But, I take it you'd be happy for all our domesticated livestock to die out from neglect as would happen if people stopped buying meat, find it as absurd as the anti-veal brigade, I'm having some side salad with my chilli beef fajitas tonight to balance things out mind.The facts are that animals feel pain and it is significant. We can appreciate it because we are animals too. Now if you accept those 2 facts and continue to perpetuate the needless suffering then the judgment is made automatically. To those people only, not the ignorant. I know people don't like to think themselves as selfishd, but what are you left with?
I'll post links about pain and neurons and brains and nervous systems later supporting those facts.
I'll say it again as you don't seem to be able to understand. The fact that animals feel pain is obvious and not relevant. Whether they feel pain during the slaughter process is the issue. It is by no means proven that animals feel pain when they are being slaughtered and if they do, it is only for a matter of seconds. This is because the slaughter process is designed to drain blood from the brain as fast as possible inducing almost immediate unconsciousness.The facts are that animals feel pain and it is significant. We can appreciate it because we are animals too. Now if you accept those 2 facts and continue to perpetuate the needless suffering then the judgment is made automatically. To those people only, not the ignorant. I know people don't like to think themselves as selfishd, but what are you left with?
I'll post links about pain and neurons and brains and nervous systems later supporting those facts.
what the fuck is the "golden rule" you're still talking through your fucking arse.I'll try to post links later to what I've read and the conclusions it has made me form. All I was really saying was I think animals feel pain and distress and thus you are obligated to extend 'the golden rule' to them. Our Human nature isn't pretty or good and the only saving grace is our intelligence, it would be better if we didn't walk through our shit lives rationalizing our behaviour.
I'll try to post links later to what I've read and the conclusions it has made me form. All I was really saying was I think animals feel pain and distress and thus you are obligated to extend 'the golden rule' to them. Our Human nature isn't pretty or good and the only saving grace is our intelligence, it would be better if we didn't walk through our shit lives rationalizing our behaviour.
The facts are that animals feel pain and it is significant.
........I think animals feel pain and distress.........
The facts are that animals feel pain and it is significant. We can appreciate it because we are animals too.
So, do you think animals feel pain, or is it a fact?
Do all animals feel pain, or just some?
What is the difference between pain and reflexes?
Would you kill a wasp? How about a pig?
What you've done is drawn an arbitrary line in the sand, based on no scientific knowledge (and the reason I know there's no scientific background to your decision is because there is no defined point at which an animal is deemed to feel pain, below which pain is not felt). You've made a moral judgement call, you've decided "these animals feel pain, and as such killing them is wrong. However, these animals don't feel pain, they have reflexes, so killing them isn't morally objectionable to me". People who eat meat and dairy simply don't draw that line.
Lets assume, incorrectly, for one moment that you're right, and the rest of the world tomorrow has an epiphany and decides killing animals for food, and eating dairy, is morally reprehensible, and stop doing it. What exactly do you think the fallout will be? I'll tell you what, global economic meltdown for one. Tens of millions, across the globe, would be unemployed. The economies of every country on the planet would collapse. Then you've got billions of animals which people no longer need, and no longer have the means or desire to tend for. What happens to the 1.5 billion domesticated cattle? Are they left to roam free? Can you imagine the disaster that would cause? So, do we slaughter them all instead? No, we can't do that, they feel pain, and we'd be morally inferior to the vegans again. Your view point is entirely based around personal feelings and opinions. It carries no moral or ethical weight with anyone but yourself. It does not colour anyone else's opinion of themselves, or imbue you with any kind of superiority to them. It also is coming from a naïve, utopian, kum by yar version of the planet whereby we all live hand in hand, providing for our fellow man, and all decisions have nothing but positive outcomes. It's pie in the sky claptrap.
I think if the animal has a nervous system and sensory receptors it "feels it" (the stimulus that causes the animal to move away), what happens next we are not sure because emotional pain steps in. How it reacts to the pain, individual humans react differently to the same pain. that is something we cannot measure.
There are some animals who we think we can understand because they show what we think are emotions, dogs, horses, monkeys etc etc other usually reptiles show "no emotions" and they are harder to read. The moral animal jumps in here. Nice dog, nasty snake.
Just because an animal has a nervous system does not mean that it shares our nervous system. As intelligence and other parts of genetics have evolved with humans at the very apex of them developmentally, it would logically follow that we also feel intense levels of pain that animals do not.
The point I'm rather poorly attempting to make here is that we're again guilty of anthropomorphising the animal world. Maybe what we classify as pain feels completely different to an animal? Maybe they feel absolutely no physical pain at all but they use the same sensory perceptions which triggers a "pain response" within them without the actual sensation of pain a bit like how language works in some creatures?
If it reacts it is feeling it. I agree we may not know what they are feeling but they are reacting and moving away, they feel something.
Stick a monkey's hand in a boiling pot and the the monkey will scream, stick a lizard's tail in there it wont scream but it will shift its tail.