KFC's new offensive, misleading and distressing TV commercial...

I really hope the new £10 and £20 notes use even more animal products than the new £5. It'll be hilarious.

I don't consider farming when implemented well abusive; I don't consider it my responsibility to create or enforce livestock welfare regulations.

Karl wrote:I don't consider farming when implemented well abusive; I don't consider it my responsibility to create or enforce livestock welfare regulations.

This as a consumer you influence it by buying responsibly and buying higher welfare etc. Which encourages better practices etc. but it is the governments jobs to set the standards

I don't think anyone here (edit - except Lucien! ) is accusing non-vegans of direct responsibility, but rather a species of hypocrisy when they claim to love animals. Witness the furore surrounding the gorilla shot in the zoo (should've shot the boy's parents instead!) or the various 'hunters' photographed with their prey (cowards! use the internet to destroy their lives!). Should not such righteous indignation require veganism? Why is it okay to kill (and eat) some animals but not kill others for their fur, or for sport?

For what it's worth, I don't have a problem with the hypocrisy (which I evidently share), but seem, during the course of this thread, to have developed a problem with the denial of there being any issue at all, since this suggests self-deception at best, or wilful ignorance at worst.

@Mic: I think it's OK to kill animals for fur as long as the animals are well-treated, but real fur is so economically worthless that places (such as Austria) that tried to apply welfare regulations to the fur industry effectively banned the practice -- it's too expensive to meet basic welfare standards on a fur farm. That's why I wouldn't buy fur, not because I think fur is inherently wrong.

It's OK to kill any non-endangered animal as long as the action (a) has some defined, productive purpose and (b) is done as humanely as possible. "I like doing it" (or "I want to jizz in a horse") usually meets neither criteria and certainly doesn't meet the first.

EDIT: @Lucien: I don't think you can transfer the responsibility of a chicken's welfare - which is down to the farm and the government - onto some poor sod that just wants to eat an egg. Going to a supermarket and buying a cheap egg isn't an immoral act and shouldn't be framed as one. If you want battery farming to be banned then take it up with the legislature. [That was a poor choice of words as obviously conventional battery farming was already ended in this country, but you know what I mean: cramped conditions and all that.]

How is 'bacon, mmmm' any more productive than hanging a hunting trophy on your wall? I would suggest that the former does far more harm right across the board.

mic wrote:How is 'bacon, mmmm' any more productive than hanging a hunting trophy on your wall? I would suggest that the former does far more harm right across the board.

Because you're applying an inconsistent criterion: an unreasonably harsh threshold to an act that provides a person with sustenance, and an unreasonably loose threshold to an act that boils down to boasting about shooting something.

There's already an initiative (and product) for consuming the most environmentally-friendly and healthy possible nutrient sludge. It's literally insane to suggest that anyone that doesn't drink the amusingly-named Soylent for their three meals a day is morally deficient.

Ultimately the immorality in trophy hunting, for me, isn't the big immorality of 'murder': it's the little immorality of wasting something that could have been useful to another person or (a helpful part of the admittedly abstract concept of 'the ecosystem'). It's not about the animal - I really, genuinely don't care about the death of nonsapient beings I have no connection to - it's about resource management. People who go trophy-hunting aren't supervillains, they're just wasteful braggarts -- still enough to deserve a bit of derision on the Internet. (Not enough to deserve having their lives destroyed, if that's happened.)

Lucien wrote:

Karl wrote:EDIT: @Lucien: I don't think you can transfer the responsibility of a chicken's welfare - which is down to the farm and the government - onto some poor sod that just wants to eat an egg.

The farm and the government set the standards, sure, but do you believe consumers aren't responsible for anything that happens? i.e. if you eat lamb tonight is the government the direct cause of that?

Essentially, yes? If I eat lamb tonight and the lamb happened to be mistreated, then that's between the farmer and whichever regulatory body is responsible for lamb welfare. It literally wasn't anything to do with me. I just went to a supermarket and thought "Hmm, I feel like lamb meat."

It's generally in British farmers best interests to ensure that their animals are treated to a reasonable standard, in the UK there's huge PR in advertising the fact that your food sources are treated humanely and any risk to that image could collapse sales and put farmers out of business quite literally overnight when every supermarket suddenly severs their contracts.
In America on the other hand there seems to be generally a lot less fuss made outside of groups like the Whole Foods demographic. Your typical yank buying their food at Wal-Mart probably doesn't give a gooseberry fool where it came from or how the animal was treated so long as it's cheap.

Lucien wrote:You wouldn't be responsible for any mistreatment beyond your knowledge but you would be for its death, right? That's the last thing I'll ask.

I'm happy to shoulder some responsibility for the lamb's death! (But not any of the circumstances surrounding the death, as I didn't actually kill it.)

Lucien wrote:

Karl wrote:EDIT: @Lucien: I don't think you can transfer the responsibility of a chicken's welfare - which is down to the farm and the government - onto some poor sod that just wants to eat an egg.

The farm and the government set the standards, sure, but do you believe consumers aren't responsible for anything that happens? i.e. if you eat lamb tonight is the government the direct cause of that?

No they are not the cause of you eating lamb.

If you choose to buy lamb that has been punched in the face once a day they are responsible for allowing that practice.

You have some responsibility though to buy the highest welfare you can but it is for the government to set what the lowest acceptable level is.

Errkal wrote:

Lucien wrote:

Karl wrote:EDIT: @Lucien: I don't think you can transfer the responsibility of a chicken's welfare - which is down to the farm and the government - onto some poor sod that just wants to eat an egg.

The farm and the government set the standards, sure, but do you believe consumers aren't responsible for anything that happens? i.e. if you eat lamb tonight is the government the direct cause of that?

No they are not the cause of you eating lamb.

If you choose to buy lamb that has been punched in the face once a day they are responsible for allowing that practice.

You have some responsibility though to buy the highest welfare you can but it is for the government to set what the lowest acceptable level is.

But what if you're at the supermarket and have two options...

Lamb...

or...

Lamb (punched in the face)...

And you buy the punched in the face version...

It's still the governments fault?



What you buy and fund is what you're responsible for. Whether that's a savings account with a certain bank that funds drone warfare, or a clothing manufacturer that uses child labour. You are creating the demand for that product and how it comes to market.

I totally agree with everything mic has said, I can't believe anyone could argue otherwise.

Chickens would go extinct within several generations if they weren't bred and reared by humans for food. They're without defence in the natural world and wouldn't survive predators, and they're not exotic enough to preserve without the incentive of food.

Agree or disagree?

BID0 wrote:What you buy and fund is what you're responsible for. Whether that's a savings account with a certain bank that funds drone warfare, or a clothing manufacturer that uses child labour. You are creating the demand for that product and how it comes to market.

I totally agree with everything mic has said, I can't believe anyone could argue otherwise.

Eating meat or buying clothes or opening a bank account is literally nothing to do with kicking animals or child slavery or drone warfare. In a modern, globalised economy, individual consumers shouldn't have to worry about the entire manufacturing process and supply chain of their everyday essentials. The people with the power to prevent all that horrible stuff are the legislature.

Let's take the analogy of clothes. I get some of my underwear from Primark ( but it's cheap!) and most of my clothes from Debenhams (affordable-enough way to look a bit professional). I have no idea if those shops ultimately use textiles factories in China that 'employ' children; I would be against UK companies being allowed to utilise that kind of factory. But it's unreasonable to suggest that I have to deprive myself of affordable underwear out of some ridiculous, ineffective sense of martyrdom for an evil I didn't commit -- buying pants and undershirts is not immoral.

I feel a bit sorry for you if you are out there day-to-day constantly worrying about whether it's OK to buy an electric car that has plastics made by some evil megacorporation that tests on animals*. You must feel very guilty all the time. At some point you have to draw the line and divorce your decision to buy something you need or want from the sometimes-unpleasant actions of businesses you have nothing to do with.

* This is written from what I assume your perspective is; like any sensible scientist with a grounding in reality I recognise the need for animal testing.

Karl wrote:Because you're applying an inconsistent criterion: an unreasonably harsh threshold to an act that provides a person with sustenance, and an unreasonably loose threshold to an act that boils down to boasting about shooting something...

Sustenance is not the issue at all and you know it. There is a great deal of food to be had without the slaughter of animals. As I said before, this is about gratification and the human (particularly western) condition of having whatever one wants (provided that society deems it to be acceptable). You seem to imply that you (or I) are in a morally superior position to the hunters, but how can this be - because we ate a small part of the animal that we didn't even kill? Inconsequential! We eat meat because we like to - purely for the pleasure of it. If hunters similarly take pleasure from shooting dumb animals, who are we to judge?

Karl wrote:...I really, genuinely don't care about the death of nonsapient beings I have no connection to - it's about resource management...

Monster!** What about the abuse of nonsapient beings you have no connection to? Why should you care any more about the pain which they certainly experience than the loss of their lives? Can you really not see the double standard? Admit it! Confess!!!


**Not really!

mic wrote:Sustenance is not the issue at all and you know it. There is a great deal of food to be had without the slaughter of animals.

So what? I don't think there is any moral difference between humanely killing a cow and killing a carrot -- because neither are sapient. (Torture is a different manner, because cows are sentient and carrots aren't.)

By the way, as you ignored in my last post, there is already a theoretically-best diet plan. It's called Soylent (there are other brands). You are an evil monster for not drinking Soylent three times a day.

mic wrote:As I said before, this is about gratification and the human (particularly western) condition of having whatever one wants (provided that society deems it to be acceptable).

Killing an animal humanely doesn't require a moral justification. But the animal is a resource, and I view killing an animal for no reason the same way I would view someone who bought luxury cars just to smash them up with a hammer and boast about it.

mic wrote:You seem to imply that you (or I) are in a morally superior position to the hunters, but how can this be - because we ate a small part of the animal that we didn't even kill?

Yeah.

mic wrote:Inconsequential!

Not when you view animals as objects that you can own and manage. Which they are.

mic wrote:We eat meat because we like to - purely for the pleasure of it. If hunters similarly take pleasure from shooting dumb animals, who are we to judge?

I just think it's in poor taste, in the same way it's in poor taste to go around telling people you go around buying Aston Martins just to drive them into walls.

I think trophy-hunting for no purpose other than sport is wasteful. I don't take any moral position against killing an animal humanely for any reason, but I do take a minor moral position - i.e. it annoys me a bit - against wasting potentially useful resources. "Useful" might be that someone else could have used bits of that animal for a more pressing concern, but it might also just mean that the animal was part of some ecosystem.

mic wrote:

Karl wrote:...I really, genuinely don't care about the death of nonsapient beings I have no connection to - it's about resource management...

Monster!** What about the abuse of nonsapient beings you have no connection to? Why should you care any more about the pain which they certainly experience than the loss of their lives?

Animals are sentient. It's bad to cause them pain. Animals are not sapient. It doesn't matter if you kill them.

mic wrote:Can you really not see the double standard? Admit it! Confess!!!

I can't see the double standard, no. In my opinion it's a really well-defined, easy-to-follow moral system. I'll say it again -- sentient = torture bad; sapient = killing bad. Why? Because sentience implies you can feel pain, and I don't want anything that can feel pain to feel it unnecessarily. But sapience is the threshold for having a true, introspective understanding of your life and desires and what the effect of death would be on them. That gives your continued life an inherent worth that simply isn't there in nonsapient beings.

Lucien wrote:I'm really surprised you think these things. While I wouldn't attribute the ideas to a political wing exactly, you seem very left wing otherwise, yet on animal rights you appear very "right wing" for lack of a better term.

I don't think I can necessarily disagree with that, though I'm not very 'right-wing' on these issues (I disagree with fox hunting and badger culls). I ocasionally lean a little right on foreign policy as well; I would describe myself as centre-left overall, with my leftmost views coming in on policies like personal liberties and the social welfare system.

Karl wrote:...In a modern, globalised economy, individual consumers shouldn't have to worry about the entire manufacturing process and supply chain of their everyday essentials. The people with the power to prevent all that horrible stuff are the legislature...

I like your example. Another could be the 'rape' of Africa for, amongst other things, rare minerals used in the production of smartphones, such as tantalum, leading to everything from child exploitation to regional instability and outright war.

Will this stop me from upgrading my smartphone when I feel like it? Not likely. Must I therefore delude myself into thinking that the African children are quite happy with their labour, perhaps with the justification that they'd be starving if they weren't working? Or am I allowed to feel bad while reading about their condition on my iPhone 7?

Lucien wrote:

Karl wrote:* This is written from what I assume your perspective is; like any sensible scientist with a grounding in reality I recognise the need for animal testing.

I'm really surprised you think these things. While I wouldn't attribute the ideas to a political wing exactly, you seem very left wing otherwise, yet on animal rights you appear very "right wing" for lack of a better term.

Just to follow up, I'm actually involved in scientific research in the pharmaceuticals sphere aimed at reducing animal testing. I think it's important we replace it with non-animal-based experiments where we can. But I also think the zero-tolerance policy of certain animal rights types is beyond ridiculous; it would be far worse if these industries failed in their duty to verify the safety of the medicines and products they launched. Animal testing will always form some part of that.