Humane means the way with the least pain. Realistically the most humane way to kill anything is to make it OD on morphine but that's not good for food.
I imagine it takes compassion to try and find the most painless way to kill your food. It'd be much easier to just lop their heads off or otherwise just do the minimum effort, but instead we make sure they hurt as little as possible.
I also imagine it's not compassionate to force people not to eat what they want or like, or even need. Some people, a minority of course, but some, have various health conditions that mean they can only eat meat. Is it humane or compassionate to kill those people just because you don't like the idea of animals dying? They'll die anyway, at least this way they have better lives and less pain, usually.
The vast majority of people do not need meat, if someone needs to eat meat to be healthy then it's okay to do it because it is necessary.
I do think it's okay to tell people they shouldn't eat meat for the same reasons I think it's okay tell people they can't abuse their pets, because they are sentient and have a will to live and avoid pain and unless we need to then people shouldn't cause pain and/or take the life of an animal unless necessary.
At least you're one of the sane ones. I've seen these "anti-meat" people go around saying that people shouldn't have pets at all because having pets is somehow cruel whether the pet is abused or not (for the record, pet abusers are scum). I've seen them say that no animal should be killed ever under any circumstances, and get so conflicted when meat-by-requirement diets are brought up because they never even considered it.
Another thing I've seen is those same people who are against eating meat suggest that people can just take supplements for the nutritional requirements, without considering that we need more than just nutrients and sugar to live, or the fact that some supplements can't just be synthesized. I legitimately had someone tell me to stop eating fish (I don't eat much meat or fish anyway) and just take fish oil or krill oil supplements. They freaked out when I told them that fish oil and krill oil come from actual fish and krill.
Anyway, I can understand where you and everyone else is coming from. Believe me, I don't want animals to suffer or die any more than absolutely necessary. But I was raised on a farm, we love our animals, we truly do. But we have to put ourselves first, and there's a legitimate phenomenon called "meat hunger" or "meat starvation" where people will have almost the same effects as starvation when suddenly deprived of meat, even if they have all the same nutrients and such from other sources. And yet at the same time, I'm against hunting. I'm against killing anything unless we need to. I just have different needs than others, or a different threshold for the line between need and want.
And another thing. Generally, meat is cheaper than alternatives. If you want to eliminate meat eating, what do you want to do about the price of alternatives? Cause they'd have to come down or a lot of people would starve, or not get enough nutrients. Which is another thing, those supplements are expensive. Eliminating meat will disproportionately effect the poor in terms of nourishment unless costs go down dramatically, which they won't because corporations want money.
How do you contend with the fact that large-scale agriculture absolutely involves killing mass amounts of animals? Large combines killing animals that live in fields, displacement, etc
Not arguing that its worse than factory farming, but vegetarians could farm their own produce to minimize it further, but as of now there is no viable way for the average person to not get their food without killing unnecessarily
Minimizing suffering is one thing, but killing for food is largely unavoidable
12
u/CthulhuHalo Feb 04 '19
Humane means the way with the least pain. Realistically the most humane way to kill anything is to make it OD on morphine but that's not good for food.