One more reason to stop supporting the horrific animal agriculture industry in this country. You don’t need anything they produce and their business is morally and environmentally toxic.
Raising animals to maintain the health of the environment has got to be one of the most asinine and nonsensical things I've seen written on HN. As in, that is a seriously wrong and stupid assumption.
So after the sheep did some recording for us, the punchline is that they were enslaved, slaughtered, and consumed? Ha ha ha. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be amusing. Not to say that this article should be a PETA champion, but it's a pretty profound example of human arrogance and a complete lack of empathy.
There isn't really an animal-using industry that involves humane conditions. Most justifications to the contrary are usually in bad faith, such as citing mom and pop farms or whatever as if that were even remotely the bulk of the sourcing. Even the fact of breeding animals specifically for harvest is already terrible, no matter if it's done by a kindly old couple or not. You would never treat a being whose life you value in this way.
All of your comments have no basis in fact, reality, or history. You should read more before you continue to comment on a subject that you know nothing about including Animal Farm. If you don’t have a good understanding of metaphor and allegory, just read the history behind it
You're getting downvoted, but you're simply correct in pointing out the hypocrisy in those who claim to value animal wellbeing while also funding animal agriculture.
If you read the article, the controversy is because other scientists are arguing there is nothing learned here that is applicable elsewhere. In essence, it’s torture without any purpose or benefit to society.
Cruelty in animal farming is bad, but it does serve to feed human populations.
For someone who doesn't torture animals, you're awfully worried about somebody seeing how you treat them.
Your farm is not a house, it is a farm. A house that might happen to sit on the same land parcel is of absolutely no interest to anyone. Your private life simply is not that interesting.
Your commercial operations, which occur outside the house, are an entirely different matter.
Think it’s disgusting to try and claim someone having the chance at no longer being a prisoner in their own body is morally in the wrong just because they might be ok with some animals suffering to make it happen.
Luckily I’m not one of those people so I’ll happily say the suffering happens once, the benefit lasts for the rest of humanity.
I was really hoping this would be something about jobs that are occupationally-hazardous, rather than an opinion piece judging various careers based on subjective notions of "good" and "bad" without any real qualification. Not that the points are wrong, but the authors could have delved further into why those careers are immoral ones to have.
Also.
> [raising animals for food] involves killing, which is both painful and perhaps immoral in itself.
Not if done properly. There are numerous ways to kill an animal painlessly and quickly; the most high-tech I've personally seen is the use of a high-voltage electric current through the cranium of an animal (usually when working with cows), which pretty much immediately shuts down the brain and any consciousness the animal might have. Sedation/anaesthesia also helps significantly. Smaller livestock can be decapitated (which, while likely not painless per se, is quick if done properly) or a probe can be jammed into the cranium to "stir" the brain and quickly shut it down (this is something you may have very well experienced firsthand in your run-of-the-mill frog dissection from grade school).
I personally disagree with the immorality (humans are naturally predators; I don't judge my dog for eating meat, nor do I judge some guy walking down the street with a bucket of fried chicken), but I realize that not everyone feels the same, and I do agree with the immorality of factory farming.
Thomas Jefferson bred human slaves for profit. I am OK taking his spot in heaven.
*Neither TJ nor I believe heaven exists.
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