I’ve never watched one of those documentaries. My views on this shifted in part due to personal experiences with animals and the shooting of Harambe.
I do not doubt what you’ve observed however the scale of the process virtually guarantees suffering.
The United States slaughters over 30 million cattle per year. If one out of 500 [1] slaughters falls on a range from major pain to unimaginable cognitive experience of trauma, it’s pretty bad.
It says nothing of mishaps and disease resulting from their keeping.
While some feel relative intelligence is not a good way to determine suffering, pigs are regarded as one of the smartest animals on the planet. As another HN friendly example, pigs demonstrate self-agency: they can use a joystick to manipulate a cursor. [2]
The US slaughters over 75 million hogs a year. Run the same stats and you end up with a commanding species that is nothing short of barbaric.
I agree with the comment upthread, that in due time our cruelty to animals in this time will be one of our great shames.
[1] I think suffering is likely far more common than this, but for HN perspective, here are some estimates in bugs per lines of code: https://stackoverflow.com/a/56043694
I do not doubt what you’ve observed however the scale of the process virtually guarantees suffering.
The United States slaughters over 30 million cattle per year. If one out of 500 [1] slaughters falls on a range from major pain to unimaginable cognitive experience of trauma, it’s pretty bad.
It says nothing of mishaps and disease resulting from their keeping.
While some feel relative intelligence is not a good way to determine suffering, pigs are regarded as one of the smartest animals on the planet. As another HN friendly example, pigs demonstrate self-agency: they can use a joystick to manipulate a cursor. [2]
The US slaughters over 75 million hogs a year. Run the same stats and you end up with a commanding species that is nothing short of barbaric.
I agree with the comment upthread, that in due time our cruelty to animals in this time will be one of our great shames.
[1] I think suffering is likely far more common than this, but for HN perspective, here are some estimates in bugs per lines of code: https://stackoverflow.com/a/56043694
[2] https://escholarship.org/content/qt8sx4s79c/qt8sx4s79c.pdf?t...