Found in the comments of a youtube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwI6py78gsI (I didn't watch because I never watch youtube videos, only reading the comments.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Hens I raise in my backyard coop and slaughter humanely when they stop laying? You're telling me they suffer?
Yep. To be clear I don't think you're a bad person deliberately abusing them but it's likely that several things are true:
they're a breed that emphasises egg laying at the expense of their health and wellbeing. Jungle fowls, the birds chickens are bred from, lay around 12-20 eggs a year. Most chicken breeds lay about 10x that. This is hard on their body and shortens their lifespan. It is cruel to breed them in the same way it is cruel to breed pugs.
As the demand for hens is much higher than roosters it is highly likely many of their brothers were killed, often moments after being born in a hatchery by a putting them on a conveyor belt that feeds them, conscious, into a blender. I wish I was making that up. Or they were stuffed into trays and suffocated in co2, not a pleasant experience either way. The blender might even be less cruel there.
Because you view them as a means to an end it is unlikely you avail them to medical care of a quality you would give a child or a pet. Also it is likely they could enjoy more life when they stop laying but you do not view them as whole beings deserving of dignity and respect, so you kill them when they are no longer productive.
It is unlikely they are killed humanely, a humane killing is one we would be happy to use on another human as a way to die with dignity. Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt you do anything so peaceful, consentual, and gentle.
This argument could be made to promote eugenics in humans, so I'm dismissing it outright.
The chicks were purchased before they were sexed, the roosters were slaughtered for meat much younger than the hens but not in a factory.
Of course I don't give them medical aid like I would with a human child. They are put out of their suffering when their usefulness ends, just as we do with all other animals. It just so happens that animals we keep as pets are useful for emotional reasons, which continues even in sickness.
I would happily die by beheading as a form of euthanasia, as the blood loss causes near instant shock and rapid loss of consciousness. If my brain could be destroyed in the process, I would prefer that even more. Both are preferable to slowly succumbing to a painful illness, as long as I have my affairs in order. Chickens don't have affairs to worry about.The only reason we don't do that with assisted suicides in humans is because of the mess it makes.
you would be gripped by a giant with no explanation at a time not chosen by you, held down, and decapitated? I umm don't think so.
Of course you can present the most sanitised and consentual version but that is not how you treat these animals. You admit that they aren't real living beings with internal worlds like yours to you. They are things you own, machines to use up and break down.
They suffer, you might call it acceptable or natural or even noble but they suffer.
If the giant that never harmed me for my entire life, and always provided me with the sustenance and shelter I need to live one day killed me before I knew what was happening, I would have a pain-free death, yes.
You're right that they suffer. All complex beings suffer in all environments. The amount they suffer is acceptable, and their lives are short but lavish compared to what they would live in the wild, or compared to never existing at all.
Living things are just that, things. Biochemical machines that exist to transform available resources into more copies of their genome. If they show no indication of sentience, then their lives are not worth anything in their own right. You don't need to pretend I'm sanitizing anything.
You may want to look into the repugnant conclusion. That path of reasoning is very flawed.
Do you mean to say you don't think chickens have signs of sentience? I'm not following that last thing. You would be completely happy to torture them if that was so, or rather it would be impossible to torture them in the same way it is impossible to torture a rock.
No. Torture deliberately inflicts pain without providing any benefit. It is only suitable for use against sentient creatures who understand that compliance message the torture will stop. To do that to something that just thinks you're killing it and can't understand why is basically the definition of animal abuse. Non-sentience doesn't make animal abuse okay, it only makes swift and painless killings of those animals okay.
But I'm just rehashing what I've already said. You're trying to put words in my mouth. Like it or not, existing as livestock is not torture, and consuming the products of those livestock is not unethical. You just want to have someone to think less of and you choose to pretend that meat eaters are just as bad as murderers so you can place yourself as morally and ethically superior to them. Because at the end of the day, you care more about your ego than whether your campaigns actually reduce suffering of real animals that are actually being tortured in factory farms.
I think it's uncontroversial to say having your life taken away constitutes suffering, unless you're undergoing some extreme torture by staying alive, and causing suffering like that is inhumane. Just saying that you do it humanely doesn't really change anything tangibly.
It doesn't cause suffering to end a life unless that life is aware of its fate and becomes stressed out, or if that death leaves behind loved ones to grieve. Chickens don't grieve.
How are you so sure they don't grieve? They form social relationships, they defend each other, they groom each other, they cooperate. They have complex vocalisations, they warn each other even when they themselves aren't in danger.
Why are you so confident they feel nothing when a friend dies? why are you so confident they don't feel fear as you kill them?
https://www.chickenfans.com/do-chickens-mourn/
https://backyardfarmlife.com/is-your-chicken-sad/
https://bestfarmanimals.com/why-is-my-chicken-dying-everything-you-need-to-know/
https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/chicken-feelings-do-they-miss-each-other/
You wouldn't believe how quickly I found all that! The other thing is: if you applied that logic to people, it becomes problematic very quickly, and there's nothing about animals that precludes them from deserving the same hesitancy around those problems.