@someone_else Said
My comment that some animals eat other animals wasn't a stand alone statement, it was a lead in to the question of whether or not the animal that was being eaten suffers more or less than the ones that we consume.
Compare, for example, a free range chicken with a wild chicken (are there wild chickens? ). The free range chicken is guaranteed food, no struggle and is humanely killed by a person before being consumed. The wild chicken is caught by...let's say a wolf...punctured by sharp teeth and dragged off, still alive to be ripped to shreds while still partially conscious. Which one suffered more?
I'll concede that humans are also animals and just higher up on the food chain. I'm very well aware that some animals are not carnivorous...as are some humans. The fact is, some animals eat other animals. The only 'ethical' question here is how we treat them while they are alive.
I understood your comment. We would probably have to look at your question on a case-by-case basis. It is certainly true that the use systems humans employ create untold suffering, even in "free-range" circumstances. Debeaking, catching, transporting, slaughter, are all points at which harm can and is caused.
From an animal rights p.o.v., all animal use is ruled out - but even from an animal welfare perspective, the notion of "free-range" is problematic as the more popular it becomes, the less likely it is in terms of resembling the storybook images we have of chickens scratching the earth in small farmyards and so on. Now "free-range" is being redefined to mean one big shed in which thousands of nonhuman individuals are confined.
Studies have shown that chicken prefer to forage for their food rather than have it simply provided to them. I think it is right that suffering may be caused when birds are caught by a carnivore - but our slaughter systems fail to properly stun nonhuman animals regularly - and that is probably even worse, having one's throat cut open while conscious and bleeding to death slowly. Being "ripped to pieces" is probably quicker.
When social scientists and others have looked at slaughter, they find that nonhuman are regularly dismembered while conscious - they thrash around and try to escape until finally dead.
Is it not the case that a chain goes round and round - and one part is at the "top" only momentarily?
rogY?