Fiona T wrote: ↑Wed Aug 24, 2022 10:05 pm
How about torture - an expression you've used repeatedly? To me torture implies deliberate and sadistic cruelty which farming isn't. Most farm animals probably lead a less tortured existence than their wild counterparts - they're fed, watered, sheltered, get medical care and are protected from being torn apart and eaten alive (that emotive language
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
) by natural predators
Fair eggnog (that's such an amazing autocorrect I'm going to leave it), "torture" is certainly the most (or maybe only) contentious language I've used. Two very important counterpoints to your claims about farm animals' lives though:
1 - "they're fed, watered, sheltered, get medical care"
They're fed in a way and to an extent that makes them maximally profitable. If a human were put in one of these farms and treated like the animals in there it wouldn't be a 24/7 buffet or room service type arrangement and although they wouldn't complain they were starving I really don't think they describe themself as being 'well fed'. I preempt a response here about grazing/grass-fed/free-range farming here: certainly that's much better, but it only makes up a tiny percentage of the animals that are 'farmed', most don't enjoy such relative luxury, and even then those systems only raise the animals that way until they're old enough to be prepared for slaughter, at which point they get fattened up in the same way as traditional farms.
They are watered, fair enough.
They're sheltered, often crammed in to tiny enclosures, or thousands of them in big enclosures, so rightly that they can't move or even turn around, and stand around in their own faeces. Factory chickens are a hotbed of disease (such as bird flu) from their overcrowded shelters, and even get ammonia burns from all the shit they're standing in. Most animals are really quite happy without shelter anyway. It's pretty undeniable that the 'shelter' we provide to/force upon farm animals is a huge net negative to their experience, not a good thing.
They get medical care for minor ailments but if there's anything seriously up with them they're just 'bad stock' and get 'destroyed'. Also most of the 'medical care' they recieve is either abusive and not for their benefit (docking pigs' tails, for example), or to treat problems that were induced by the shitty conditions they were kept in in the first place (ammonia-burnt chickens, bow-legged cows, etc.)
2 - comparisons to the suffering of wild animals
Nature is brutal and life is no picnic for most wild animals. But even if farmed animals have a better lot than wild animals, which I'm not convinced is true in a majority if cases, it's not really a relevant or fair comparison. Farm animals wouldn't have otherwise been wild. They otherwise wouldn't have existed. They are bred into their tor...
seriously unpleasant existence purely because doing so makes some money for some humans.
So while my use of the word "torture" may seem emotive (and I will concede this word is more debatable that the others I have used so I'm very open to arguments that it is inappropriate and will stop using it if so), I think it holds up. As I emphasised at the beginning of this thread, what matters is the experience of the abused party. If you feel comfortable enough to do so, try imagining yourself in the position of one of those cows in a calf crate or chickens in an overcrowded shed with ammonia burns. I don't think the reason for your tormentor's subjugation of you, or the idea of what wild animals' lives might be like, wouldn't be any solace to you if you were experiencing what those farm animals were experiencing. I think you'd call it torture, and you'd want it to stop.