Would you eat brainless animals?

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In summary, André Ford has proposed a new system for the mass production of chickens that removes the birds’ cerebral cortex so that they don’t experience the horrors of being packed together tightly in vertical farms. Philosopher Paul Thompson from Purdue University has suggested “The Blind Chicken Solution.” He argues that chickens blinded by “accident” have been developed into a strain of laboratory chickens that don’t mind being crowded together as much as normal chickens do. As a result, he argues, we should consider using blind chickens in food production as a solution to the problem of overcrowding in the poultry industry. He argues that it would be more humane to have blind chickens than ones that can see.
  • #1
feathermoon
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This is sort of an alternative to the 'would you eat cultured meat' question. What if we could engineer animals without conciousness (sentience)? Would it be cruelty free? Would you eat it?

Example:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

Architecture student André Ford has proposed a new system for the mass production of chickens that removes the birds’ cerebral cortex so that they don’t experience the horrors of being packed together tightly in vertical farms.

Each year, the United Kingdom raises and kills around 800 million broiler chickens for their meat. These creatures are grown in vast sheds with no natural light over the course of six to seven weeks. They are bred to grow particularly quickly and often die because their hearts and lungs cannot keep up with their body’s rapid growth.

Philosopher Paul Thompson from Purdue University has suggested “The Blind Chicken Solution.” He argues that chickens blinded by “accident” have been developed into a strain of laboratory chickens that don’t mind being crowded together as much as normal chickens do. As a result, he argues, we should consider using blind chickens in food production as a solution to the problem of overcrowding in the poultry industry. He argues that it would be more humane to have blind chickens than ones that can see.

But Ford goes a step further and proposes a “Headless Chicken Solution.” This would involve removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken to inhibit its sensory perceptions so that it could be produced in more densely packed conditions without the associated distress. The brain stem for the chicken would be kept intact so that the homeostatic functions continue to operate, allowing it to grow.

Ford proposes this solution for two reasons: To meet the rising demand for meat, particularly poultry, and to improve the welfare of the chickens by desensitizing them to the unpleasant reality of their existence.

I find it terrifying in a way. Especially if the solution is just lobotomizing live chickens. That's like killing it twice to me.
 
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  • #2
I think this raises just as many ethical issues as it solves, so I don't think it's the solution to cruelty in factory farming.
 
  • #3
feathermoon said:
This is sort of an alternative to the 'would you eat cultured meat' question. What if we could engineer animals without conciousness (sentience)? Would it be cruelty free? Would you eat it?

Example:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/


I find it terrifying in a way. Especially if the solution is just lobotomizing live chickens. That's like killing it twice to me.

Wow. It's both very creepy and very logical.

My aversion to this, and to the cultured meat: I make a big effort to not eat processed foods. I'm not militant about it, I just prefer to eat things as close to their natural state as possible.

So no, I don't think I'd eat brainless animals.
 
  • #4
Humans are omnivores, embrace it don't hate it.
 
  • #5
NafeesR said:
Humans are omnivores, embrace it don't hate it.

Say's who ?
 
  • #6
thorium1010 said:
Say's who ?

Says me, in all honesty I respect anyone's decision to be vegan but PETA has to stop spreading propaganda and stop trying to make us (the non-vegans) look like criminals.

Cmon I can't be the the only one who thinks this is insane:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Peta_Comic_Book.gif [Broken]
 
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  • #7
I've always considered chickens to be brainless animals and I love to eat them.
 
  • #8
How much would it cost to do this to chickens, even if it was possible that they would be easy to keep?
 
  • #9
  • #10
I'm not motivated to eat anything other than wild animals or active livestock for meat. I think a quick death avoids cruelty (as long as the coral is curved thanks to Temple Grandin, so that the other cows don't see it coming).
 
  • #11
Pythagorean said:
I'm not motivated to eat anything other than wild animals or active livestock for meat. I think a quick death avoids cruelty (as long as the coral is curved thanks to Temple Grandin, so that the other cows don't see it coming).

Something I always appreciated about Judaism is the dietary proscriptions on how the animal must be killed. Shechita is supposedly to render the animal unconscious within seconds.

NafeesR said:
Says me, in all honesty I respect anyone's decision to be vegan but PETA has to stop spreading propaganda and stop trying to make us (the non-vegans) look like criminals.

Yet, it was PETA (of all the nefarious animal welfare groups out there?) that uncovered evidence of the mistreatment of animals in kosher slaughterhouses. Anyway, their target audience is youths (so are safe to ignore honestly), and this thread isn't concerning them to begin with.


I wonder if there is a way to engineer animals to be born on a factory scale without cerebral cortices? The technological hurdles and especially costs associated would probably be lower than in vitro meat. In that regard this may be a better solution.
 
  • #12
In a heartbeat, factory-conditions are animal cruelty.
 
  • #13
SoggyBottoms said:
I think this raises just as many ethical issues as it solves, so I don't think it's the solution to cruelty in factory farming.
Agreed. It's just replacing one cruelty with another, whilst people may argue that there is an overall reduction in cruelty/pain I think a better answer would be to heavily regulate the industry to prevent this kind of thing.
 
  • #14
feathermoon said:
This is sort of an alternative to the 'would you eat cultured meat' question. What if we could engineer animals without conciousness (sentience)? Would it be cruelty free? Would you eat it?

Example:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/



I find it terrifying in a way. Especially if the solution is just lobotomizing live chickens. That's like killing it twice to me.

This whole process requires an awful lot of anthropomorphizing about animal husbandry conditions as a premise, and assumes current conditions for raising animals are cruel. I disagree with those premises, and think it is better to maintain humane conditions for the animals than to start decerebrating animals (wouldn't work anyway...no pain sensation would also mean they are unaware of when they injure themselves, removing the entire cortex also removes motor control, which would mean atrophied muscles, among other issues). Worse, if animals get packed closer together, you also increase risks from disease spread through the whole flock or herd.

Likewise, the idea of a blind chicken as beneficial could have only been hatched up by someone completely ignorant about chickens (sadly, as much of the population becomes further removed from the sources of their food and grows up never even seeing an actual chicken or cow, let alone being involved in caring for them, they become more and more gullible to the anti-meat propaganda). Chickens, being birds, are very reliant on their sense of vision, especially for finding food. They aren't like dogs who can sniff their way to the food dish if they become blind, or humans who can feel their way.
 
  • #15
Moonbear said:
This whole process requires an awful lot of anthropomorphizing about animal husbandry conditions as a premise, and assumes current conditions for raising animals are cruel. I disagree with those premises, and think it is better to maintain humane conditions for the animals than to start decerebrating animals (wouldn't work anyway...no pain sensation would also mean they are unaware of when they injure themselves, removing the entire cortex also removes motor control, which would mean atrophied muscles, among other issues). Worse, if animals get packed closer together, you also increase risks from disease spread through the whole flock or herd.

Likewise, the idea of a blind chicken as beneficial could have only been hatched up by someone completely ignorant about chickens (sadly, as much of the population becomes further removed from the sources of their food and grows up never even seeing an actual chicken or cow, let alone being involved in caring for them, they become more and more gullible to the anti-meat propaganda). Chickens, being birds, are very reliant on their sense of vision, especially for finding food. They aren't like dogs who can sniff their way to the food dish if they become blind, or humans who can feel their way.

I agree that blinding them is just crazy. Yet, I think you're wrong in that huge segments of the meat supply industry do use cruel methods to produce chickens. If the cortex was removed with the brain stem intact, they'd be fully capable of chicken-like behaviors.

On second thought, without testing whether a chickens sans cortex is phenomonally conscious I'm fully against it. This just opens more avenues to abuse in a way. Back to cultured meat bandwagon for me.
 
  • #16
I only eat free range chickens and I only eat free range eggs. This is a personal choice that I can't afford most of the time, but I can't bring myself to eat the alternative. I don't believe that turning the animal into a vegetable would make any difference to my decision. I would just see it as another symptom of an unfortunate truth.

There will always be an abundance of people who can only afford to buy the cheapest meat available, ergo the demand for low-cost mass produced factory raised chickens will always be high. It would be nice if everyone could afford to buy the free range corn fed chickens that get to cluck around in the sun all day, but it's never going to happen unless people stop buying the cheap stuff and demand better quality produce.
 
  • #17
megin said:
I only eat free range chickens and I only eat free range eggs. This is a personal choice that I can't afford most of the time, but I can't bring myself to eat the alternative. I don't believe that turning the animal into a vegetable would make any difference to my decision. I would just see it as another symptom of an unfortunate truth.

There will always be an abundance of people who can only afford to buy the cheapest meat available, ergo the demand for low-cost mass produced factory raised chickens will always be high. It would be nice if everyone could afford to buy the free range corn fed chickens that get to cluck around in the sun all day, but it's never going to happen unless people stop buying the cheap stuff and demand better quality produce.
The term "free range" is pretty meaningless. All it means is that some chickens might have access to an open door for 5 minutes. If you're paying more, you're more than likely getting ripped off.

“Free range” does have an official definition: “Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.”

The definition of “outside,” though, is shaky; does that mean there’s a window chickens could theoretically squeeze through? Do the birds actually go through it? And outside could be a gorgeous rolling hill or it could be … a parking lot. Some producers include a fenced-in section of open concrete in their grow-out houses, with enough room for maybe 5 percent of the thousands of chickens in that house, and this may technically satisfy the term. (Although Mr. Kastel is seeing indications that the Obama administration may crack down on this.)

What you are thinking you're getting is "pastured" chicken.

What some producers and farmers call “pastured” chicken is much more in line what with many people think they’re getting with free range. This means that the birds are actually kept in coops at night, but are left to forage on grass, seeds, worms, etc., during the day. They might be fed grain as well, but they have access to a greater variety of food in their diet, and the result is much more richly flavored meat and eggs — and a much more humane life for the birds. It’s also much more expensive to raise chickens this way, because of the amount of space required and how that limits how many chickens you might be able to raise at a time. What’s more, chickens can quickly turn a field into a moonscape with their pecking, so true pastured chickens will often be moved around a very large pasture as areas they’ve torn up need time to regrow.

http://www.salon.com/2011/01/20/what_chicken_labels_really_mean/
 
  • #18
i am veg. But if i were non veg. It would not be so much about braininess as it would be about economy.
Culture production would definitely be more expensive that normal.
I guess so.
 
  • #19
Evo said:
The term "free range" is pretty meaningless. All it means is that some chickens might have access to an open door for 5 minutes. If you're paying more, you're more than likely getting ripped off.

I'm not from the USA. In my country, "free-range", by law, means the chickens freely run around an outdoor range for at least 8 hours per day, and are generally corn fed and able to hunt for insects. Usually, free range chicken farmers will also raise slower growing breeds rather than the faster growing breeds used for mass production. All these differences result in meat that looks, feels and tastes very different to the meat that is produced for, and sold to the masses. I'm also fortunate in that I can trace the meat that I buy back to the farm where it was reared and slaughtered. Sure, I pay a little more for all this, but I feel it's worth it.
 
  • #20
Even in th US, many free-range farmers actually allow their chickens to range several hours a day. You should know the farm, though, because they can get away with it if they don't care about farm image.
 
  • #21
would you eat vegetables if it was realized that they had a sentient existence.
Is anyone prepared to recognise that vegetables respond to external influences such as sound, light, physical touch etc. Sometimes these are more obvious than what is shown by 'animals'... or eggs
 
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  • #22
Well, I don't think I could be able to tell the difference. So yea..I would eat it.
 
  • #23
What about lobsters? They do not have a central brain per se but rather a simple neural network that allows its body to respond to the environment. Does this constitute a 'brainless' animal?
 
  • #24
I will be eaten by brainless animals, unless I will be cremated.
 
  • #25
MrRagnarok said:
What about lobsters? They do not have a central brain per se but rather a simple neural network that allows its body to respond to the environment. Does this constitute a 'brainless' animal?
clams, oysters, ... There are a lot of brainless animals and a lot of people eat them.
 
  • #26
I think the general point is "would you eat a lobotomised animal" rather than one that naturally does not have a brain.

However the ethical consideration of "can it feel pain, emotions and consciousness" can be somewhat independent of the question does it "have a brain?"
 
  • #27
megin said:
It would be nice if everyone could afford to buy the free range corn fed chickens that get to cluck around in the sun all day, but it's never going to happen unless people stop buying the cheap stuff and demand better quality produce.

It would also be nice if we had limitless amounts of arable/produceable farmland in order for those chickens to run around on all day long. Sadly though, agricultural land is at a premium in most parts of the world (as it is squeezed out by development). Thus, high density food production is becoming more and more essential (especially as population numbers rise).

I don't think that shelling out more for better quality food is going to necessarily get you the animals that frolic in the sun on a regular basis. More and more, you'll likely just get access to meat that has been handled better and "tastes" better.

Also, I guess I'd eat a brainless animal. There are some fundamental moral issues around this, but for those animals which currently exist in only a domesticated setting (eg. the animals I currently eat), they have basically been genetically-engineered by people over the course of many years.
 
  • #28
Borek said:
I will be eaten by brainless animals, unless I will be cremated.

Circle of life!
 
  • #29
Why not just manufacture the materials we need in the form we need rather than all this farming? Farming is just a little bit more convenient is all, but if plants have been doing it for millions of years I'm sure it isn't that bad.
Also, bacterium are brainless, but is it proven that even single-celled have a measurement of 0 consciousness? This brainless animal thing wouldn't solve it in that case anyway because there aren't necessarily cells working together to create a grander consciousness but they would still just remain is tiny parts of consciousness.
It kind of brings me to the point that you can't quantify and directly measure consciousness so there's really no way to measure if something actually has consciousness or not.
 
  • #30
CaptFirePanda said:
It would also be nice if we had limitless amounts of arable/produceable farmland in order for those chickens to run around on all day long.
I don't believe that land is necessarily an issue. I think it comes down to how much demand there is, and how much profit can be made from satisfying that demand. For example, supermarkets now sell a huge range of fresh organic produce, and many other food and non-food organically sourced products. There are entire chains of supermarkets and independent stores now devoted to selling only organic items. Why? Because since organic produce was introduced to the market some years back, demand has increased dramatically and it has become economically viable to produce and manufacture these products. If there is land enough to supply that demand, then I can't see land being an issue if more people decided they only want to purchase and eat free-range eggs and poultry.

On the subject of free-range eggs: many supermarkets (in Europe especially) now only sell free-range eggs and products made using free-range eggs. Why? Because of the demand, and of course because the margins for free-range eggs are about twice as high as they are for battery eggs.

CaptFirePanda said:
Sadly though, agricultural land is at a premium in most parts of the world (as it is squeezed out by development). Thus, high density food production is becoming more and more essential (especially as population numbers rise).
While it is true that there is limited land suitable for crop production in some parts of the word, on a global level, there is still ample land available should it be required in the future - not that accessing all of that land will ever happen/be needed or be easily/environmentally friendly to do so. While some countries may feel the bite of land shortages, overall, most future growth in crop production will stem from increases in cropping intensity and from improved yields, and not just from an expansion in arable land. To put in into perspective, since the early 1960's a mere 15% of world crop production was a result of an increase in arable land, the other 85% was a result of yield improvements. Although the population will obviously continue to rise, overall, worldwide population growth has slowed down, and so has the demand for crops. I do agree that high density food production is becoming more essential and more popular.

CaptFirePanda said:
I don't think that shelling out more for better quality food is going to necessarily get you the animals that frolic in the sun on a regular basis. More and more, you'll likely just get access to meat that has been handled better and "tastes" better.

What exactly do you mean by "handled better"?

When I buy free-range produce, I'm assured by law that what I am buying fits the idea of what I am buying.

Forgive me for going off on a tangent here, but this is a subject of great interest to me.
 
  • #31
MrRagnarok said:
What about lobsters? They do not have a central brain per se but rather a simple neural network that allows its body to respond to the environment. Does this constitute a 'brainless' animal?

Actually, yea. I draw my veggie line at insects. Arthopods have just fused ganglia, right? I tell myself this anyway: I haven't and probably won't be eating crab or grasshoppers anytime soon.
 
  • #32
Sounds quite creepy. I'm not sure if I'd eat. I hope that bacteria, or, maybe plants could be developed that produce aminoacids cheaply. I would eat it even it was some strange, tastless gooey. As long as it's cheap, I'd eat it. Add some spices and it's good for me.
 
  • #33
vertyu said:
Sounds quite creepy. I'm not sure if I'd eat. I hope that bacteria, or, maybe plants could be developed that produce aminoacids cheaply. I would eat it even it was some strange, tastless gooey. As long as it's cheap, I'd eat it. Add some spices and it's good for me.
If amino acids were all we needed we would have invented near-limitless artificial food decades ago.
 
  • #34
Ryan_m_b said:
If amino acids were all we needed we would have invented near-limitless artificial food decades ago.

Well, if you eat relatively cheap plant-based foods and aminoacids that are not present in these plants, then aren't you getting all the nutrients you need?
 
  • #35
vertyu said:
Well, if you eat relatively cheap plant-based foods and aminoacids that are not present in these plants, then aren't you getting all the nutrients you need?
No, there are only 20 types of amino acids and all they form are proteins. Human nutrition has incredibly complex requirements that haven't even been completely identified. The best way to remain healthy is to eat a varied diet.
 
<h2>1. Why would anyone want to eat brainless animals?</h2><p>Some people may choose to eat brainless animals because they believe it is more humane and ethical, since the animal does not have a functioning brain to experience pain or suffering.</p><h2>2. Is it safe to eat brainless animals?</h2><p>As long as the animal has been properly raised and prepared, there should be no safety concerns with eating brainless animals. However, it is important to follow proper food safety guidelines when handling and cooking any type of meat.</p><h2>3. Are there any nutritional differences between brainless and normal animals?</h2><p>In general, there are no significant nutritional differences between brainless and normal animals. However, some nutrients may be slightly altered due to the absence of a functioning brain, such as lower levels of certain hormones or neurotransmitters.</p><h2>4. How are brainless animals raised and slaughtered?</h2><p>Brainless animals are typically raised and slaughtered in the same way as normal animals. The only difference is that their brain function is disrupted or non-existent, either through genetic modification or a specific slaughter method.</p><h2>5. Are there any ethical concerns with eating brainless animals?</h2><p>The ethics of eating brainless animals can be a controversial topic. Some argue that it is more ethical to consume animals that are not capable of experiencing pain or suffering, while others argue that it is still unethical to manipulate and consume animals for human consumption.</p>

1. Why would anyone want to eat brainless animals?

Some people may choose to eat brainless animals because they believe it is more humane and ethical, since the animal does not have a functioning brain to experience pain or suffering.

2. Is it safe to eat brainless animals?

As long as the animal has been properly raised and prepared, there should be no safety concerns with eating brainless animals. However, it is important to follow proper food safety guidelines when handling and cooking any type of meat.

3. Are there any nutritional differences between brainless and normal animals?

In general, there are no significant nutritional differences between brainless and normal animals. However, some nutrients may be slightly altered due to the absence of a functioning brain, such as lower levels of certain hormones or neurotransmitters.

4. How are brainless animals raised and slaughtered?

Brainless animals are typically raised and slaughtered in the same way as normal animals. The only difference is that their brain function is disrupted or non-existent, either through genetic modification or a specific slaughter method.

5. Are there any ethical concerns with eating brainless animals?

The ethics of eating brainless animals can be a controversial topic. Some argue that it is more ethical to consume animals that are not capable of experiencing pain or suffering, while others argue that it is still unethical to manipulate and consume animals for human consumption.

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