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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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It's not an arbitrary goal, because in order to provide dairy to everyone, these practices must happen (when we don't need to provide dairy to everyone). I guess I could clarify that rather than it being a necessary component of dairy production to kill calves and cattle, for example, it's a necessary component of dairy production on a scale to feed our planet, or even any significant human populations. For all intents and purposes as they apply to most people, and when considering the industry as a whole, these practices are necessary for dairy production, while dairy production itself isn't necessary.
it is arbitrary: there is no reason to believe any particular dairy operation couldn't keep it's calves out of the veal industry.
You're focusing on one aspect of dairy farming when there are a number of ethically unsound practices such as stealing the babies from their mothers and killing them for beef, even if not veal. Or artificially inseminating mothers and forcefully impregnating them, selectively breeding them to overproduce milk which wrecks their bodies. And then killing them at the end of a life of extreme suffering, still at a relatively young age. It doesn't make a difference to the fact that they're cruel, and necessary parts of large scale dairy farming, which is unnecessary as a whole.
this is not inherently unethical. i can't think of a single ethical system that would say this is immoral.
So causing a mother to cry for her missing baby isn't unethical? I'm not sure what ethical system you're referring to that would determine whether something is ethical. By all accounts, causing suffering to an animal is cruel when it's not needed.
literally, any. pick one.
Pretty much every ethical framework that exists would find that causing needless harm and suffering to animals is unethical. Kicking a dog when you don't need to is unethical. Similarly, stealing a baby from their mother, restricting them in a crate, and killing them, causing the mother extreme emotional anguish, is unethical; causing her pain from overproducing milk is unethical; given that dairy farming is itself unnecessary.
but we're not talking about kicking dogs. we're talking about producing food.
No, we're talking about producing a particular kind of food that isn't necessary. Kicking a dog isn't necessary and neither is exploiting cows for their milk and causing them and their calves suffering and ultimately killing them at young ages. Both are harmful practices which can be avoided.
that's not true. but even if it were, you don't have a monopoly on what may be considered necessary. a dairy farmer may say he needs to participate in any of the practices you find abhorrent to feed his family, and i wouldn't tell him he's wrong.
i did no such thing.
it's only cruel if the suffering is the intention of the practice. if we could remove the suffering, we would. so it's not cruel, it's indifferent.
An action is cruel if it causes unnecessary suffering, period. The lack of an intention to cause suffering is irrelevant if the action does cause suffering and doesn't need to happen, and we are aware of the harm it does. Which we are. Continuing to engage in the practice is therefore willingly causing needless suffering, which is unethical.
it's not.
It's not cruel to cause (ultimately) unnecessary suffering to an animal? And that's your opinion, remember. Not a fact.
cruelty would be doing it just to cause suffering. suffering is incidental, not the point. if we produced everything using the exact same processes without suffering, would you find that acceptable? i think everyone would say that's preferrential.
Raping someone not to cause them suffering but to gain something out of it is (pleasure, or a baby) is unethical. Something unnecessary that causes suffering doesn't need to be done for the express purpose of causing a being suffering in order to be unethical.
artificial insemination isn't rape. it's a veterinary procedure.
That's funny, notice I never said artificial insemination was rape. I guess that's something you assumed given that it is very comparable to rape, and is undoubtedly a sexual violation, regardless of its intention (which is ultimately unnecessary). And it's not a veterinary procedure, it's a farming practice with the end goal of producing a product to sell that the animal is exploited for.
I was using rape as an example of a practice that causes suffering and which is unethical despite the fact that causing suffering isn't the motivation for doing it (necessarily), in response to you trying to argue that something that causes suffering isn't unethical if suffering isn't the intention. If something causes unnecessary suffering, it's unethical, regardless of the intention.
this is the height of intellectual dishonesty. i will accept an apology, but i will not continue without one.
I literally never said it was rape. I previously said it was a sexual violation, but I genuinely used the example of raping a human for a different reason, as an example of a practice that is unethical despite the fact it may not be intended to cause suffering (but does, and is unnecessary) If you can't cop that, that's your problem.