The saddest thing to me is the people that say they "love animals" but eat them pretty uncritically (though obviously I used to be one of these people).
Just put like this, it’s a bit of an opposite extreme. I mean, the rest of your message also give context that mitigate the statement, but alone it sounds a bit drastic: if some people plot a genocide against some other people, the latter would be wiser to care about it.
But what to do, if the society itself is sick?
Well, either find a balance of blocking out the bad parts and accepting only the good, or find a better society ...
(To become a immigrant somewhere else)
As for myself, I can't believe that animals aren't concious.
I am still not a vegetarian, but do have a much more realistic view on what's really on our plates now. - I don't think eating meat is bad though. I _do_ eat a lot less meat now. (smaller portions and less frequent). Predators eat prey, but they don't mass produce their prey.
For some random context: the sheep killing there - it was an old sheep, lived a blessed life loved by the community, to be eaten at an old age at Eid someday. Everyday the women in the village and maybe their kids will take the sheep to graze etc. and give them love like any farmer loves his animals. He was only scared moments before the deed was done as then they are moved to a little separate pen and likely realize it's the end for them. The families usually own only a few sheep, different ages. Occasionally when one ages out it's slaughtered. - Cows and other larger animals such as Camels are for extremely special occasions and actually rarely eaten. (once a year, or at a marriage or something special like that.)
I wish it was feasible in my country for example to do similar things, which are much more friendly to the animals involved, but it's litteraly ILLEGAL. funny how that works...
Yeah I guess just the moment of eating it is not the bad aspect, but what comes before this moment. forcefully impregnating animals, taking their kids away from them, letting them live in concrete buildings without much access to fresh air or grass, transporting them in inhumane conditions etc.
> the sheep killing there - it was an old sheep
i frequently wonder if it would be possible to switch to a model where animals at least get to live a full life, before being slaughtered at an old age. probably not profitable at all...
to be fair, as romantic as your moroccan story sounds, i'm not a fan at all of the practice of just slitting an animals throat and letting it bleed out. Sounds like a very traumatic, painful experience if you're a conscious being. and the more i think about it, i'm not sure if giving an animal a good life is enough of an excuse to then slaughter it.
don't get me wrong, i do eat meat (would love to stop), but for me there's no valid, ethical argument towards meat consumption. if people want to eat meat, then they should, as long as they're honest about what exactly it is they're doing.
But an advanced alien race captured some humans and was basically raising them like cattle. Inseminating women, harvesting milk, slaughtering for meat. It really affected my perception of how fucked up the whole process actually is.
doesn't surprise me that this plot already exists, as it's not that creative. i must've been inspired by this, somehow, without being aware of it :D
At the same time I have no issues with animal resource factories. I justify their existence by the fact that I'm a carnivore and needed meat and fats to properly operate since forever, no need for complex philosophy here. The necessity to justify that against ethics usually means you got way deeper into it than is reasonable.
Modern usage of animal products for food is purely for convenience and pleasure. A point could be made that that's sufficent, but it's objectively not necessary.
But my main point (which I started to write above but seemingly decided to omit, to my own confusion) is that this fear-cold-hunger-devour-alive-die-young bs is how wild nature works every day for eons. I am its creature and should see no guilt except for true sadism.
I agree with regulating bad farms away, but suffering through reduction of my already small demand to zero barely helps anything.
edit: with meat factories I did not talk about industrial packaging of meat. That is fine. What is not fine with me, is having living animals on conveyor belts, who never see the sun or feel the earth.
