"They Were Bred for a Purpose"

“They would go extinct without us breeding them! At least they have a purpose: to be eaten.”

I guess for them it’s not “eat or be eaten” but “be eaten or be extinct”. So isn’t that a fair trade for animals? They get to exist even if for a brief amount of time, and even if it’s constant suffering, just to be eaten. But hey, they existed, right? If this one holds up, I would be able to justify eating them without guilt.

One existence, please

I explore why existence might not be all it’s cracked up to be for them, and why it’s not an ironclad agreement, more deeply in the Humane Slaughter article. To summarise:

• Nobody is waiting to be born: There is no waiting room of souls floating around till we breed them into existence. No one is harmed if they don’t exist.
• Creating someone doesn’t mean you own them: Parents bring children into the world, and that gives them a duty of care, not the right to kill them when they please.
• Intended use does not decide morality: Intention does not override the interests of the being affected. Do they not want to live?

So “bringing something into existence” doesn’t give us the right to just do whatever we want to them. And what sort of existence are they given anyway?

With some extra suffering on the side

We’ve essentially, over the years, redesigned their bodies around what we want from them, and their welfare was never the priority:

• Broiler chickens grow so big, so fast, that they live with heart problems and struggle to walk because their legs can’t cope with the weight. They are slaughtered at just 4–6 weeks old [source].
• Laying hens and dairy cows: Their conditions are covered in a separate article where I look into the milk and egg industries.

“Life’s a bitch and then you die”, literally, for them, and we decided it for them.

The way of the dodo!

Does anyone actually think the whole world will go vegan overnight and every farm animal will suddenly be set free? If our perception does shift, it will most likely be gradual, with fewer animals bred each year. I’m sure we can adapt our world into a more animal-friendly place. We’re the smartest species, after all.

We’re not saving 80 billion land animals a year by breeding and slaughtering them. We’re just punishing 80 billion land animals a year for our taste pleasure.

The Bottom Line

As far as I can tell, they don’t need us to breed them into existence to give them a purpose. If there’s a version of this argument I’m missing, I’d love to hear it.