Originally Posted by Libertine

A BA in political sciences? How impressive

And yes, it is on par with force-feeding geese, at least, in terms of animal suffering. The fact that we "are omnivores"(1) does not change anything about that, since eating meat does not necessitate factory farming. Factory farming is needed for low prices and high profit margins, but if people were willing to pay a bit more and paid more attention to the sources of their food, livestock living conditions could be improved vastly.

My point is not that factory farming makes force-feeding defensible, but that it is an indefensible form of hypocrisy for a society to let itself be guided by ignorance and irrationality. If you care about animal welfare, care about animal welfare as a whole, not just about animal welfare in a few cases that manage to get public attention. If we have moral duties towards animals, then it goes without saying that these duties have to be applicable in all cases, not just those that randomly catch our fancy. Irrational laws that are the product of contingent emotional attachments have no moral force, and do not make any structural difference - they only serve to give a false sense of righteousness, as we turn a blind eye to the effects of our other actions.



(1) Of course, what is "natural" and what is not is of no consequence whatsoever in moral debates. For example, violence is quite natural, while using a fork to eat is not. At the risk of stating the obvious, I have to point out that it is impossible to derive an "ought" from an "is" without the help of another moral statement.