Adults become so overly conditioned to accept that killing animals for our daily lives is normal, that we no longer register animal death as an ethical issue.
It is normal. Historically speaking, not doing so is what’s not normal. The nature of this planet is that every living thing lives off eating other living things.
It is normal for animals who don't think the same way that we do. They don't understand the concepts of "killing" or "life" and don't value life in the same manner as humans.
It's always struck me as odd when unethical treatment of animals is justified by saying "animals eat/kill/hurt other animals too!". We're different from animals. Our standards should be higher.
Many animals do understand killing and death. Elephants are a prime example of this.
Also, what is unethical about eating an animal? If this is really an issue, then we should be out there killing all those murdering predators like wolves, right?
Setting aside the obvious questions about how wild vs farmed animals are raised, wolves don't have a choice about what to eat, while humans do. Even if we wanted to improve the status of wild animals, murdering wolves isn't obviously the best way.
So what if they don't have choice? If a mentally deranged person commits a crime because they didn't have a choice, we still remove them from doing further harm from others. Would you not kill a wolf attacking a person? If we are saying that animals are equal, then we should also be protecting the innocent prey.
It is normal because for a very long time we didn't have a choice. I won't argue with the ethical aspects of killing animals but from a climate standpoint it makes sense to kill and eat a lot less animals.
I chose not to eat any animal products because I feel I don't need to eat animals to live and because the alternative is better for the world in general. The alternatives seem to either not live up to the claims or not be sustainable except at a small scale.
I think it would be more likely that people are just so far removed from the killing in today's society that they don't know/care about the ties to their lives. How many of today's people have actually killed, butchered, and eaten an animal? I imagine the vast majority of people just go pick up pre-cut, pre-packaged meat at the grocery store.
This is exactly what I was trying to say, but you did better.
My using the word "normal" totally derailed the discussion.
I'm not a vegetarian or against killing animals. I just wanted to note that the natural relationship of killing to satisfy hunger is not what we have now at all. Many children don't even realize that the food they eat used to be animals until they are 5-6 years old. That's pretty detached from the "natural" order.
Maybe. Perhaps some killing is ethical. PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) has shelters and I hear they have very high kill rates, like >95%.
I would consider other organizations like Operation Kindness that have actual no-kill shelters. Personally, I do not like PETA, and would never have even thought their name in this discussion had they not been mentioned by someone like yourself. I get how other people might be enitced to believe in them as you pointed out Ethical is in their name. However, I don't put any more weight in that than MacBookPro is a professional device with its Prosumer specs (as I type this out on my maxed at 32GB RAM MBP).
It is normal. Historically speaking, not doing so is what’s not normal. The nature of this planet is that every living thing lives off eating other living things.