I have never owned a pet and don't really like animals. I'll tolerate other people's pets, and sometimes even like them, but would generally rather not have them around. I'm vegetarian because I don't see the need for me to eat anything that has to be killed. If someone serves me meat I'll eat it rather than throw it out, and I loved it when I bought a box of mis-labled vegetarian Jamaican patties that were full of ground beef, or when my chapchae came with bulgogi, because meat is delicious. I also don't ask about ingredients. I'm pretty sure lots of the thai food I eat has fish sauce in it, but I eat it anyway.

I'm not vegan, and I completely understand why people eat meat, even if in theory they're against harming animals, since dairy cattle suffer a fate comparable to going to slaughter yet I consume lots of dairy products. I don't eat eggs, even though my parents' neighbour keeps a few hens that roam though my parents yard, mainly because I'm too cheap to pay for free-range eggs and after not eating them for so long I don't digest them that well. I really don't care whether anyone else eats meat or not.

I guess I just figure I'm an omnivore, so it is what it is.

But if I had to hunt for meat, the amount of waste would be much higher. So is it better to kill more animals that have a good lifestyle, or kill fewer with a bad one?

Where do we draw the line? Do you think a spider, cat, wolf, cow, or fish doesn't value their life as much as you do yours?

If you are going to try to try to separate things into categories the two main ones are the intelligence of the animals and the degree of mistreatment. I'm pretty sure chickens are much smarter than cows.

I don't really consider chicken or cow suffering when buying meat, but do try to avoid conventional pork as pigs are much more intelligent than either cows or chicken.

No, there is some irrational reasoning that most definitely makes me care a little about the life quality of cows more than that of chickens. I could learn chickens communicate through clucking and have names they refer to each other as and I'd still not blink while buying $2/lb chicken breasts.

Never realized chickens ranked so low on likability.

We just need an animal intelligent enough to know that it's purpose is to be eaten, or maybe that is unconscious animal knowledge.

Perhaps we could even breed an animal that recommends the best cuts of its meat.

That can happen too but that's not the issue here.

It's not a case of wanting it but doing nothing. There's a class of ethical problems where making a fixed effort* yields increasingly good results. I eat a lot of ethical meat because I make a fairly constant effort to do so, I'd rather eat 100% ethical** meat but there's no way I'm willing to make the effort required to do that given how much effort it would currently require.

There's political support as well and the more we tilt things towards ethical meat the weaker the political opposition lobby becomes, good legislation is a major help in converting that fixed effort into far better results.

* effort is extra expense plus extra inconvenience. Also its not just a fixed effort, people can be persuaded to make more effort.

** ethical meat has levels as well.

DiB and chickens share the same rank on likability scales.

Not really sure why we think intelligence should be more important than other things, like cuteness. Is it because they're more like us, so we shouldn't kill them? I'd kill Josef Mengele before Kate Upton. On a sinking ship should we save the smartest? Nerds and children, first!

Maybe you should look into Operation Paperclip. People in positions that mattered didn't agree with your opinion much, and the US space program probably would have taken longer to have achieved what it did. Though the above mentioned Operation brings up some other moral and ethical questions.

Intelligence measured by what yardstick? Most of PU could wind up being dinner.

Yeah, I never got why intelligence should matter wrt animal killing. It's not like a dolphin is going to solve some long-standing physics puzzle that's baffled scientists for generations.

Knowing what a Simpsons fan you are, I am so disappointed in you.

It's about how aware they are about their living conditions. You can only talk about animals' suffering in the context of intelligence. An oyster can't suffer. A pig can. Can a cow? I don't know.

Obviously that is what I meant. Also I am not sure that chickens are dumber than pigs (or dogs or bears). Parrots and crows certainly aren't.

Parrots and crows are certainly very intelligent. Pigs are very intelligent as well (with a genome that's similar to ours, even)

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain


Gotta excerpt this quote, unrelated to intelligence:

There are pig wet-nurses!

Every animal can suffer and feel fear. Maybe not Jellyfish, as they dont have a brain.

Awareness is still not doing it for me. Awareness of what? Do we think a monkey suffers more pain than a cow or gets more upset when it hasn't had a bath? All animals feel pain, most animals crap all over the place and lick their butts too. We aren't worried dogs and cats feel more pain than chickens, we don't eat them and mistreat them because we think they are cute and they're our best friends. How we treat animals has as much to do with their Disney characters and how they taste with mayo as their intelligence or awareness.

So you think that a scallop's pain is as morally troublesome as a chimpanzee's?

Were there scallops in Finding Nemo?

Of course not. We have as society lost respect for nature and the animals that are food comes from. We are destroying nature and the chain of life. We think that we are above it, but when the chain collapses it will be us on the endangered list.

Is practicing infanticide a sign of intelligence or awareness?

Huh?