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If you could grow and kill with a small fraction of the suffering that farmed animals endure today, then eating meat would be mostly fine (other than environmental issues, perhaps). Unfortunately that's impossible for all but a very small minority of people - those who can raise and kill animals themselves or have someone they trust very well to do it for them.[0][1]

Well over 95% of meat is factory farmed[2], and animals that are raised in factory farms do not live pleasant lives, to put it lightly.[3] This is coming from someone who grew up on a farm, and whose parents are still farmers.

[0] People think that buying from their local butcher or local farm must make their meat ethical. In fact, small abbatoirs often have very shoddy killing protocols compared to the large ones. You end up with farmers clubbing animals to death, or putting 5 bullets into a pig's head before it dies: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-14/tasmanian-abattoir-ac...

[1] Hunting isn't an ethical source of meat. Even professional hunters (e.g. those who kill kangaroos for farmers in AU) will let ~1 in 20 get away with a bullet in them. That could mean suffering for hours or even days if it clots but then dies due to internal bleeding or infection. I used to hunt and I would go to sleep thinking about the animals that got away wounded that day. Still, it took me far too long to realise that there is no need to eat animals.

[2] https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko




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