Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Tastier when treated better

This post is not to say that we should focus on feeding chickens and cattle healthy diets so that they end up tasting good to us when we eat. However, it is true that the meat from these animals tastes better and has better nutritional quality when their diets consist of fresh grass and insects, rather than corn-feed pumped with nasty chemicals that cause harm to the animals whose digestive tracts can't handle it anyway. Cows and chickens that are kept in solitude, being fed this unhealthy diet of corn are suffering. AND their meat is less healthy. If humans create a healthy lifestyle for animals we intend to eat, they will be more nutritional for us, and there is little suffering.

My point is, we both benefit.

1 comment:

  1. agreed. I don't know how to create a new post at the moment so I'll just add to Ian's comment.. A lot of the examples I find myself coming up with may be beneficial to the animal or nonhuman, but the situation always ends up benefiting humans also. I cannot seem to come up with an example that refutes Kant's point. The issue I'm finding is that whatever we do to improve an animal's life will benefit our conscience. Though there is not always a tangible benefit for humans, Kant's point that our morals are at stake as well as our own personal growth seem to make it so that every situation has an internal benefit to the conscience of people. So I find myself agreeing with his point, even though something in the back of my mind is not agreeing wholly with the implications of the idea that we do not owe animals anything for their own sake.

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