Bye bye MEAT! How will the post-meat future look?

[Jeff Robinson]

God I love Urban every time I think we've reached peak crazy you prove me so spectacularly wrong.

Why do you think that's crazy? The view that we owe ethical obligations to other sentient beings is accepted by virtually everyone (including I suspect almost everyone on this thread). The real disagreement lies in what the nature of those duties are and why we owe them.

 

[bcuster]

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, I’m a fervent animal rights advocate, though as with any sensible view of human rights, I’ve never held that these rights are absolute or can’t be balanced against countervailing considerations. Killing animals that pose dangers to humans (e.g. cane toads) can be justified on my view, if there are no reasonable alternatives.

So I’m not opposed to the ‘occasional’ killing of animals either (I also support killing animals for their own benefit of course). What I’m opposed to is building industries around the domestication, exploitation and killing of animals. These industries happen to almost always be worse for the environment than plant-based alternatives (and the narrow focus on GHGE is problematic here, we need to also be talking about soil erosion, deforestation, land use, ocean dead zones etc).

But, as Kabbes said, at the heart of my opposition to animal agriculture is not its environmental impact but its incompatibility with the rights of animals. I also think that minimising cruelty is close to impossible in the context of animal farming. This isn’t because I think farmers are inherently cruel people but because the very enterprise of subordinating animals’ existence to the imperatives of human consumption almost inexorably leads to cruel treatment. Just think of the wretched lives of dairy cows for example, whether organic, free range or industrially reared. Or the mass grinding up and gassing of male chicks in hatcheries (again whether for intensively reared, free range or organic egg production). But even more significantly, the economic pressures of capitalism are everywhere driving animal farming in the intensive direction, which guarantees a torturous existence for the hundreds of billions of animals caught in its maw. This is why I’m emphatic that veganism is the only game in town for tackling animal cruelty.

Yes, this is a value-driven position. It stems from the same values that guide my socialism - a commitment to justice, an opposition to exploitation, domination and discrimination. Wanting a world in which others aren’t subjected to brutal violence (see any slaughterhouse) for the economic benefit of others. This is going well beyond the bounds of this thread but I think that value judgements are both unavoidable and essential in politics. Socialism and anarchism without firmly entrenched values at their centre are meaningless (I reject entirely certain strains of Marxist orthodoxy on this point). Appeals only to ‘interests’ guarantees the preservation of the status quo.

Bravo. Well said…

 

[kabbes]

I may not be personally in alignment with all that, Jeff, but I think it’s internally consistent and fair enough as a position

 

[Spymaster]

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, I’m a fervent animal rights advocate, though as with any sensible view of human rights, I’ve never held that these rights are absolute or can’t be balanced against countervailing considerations. Killing animals that pose dangers to humans (e.g. cane toads) can be justified on my view, if there are no reasonable alternatives.

So I’m not opposed to the ‘occasional’ killing of animals either (I also support killing animals for their own benefit of course). What I’m opposed to is building industries around the domestication, exploitation and killing of animals. These industries happen to almost always be worse for the environment than plant-based alternatives (and the narrow focus on GHGE is problematic here, we need to also be talking about soil erosion, deforestation, land use, ocean dead zones etc).

But, as Kabbes said, at the heart of my opposition to animal agriculture is not its environmental impact but its incompatibility with the rights of animals. I also think that minimising cruelty is close to impossible in the context of animal farming. This isn’t because I think farmers are inherently cruel people but because the very enterprise of subordinating animals’ existence to the imperatives of human consumption almost inexorably leads to cruel treatment. Just think of the wretched lives of dairy cows for example, whether organic, free range or industrially reared. Or the mass grinding up and gassing of male chicks in hatcheries (again whether for intensively reared, free range or organic egg production). But even more significantly, the economic pressures of capitalism are everywhere driving animal farming in the intensive direction, which guarantees a torturous existence for the hundreds of billions of animals caught in its maw. This is why I’m emphatic that veganism is the only game in town for tackling animal cruelty.

Yes, this is a value-driven position. It stems from the same values that guide my socialism - a commitment to justice, an opposition to exploitation, domination and discrimination. Wanting a world in which others aren’t subjected to brutal violence (see any slaughterhouse) for the economic benefit of others. This is going well beyond the bounds of this thread but I think that value judgements are both unavoidable and essential in politics. Socialism and anarchism without firmly entrenched values at their centre are meaningless (I reject entirely certain strains of Marxist orthodoxy on this point). Appeals only to ‘interests’ guarantees the preservation of the status quo.

Blimey. The old Jeff is back in town. I don't share those opinions but at least they're lucid.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Why do you think that's crazy? The view that we owe ethical obligations to other sentient beings is accepted by virtually everyone (including I suspect almost everyone on this thread). The real disagreement lies in what the nature of those duties are and why we owe them.

There is also disagreement as to what constitutes unnecessary cruelty. For example, I don't find the chick-grinders as barbaric as many do. It may look heartless, but it is a speedy death. They're dead within a second or so.

That said, chick culls could be a thing of the past very soon due to sexing of eggs pre-hatching.

tbh I wouldn't dispute a contention that the old way of farming chickens, in which the females were raised to lay eggs and the males raised for meat, was in many ways more humane than the current practice of raising dedicated broiler breeds for meat.

 

[MickiQ]

Why do you think that's crazy? The view that we owe ethical obligations to other sentient beings is accepted by virtually everyone (including I suspect almost everyone on this thread). The real disagreement lies in what the nature of those duties are and why we owe them.

There are no other sentient beings bar us Jeff (in this neck of the galaxy at least), There are other species that demonstrate 'some' of the traits of sentience but the gap between even the most capable primate (never mind cow or chicken) and the least capable human is a vast yawning gulf.
It behooves us to take care of our environment for our own survival if nothing else and cruelty for cruelty's sake is best avoided not least because of how it effects the way we might treat each other.
But rights and obligations are purely human concepts that only humans could remotely begin to understand.
Humans get to decide right or wrong (we invented the ideas after all) Your whole argument hinges on that.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

There is also disagreement as to what constitutes unnecessary cruelty. For example, I don't find the chick-grinders as barbaric as many do. It may look heartless, but it is a speedy death. They're dead within a second or so.

That said, chick culls could be a thing of the past very soon due to sexing of eggs pre-hatching.

tbh I wouldn't dispute a contention that the old way of farming chickens, in which the females were raised to lay eggs and the males raised for meat, was in many ways more humane than the current practice of raising dedicated broiler breeds for meat.

This is a slickly produced promotional video for a UK hatchery and it does not show the chicks being ground up alive. There are far more gruesome videos available. But even in this promotional video you can see that these sentient beings are treated without the slightest consideration for their wellbeing. They are treated like mere things. The economically worthless ones are discarded like garbage. In the wild, these chicks (or their wild ancestors to be more precise) would be under the protection and care of their mother. In these settings they are met only with cold indifference. If it looks heartless it's probably because it is.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't accept that, MQ. In fact, I'd say it's very hard to maintain a consistent scientific argument that humans are the only sentient beings on Earth, whichever way you define 'sentient' (it's not a word I like to use due to its imprecise definition). You end up more or less needing to define sentient as 'human' to make that argument scientifically, which of course then logically excludes many humans, including all new-born babies! Either that or you need religious arguments. Humans are the only humans. That's all.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

There are no other sentient beings bar us Jeff (in this neck of the galaxy at least), There are other species that demonstrate 'some' of the traits of sentience but the gap between even the most capable primate (never mind cow or chicken) and the least capable human is a vast yawning gulf.
It behooves us to take care of our environment for our own survival if nothing else and cruelty for cruelty's sake is best avoided not least because of how it effects the way we might treat each other.
But rights and obligations are purely human concepts that only humans could remotely begin to understand.
Humans get to decide right or wrong (we invented the ideas after all) Your whole argument hinges on that.

You may be using 'sentient' in a different way to how most people use it (I suspect you are thinking of 'sapience'). Most people just mean consciousness and a capacity to feel things like pleasure and suffering. Virtually everyone agrees that at least all vertebrates and some invertebrates have sentience. There are some animals who have more sapience than some humans (compare for example a chimpanzee with a severely cognitively disabled person for example). And animals have all sorts of capacities that humans lack (e.g. echolocation, magnetoreception etc.). There is no 'ladder of life', just different beings adapted to their evolutionary niches.

I would argue that other social animals do have some understanding of 'obligations'. It will be a very different form of understanding to humans, but reciprocity, social co-operation and inequity aversion have been found in other animals for example. In any event we attribute rights to infants even though they have no understanding of the concept. There's no reason not to also do so with animals.

 

[WouldBe]

Killing animals that pose dangers to humans (e.g. cane toads) can be justified on my view, if there are no reasonable alternatives.

Cows can and do trample people to death including recently. Is beef still on the menu then?

 

[MickiQ]

I don't accept that, MQ. In fact, I'd say it's very hard to maintain a consistent scientific argument that humans are the only sentient beings on Earth, whichever way you define 'sentient' (it's not a word I like to use due to its imprecise definition). You end up more or less needing to define sentient as 'human' to make that argument scientifically, which of course then logically excludes many humans, including all new-born babies! Either that or you need religious arguments. Humans are the only humans. That's all.

I don't think so, saying human babies are not intelligent is whataboutery, you're trying to apply a definition of intelligence to individuals rather than to species as a whole and species is what matters.
The only true sentient species now is us (there were once others such as the Neanderthals but only we remain).
If you define sentience as the characteristics that creatures like chimps, monkeys etc possess then you still end up with a clear gap between them and things like slugs and snails plus things like chickens that would struggle to meet sentience under even that definition. And you would still need a special category (sapience maybe) to cover us.
We are unique, granted that this may not turn out to a good thing in the long run but there is no other species that is even remotely like us.

 

[WouldBe]

There is also disagreement as to what constitutes unnecessary cruelty. For example, I don't find the chick-grinders as barbaric as many do. It may look heartless, but it is a speedy death. They're dead within a second or so.

Of course there is a way around that and for male dairy calves in that instead of killing them shortly after 'birth' you raise them for meat.

Conversely of course you could argue that animals like humans become more aware as they get older.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't think so, saying human babies are not intelligent is whataboutery, you're trying to apply a definition of intelligence to individuals rather than to species as a whole and species is what matters.
The only true sentient species now is us (there were once others such as the Neanderthals but only we remain).
If you define sentience as the characteristics that creatures like chimps, monkeys etc possess then you still end up with a clear gap between them and things like slugs and snails plus things like chickens that would struggle to meet sentience under even that definition. And you would still need a special category (sapience maybe) to cover us.
We are unique, granted that this may not turn out to a good thing in the long run but there is no other species that is even remotely like us.

Give me a concrete example of something that humans can do that no other animal can do and why that ability, and that ability alone, merits the word 'sentience', or if you like 'true sentience'.

You're mixing your terms up badly here, btw. Do you mean 'intelligence' or 'sentience'? I think you first need to define your terms.

I disagree with JeffR about quite a bit, but on this particular point we're in broad agreement. The reason it's ok to exploit other animals, if it is ok, is not because they're not sentient in our special way.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Of course there is a way around that and for male dairy calves in that instead of killing them shortly after 'birth' you raise them for meat.

Conversely of course you could argue that animals like humans become more aware as they get older.

Yes, many male dairy calves are raised for meat.

Wrt chickens, I already mentioned that this is how it used to be done. Today, specially bred fast-growing broilers are grown for meat.

 

[editor]

Cows can and do trample people to death including recently. Is beef still on the menu then?

These kind of facile arguments really scrape the barrel.

 

[kabbes]

These kind of facile arguments really scrape the barrel.

This is true, but at the personal level it is the case that kabbess stopped being a vegetarian and starting eating beef after she narrowly avoided being trampled by cattle. It may make no sense but there it is. Personal vendettas can be a weird thing. I still refuse to eat a Magnum for entirely different but petty reasons.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This is true, but at the personal level it is the case that kabbess stopped being a vegetarian and starting eating beef after she narrowly avoided being trampled by cattle. It may make no sense but there it is. Personal vendettas can be a weird thing. I still refuse to eat a Magnum for entirely different but petty reasons.

Did Roger Moore once step on your toe?

One point about eating meat that I'd make would be the reverse of this. It has nothing to do with any kind of antagonism towards the animals I'm eating.

 

[Funky_monks]

In the wild, these chicks (or their wild ancestors to be more precise) would be under the protection and care of their mother. In these settings they are met only with cold indifference. If it looks heartless it's probably because it is

It's this fundamental lack of how the "wild" scenario functions that I've always found quite interesting, and is possibly part of a lack of understanding about farming.

A wild bird might hatch a clutch of eggs - depending on the species of bird, the eggs hatch at varying stages of development. Jungle fowl (chicken) and Pheasant etc do hatch chicks at quite a late stage of development (eyes open, can walk almost instantly etc). Of those a proportion of viable eggs won't hatch, of the chicks, a couple might make it to reproductive age, most will die in a number of grisly ways through exposure or predation etc. In birds that lay eggs that hatch early in development (songbirds etc) and the parent birds feed them, the chicks actively compete for the attention of the parent birds for food. The better ones survive, the weaker ones starve. When it comes time for them to fledge, they may be fed on the ground for a bit by a parent bird if they don't manage to fly immediately but they often are eaten or die by other means if not.


Nature is fucking brutal, humans attempt to interact with livestock, which sit between wild animals and prey animals to make sure they have a better quality of life than nature affords them, whilst also trying to balance producing them in an efficient and viable manner.

 

[Funky_monks]

Yes, many male dairy calves are raised for meat.

Wrt chickens, I already mentioned that this is how it used to be done. Today, specially bred fast-growing broilers are grown for meat.

Broilers are generally of either sex, it doesn't matter from a food perspective. Layers must be female.

The culling of male chicks is being banned (Austria and possibly soon Germany, I think), so perhaps we'll see the return of a dual purpose bird.

 

[MickiQ]

Give me a concrete example of something that humans can do that no other animal can do and why that ability, and that ability alone, merits the word 'sentience', or if you like 'true sentience'.

You're mixing your terms up badly here, btw. Do you mean 'intelligence' or 'sentience'? I think you first need to define your terms.

I disagree with JeffR about quite a bit, but on this particular point we're in broad agreement. The reason it's ok to exploit other animals, if it is ok, is not because they're not sentient in our special way.

Seriously? you're using the internet to ask me for an example of something humans can do and no other animal can do?

OK let's start look out the window and you see the products of human science and technology all of which trace back to human intelligence. Science didn't make us smart, being smart gave us science.
And whilst it may seem counter-intuitive it gave us religion since no other creature wonders what the universe is for.

We can build a fire, Chimps who have been around longer than us and have the same flexible hands can't do that. And fire started us on the road that led to where we are now, iron was initially made by chucking lumps of hametite into a fire letting the carbon and oxygen burn off and the iron clumped at the bottom. This required not only the ability to build a fire but the ability to consider that burning rocks might be a productive idea so we can visualise abstract possibilities.

We can store information, we've always done that be it digitally, on paper, stone tablet or painting it on cave walls. We can send messages and information to individuals not present. Other animals can communicate to individuals present but leaving long term information is beyond anyone bar us.

We mark the passage of time not just tell the difference between night and day. before we had calendars and clocks we moved stones about.

We can manipulate other species across multiple generations dogs and chickens and a host of other species exist because we selectively bred them.

We can talk other animals cannot, they can communicate simple things of course like "Danger" or "Food Here" but we can communicate abstract concepts (another thing which only we can do)
Some animals can also grasp in a limited way human concepts such as a name. A Dog don't understand the concept of name as something that distinguishes them from other dogs but it can understand that the human uses that sound to summon them.

OK Sapience is probably a better word than sentience for what I'm trying to put across but yes there is a clear gulf between us and everything else.
As for exploiting other animals because we are smarter than them well we've been doing that since we first started putting up fences, we wouldn't exploit anything if we weren't smarter than it we'd be too busy dodging the apex predators of which without our brains we wouldn't be one of.

 

[Spymaster]

I still refuse to eat a Magnum for entirely different but petty reasons.

The cork would give you indigestion anyway.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Seriously? you're using the internet to ask me for an example of something humans can do and no other animal can do?

Yes. Seriously. This was my request:

"Give me a concrete example of something that humans can do that no other animal can do and why that ability, and that ability alone, merits the word 'sentience', or if you like 'true sentience'."

The bit in bold is the important bit, no?

I feel a Douglas Adams quote coming on whenever someone lists human achievements in that way.

on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.​

Regarding 'sapience', not a term I've heard before, well guess which animal scores highest on that scale. Might it be the animal that calls itself Homo sapiens sapiens?

 

[Funky_monks]

Yes. Seriously. This was my request:

"Give me a concrete example of something that humans can do that no other animal can do and why that ability, and that ability alone, merits the word 'sentience', or if you like 'true sentience'."

The bit in bold is the important bit, no?

I feel a Douglas Adams quote coming on whenever someone lists human achievements in that way.

Actually, I think there was a "nail on head" moment amongst that which is the level to which humans are capable of abstract thought.

How this development occurred amongst humans is something of a debate amongst anthropologists, and has led to some quite left field suggestions such as the "stoned ape hypothesis":
Lopez, Nicole (2020) "An Exploration of Linguistic Relativity Theory for Consideration of Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory” on the Origins of Consciousness and Language: Implications for Language Pedagogy," Journal of Conscious Evolution: Vol. 16, Article 6.

 

[WouldBe]

These kind of facile arguments really scrape the barrel.

Don't blame me blame Jeff's weird logic.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Actually, I think there was a "nail on head" moment amongst that which is the level to which humans are capable of abstract thought.

How this development occurred amongst humans is something of a debate amongst anthropologists, and has led to some quite left field suggestions such as the "stoned ape hypothesis":
Lopez, Nicole (2020) "An Exploration of Linguistic Relativity Theory for Consideration of Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory” on the Origins of Consciousness and Language: Implications for Language Pedagogy," Journal of Conscious Evolution: Vol. 16, Article 6.

That's the strongest bit, yes. You have to be very careful about how you define that, though. I don't think the assertion made by some that language is required for abstract thought is correct.

We don't directly think in language - language is the symbolic system by which we present our thoughts to ourselves. And we also think - and reason - non-linguistically all the time. Other animals are certainly also capable of reasoning and things like imagining the future.

I think a better way to look at it is to consider language as an example of metaphorical thinking and ask can other animals think metaphorically? Can they perform a domain-wide non-specific 'try everything' form of thought in which abstracted structures and patterns are compared to one another?

Big subject. Don't quite have time right now.

 

[redsquirrel]

Thanks for your feedback.
.........

Thanks for that Jeff, it makes your position(s) clearer. Like I said I'd disagree with you on quite a bit, but respect it and my views/politics align with some of it.

 

[CNT36]

Broilers are generally of either sex, it doesn't matter from a food perspective. Layers must be female.

The culling of male chicks is being banned (Austria and possibly soon Germany, I think), so perhaps we'll see the return of a dual purpose bird.

I thought those bans were largely as response to technological advancement in determining the sex of eggs before hatching? If there was the economic imperative for that would it not already be happening?

 

[Funky_monks]

I thought those bans were largely as response to technological advancement in determining the sex of eggs before hatching? If there was the economic imperative for that would it not already be happening?

That tech is happening but I'm pretty sure that's not why the ban is happening.

Nothing like 100% success rate or the layer companies would be on it - save in 50% of their incubation costs

 

[WouldBe]

That tech is happening but I'm pretty sure that's not why the ban is happening.

Nothing like 100% success rate or the layer companies would be on it - save in 50% of their incubation costs

Wouldn't you have to incubate them so far so that it's possible to sex them?

 

[Funky_monks]

Wouldn't you have to incubate them so far so that it's possible to sex them?

I believe its possible through the shell at a couple of days incubation, but could be wrong.
But I do know that incubators use a hell of a lot of energy so companies will be all over it when it is proven.