alt Hacker NewsWould it make the meat industry more ethical if happy drugs were made available to animals? If I had to choose between a meaningful (even if I didn’t know it when living), blissful unnatural life and none at all, I’d choose the former.
It’s the negative affect and suffering (stress, pain, boredom etc) that is the bad part of eating animals.
(I think— I know others have thought more than I on this topic)
It just seems like an easier tech solution might be promising
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The problem is that the happy drugs will, in some detectable concentrations, end up in meat.
(A smaller problem is that humans will start using the drugs if the distribution is not tightly controlled.)
I too could, theoretically be thrilled to be drugged to the gills when I'm killed. I however, can consent. Animals cannot. But we know that animals can think. Regardless of debating the ethics of consuming them, this adds an additional ethical quagmire of is it ethically sound to drug non-consenting, thinking species.
Ha yes the blissful experience of drug addiction
solve the land use problem for growing cattle feed if you want it to be maximally ethical.
Not really. Similar to giving drugs to lower class people so they can bear the unbearable life. For an indiviual, sure, life probably feels better in a narrow sense, but is it more ethical? No.
What I find interesting about this whole discourse is that the lived experience of animals matters to people. At all.
Just a hundred, two hundred years ago we made the Elephant rifle, because a normal gun couldn't bring it down, but it was a fun sport to go out and kill just for the heck of it. No one cared about the animals.
It seems like we are living in an age of suicidal empathy and I'm not sure how we got here.