This is goofy. You think people for thousands of years living with their livestock had the same sort of angst over killing animals? There's an assumption among many animal rights advocates that if we had to look our food in the face that we'd be less likely to so easily take its life. Bullshit. Largely, the rise in discomfort over killing animals has corresponded with NOT being around them -- and this is before factory farms, ie, piggy concentration camps. Think about it: is it the kids that grow up on farms that are leading the vegan movement or is it urban youth whose closest relationship with an animal, other than a dog or a cat, has been from a Disney movie?

@ extramsg: humans used to do a lot of evil shit for thousands of years. That doesn't mean we are forced to continue forever for that reason, and "progress" is what we call it when we change course.

@ PAC: While practically anything is better than a CAFO, I'll still say that nothing's 100% defensible, unless you completely stop exploiting animals*. For example, even if you give them the cushiest existence possible, you're still a) drastically shortening their natural life for b) three minutes of your own, utterly-non-necessary-for-life-sustaining enjoyment.

That just doesn't sound 100% morally defensible to me.

* I exploit some animals.

@Commenty Colin +1

I've known people who grew up on farms, killed their own cows and ate them, who later became vegetarians. Statements like "vegetarians are city kids who know nothing about farming" is part of the effort to find a justification that works.

Meat eaters eat meat because they like the taste and perhaps also how they earn a living. The justification is whatever works.

@extramsg: the relatively recent "angst over killing animals" might also have to do with the gradual rejection of the teaching/idea that animals are automatons without feelings to use for our enjoyment/exploitation/whatever. The whole "man has dominion over the animals" excuse is so Old Testament.

I've known plenty of farmers who got by fine with the "don't name it" rule as opposed to the "don't name it and also force it to live in it's own shit" rule. Factory farming is abhorrent, but the practice of consuming animals hardly is, at least in my mind.

The average animal is not going to live forever in the forest and finally write that novel they've been putting off all these years. Rather, they're likely going to die from a predator, starvation, or something fun like a festering wound.

Ethical farmers have a relationship to their animals. They care for them, feed them, and protect them from harm until it's time to, you know, eat 'em. And when it is time, it's relatively quick and painless (again, if done ethically). So it's hardly a one way relationship.

My dad raised cows for slaughter and I'm vegan. The experience rarely informs my choices. Personally, regardless of Disney sentimentality, I do not believe consuming animal products would significantly improve my quality of life. Furthermore, my dietary needs are easily sustained without animal products. I believe (rationally or not) that my choices have less of an environmental impact and I have more control of what goes into my body.

People do things for different reasons.

I grew up on a farm in Iowa and I'm a vegetarian. MSG has
no idea what he's talking about.

I grew up in the heartland, though not a farm but I have a lot of friends who did and a surprising number of them are vegetarians and vegans and some of them are more hard-core than most. Mostly, it's education, learning that other animals don't HAVE to suffer for our passing pleasure and that a vegetarian diet is generally healthier -at least healthier than what has been the traditional American diet for well over half a century. As well as the detrimental impact that large-scale animal farming and fishing has on the environment. We no longer live in the 18th century. So really it's not goofy at all.

I think it's just fine that there are so-called "ethical" meat farmers are doing their thing, comparatively speaking, but they are a tiny drop in the bucket as far as global meat production goes. So pardon me if I choose not to participate or support the raising of meat animals on any level, it's just easier that way.

@Commenty
You'll notice I made no moral claim. All I said was that it's ridiculous to think that just because we "get to know" the animals we're going to slaughter that we're less likely to go through with it. History shows something quite different. In fact, the opposite.

@Smiley, @Carmalito, @Fruit Cup
I didn't make a claim about all this or all that. I just pointed out the historical correlation and cultural tendencies. There are always outliers.

I made no argument about eating meat or being vegetarian, just about the false belief that being around animals, treating them generally well, etc, makes someone less likely to slaughter that animal.

Is it morally defensible to eat dogs and cats? Pigs are comparable in intelligence and emotion from what I have read.

It would have to be one charming motherfuckin' pig, sueno...

@extramsg
I realize that having your own restaurant that has been on TV makes you a bit of an authority on all things in your own very large ego, but your personal stereotype regarding vegetarians is nothing more than that. Vegetarianism goes back a very long way.