(August 24, 2011 at 9:10 pm)theVOID Wrote: Would the cow have lived at all otherwise? No, and it would also live a better life than if it was in the wild, free from hunger, disease, predators and dying of starvation once it becomes to frail to keep up with the herd. Farming animals provides them with a better quality of life and the only reason we do such a thing is because there is a pay off for us with the meat we consume - It seems to me rather clear than a farmed animal has a higher quality life, relative to both it's existence in the wild and the fact that it likely would have never existed at all - the fact that it has to be consumed as a result of this process doesn't undermine that. Obviously this excludes battery farming, the animals there have pretty miserable lives and I avoid eating battery farmed meat whenever possible.
The argument holds even under battery farming (which I'm not a fan of). The cow again would not have lived, and it would meet an even more "in-humane" adversary in life as a wild animal. Not to mention it's eventual end beneath the slow jaws of some carnivorous predator that hasn't developed stun/bolt. Or starvation, disease, and injury.
