I disagree. So long as we don’t torture them I see no problem in consuming other creatures. “One bad day” is a good guideline for how animals should be harvested for food.
So long as they aren’t in physical pain during their life, I don’t think animals really care or even understand their situation. For instance, a bunch of cattle don’t wonder about how their lives would be better if they were free range. They just live in the moment with no concept of “a better life” or “freedom”. We project our feelings on them which they don’t have the ability to reason about.
Physically hurting them during their short lives is wrong because they do feel physical pain. We shouldn’t scare them. But they wouldn’t even exist if they weren’t made for food.
We don’t need these animals to survive. Human beings can live long, happy, healthy lives without meat and cheese. Literally all nutrients we need to live and be healthy can be found in plants, or manufactured and added to foods (which is how livestock end up with B12, actually)
So, with that in mind, really any amount of harm or violence done to these animals is unnecessary, and done for pleasure (taste) only.
People who disagree tend to think that we somehow need to consume animals, but that has been debunked many times. Or, folks often convince themselves that violence and suffering of a sentient being for the reason of pleasure is somehow not simply evil.
That’s generally the viewpoint of folks who oppose eating and hurting animals.
Even the “one bad day” argument doesn’t hold up well, because folks would still raise hell if I painlessly killed my dog as soon as it became inconvenient to have one, no? Or they’d still raise hell if someone was unknowingly molested in their sleep.
There is more to deciding if we are treating a sentient being well beyond simply “did I treat it okay before I killed it?”, and the only reason that’s hard to see is because most people on this planet grow up being told that for some reason, some animals are different. For some reason, we can bludgeon a pig to death with a hammer (thumping), or boil a living lobster alive, but we can’t do the same to a dog or a cat.
We have been lied to. Doing any of these things to animals is wrong because we don’t need to eat them, except in very rare cases.
If you’re ever on a desert island, we can have a different conversation.
But it's my culture to consume them. My people have lived this way for thousands of years and I intend on continuing it and teaching my children our traditions. It connects me to our shared history and it connects me to the Earth. I am a natural being on this planet and part of the lifecycle. Consumption of meat is a part of that. Cooking meat over open fire with smoke and the aromas filling my lungs means something to me.
I don't want to change my culture to another way of living that I am disconnected from. I understand there are many cultures that don't eat meat and I respect that and wouldn't try and change them to eat meat. But it isn't mine and I intend on living the way I believe that god, or the universe, intended me to live.
Culture is not a reason to justify harm or violence. Just because we've always done something doesn't mean we always should, otherwise anything that falls under the umbrella of culture can't be critiqued, like genital mutilation, or child brides.
Culture is important, but we can just as easily establish cultural practices that condemn violence and harm, rather than support them.
How about all the creatures that are killed by harvesting machines when wheat, corn, or soy is being harvested... I imagine probably the number of small creatures that are destroyed are probably on par with the number of crustacea harvested each year.
Sure, there are absolutely deaths there. But the problem though is that the majority of crops we grow are grown to feed the livestock.
So you’ll still minimize the number of crop deaths by going vegan.
Even if you believe that plants are just as sentient as animals (which some people have argued to me…) then going vegan still reduces that suffering the most.
The idea that they wouldn't exist if not 'made for food' sounds like a pretty anthropocentric view, what do you base that view on? Aren't cows competing in the same genetic race for survival every other species is? They certainly aren't like a fruit that's designed to be appealing for consumption - except perhaps for the selective breeding we've done since domestication.
Because dairy and meat cows literally would not exist if not for human consumption, their evolution and continued existence is not natural. Their wild cousins is a different story though.
Why does this matter? They still feel and suffer just as much as their “natural” cousins, so it’s not like we should pretend we are granting them anything good.
Livestock raised for commercial meat and dairy consumption live horrible lives. Watch Dominion for free on youtube if you don’t believe me.
We should stop breeding these animals into existence.
Pigs are known to pretty commonly work out why they're being raised (to the point that they get distressed as other pigs get taken away and work out when it's their turn).
That said, I don't particularly think we need to stop besides for environmental reasons. The ideal solution will be when we can grow "test tube" meat of comparable quality to existing meat.
This is easily refuted by the myriad instances of animals escaping their captors, strategizing, and even empathizing. For academic writing on exactly that, I suggest reading "Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era" by Sarat Colling.
So long as they aren’t in physical pain during their life, I don’t think animals really care or even understand their situation. For instance, a bunch of cattle don’t wonder about how their lives would be better if they were free range. They just live in the moment with no concept of “a better life” or “freedom”. We project our feelings on them which they don’t have the ability to reason about.
Physically hurting them during their short lives is wrong because they do feel physical pain. We shouldn’t scare them. But they wouldn’t even exist if they weren’t made for food.