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Comment by Momquist | Hacker News Reader

I think another point to add is that raising animals for food can be seen as a symbiotic relationship.

If not for the development of animal husbandry, would pigs, chickens, and such be as successful (from a total population pov)? I think not. Many animals have the chance to be alive, only because they are supported by humans. This relationship is not only one-way: they are protected from predators, sheltered, and fed.

Of course this doesn't justify mistreatment. But it puts in perspective the idea that turning vegetarian, and banning meat would be good for those animals in question. It wouldn't: they wouldn't be alive in the first place.

By the way, even animal husbandry is not specific to humans. Ants for example, have "farmed" aphids for millions of years. They milk them for honeydew and eventually eat them.

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> Of course this doesn't justify mistreatment. But it puts in perspective the idea that turning vegetarian, and banning meat would be good for those animals in question. It wouldn't: they wouldn't be alive in the first place.

It's highly arguable whether they are better off being "alive", when this "aliveness" is so far off what they are genetically programmed to enjoy as a normal life.

For example, if an alien species took over Earth's biosphere and treated humans like we treat cows, raising them in overcrowded pens, feeding them food that occasionally contains human meat, forcefully inseminating the females every year and separating them from their young 24 hours after birth, then killing the females when they reach their mid-twenties because their fertility drops, and basically using a tiny proportion of males to make sperm and slaughtering the rest at a young age... would you make the argument that there's a two-way relationship there? That humans are benefitting in some way?

Even if they took these domesticated humans and spread them to the stars, ensuring their survival for millions of years, and protection from other predator alien species, so long as these "humans" were treated in this way we would not consider this to be beneficial to our species in any way. At least I wouldn't: better extinction than such a "life".

Obviously we can't ask the cows what they would prefer (or perhaps we can, we just don't have much interest in figuring out how to do it). If we did ask them, though, I doubt they'd see this relationship as beneficial to them in any way.

Yes the way we treat them is definitely a point of contention.

> when this "aliveness" is so far off what they are genetically programmed to enjoy as a normal life.

I assume, just like humans, other animals can adapt and even enjoy a life partly controlled and radically different from natural conditions.

I think the basis should be: are they better off than in the wild? In terms of pain, comfort and stress. And I'd argue that we can give them a better life. But, especially with factory farming, we often don't.

In your specific example of aliens raising humans. If aliens let them live in decent conditions, with some added benefits: say diseases, illnesses and poverty completely eradicated, and wars forbidden. But with the caveat that aliens do decide when you die. (Somewhat similar to Logan's run...). I think many may see it as better than our current life.

True- though it does not have to be binary. Our current levels of meat consumption are unsustainable and the levels of production required make treating the animals well a laughable proposition. I've tried to greatly reduce my meat consumption recently.

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