The difference is in the scale of the slaughter and the actual slaughtering being dissociated from the eating for many of these animals, such that a disproportionate minority takes on the task of killing for a majority of meat consumption. This has recorded known harmful effects on the people doing the killing as well as the community in which the killing is done, in a way other large industrial processes do not.
As an aside: this is a gotcha question and doesn't fundamentally address the position that animal slaughter is cruel. It relies on an obviously false rhetoric that something performed by non-sapient creatures in an environment where the only way to survive for some creatures is largely through the personal killing of other creatures is morally equivalent to an environment where sapient creatures who have wide dietary availability make the choice to consume the flesh of another creature that has been usually killed for them.
I don't understand. You're saying the problem with eating animal meat is not that an animal has to die, but in who does the killing? So it'd be better if each person had to kill their own food, even though it would almost surely result in a lot more waste, and thus a lot more killing?
>As an aside: this is a gotcha question and doesn't fundamentally address the position that animal slaughter is cruel.
I don't think so. If you think killing animals is cruel in itself, then you have only two logically consistent options: you either a) change your lifestyle to ensure you don't kill any animals whatsoever, or b) accept that some cruelty is inevitable and set some standard of acceptable cruelty for yourself. Anything else is a symptom of cognitive dissonance.
> If you think killing animals is cruel in itself, then you have only two logically consistent options: you either a) change your lifestyle to ensure you don't kill any animals whatsoever, or b) accept that some cruelty is inevitable and set some standard of acceptable cruelty for yourself.
Neither of these are addressed by equivocating this to wild animals predating.
> I don't understand. You're saying the problem with eating animal meat is not that an animal has to die, but in who does the killing? So it'd be better if each person had to kill their own food, even though it would almost surely result in a lot more waste, and thus a lot more killing?
I don't know if it's better if each person had to kill their own food. I'm not making a prescription on what people should do. I am only pointing out that there are real consequences to the current way we consume meat in a way that damages people and communities in a way that could be described as cruelty.
>Neither of these are addressed by equivocating this to wild animals predating.
Yes, because the question is about how "cruelty" is defined. You can either say killing in the wild is cruel or not cruel. If it's not cruel, then how is industrial slaughter cruel? If it is cruel, then one can pose the question of whether it's possible to slaughter industrially humanely.
>I am only pointing out that there are real consequences to the current way we consume meat in a way that damages people and communities in a way that could be described as cruelty.
Umm... Sure, but I think avalys was asking about cruelty to the prey, not to the predator.
> it'd be better if each person had to kill their own food, even though it would almost surely result in a lot more waste, and thus a lot more killing?
That's only true assuming people would keep up their meat consumption levels, which I seriously doubt.
These are still gotcha questions that don't fundamentally address the concerns of the original poster. Either address my points in good faith or just say you disagree with the position and provide your own reasoning; these questions feel clever but they're intellectually shallow.
They are genuine questions. You want to stop all animal slaughter and insects are animals so we need to stop killing insects but I have no idea if that's achievable.
As an aside: this is a gotcha question and doesn't fundamentally address the position that animal slaughter is cruel. It relies on an obviously false rhetoric that something performed by non-sapient creatures in an environment where the only way to survive for some creatures is largely through the personal killing of other creatures is morally equivalent to an environment where sapient creatures who have wide dietary availability make the choice to consume the flesh of another creature that has been usually killed for them.