Vegetarians!

[GamingWolf]

Wait you were taking nevada's post seriously? That looked very much like satire to me.

Never mind it though. Point being that there's no need to mess around with an animal's feelings when we can clearly kill them painlessly and efficiently. There's no telling if it's justified killing them... just that we will end up killing living things for food.

[Scrivener]

Is there a clear line between tortured death and "regular" death? also, do you really think nobody in the history of cruelty could come up with a crime worthy of being tortured as punishment? i think you "underestimate the power of the dark side."

[SlappyMcGee]

Whoop. You caught me. No amount of cruelty that a living thing partakes in justifies killing them. We can't debate. We can only agree.

I think you need to reread his post. No amount of cruelty justifies torturing anything. I'm fine with killing things quick-and-painless style.

Honestly, so am I. I will continue to eat the meat that my sharpshooter step-father kills with his fucking rifle. (Incidentally, he is currently the best sharpshooter in Canada and ranked second in the world.) I am just really against this corporate "make animals feel like shit for a long time and then kill them".

[scythe]

I am just really against this corporate "make animals feel like shit for a long time and then kill them".

That is fair.
http://slowfood.org/
Let me help you with that!

[otters~1]

Even the cow at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe had the decency to shoot itself before it was served.

Which (sort of) brings up the quesiton: what if the animals we eat have been genetically modified to enjoy being force-fed grass in a 4x4 cage?

[GamingWolf]

There isn't really a line between a horrible death and a simple quick death. More like a scale. Hey... let's make one! How horrible is it to shoot a cow?

0 - You shot a cow right in the head and it died instantly.
1 - You took more than one shot or slightly missed the jugular but the cow died within minutes.
2 - You shoot and miss the cow a few times, the cow is clearly frightened and it takes you a little time to finally subdue the cow.
3 - You went a little overboard and used some sort of explosive weaponry to shoot the cow with.
4 - You, the crazy douchebag you are start firing rounds all over the farm... scaring away all the livestock except for one determined cow. Then to make a point, you shoot the cow.
5 - You and your band of redneck militia have tipped over a cow and then took out out your machineguns and fired away at the cow.
6 - Oh you... you're the whackjob that got out a jeep with a gatling gun and made every single bullet hit the cow without fail.
7 - You're slightly more creative. You are the original owner of the cow. You have bonded to the cow, cleansed the cow, read bedtime stories to the cow. When the time is just right and the consumer demands enough... you shoot the cow.
8 - You're not just the owner of the cow, you're the cow's best friend! You are never seen without your cow. You take it with you everywhere. Despite all the food you have... you seem to be lacking beef. Thinking quickly, you shoot the cow.
9 - WHO ARE YOU? You completely beat around the bush before you finally shoot the cow if you know what I'm saying. You made love to the cow and then shot it.
10 - Never mind who you were before. This is truly horrible. You have trained your youngest child how to handle a gun.... in order to shoot cows... but then you change your mind. That's not enough for you. You tell your kid how to make a cow hold a gun with its hooves and make it shoot itself.

This may or may not be in the right order.

[smartalco]

There isn't really a line between a horrible death and a simple quick death. More like a scale. Hey... let's make one! How horrible is it to shoot a cow?

-Things-

This may or may not be in the right order.

This may or may not be one of the most hilarious things I have read today.

Plants don't think? Pssh. Weird science says you are wrong! (Disclaimer: I googled 'plants think' and picked a random story)

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Is there a clear line between tortured death and "regular" death?

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."
-Justice Potter Stewart

also, do you really think nobody in the history of cruelty could come up with a crime worthy of being tortured as punishment? i think you "underestimate the power of the dark side."

I think you misunderstand the point of punishing criminals. It is not to make the criminal feel bad about his actions, regret doing them, and come out conditioned not to do bad things anymore. The point is instead to deter criminals in the first place (although it's pretty bad at that), and more importantly to remove them from society before they do any more harm.
When you reach a certain point of depravity, the punishment is death because there is no appreciable chance that this person won't continue doing depraved things. He is executed because society simply does not need this sort of person and is much better off without him, and there is no point whatsoever in spending additional time, effort, and tax dollars in making him feel pain before he's killed.
Increasing the amount of depravity beyond that point changes nothing -- he is still to be removed from society by means of killing him. Torture remains utterly pointless.

[Geti]

P.S. Geti... go kosher.

wheh, why?

Which (sort of) brings up the quesiton: what if the animals we eat have been genetically modified to enjoy being force-fed grass in a 4x4 cage?

It'd be nigh-impossible to engineer that sort of behaviour into something at this point because of our limited understanding of neural systems but ignoring that, I suppose if the animal enjoyed the whole process it would be feasible for me to eat it based on the fact that you'd be causing it no harm in the sense of, well, sensory discomfort. The grass and 4x4 cage seems a little generous if we're talking about the current meat industry though, unless you mean 4x4 feet.
It's a similar ethical issue to "Is it okay to use amnesia-inducing drugs rather than anaesthetic because it doesn't matter if the patient is in horrible horrible pain if they don't remember it anyway?".

[capt_weasle]

This conversation is turning into that scene from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where the beef is taken from a cow whose sole desire is to be eaten. Would it be fine to engineer cows in such a way?

[Tanner]

Even the cow at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe had the decency to shoot itself before it was served.

This conversation is turning into that scene from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where the beef is taken from a cow whose sole desire is to be eaten. Would it be fine to engineer cows in such a way?

This is starting to get annoying, dude.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Heck, I wouldn't care if the cows were put into vegetative comas so that they never understand what's happening to them. It'd probably just be more of a bitch to manage muscle atrophy and bedsores and stuff.
As for resorting to neurology, we already know (kinda) that we can turn animals into fearless psychopaths by stripping off parts of their amygdalas, but the problems there are the cost of the operation and preventing them from killing themselves in gruesome ways before they're ready to be harvested.

[Sunset]

being a vegetarian, to me, is flat out stupid. I may be incorrect to some of you, but really. meat is fucking delicious.

[Vyacheslav]

Save a cow, eat a vegetarian.

[Geti]

being a vegetarian, to me, is flat out stupid. I may be incorrect to some of you, but really. meat is fucking delicious.

These are the kind of aggressively expressed opinionated statements that ruin good discussion. Delicious is subjective and only one part of the decision making-process related to becoming (or not becoming) a vegetarian in most people.

[SlappyMcGee]

Even the cow at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe had the decency to shoot itself before it was served.

This conversation is turning into that scene from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where the beef is taken from a cow whose sole desire is to be eaten. Would it be fine to engineer cows in such a way?

This is starting to get annoying, dude.

SlappyMcGee approves of this post. Nominated for post of the year.

[capt_weasle]

Well, shit. I apologize.

[Rose]

I am eating bacon as I type this.