Humane Slaughter

“What if I only buy organically farmed meat? The animals live a beautiful, safe life and then they just have one bad day at the end?”

Factory farming is a moral catastrophe, but it’s not the only way to obtain meat to eat. There are farms that raise animals in much better conditions. Of course, it would cost more, but it’s worth it for the taste and ethical peace of mind, no?

If we look into this, it’s just one bad day, right?

Spell ‘Humane Slaughter’. Can I get the definition?

From dictionary corner:

• Humane: means compassionate, civilised, and kind.
• Slaughter: to kill.

Humane actions are ones that humanity should be carrying out. So I’m struggling to see how you can “kill” something “compassionately.” I can’t work out how to humanely kill something that doesn’t want to die.

But what if it doesn’t hurt?

“Okay, but if the death is completely painless, the animal doesn’t suffer. So where’s the harm?”

This is pretty convincing sounding for me at least because there’s no harm, right? Imagine the perfect farm with the perfect death: no fear, no stress, no pain. Is that okay?

Maybe not. The harm of killing is never just the pain. The harm is what’s taken away. A cow who can feel isn’t just something that can be hurt. There’s someone there, with a life of their own and every future day they would have lived. A painless death still takes all of that.

We already know this intuitively with humans. If someone were killed in their sleep without ever knowing it, nobody would say “well, it didn’t hurt, so no harm done.” I would have immense sadness at the loss of the life that they’re missing out on. This is why I draw my line at sentience: if there’s someone there, they have something to lose.

Love them to death

Imagine I got a kitten and raised him with love, provided him with food, shelter, and safety, and then he grows up, no longer looking like a kitten. But I love kittens, not cats, so I decide that the kitten has had a great life and euthanise him to replace him with a new kitten.

A bit twisted, in my opinion? I would love Aloo forever and want him to live the longest life!

1. Won’t somebody please think of the children! Animals raised for food don’t get to live anywhere near their natural lifespan.

Animal	Slaughtered on average	Natural lifespan
Cow (beef)	18–24 months	~20 years
Pig	6 months	~15 years
Chicken (meat)	6 weeks	~8 years

Even on the best farm in the world, we are killing them when they are essentially still children. That’s just business, bebe!

2. Down payment on cruelty: Just because I am kind to an animal, it doesn’t build up a ‘moral credit’ balance that allows me to do whatever I want to them later. Past kindness does not justify future violence.
3. Killing them with kindness: In the case of euthanisation, there’s a fundamental difference between putting down an animal to prevent their suffering, and killing a healthy animal for the purposes of exploitation. One is compassion and the other is convenience.

I brought you into this world, I can take you out!

“But if we didn’t eat them, they would never have been born at all! Isn’t it better to have one decent year of life and one bad day, rather than never existing?”

I struggled with this argument the most. Isn’t it better to have any sort of existence rather than none at all? It’s common enough that philosophers have written about it. There are actually three distinct philosophical problems that arise when we try to justify bringing animals into existence for the purpose of being eaten:

1. No Body, Nobody (There’s no one waiting to be born)

Why is non-existence bad? My biggest problem was not realising that there is no waiting room of unborn souls ready to step into the sun from their dark void.

Choosing not to breed a cow does not harm a cow. There’s no one there to harm.

But say we do believe that existence is better than non-existence as long as there is some net positivity. That brings us to utilitarianism.

2. 1 year of happy life > 1 bad day (Utilitarianism)

The argument assumes that as long as the “net happiness” of the animal’s life outweighs the pain of its death, the transaction is morally good. If we put this into a different context, suddenly it intuitively feels wrong.

💭Help, my farmer's an alien!

Imagine aliens land on Earth and open up a human farm. Humans can choose to live there and are given everything they need to thrive for 10 years. After that, they are peacefully euthanised and eaten.

Not bad, right? Cost of living, wars, pandemics! Life’s pretty hard right now, so it’s a pretty sweet deal, especially if you’re older.

But now imagine you were born into this human farm. You have a great 10 years of life from age 0 to 10, and then you are peacefully euthanised and eaten.

Is this still a good deal? Not really. Even though on paper it’s the same 10 good years and the same painless death, the difference is how much life gets taken away. An 80-year-old loses a few years they might have had anyway. A 10-year-old loses growing up, falling in love, and everything they would have done with the next 70 years.

A cow killed at 18 months loses the same, with roughly 18 years of life gone. Therefore, it’s not a good deal for them either (But a cow doesn’t have the same value).

But we own the animals, so we get to decide what’s right for them, right? What rights does a cow have? This leads us to Deontology and the Rights-Based View.

3. Right to have Rights (The Rights-Based View)

We owe a lot to our parents, but does that mean they can kill us?

If two parents have a child, they brought that child into existence. But creating life does not give them the moral or legal right to kill that child at age five because parenting is too difficult. Once they exist, the child possesses its own inherent right to live.

Shouldn’t this extend to all sentient beings? If a being can experience life and has the capacity to suffer, there’s someone there with a life of their own. Shouldn’t they automatically have a right to live as well?

Bringing a sentient being into the world is a massive responsibility, not a transaction. Once you breed them, you owe them a duty of care. You don’t get to play God by saying, “I created you, therefore I am entitled to kill you when I want a sandwich.”

Make some room!

Most people disagree with factory farming to some extent, but then do nothing about it.

But what if we actually did it? What if we banned factory farming and we regulated the hell out of the meat industry to ensure an amazing life for all the animals?

The maths doesn’t work. We slaughter roughly 80 billion land animals a year. It’s not possible to give every one of those a great life because of land, time, resource, and logistical constraints.

Paying for Peace of Mind

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how good the cow’s life is. “Humane” and “organic” labels are better, but they don’t address the main point. Better welfare can make a life less cruel, but it can’t make a killing okay. The animals still don’t want to die, and that is exactly what I am trying to avoid.