I hope it’s all right to butt in here—I think the animals I eat have inner lives, and the ones I raise for food are less tortured than the ones who live on factory farms, and also less tortured than those who live without any human influence. I think that animals who live wild in nature are also “essentially tortured”—those which don’t freeze or get eaten in infancy die slowly and/or painfully to starvation or predation when their health eventually falters or they get unlucky.
I think the humans who supply the world with processed food have inner lives and are essentially tortured by their circumstances, also. I think the humans who produce the commercial foods I eat, at all stages of the supply chain, are quantifiably and significantly less happy due to participating in that supply chain than they would be if they didn’t feel that they “had to” do that work.
If I was to use “only eat foods which no creature suffered to create” as a heuristic to decide what to eat, I’d probably starve. I wouldn’t even be able to subsist on home-grown foods from my own garden, because there are often days when I don’t particularly want to water or harvest the garden, but I have to force myself to do so anyways if I want it to not die.
I agree with you on the principle that torturing animals less is better than torturing animals more, but I think that the argument of “something with an inner life was tortured to make it” does not sufficiently differentiate between factory meat and non-meat items produced by humans in unacceptable working conditions.
Your points seem valid. However, it does seem to me overwhelmingly likely that there’s more suffering involved in eating factory farmed meat than eating non-meat products supplied from the global supply chain. In one case, there are animals suffering a lot and humans suffering; in the other, there are only humans suffering. I doubt that those humans would suffer less if those jobs disappeared; but that’s not even necessary to make it a clear win for avoiding factory farming for me.
I hope it’s all right to butt in here—I think the animals I eat have inner lives, and the ones I raise for food are less tortured than the ones who live on factory farms, and also less tortured than those who live without any human influence. I think that animals who live wild in nature are also “essentially tortured”—those which don’t freeze or get eaten in infancy die slowly and/or painfully to starvation or predation when their health eventually falters or they get unlucky.
I think the humans who supply the world with processed food have inner lives and are essentially tortured by their circumstances, also. I think the humans who produce the commercial foods I eat, at all stages of the supply chain, are quantifiably and significantly less happy due to participating in that supply chain than they would be if they didn’t feel that they “had to” do that work.
If I was to use “only eat foods which no creature suffered to create” as a heuristic to decide what to eat, I’d probably starve. I wouldn’t even be able to subsist on home-grown foods from my own garden, because there are often days when I don’t particularly want to water or harvest the garden, but I have to force myself to do so anyways if I want it to not die.
I agree with you on the principle that torturing animals less is better than torturing animals more, but I think that the argument of “something with an inner life was tortured to make it” does not sufficiently differentiate between factory meat and non-meat items produced by humans in unacceptable working conditions.
Your points seem valid. However, it does seem to me overwhelmingly likely that there’s more suffering involved in eating factory farmed meat than eating non-meat products supplied from the global supply chain. In one case, there are animals suffering a lot and humans suffering; in the other, there are only humans suffering. I doubt that those humans would suffer less if those jobs disappeared; but that’s not even necessary to make it a clear win for avoiding factory farming for me.