The ethics if factory farming

[The Grand Nudger]

The caveat is that we were talking about coyotes 'n' sich, and animals living natural lives. If you want to define humans as animals and say that living in factories is therefore part of natural life, okay. But I don't think it's a good definition.

Why isn't it? If I told you that it was okay to kill livestock but not human beings - that we are somehow special and different and so our suffering matters and theirs does not - you would chide me for drawing a self serving line in the sand, eh? Well, here's your line - are we being consistent?

Yes, this is kind of the point. We've created species that probably are no longer even viable.

They are more viable than their "wild" counterparts are - and this is because they are suited to the current environment. If the environment changed - they wouldn't be (and that's what happened to the Aurochs). Such is life.

But to say their continued existence is a special reward for their selective interaction with hungry humans is pretty unreasonable.

There are no rewards, special or not. They are simply better suited to the current environment than their predeccsors and many other existing species (which are currently dropping like flies while they thrive).

Existing for no other purpose than guaranteed confinement, separation from mates and offspring, and death with not even a slight statistical chance of successfully escaping, is hardly a plus-- even if there are many millions of the species in existence.

There is no "purpose" - we're talking selection here.

They can engage with their environment meaningfully-- attempting to fight, or to flee, or to mate

If they attempted to fight or flee they would not be (and are not) granted the opportunity to mate. This would be mal-adaptive behavior, and that's a selective pressure.

You can say that bovines are "evolving" to match the "human environment," but while there is some chance involved (meatier bulls being chosen as sires, for example), there's really no chance for the animal to interact meaningfully with its environment.

Their behavior also determines their access to mating opportunity. We want them docile - and we want them to be over-eaters. A beefy, well marbled cow that is a docile eating machine will have progeny almost beyond number.

This ability to interact with the environment is found on any list of the defining features of life-- therefore if anything is robbed of this ability, it cannot really be said to be living a life. Zombie cows are bad, and creating zombie cows on purpose is pretty evil (and I define evil as anything which corrupts a living organism to the point that it cannot be said to be meaningfully alive).

You don't like their lives - that doesn't mean they aren't living their lives. The buffalo being chased by wolves probably doesn't like it's life either. Why are zombie cows bad (and there goes the idea of creating brainless cattle to remove any moral argument, eh)? Wtf is "corruption" in the context of biology or selection? Adaptation and selection -just is-, it;s not a ladder with rungs whereas the bottom is a "corrupted cow" and the top is the "highest ideal of a cow".