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by ThrowawayIP 1969 days ago
Why is that the unethical "tipping-point"? Why doesn't this farm address the other ethical issues with dairy farming like Sexual Assault, Forced Pregnancy, Mutilation, Infanticide, or Murder?

The answer is that it would not be profitable. This whole venture, stem to stern, is a lesson in ethics-washing.

2 comments

In the case of animals those are known, as I'm sure you are fully aware, as Artificial Insemination and Slaughtering.

Your point seems to be that anything done to an animal is just as bad as doing it to a human. I'm not sure you can apply human ethics codes to animals. The animals certainly don't apply it to each other.

If a bull mounts a cow and the cow is clearly not participating by choice, would you put the bull on trial for rape in front of a cattle Jury?

"Sexual assault", "infanticide", "forced pregnancy" and "murder", these are terms that are normally used to mean something that a human does to another human, not another kind of animal.

I'm curious, but would you call what male cats do to female cats "sexual assault"? Or what cats do to mice, "murder"?

I'm asking because the reason that "murder", in particular, is usually only applied to human behaviour is because a human motive is usually assumed, i.e. either some sort of emotion like anger etc, or financial or other profit. Conversely most people don't believe that animals can have other motives for killing other animals than to eat them (yet check out "surplus killing" on wikipedia). So I'd say that killing another animal to eat it seems to only be interpreted as "murder" when it's done by a human, which sounds like it's motivated from reasons other than to succinctly and precisely define a certain behaviour.