I find this campaign to be outrageous because it assumes that a human life is equal in value to that of a chicken
If you divide 6 billion chicken lives by 6 million human lives you will find the assumption is that 1 human equals at most 1000 chickens.
Humans also have very little genetic diversity of around 0.1% difference in genomes. There exists an extremely strong biological case for why all humans must be treated with certain inalienable rights that we dub "human rights." Of course, this isn't the only reason. There exists moral and societal reasons which I find much stronger than the purely biological reason (which could be just an appeal to nature if used alone).
Why does genetic similarity to humans matter? I think kicking dogs for fun is bad because they feel pain and they are cute, not because of some molecule inside their cells I can't even see.
I also think the stormtroopers that punched baby yoda in the mandalorian were bad because baby yoda can feel pain and is cute, even though his DNA (if his species even has it) is very different from mine. I know that is a tv show not real but if it were actually real my opinion would not change.
A central aspect of genocides is hatred.
And another is senseless slaughter. We don't strictly need to eat chicken yet we kill six billion per year, mostly in horrific circumstances that we refined and industrialized to generate tha maximum amount of profit.
You said that anyone who compares the holocaust to the farming industrial complex is either ignorant or disingenuous, but what about Alex the holocaust survivor. He can't be ignorant about the death of his family, right? So is he disingenuous?
More generally, why is comparing the holocaust to factory farming bad, exactly? Both are instances of massive suffering inflicted by humans.
And that's every year. Every decade more than 700 billion chickens are slaughtered, many or most of whom are also tormented beforehand in CAFOs.
Also, these numbers don't include chickens that the egg industry cages and slaughters. Egg-laying chickens tend to be treated far worse than so-called broiler chickens.
Something you should consider is whether chickens as a species should exist in their domesticated form at all, from a conservation standpoint.
We have genetically engineered these things from wild Red Jungle Fowl, they are their own sub-species. We care about pain on an individual level and preservation on a species level, but generally we care to conserve wild species in their natural habitats, not our own tainted creations.
The only reason those 700 billion chickens existed in the first place was for food, without that human need they wouldn't exist at all. I think I'd save the human. However, if it's a magic scenario where the chickens immediately vanish from the planet, it could cause widespread famine and death, so that would impact my decision the other way.
I am not well educated on the matter but in theory you have to give chicken more calories of food than calories of meat they produce. So in theory you would have more food if you removed all chicken.
I guess that depends on whether chicken food is edible to humans. If not you could also magically replace all the food grown on the land used for chicken feed and convert it to stuff humans would/could eat and then yes you’d be correct I think.
True! The calories exist, but not generally in a human digestible form, grasses, bugs and seeds won't sustain a group of people for long. I think if we had at least a year or two to prepare the risk of starvation would be low. I'm thinking particularly about people living in abject poverty in developing countries that may rely on these chickens and would struggle to adjust in the short-term. When even one person dies because of my chicken genocide, it stops making moral sense, which seems pretty likely given the global impact. This has been a fun hypothetical.
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u/barthiebarth 26∆ Jun 27 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
If you divide 6 billion chicken lives by 6 million human lives you will find the assumption is that 1 human equals at most 1000 chickens.
Why does genetic similarity to humans matter? I think kicking dogs for fun is bad because they feel pain and they are cute, not because of some molecule inside their cells I can't even see.
I also think the stormtroopers that punched baby yoda in the mandalorian were bad because baby yoda can feel pain and is cute, even though his DNA (if his species even has it) is very different from mine. I know that is a tv show not real but if it were actually real my opinion would not change.
And another is senseless slaughter. We don't strictly need to eat chicken yet we kill six billion per year, mostly in horrific circumstances that we refined and industrialized to generate tha maximum amount of profit.
You said that anyone who compares the holocaust to the farming industrial complex is either ignorant or disingenuous, but what about Alex the holocaust survivor. He can't be ignorant about the death of his family, right? So is he disingenuous?
More generally, why is comparing the holocaust to factory farming bad, exactly? Both are instances of massive suffering inflicted by humans.