Killing animals "humanely" for meat makes no sense

[nehalem256]

The main point of the thread was to identify the hypocrisy of a certain part of the population.

Let me break it down for y'all.

You have Bessie in a field enjoying life with her salt lick.

Joe 6-pack wants to have a barbecue. Joe goes over to the field but he can't bring himself to kill Bessie. Instead, Joe goes to the local supermarket and picks up some nice pre-packaged steaks.

Joe remains ignorant about how Bessie went from enjoying life with her salt lick to being on his plate.

If Joe were forced to watch the entire process, killing Bessie "humanely" probably would have little bearing on whether or not he would eat the steaks.

tl;dr If ordinary people were forced to watch the entire commercial food chain in action (slaughterhouses, rendering plants) then they most likely would not eat meat for quite a while.

I wouldn't want to be a sewer maintenance worker. Doesn't mean I have an issue using a toilet.

 

[Imp]

The main point of the thread was to identify the hypocrisy of a certain part of the population.

Let me break it down for y'all.

Meh, we're all hypocrites in one way or another. It's only an issue if you start getting self-righteous about it and deny it -- which is unfortunately a lot of people. *cough* People who love the environment but love their BMWs, iPhones, Amazon Prime delivery.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Any facts to back this up?
USDA along with KBP has tight oversight in slaughter plants that process Kobe beef, along with all other Wagyu breeds. CAB is also tightly controlled/monitored. 20 years ago I'd agree with your statement.

Did you know, every head of Wagyu cattle slaughtered in the larger plats are individually DNA tested?

It's a scam in the US, because it's probably not actual Kobe beef. (Only available since 2012, and in limited quantities since.)

So when Red Robin has their $9.99 Kobe Burger and bottomless basket-o-fries, there's a very good chance it's fake.

 

[MrDudeMan]

i can't tell if this is a serious post or not. only a certified psychopath wouldn't understand this situation.

it's extremely simple: kill it quickly because anything else is just being a dick for no good reason and let it live the best way possible before that point. yeah, you're going to eat it and that's the plan from day 1, but there's absolutely zero reason to be an asshole to any animal up until that point. free range/organic makes sense for a metric fuckload of reasons.

distill this issue to its essence to truly see how fucking disgusting human beings are: you'll save a few pennies at the grocery store in return for a chicken sitting in a 1x1x1 cage for almost it's entire life. that's the trade you're making and anyone who thinks that's justifiable is a moron.

 

[SlitheryDee]

If you're going to eat something, raise it and kill it in whatever way will either make it taste best or yield the most meat, according to your goals. It's not your furry little friend. It's your food. Luckily treating the animals relatively well seems to often serve everyone's wishes.

 

[MrDudeMan]

If you're going to eat something, raise it and kill it in whatever way will either make it taste best or yield the most meat, according to your goals. It's not your furry little friend. It's your food. Luckily treating the animals relatively well seems to often serve everyone's wishes.

that's bullshit. you treat it well because anything else makes you an asshole. are you seriously saying if it made beef taste better to beat the shit out of a cow every day that you would support that? it's not your furry little friend and you don't have to scratch its ear every day, but you also don't have to treat it like it's in a concentration camp so you can sit at home jacking off about your perfect steak. a living thing had to die to feed you for a handful of meals, so the least you can do is treat it with some respect and not cause it to suffer for that little bit of extra zest in your burger. honestly, this kind of stuff really accentuates how fucked up we are as a species.

 

[yuchai]

The main point of the thread was to identify the hypocrisy of a certain part of the population.

Let me break it down for y'all.

You have Bessie in a field enjoying life with her salt lick.

Joe 6-pack wants to have a barbecue. Joe goes over to the field but he can't bring himself to kill Bessie. Instead, Joe goes to the local supermarket and picks up some nice pre-packaged steaks.

Joe remains ignorant about how Bessie went from enjoying life with her salt lick to being on his plate.

If Joe were forced to watch the entire process, killing Bessie "humanely" probably would have little bearing on whether or not he would eat the steaks.

tl;dr If ordinary people were forced to watch the entire commercial food chain in action (slaughterhouses, rendering plants) then they most likely would not eat meat for quite a while.

Most people like meat and are unwilling to give it up. At the same time, due to realities of life they cannot be butchers or hunters. I am not aware of any meat source that is guaranteed not to cause any unneeded suffering for the animal. If it exists most people probably cannot afford it.

So really what are people's options? Everyone should just go ahead and become vegetarians?

 

[SlitheryDee]

that's bullshit. you treat it well because anything else makes you an asshole. are you seriously saying if it made beef taste better to beat the shit out of a cow every day that you would support that? it's not your furry little friend and you don't have to scratch its ear every day, but you also don't have to treat it like it's in a concentration camp so you can sit at home jacking off about your perfect steak. a living thing had to die to feed you for a handful of meals, so the least you can do is treat it with some respect and not cause it to suffer for that little bit of extra zest in your burger. honestly, this kind of stuff really accentuates how fucked up we are as a species.

If you care about the cows, stop eating them. Everything else is a rationalization for what is at it's core a horrific practice no matter how "humanely" it's carried out.

 

[alkemyst]

If you care about the cows, stop eating them. Everything else is a rationalization for what is at it's core a horrific practice no matter how "humanely" it's carried out.

Horrific practice? That's delusional at best.

It's sad you and the OP don't seem to understand what this debate is even about.

 

[MrDudeMan]

If you care about the cows, stop eating them. Everything else is a rationalization for what is at it's core a horrific practice no matter how "humanely" it's carried out.

i honestly can't tell if you're trolling or if this is an attempt at a serious rebuttal. if it's meant to be serious, you've severely misunderstood the point of this thread and my comments.

 

[destrekor]

It's good to provide humane care for the animals. It's simply a good practice of being a higher-order animal like us.

Nature is cruel, but we don't have to carry on the cruelty of nature out of the flawed logic that because nature is cruel, we should practice the art of cruelty. We know better, and can achieve better. So why not?


Now, the OP confuses me, because none of this has to do with the free range and organic movement, at least, not entirely. That movement does provide for more humane living conditions, in that they get to roam where they want to instead of being corralled and fed empty nutrients to fatten them up. That said, the movement is more about the actual quality of the end product for consumption, in that when they eat their natural free-range diet, we get meat with a better nutritional profile.

Knowing the process that goes into butchering simply sucks, there's no way around that. It is a part of our nature in that we need to consume these animals, and the best butcher practices are long-removed from the natural stylings of strong-jawed carnivore kills.

For those that feel sinful knowing that an animal had to be quite grotesquely killed in order to fill the plate at the table, I can't really offer much that would soothe the soul. It sucks, but there's not much else that can be done.

To do it the most humane way possible, and to provide quality living conditions, is the best we can really hope to achieve. But do note that quality living conditions does not require getting the most natural diet for the animal. For their short lifespan, bad diets full of harvested grains is not going to negatively effect their lifestyle and health.

Which is to say, we can have humane conditions and best-practice butchering and yet still have less-than-ideal nutritional profiles in the resulting meat. So we should opt for the best of it all: natural grazing diets with quality living conditions and "humane butchering", so that our soul can rest easy and we can get the nutrition we should be after in the first place. Sometimes that comes at the cost of taste in the eyes of some, as many prefer excessive fat from grain feed, whereas grass-fed/free-range meat is typically far more lean. I am of the opinion that the best nutrition should be our optimal goal, or else why are we eating a particular thing? And that happens to coincide perfectly with the ideal living conditions for most animals we raise to consume.

 

[SlitheryDee]

i honestly can't tell if you're trolling or if this is an attempt at a serious rebuttal. if it's meant to be serious, you've severely misunderstood the point of this thread and my comments.

I think you've forgotten what this thread is about. You comments seem pretty clear to me as well. The thread is about whether or not we should expend additional effort to make sure we're being "nice" to our food. You say yes we should because doing otherwise makes us "assholes" and "dicks". You essentially offer no further justification for that idea.

I can only assume you hold that position because it makes you feel better about the whole raising animal for slaughter situation. It's the salve for your conscience when you pick up a ribeye from the supermarket.

All I'm saying is that I don't allow myself that luxury. Either animals are food or they aren't. I'm not going to pretend I'm a better person because I worry over the quibbling details of their lives before they're lead down the chute to be slaughtered. I eat meat, and in some small way that makes me a kind of animal murdering monster. Certainly cows would view me as such if they had the sense to do so. I have two choices then. Be that monster and continue eating animals, or stop being that monster and become a vegetarian. The rationalizations I make about how worried I am for the animal's welfare and treatment are only the mask the monster hides behind, they don't change the ultimate nature of the activity.

 

[dank69]

I think you've forgotten what this thread is about. You comments seem pretty clear to me as well. The thread is about whether or not we should expend additional effort to make sure we're being "nice" to our food. You say yes we should because doing otherwise makes us "assholes" and "dicks". You essentially offer no further justification for that idea.

I can only assume you hold that position because it makes you feel better about the whole raising animal for slaughter situation. It's the salve for your conscience when you pick up a ribeye from the supermarket.

All I'm saying is that I don't allow myself that luxury. Either animals are food or they aren't. I'm not going to pretend I'm a better person because I worry over the quibbling details of their lives before they're lead down the chute to be slaughtered. I eat meat, and in some small way that makes me a kind of animal murdering monster. Certainly cows would view me as such if they had the sense to do so. I have two choices then. Be that monster and continue eating animals, or stop being that monster and become a vegetarian. The rationalizations I make about how worried I am for the animal's welfare and treatment are only the mask the monster hides behind, they don't change the ultimate nature of the activity.

I addressed your position in post 7.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I addressed your position in post 7.

I believe suffering is an actual thing. Why do we feel the need to reduce it though? Just for it's own sake? It makes sense when it's a pet whom you love. It makes sense when it's a human being with whom you can relate. Why does it make sense in a food animal that by all rational accounts you should be endeavoring to divest yourself from emotionally? If you can care about something and then kill it for food it's YOU who are the psychopath, or perhaps something even darker and more twisted for which there is no clear categorization.

 

[dank69]

I believe suffering is an actual thing. Why do we feel the need to reduce it though? Just for it's own sake? It makes sense when it's a pet whom you love. It makes sense when it's a human being with whom you can relate. Why does it make sense in a food animal that by all rational accounts you should be endeavoring to divest yourself from emotionally? If you can care about something and then kill it for food it's YOU who are the psychopath, or perhaps something even darker and more twisted for which there is no clear categorization.

It's not about "caring" it's about not causing pain. You know how we have international laws against torture but killing people during war is just fine?

 

[moonbogg]

This is a discussion born out of luxury. If things got bad, you would eat whatever the hell would let you eat it.

 

[Rakehellion]

There are laws to stun the animals prior to their being slaughtered for food.

To be a vegetarian is a good alternative

look, if u r gonna eat animals, how do you draw a line between a pig and dog? and what's to stop you from eating monkeys and humans?
im not gonna go into animal ethics. but i became a vegan because im fortunate to have a choice.

Lol? Tons of animals die from vegetable production. Aside from that, you obviously don't care for the well being of the underaged Mexican immigrants who pick your lettuce in the hot sun for 12 hours every day.

Ironically, harvesting insects has the least environmental impact of any food.

 

[Rakehellion]

tl;dr If ordinary people were forced to watch the entire commercial food chain in action (slaughterhouses, rendering plants) then they most likely would not eat meat for quite a while.

If you saw how poorly the farmers who pick your vegetables were treated, you'd stop eating plants.
If you saw how they process water at a treatment plant, you'd stop drinking water.
If you saw how much pollution is in the air, you'd stop breathing.

People slaughter animals and then eat them every day.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

We are raising a bunch of slack jawed ... nevermind ... these days.

 

[MongGrel]

You kill animals humanely to show respect. Animals are a resource that should not be squandered, taken for granted or, exploited entirely for money.

+1

 

[tokie]

If you care about the cows, stop eating them. Everything else is a rationalization for what is at it's core a horrific practice no matter how "humanely" it's carried out.

Exactly.

Whether or not you treat an animal "humanely" you are still killing it in order to eat it.

Just because you treated it nicely while it was alive does not make the fact that you are killing it any different.

Hunters/butchers realize this and can stomach it. The average Joe buying a steak at the grocery store does not think about this, probably out of willful ignorance.

This is analogous to giving someone about to be executed a last meal of their choice. Sure it may be a nice gesture but it doesn't change the fact that someone is being murdered.

 

[waggy]

Exactly.

Whether or not you treat an animal "humanely" you are still killing it in order to eat it.

Just because you treated it nicely while it was alive does not make the fact that you are killing it any different.

Hunters/butchers realize this and can stomach it. The average Joe buying a steak at the grocery store does not think about this, probably out of willful ignorance.

This is analogous to giving someone about to be executed a last meal of their choice. Sure it may be a nice gesture but it doesn't change the fact that someone is being murdered.

bolded part is wrong. I have been hunting for over 30 years. One of the thing stressed is a "killing shot". If youj don't have it DON'T fire.

why? I don't want the animal to suffer from a poor shot. i don't want to track the fucker miles to retrieve it.

I have only seen a few that don't give a shit.

 

[SlitheryDee]

It's not about "caring" it's about not causing pain. You know how we have international laws against torture but killing people during war is just fine?

If you don't care about something then why concern yourself with it's pain? This smacks of something we hold as a virtue, but actually has no rational basis. How do you think people who work in slaughterhouses can do their jobs? They divest themselves of any emotional attachment to the animals being slaughtered. It's the only way a sane person can truly deal with the horror of it. All of them can't be psychopaths. It doesn't mean they enjoy what they do. It just means that they have steeled their minds against the natural human response to it. In a small way, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm just not going to pretend that there's any nobility or morality in it no matter how much I wring my hands over the minutia, which is what I believe many here are doing.

As to your second point: We shouldn't be killing anyone. If we unanimously decide someone should die though; why should we have a problem with torturing them if there is anything to be gained from it? To me, the killing is the big deal. All the stuff leading up to that is next to nothing, yet we decide to focus powerfully upon the lesser issue so we don't have to think about the larger one. It's another of those "just because" situations. It fills a need we have for self-justification, and that's all.

 

[Rakehellion]

Just because you treated it nicely while it was alive does not make the fact that you are killing it any different

Just because you are killing it does not change the fact that you treated it nicely.

 

[MrDudeMan]

I think you've forgotten what this thread is about. You comments seem pretty clear to me as well. The thread is about whether or not we should expend additional effort to make sure we're being "nice" to our food. You say yes we should because doing otherwise makes us "assholes" and "dicks". You essentially offer no further justification for that idea.

I can only assume you hold that position because it makes you feel better about the whole raising animal for slaughter situation. It's the salve for your conscience when you pick up a ribeye from the supermarket.

All I'm saying is that I don't allow myself that luxury. Either animals are food or they aren't. I'm not going to pretend I'm a better person because I worry over the quibbling details of their lives before they're lead down the chute to be slaughtered. I eat meat, and in some small way that makes me a kind of animal murdering monster. Certainly cows would view me as such if they had the sense to do so. I have two choices then. Be that monster and continue eating animals, or stop being that monster and become a vegetarian. The rationalizations I make about how worried I am for the animal's welfare and treatment are only the mask the monster hides behind, they don't change the ultimate nature of the activity.

I really didn't think I needed to justify those points and I still don't. However, you're still missing the point even though you claimed otherwise, so how about this:

It's not wrong to eat animals.
It's extremely stupid and, if you have any sense of humanity, wrong to cause unnecessary suffering to animals before they become your dinner.

Spare everyone the idiotic bullshit of "well just be a vegetarian if you don't like it." Almost no one is saying anything that stupid except you. Eat animals until you explode if that's what you need to do, but you don't need to torture them before they turn into your food. Keeping a chicken confined to a 1x1x1 cage, which has historically been their allowed living space, is fucking retarded. Let the damn thing walk around and live mostly unencumbered before you serve it for dinner. Espousing literally any other opinion means you've reduced a living thing to something far less. It doesn't have to be a human to earn more than barely survivable, miserable living conditions.

Since you seem to not understand that animals feel pain, have emotions, and generally are capable of suffering. You also don't seem to understand that inflicting those things on animals isn't the same as killing them for food.