Would you eat brainless animals?

  • Thread starter Thread starter feathermoon
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Animals
AI Thread Summary
The discussion revolves around the ethical implications of engineering animals without consciousness, specifically in the context of poultry production. André Ford's "Headless Chicken Solution" proposes removing the cerebral cortex of chickens to prevent them from experiencing distress in crowded farming conditions. This idea raises significant ethical concerns, with participants expressing discomfort at the notion of lobotomizing animals, arguing that it may not resolve the cruelty associated with factory farming but rather replace one form of cruelty with another.Philosopher Paul Thompson's "Blind Chicken Solution" is also mentioned, suggesting that blind chickens could better tolerate overcrowding. However, many participants argue that such modifications could lead to further suffering, as animals rely heavily on their senses for survival. The conversation touches on the broader implications of animal welfare, the demand for ethically produced meat, and the potential for cultured meat as an alternative.Some participants express a preference for free-range and ethically sourced meat, while others question the effectiveness of labels like "free-range," suggesting they may not guarantee humane treatment.
feathermoon
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
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.
 
Biology news on Phys.org
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.
 
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.
 
Humans are omnivores, embrace it don't hate it.
 
NafeesR said:
Humans are omnivores, embrace it don't hate it.

Say's who ?
 
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
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've always considered chickens to be brainless animals and I love to eat them.
 
How much would it cost to do this to chickens, even if it was possible that they would be easy to keep?
 
  • #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
 
Last edited:
  • #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.
 
  • #36
Ryan_m_b said:
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.

I know about 20 amino acids. Most of them are either produced by your body, or are present in cheap plants. Just few of them are present only in meat or eggs/milk, but not in cheap plants. If you think that I thought that our mammalian organisms require only aminoacids, you're very wrong.

The question is, do you really need meat, if you eat a variety of plant foods, vegan foods, plus pure aminoacids that you need? For example you get all the plants, and plant-based foods/nutrients that can be produced relatively cheap. The few remaining aminoacids are eaten in pure form, unlike meat, that contains in addition to these aminoacids a lot of other nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fats etc.

I mean, can you eat cheap vegan foods with pure, artificially produced aminoacids, and remain healthy?
 
  • #37
vertyu said:
I know about 20 amino acids. Most of them are either produced by your body, or are present in cheap plants. Just few of them are present only in meat or eggs/milk, but not in cheap plants. If you think that I thought that our mammalian organisms require only aminoacids, you're very wrong.
That was the impression your post gave. Meat and eggs are an excellent source of protein and thus amino acids.
vertyu said:
The question is, do you really need meat, if you eat a variety of plant foods, vegan foods, plus pure aminoacids that you need? For example you get all the plants, and plant-based foods/nutrients that can be produced relatively cheap. The few remaining aminoacids are eaten in pure form, unlike meat, that contains in addition to these aminoacids a lot of other nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fats etc.

I mean, can you eat cheap vegan foods with pure, artificially produced aminoacids, and remain healthy?
You can have a perfectly healthy vegan diet yes, many vegans practice this as standard.
 
  • #38
Its not about the prey species' sentience as much as its about me being a carnivore.

I do not think a Lion or a Tiger is evil, or doing anything wrong when it eats a deer or a farmer.

They are carnivorous, and evolved to eat meat.

If PETA, etc, wants the carnivores all killed to avoid them eating prey, it would make just as much sense.

Why say that one species, say, Tigers, are no longer allowed to eat meat, because its unfair and cruel to their prey?

What about Chimpanzees and Baboons, etc? They eat meat...Should we make them eat only plant matter?

Humans? Should we ONLY try to change what humans eat? Is there some reason that its OK for a Zebra to be torn apart by a pride of lions, but not ok for a human to whack a chicken?

Why are they prejudiced about humans?

Is it just because we can THINK about that zebra, and decide that maybe we feel bad for it...and go have a banana instead?

So, if a lion is not ABLE TO THINK about the zebra, other than as a striped bag of meat, perhaps the lion is not sentient in a way that we hold ourselves to.

So, if we EAT a lion, we are therefore not eating a sentient being.

If we DO consider the lion to be sentient, then we consider it to be evil, as it chooses its own welfare over the zebra's,and would murder the zebra for the sake of a meal.

So, if the lion is murdering the zebra for a meal, then we are murdering a chicken for a meal (OK, we mostly hire a hitman, etc...).

If its wrong for the lion, then its wrong for us.

If its ok for the lion, then its ok for us.

:smile:
 
  • #39
Ryan_m_b said:
You can have a perfectly healthy vegan diet yes, many vegans practice this as standard.

Usually it's not cheap though. If you want to avoid milk and eggs, then you need some relatively expensive suppliments/plants/algae. I'm talking about cheap vegan diet, something that can be afforded even by poor people. Something as cheap as potato, maize, or wheat. And maybe a bit more expensive, such as pepper and cheap nuts.

Would such a diet with pure remaining aminoacids be perfectly healthy?

And being perfectly healthy is still debated, especially when in many cases there is no cheap and easy vegan diet, and people end up on more simple, cheap diet, and don't get everything they need in needed amounts.

I would personally not oppose if meat would become highly taxed for environmental and ethical reasons, but only if a cheap alternative to meat would exist. It could be environmentally friendly and ethically produced eggs plus milk, and bacteria/plant produced aminoacids. That would require genetic engineering to produce such bacteria or plant.

Isn't the whole idea behind artificial, in vitro meat, and in this case this brainless chicken, to resolve ethical problems? A cheap alternative that replaces meat, the main source of essential aminoacids? Well, in many cases also environmental and affordability reasons.

I mean that aminoacid gooey I was talking about can give us a world with ethically and environmentally friendly produced diet that is also cheap? Assuming people would agree to stop eating meat, or at least tax it so much that most people would stop eating meat.

I kind of assumed that everything I typed in these few last posts was obvious and mentioned bacteria/plant produced aminoacids as an alternative, because that's what this thread is about: a more ethically produced source of essential aminoacids.
 
  • #40
Going back a little bit.

Ryan_m_b said:
If amino acids were all we needed we would have invented near-limitless artificial food decades ago.
Wrong, scientists have been working on producing these 20 aminoacids for long. Although they have been synthesizing these for decades, there is not cheap method that could produce near-limitless amounts. There are many applications that would benefit from cheap production methods.http://www.chem.wisc.edu/areas/organic/studsemin/rosen/Rosen-abs.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strecker_amino_acid_synthesis

Ryan_m_b said:
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.

The question is not very unambiguously formed. It depends on how cheap these plant-based foods are.

If we're talking "western-world, above poverty line" relatively cheap, then answer to this question is yes. You get all the nutrients you need from the plant-based foods (except for few remaining essential aminoacids, because they are present only in expensive and often hard to get plant-based products). But in this case you get them from artificially produced cheap supplements.

If we're talking relatively cheap for most of world's population, then the answer is no.

And again, purely vegan diet is a debated subject. In terms of health too. It's not a proven fact that is it perfectly healthy, at least not for all people. In addition, vegan diet foods may be hard to get, and expensive for poor people.

So if we take into consideration that a vegan diet may not always be perfectly healthy for any and everybody, then the answer is: it depends.
 
Last edited:
  • #41
If it helps, they are developing MEAT (Muscle tissue) that they can grow WITHOUT AN ANIMAL.

Essentially just growing the part we eat, and not the rest.

It would be akin to Cows bearing fruit, and we just pick the cow berries and eat them...but we don't eat the COW.

:D

Again, the problem is that a vegan diet works fine for a yuppie in Greenwich village, etc, but is not affordable enough to be sustained by poor people.

So, just like we need to excuse the lion, we need to cut everyone else a break who eats what they can...and its not always enough. Many of the malnourished poor ALREADY can't afford meat, and live on a primarily vegetarian diet. They are MALNOURISHED as a result - protein is expensive. They resort to bushmeat, etc...which in some cases means eating endangered species, because they are STARVING.

If people could ship them nutritious and delicious vegan supplement pills, and they were cheaper than the veggies they grew on their farms, etc, say free, I'm sure they could be convinced to swallow them instead of a lemur or whatever. Eggs are a reasonable protein supply though, and if they can avoid eating the critters that LAY the eggs, that helps them a lot.
 
Last edited:
  • #42
Yes, that meat growing without an animal is quite an interesting concept. I know I'd buy it if the price is reasonable. Something like twice the price of normal meat.
 
  • #43
The disinformation in this last page is staggering. Plenty of non-meat sources contain complete proteins. Vegetarian and vegan diets are healthy. Vegan and vegetarian diets are easily affordable (unless you consider those who don't pay for food at all, beggars make bad choosers) and easy IF you take the time to figure out what you're doing. Poor people are hardly malnourished because they specifically cannot afford meat.
 
  • #44
Tea Jay said:
Its not about the prey species' sentience as much as its about me being a carnivore.

I do not think a Lion or a Tiger is evil, or doing anything wrong when it eats a deer or a farmer.

They are carnivorous, and evolved to eat meat.

If PETA, etc, wants the carnivores all killed to avoid them eating prey, it would make just as much sense.

Why say that one species, say, Tigers, are no longer allowed to eat meat, because its unfair and cruel to their prey?

What about Chimpanzees and Baboons, etc? They eat meat...Should we make them eat only plant matter?

Humans? Should we ONLY try to change what humans eat? Is there some reason that its OK for a Zebra to be torn apart by a pride of lions, but not ok for a human to whack a chicken?

Why are they prejudiced about humans?

Is it just because we can THINK about that zebra, and decide that maybe we feel bad for it...and go have a banana instead?

So, if a lion is not ABLE TO THINK about the zebra, other than as a striped bag of meat, perhaps the lion is not sentient in a way that we hold ourselves to.

So, if we EAT a lion, we are therefore not eating a sentient being.

If we DO consider the lion to be sentient, then we consider it to be evil, as it chooses its own welfare over the zebra's,and would murder the zebra for the sake of a meal.

So, if the lion is murdering the zebra for a meal, then we are murdering a chicken for a meal (OK, we mostly hire a hitman, etc...).

If its wrong for the lion, then its wrong for us.

If its ok for the lion, then its ok for us.

:smile:

Ignoring the logical flaws in your argument and the crazy theories, one has to wonder where this post is even coming from.
 
  • #45
feathermoon said:
The disinformation in this last page is staggering. Plenty of non-meat sources contain complete proteins. Vegetarian and vegan diets are healthy. Vegan and vegetarian diets are easily affordable (unless you consider those who don't pay for food at all, beggars make bad choosers) and easy IF you take the time to figure out what you're doing. Poor people are hardly malnourished because they specifically cannot afford meat.

If you eat milk and eggs, usually it's enough. I don't know where you live, but here in Europe good vegan diet in not cheap. Significantly more expensive than non-vegan diet. 70 euros is enough for one month, but vegan needs to buy expensive nuts and expensive fruits and other expensive products. You would need around 200 euros every month.

In poor countries people eat very cheap food, they may spend around 20 dollars for food for whole month.

And the Internet is full with vegan propaganda, because all these people need to tell everyone how superior they are.

At the same time if you read their experiences, many tell how they feel weaker, get colds more often etc. Pregnant mothers may put their child into danger because of their stupid hobby.
 
  • #46
I don't see brainless meat as cruelty, but I do have a concern that finding a substitute for animals could mean just less room for animals in a human dominated world.

Put it another way, what if we demanded the meat of endangered animals, grown free range, in our burgers. Would we be making them extinct or would we be assuring they were as successful (at survival) as cows and sheep?

Im very much in favor of free range as a moral concept, Not eating meat does not necessarily make the lives of animals better, but if you do eat meat you can at least take responsibility those lives you exploit.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top