It's just the circle of life. Live in a remotely rural area with animals around and you're going to see pretty regular death. For instance foxes are beautiful, extremely intelligent, and amazing animals. They'll also systematically and sadistically kill literally every single chicken inside a henhouse, one by one, if they get in. In another instance a dog I loved more than anything as a child to young adult was killed by a wild boar - tusk straight into the lungs.

The same, by the way, applies to vegetarian stuff. The amount of critters being killed to keep them away from the veggies would probably shock you, especially in the rather inhumane way its sometimes done in industrial farms. Shooting, for some baseline, is considered one of the most humane ways of dealing with large pests.

I simply see nothing wrong, at all, with eating meat. It's a natural and normal part of life and also, by far, the easiest way to ensure you hit all your necessary nutrients without going overboard on calories - especially if you live an active life and/or are into things like weight training.

Look up Sepp Holzer on YouTube, or really any permaculturist that eats meat. They treat their animals well, but also eat them. I think it’s healthy to feel a twang when you kill anything. It can contribute to the gratitude you have when sitting down to a meal. The native cultures seem (at least in pop culture caricatures) to have understood this.

I have a farmer friend who occasionally has to kill one of his milk cows. He names them, pets them, cares for them like a pet. It pains him to kill them, and I always know when he’s had to do it— I can see it on his face. I’ve bought some of the meat form his cows, and I was grateful for the meat, and the man who raised the cow with such care.

Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with.

But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved.

As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People don't like to kill in general. Go outside and ask people how they felt getting their first kill on a hunt as a kid, you're going to realize that a unifying element is learning to deal with harming another animal.

Bonus: being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.

It's different perspectives.

For a lot of people it's an exchange thing. You give the chicken a place to stay, food and care and in exchange you get to eat it when it gets old. They do bond with them but there's this understanding from day 1.

If you don't get that out of it it'd turn into an omlette so instead of turning into an omlette it gets to enjoy a large percentage of its life.

One needs to decide if an animal is a product or a pet. It's difficult to have them be both.

Having them as a product does not mean you don't care for them, on the contrary, but I would say it's a completely different type of bond.

> But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?

I would argue it's about the purpose, not the bond. You don't kill a pet, but you do kill food. And you should never kill for the sole sake of killing.

> but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land

You needed HN to figure that out? I assume this is obvious sarcasm but almost none of the domesticated animals species would exist if almost all humans throughout history weren't willing to do that.

Even eating dogs was perfectly standard in most more "primitive" and/or destitute societies.

My wifes family was wicked as they would let the children bond with the animals, without letting them know they gonna be dinner.

She tells a story of a wonderful pet goat. Until one day it was "gone to another farm", and they enjoyed goat curry for dinner.

The older siblings knew... and now they dont talk lol.

Or why should the "bond" cause us to not eat animals? They aren't pets we eat in a panic, but animals we raise with the intention of eating but still bond with them and continue the process through consuming them and letting the animal go on to fulfill a higher purpose of providing sustenance to the humans they bonded with.

> Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.

I love my chickens and I'm really sad when I lose some to predators. Yet I have no issue to harvest them for eating. They are not pets, I raise them for eggs and meat.

Maybe it's because I was raised on a farm, but I make a difference between pets and farm animals and that does not mean that I don't have a "bond" with some of the latter.

Why should they "bat an eye" about killing animals raised on their own land? It's how we've lived since the dawn of time. Death is a part of life.

If you think it's wrong to kill animals to eat, I would ask you "By what moral standard?"

> I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals

You develop bonds, just different ones and you learn to place limits because you know what the purpose of the animal is.

I still felt it when I was really little, but that was gone by the time I was a teenager and the reality that this was our living set in.