I get that this is probably mostly sarcastic humour, and
I'm not trying to dispute the kernel of truth. No serious person loses sleep over our mass murder of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
But there is a line _somewhere_ on the natural spectrum of life forms, from microorganisms, to plants, to bugs and vermin, to dogs, pigs, primates, and humans, where our attitude about loss of life and/or a miserable life changes. Where are you suggesting we put that line?
Well at least those microorganisms had a chance of a normal life, and you did the killing yourself. What gets me about factory farming is the complete hopelessness of an animal born into a factory, reduced by us to being an inconvenient ingredient and nothing more, and how all of that is hidden from the consumer as much as possible, outsourced to a faceless machine.
What's a normal life? I've seen the chicken scene, and I've killed a chicken with my bare hands. I've clubbed a fish and cleaned it. I'm not afraid of where my food comes from. Chickens don't have hope, and I don't project that feeling onto them, just like I don't with microorganisms. Why do you think what you're saying is negative? If this trend tends to infinity we raise chickens instantly and vaporize them into cooked chicken in a blink of an eye.
Chickens want things. They want to walk around the scratch the ground. If you make a noise they'll run away from you - they dont want to get eaten by a fox.
Your comment about microorganisms is about 'where to draw the line' and your comment about 'tend to infinity' implies you like the 'appeal to extremes' form of argument.
I'm interested in what we're doing in the world now and I'm happy to suggest where a line should be drawn. I'm not worried about absolutes.
Aren't they still microorganisms at that point? Don't they have hopes and dreams like animals? Or do we not know about either and are drawing a magical line at some point?
No. A randomly arranged amorphous mass of protein is not a drumstick. There is no bone, there is no skin, there is no cartilage, there is no connective tissue.
Would it not make sense to re-use the circulatory, filtration, energy production, digestive, and excretory systems that evolved over millions of years to locomote chicken flesh, rather than try to re-engineer these systems? Just ditch the brain. If there’s no sentience, what is the ethical difference between this and vat-grown synflesh?
> Your comment about microorganisms is about 'where to draw the line' and your comment about 'tend to infinity' implies you like the 'appeal to extremes' form of argument.
I would say that's accurate. I think extremes can bring out honest positions in an argument. Where would you suggest we draw a line? How long should a chicken live before we decide to kill it?
We could do a lot worse than go with EU Regulation 889/2008 (i.e european definition of organic)
See Article 12 for poultry. There are details about how they should be kept, density, materials (e.g. straw or turf), lighting conditions, access to perches, access to outside space. Minimum age at slaughter is 81 days.
