amongst humans, so I'd say no. Additionally, killing an animal humanely doesn't cause it to be unhappy, since dead animals are incapable of experiencing emotional states.

[Luc]

> I kind of like it when I can watch my food being happy before I eat it.

There's an inkling of empathy there, I suppose. It's a start.

[omginternets]

Yes, surprising though it may be to the vegan crowd, we meat-eaters are not heartless bastards.

We just disagree with you on the question of whether veganism is the answer to a very real problem.

[Luc]

I think you are wrong in the detail of your statements, but anyway, I am not vegan.

[mirimir]

Happy food is healthier. Bad vibes have physical correlates. That's part of kosher/halal standards.

[vetinari]

Really? Many consider kosher/halal to be a torture.

[mirimir]

Yes, I know.

But consider that bleeding to death is also considered to be relatively painless, as a suicide method.

[vukk]

Warning: descriptions of suicide.

I feel like this argument collapses when given any serious thought. Mainly because even without experiencing either, I'd consider drawing a warm bath and cutting your own wrists a very different experience compared to hanging upside down and somebody else cutting your throat.

[mirimir]

Point taken.

I've never cut my wrists, but I have experienced substantial rapid blood loss. The injury itself wasn't at all painful, in the moment. Not until much later, waiting to heal. And the experience was actually rather peaceful, rather like methaqualone or diazepam. Except for the freakout about stopping the bleeding, anyway.

It's my understanding that proper kosher/halal slaughter is supposed to be non-traumatic. Because trauma makes the meat taste bad.