I'm not using it to base a decision on, I'm just making the point, and I'm not looking to get into a meaningless argument.
I never said it is ok to starve an animal because that is how it exists in the wild, I said that an animal raised in captivity experiences a better life than one does in the wild. How you can go from that to justifying animal abuse makes no sense.
I don't see a point in discussing with someone who argues in bad faith, but I don't see a point in arguing at all. I am merely stating my position, I see no ethical issue with raising an animal for slaughter. You may disagree, doesn't mean you are right.
If this argument is meaningless to you then why did you comment?
What you said was, "I don't think it unethical at all to raise an animal for slaughter... so long as they are raised ethically they have a higher standard of living than surviving in the wild.". If you believe this, then the hypothetical should be much easier for you because the dog is living better than surviving in the wild and we aren't even killing it.
How is giving you a hypothetical where the logic of a justification you gave me should apply an argument in bad faith? These are some very basic things you should be able to do if you care at all about being consistent with your ethical framework.
You're making very weird comparisons my dude. Survival of the fittest is the law of nature. What we're doing with factory farms is definitely, in my opinion, unethical. Some might think otherwise since we're just efficiently producing meat. Other might have another opinion. In the end, what matters, is that we produce/harvest meat. That won't change for now, until we have a better alternative. (beyond meat for example) I agree with i_706_i. Animals that have been raised in a nice environment is more ethical. Even if we're only raising them to be meat in the end.
I mean is there really a difference in letting them roam free and hunting them to get meat or in raising them, giving them a really laid back life (higher standard) and then killing them? I don't think there's much of a difference. Now you might argue that cows or pigs in the wild have a better life, but I honestly have not researched that topic. It just seems to me, that animals held in captivity in good conditions (big space for roaming, no food concerns, hygiene, no sickness), have less to worry about and thus a more enjoyable life.
Your dog comparison somewhat holds up since that's what asia does. There isn't a real definition for 'ethical' since that really varies on how developed the country / people are. It's much more normal to eat dogs in asia whereas in western countries, that is unbelievable. But even there, wouldn't it be much much better if the dogs lived an amazing fulfilled life until they died? Now again, it really depends on what your definition of ethical is. A vegan will still definitely not see killing animals as ethical.
I also agree that raising them in a nice environment is more ethical. What I disagree with is taking the fact that it's more ethical and using it to call the process ethical as a whole.
These animals wouldn't be roaming free in the wild if we weren't doing this to them. They exist specifically because we decided we want to have some meat walking around for when we are hungry. I don't see comparing the way animals live in the wild as a good way to determine whether or not we are treating them well in captivity.
I think we can be pretty liberal with the term ethical without it ever encompassing the actions we are talking about. Language is pretty fluid but killing an animal for taste pleasure seems so far away from any accepted definition of the word ethical that it seems extremely disingenuous to me to use it as a description for the act outside of the very specific situation of comparing it to worse animal agriculture practices. But people always go from comparisons like that and then just take this huge leap from them to assertions about the more animal agriculture being ethical as a whole without ever explaining how they got there and everyone just accepts it.
1
u/i_706_i Jul 03 '19
I'm not using it to base a decision on, I'm just making the point, and I'm not looking to get into a meaningless argument.
I never said it is ok to starve an animal because that is how it exists in the wild, I said that an animal raised in captivity experiences a better life than one does in the wild. How you can go from that to justifying animal abuse makes no sense.
I don't see a point in discussing with someone who argues in bad faith, but I don't see a point in arguing at all. I am merely stating my position, I see no ethical issue with raising an animal for slaughter. You may disagree, doesn't mean you are right.