• @CarbonIceDragon
    link
    English
    17 months ago

    I mean, arguably one could make a standard based on animal intelligence. Like, dogs are fairly smart, so one could argue that raising them for meat in farm conditions isn’t very ethical, and similarly, farming something like, say, a dolphin, might be even worse if someone was to do that, but then that farming much more simple minded creatures like shrimp, bees, mealworms etc would be much more acceptable. A standard like that still wouldn’t reflect well on most animal agriculture though given that most meat animals are mammals and birds, which can be reasonably intelligent, especially pigs to my understanding. Though I suppose the conditions of the farm matter too, like, sheep kept on adequate grazing land for their wool probably don’t have too bad a life as far as farm animals go, and it’s probably possible if more expensive and less land efficient to get milk and eggs from cows/goats and chickens in a reasonably humane way too, since those products don’t inherently require raising the animal just to kill it.