Free Range FTW!

[DanJW]

Oh, this reminds me of something I forgot to include in my first post: If you are considering the potential life you are denying an animal when you kill it, you also have to consider all other potentials which you are denying by your action or inaction. So if you're not reproducing like a rabbit, you're denying numerous potential humans life. You could say that their quality of life wouldn't be very good, but if that's good enough reason to deny them life, you're basically saying that people with poor quality of life would be better-off dead.

I was thinking more in terms of survival of the species, rather than the individual. Not everyone puts equal value on biodiversity of course.

I see your point though, and indeed it becomes very thorny down that route.

An ecosystem without predators would have incredible competition for resources. The herbivores would be forced to evolve all kinds of vicious natural weapons and behaviours with which to fight over food, territory and mates.

[twmac]

I don't eat meat because I don't much like the taste. Not so much a vegetarian as an extremely fussy eater.

On the point of humane treatment of animals... I think it is pretty hard to argue in one direction or the other without disappearing up one's anus.

When we treat our own race like shit it is difficult for me to believe that we are arguing about the suffering of... oh wait

[SignorSuperdouche]

you're basically saying that people with poor quality of life would be better-off dead.

Involuntary euthanasia FTW!

[James]

I was thinking more in terms of survival of the species, rather than the individual. Not everyone puts equal value on biodiversity of course.

Sorry, it wasn't meant as a direct response to what you said; it merely reminded me of something I'd been meaning to say, but forgot about.

[Nick]

Hippies.

[toblix]

Animals in the wild also suffer and die. More so than domestic animals.

Really?

[Salka]

I'VE HEARD IT SAID that if we were all to switch to free range everything, there wouldn't be enough space in the country (well, this one (England (where I am (I like parentheses))), anyway) to provide for us all. The solution, of course, would be to consume less animal produce. But since we're being conscientious, why not just go the whole hog and turn vegetarian? I agree that it's good to have concern for an animal's well-being, but it seems a bit peculiar to do things in half measures, and I'm not sure if you* can really be absolved from blame for being nice about all the killing you're* responsible for.

I think it's pretty natural to eat meat, and a fair thing to do - hey, even we're a food source for some animals. The thing I protest is the unnecessarily cruel treatment of animals leading up to their deaths. We're clever creatures, right? We can empathise and stuff, so why do we inflict such misery on less powerful creatures than us? Some people argue that they don't feel fear or pain in the same way, but I think that's a dangerous assumption to make - I've lived around lots of animals and I believe that they are far more emotionally complex than people give them credit for. Turkeys for instance... they're awesome birds, but very few people see them as anything other than meat (you don't hear cute stories and see cute movies about cute turkeys) and so people are more willing to see them being horribly abused.

We probably all should eat less meat. In Ye Olden Days when intensive farming didn't exist, people managed. We're all so wasteful these days... even I (despite feeling very strongly about this kinda thing) sometimes buy meat and then let it go off in the fridge without eating it. The other week I threw out an entire chicken. A whole chicken, wasted (and died for no reason). I think most of us are pretty wasteful like that, even when we try not to be. Anyway er I'm rambling now... I guess my point was that I'm sure we could live without intensive farming. Sure not all the animals would have thousands of lush acres to roam around on... but they wouldn't be jammed in cages or a dark shed for their entire lifetime. And hopefully at some point someone will outlaw the fast-growing types of chicken they often use for meat... they grow so fast that their own skeletons can't support their weight. Eugh.

I'm sleeeeepy I'm gonna go nap. I don't know what I'm saying. PS vegetables are nicer than people give them credit for... especially if you dip them in humous. Nom nom nom!

Edited January 10, 2009 by Yufster

[James]

I can definitely support ethical treatment of animals, or whatever you'd like to call it, but I think it's important to realize the implications of the things we're promoting. If giving animals a better life means changing the way that we consume them, we need to be aware of and discuss this.

Also, whether or not eating meat is natural for us does not necessarily have any bearing on whether it's acceptable or good. As you said yourself, we're clever creatures. We could work out a way to do without (and many do). It's also natural for us to live in caves and kill each other, but we've risen above one and make half-hearted attempts at avoiding the other. This may or may not be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. Actually, it looks like "Appeal to nature" would be a less ambiguous term.

I'm not saying it's impossible to justify meat-eating, but I don't think the fact that we're physiologically suited to it is particularly compelling.

Anyway, I like to follow my stupid thoughts to wherever they take me.

[Spaff]

even if you dont give a fuck about animals, if you are eating intensively farmed, shit fed, rank, badly butchered, water filled 'meat' stuffed with antibiotics and random growth hormones then your food is going to taste like shit and poison you.

so if you can only think of yourself, then you have the same priorities anyways, intensive farming is still bad

I love eating meat, but I'd never cut down on the amount i spend to get the shit stuff, becasue i dont want to eat crap, AND animals don't deserve to be shoved into little crates where they can't move around... liek the matrix but with pigs!.. maybe the piglet Neo will rescue them all. ¬¬

[Salka]

I can definitely support ethical treatment of animals, or whatever you'd like to call it, but I think it's important to realize the implications of the things we're promoting. If giving animals a better life means changing the way that we consume them, we need to be aware of and discuss this.

Also, whether or not eating meat is natural for us does not necessarily have any bearing on whether it's acceptable or good. As you said yourself, we're clever creatures. We could work out a way to do without (and many do). It's also natural for us to live in caves and kill each other, but we've risen above one and make half-hearted attempts at avoiding the other. This may or may not be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. Actually, it looks like "Appeal to nature" would be a less ambiguous term.

I'm not saying it's impossible to justify meat-eating, but I don't think the fact that we're physiologically suited to it is particularly compelling.

Anyway, I like to follow my stupid thoughts to wherever they take me.

Yeah I see your point. For now I'm content with people just treating the animals with respect before their death, but ultimately yeah, the argument about whether it's actually right to eat them or not could go on and on. It's interesting how people will happily eat a cow, for instance, but if you offered them dog meat they would be horrified.

Pig Matrix... hahaha.

[Marek]

This clip is very briefly relevant, and interesting in a more general sense. And Screenwipe, the programme it comes from, is good.

Screenwipe is great. How did you create that video anchor link, for lack of a better term?

[James]

Screenwipe is great.

You're not wrong. It's one of my favourite things on telly.

How did you create that video anchor link, for lack of a better term?

You put "#t=XmXXs" at the end of the URL, where X and XX are substituted for the number of minutes and number of seconds. It, uh, "snaps" to the nearest, well, you know when you're skipping through a video and it will only let you skip to certain bits? You can only start a clip at those.

[Spaff]

we learn something every day.

[Salka]

WOWWWWWWWWWW!!!! !

[Mel]

Yufster (and others): I haven't read these books, but you might find them interesting (I'm going to pick them up sometime):

Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma. (each link has a pdf of the book intro)

When I was first practicing as a veterinarian, I did some beef and dairy work. Some of those farmers were fantastic and some weren't. I tend to prefer smaller farms. I hate the way chickens are raised and I don't like feed lots (the cow-calf operations aren't as bad). I need to be more aware of which kinds of meat I purchase.

The cost differences are so vast, that you can't blame someone who is short on money for buying the cheaper chicken or beef. I think it's difficult to increase the use of free range animals and promote smaller farming operations. I don't know what the best way would be, especially when the cheaper the food is, the worse it is for you (in terms of production and health). Pollan tries to address those issues in the above books.

[SignorSuperdouche]

We're clever creatures, right? We can empathise and stuff, so why do we inflict such misery on less powerful creatures than us?

I have to take issue with this.

Empathy is an example of how stupid people are not how smart we are. If we were really smart we'd recognise that working together and looking after each other is good for the survival of the species but, for the most part, we don't. Human beings are motivated to cooperate not because it is a noble pursuit in and of itself but because of the chemical rewards we get when we do so. We do the right thing because it makes us feel good - and being motivated by feelings, rather than logic, is the exact opposite of clever.

This emotion based system that we rely on to get us to function as a group can also kick in when we look at animals but that is not the purpose of this system. It's like you're blindly following a set of rules but you don't understand the reason for the rules or the meaning behind them.

[James]

Who says the good of the species has to be our only conscious goal? You could say that, as far as the individual is concerned, there is no point in perpetuating the species, so why would it be so smart to act in a manner conducive to that?

As for being motivated by feelings, I'm not really sure it can be any other way. You can apply more logic to your considerations, but ultimately you must have an aim, and I don't think logic can generate one of those. You can aim to prolong the species because you feel affection and kinship to it, or you can aim to prolong your own life because you feel fear of pain and death, or you can aim to eat an awful lot because it feels good at the time, and you fail to consider how rotten you will feel afterwards, but ultimately it all comes down to some sort of goal, and I don't think anything has intrinsic desirability: all desire exists in the mind of the desirer. It sounds obvious, but I think it needs saying. I don't hold much truck with this logic-over-all stuff. Yes, a lot of us could do with taking a more logical and reasoned approach to life, but logic alone can't really give us anything.

So while it may serve no evolutionary purpose, some of us do have a feeling of affection or empathy with animals, and I personally don't think it's any worse than any of the other feelings we experience. My main problem with it is that it's often inconsistent. Why do I like cats and dogs on the one hand, and eat cows and sheep on the other? I suppose both are indulgences, in a way.

[SignorSuperdouche]

I thought about going to go into that but I felt it was tangential to my point.

Ultimately I agree that the desire to propagate the human species has no innate value. It is a basic axiom of life that is neither good nor bad. It's just true in the same way that 1+1=2 is just true.

[James]

I guess my point is that while the "desire" of a species to survive (a species of any sort of age, at least) is undeniable and unavoidable, this does not necessarily transfer to the individual. It's a matter of selfish creature versus selfish gene, I suppose. Well, kind of. I don't know.

But yes, I would say that it's a description of fact rather than a prescription of what is "good".

[Nachimir]

and being motivated by feelings, rather than logic, is the exact opposite of clever.

Motivation hinges on feelings and emotions. There's massive disagreement and three major camps in academia surrounding motivation theory, but every one of them is fighting to dominate the term emotion with their own particular definition, and all agree that it's a fundamental part of motivation itself.

Furthermore, the dichotomy between emotion and logic is a fallacy that comes from Greek natural philosophy rather than study of the brain or even contemporary study of behaviour. It's a convenient way to think and has been lent further weight by characters like Spock in popular culture, but it's just not the case that emotion is purely irrational or leads to bad decisions; often our motives lead us to sound ones and it's not by taming some base, irrational, emotional nature with the shining light of rational thought that this occurs. It's a combination of both, if we didn't have the values and energy output of emotion then we wouldn't really give a shit about anything. Emotion tends to operate with a much shorter term, and hence sometimes self defeating view (i.e. binging on things we know are bad for us), whereas thought we call rational tends to take a longer term and wider strategic view of any situation. These wider views aren't always necessary.

[SignorSuperdouche]

Surely, and that is why people are stupid.

To rely on some ineffable instinct to guide your actions is to not consciously assess the situation and come to a rational conclusion. That's not to say the outcome will not be desirable (being scared of lions and tigers and what have you is probably a good thing) but without understanding what you are doing and why you are doing it it is still stupid.

[James]

But if you understand that your concern for the well-being of animals is just an over-extension of the desire to preserve the safety of our fellow humans, and wish to apply intelligence to finding methods for improving the lot of the animals we're responsible for, why is that any more stupid than finding ingenious ways to escape danger?

I guess the very fact that I called it an over-extension suggests that I'm making some sort of judgement about its sensibility, but as I said above, all goals are ultimately our own creation, so I don't see why I should approve any less of the desire to avoid unnecessary animal misery than the desire to avoid unnecessary human misery (as long as I also consider human misery, of course). Like I said above, my main problem is when we're inconsistent about things, and I'll readily admit that I'm just as inconsistent as the next man.

[SignorSuperdouche]

I don't think I am being inconsistent, although I'm probably not explaining myself very well which wont be helping my case. Use of the word stupid was probably a bad choice - I don't mean it in a negative way just as the opposite intelligence.

Empathising with animals, as far as I am aware, is merely a side effect of our ability to empathise with each other. If this is true then feeling empathy for an animal is a false positive which can be safely ignored.

[James]

No, sorry, I wasn't accusing you of being inconsistent. I was accusing myself and the species as a whole of being inconsistent. You know, with all the picking favourites stuff. So we're both doing a poor job of explaining ourselves. Fantastic.

[gdf]

The way a lot of cheap meat is produced is pretty horrendous, but the Supermarkets hawk it at a much lower price than other stuff just because it's pumped out in such a huge quantity. Sadly, a lot of people really can't afford that extra few pounds to buy the meat of animals that were treated well. I try my best of course, but it's certainly true that laws have to become a lot less lax regarding the treatment of animals being bred for their meat.