Much beef & poultry purchased by consumers in the U.S. is obtained by harvesting animals at or near maturity. Thus these animals if not eaten might otherwise live longer naturally.
Some question the ethics of this, and some among them exclude them from their own diet, their protest.
Lobsters are generally wild, and caught, trapped at sea.
It's a rough path, but such lobsters end up in the kitchen. And when it's time for dinner preparation the live lobster is dropped into a cauldron of boiling water.
Certainly an abattoir is no picnic for cattle. But innovations in recent decades have helped to make such slaughterhouse operations a little less horrifying to the cattle.
No similar amelioration for the lowly lobster.
What intellectual / ethical standards apply here? Is there a rational, plausible argument to be made one of these lines of slaughter is acceptable, but the others not?
Or does 3rd millennium ethics oblige us to all go vegan?
Spring forward
Some question the ethics of this, and some among them exclude them from their own diet, their protest.
Lobsters are generally wild, and caught, trapped at sea.
It's a rough path, but such lobsters end up in the kitchen. And when it's time for dinner preparation the live lobster is dropped into a cauldron of boiling water.
Certainly an abattoir is no picnic for cattle. But innovations in recent decades have helped to make such slaughterhouse operations a little less horrifying to the cattle.
No similar amelioration for the lowly lobster.
What intellectual / ethical standards apply here? Is there a rational, plausible argument to be made one of these lines of slaughter is acceptable, but the others not?
Or does 3rd millennium ethics oblige us to all go vegan?
Spring forward