“animals that provide us with healthy, life-giving food deserve not to be subject to torment and agony and immeasurable misery”
— Daniel Payne, “Why You Should Eat ‘Humane’ Meat,” The Federalist, June 24 2014
Agreed.
So too do animals who do not provide us with healthy, life-giving food deserve not to be subject to torment and agony and immeasurable misery.
No living, feeling creature deserves to be subject to torment and agony and immeasurable misery — perhaps not even those who have subjected others to torment and agony and immeasurable misery.
But neither does any animal deserve to have its life taken to feed humans if it is not necessary for the survival and health of humans.
And it isn’t.
Nor is it possible to deprive a living, feeling creature of its life humanely, any more than it is possible to rape someone humanely.
Euthanasia is a way to end a life of torment and agony and immeasurable misery humanely.
But the needless slaughter of healthy, helpless animals is not euthanasia — nor should it be called humane.
At best some slaughter can be called “less-inhumane” than slaughter that causes torment and agony and immeasurable misery — just as rape without strangulation can be called “less-inhumane” than rape with strangulation.
But unnecessary life-taking is not and cannot be humane.
Craig, W. J., & Mangels, A. R. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266-1282.
Eisnitz, G. A. (2009). Slaughterhouse: The shocking story of greed, neglect, and inhumane treatment inside the US meat industry. Prometheus Books.
Rollin, B. E. (2009). Ethics and euthanasia. The Canadian Veterinary Journal, 50(10), 1081.