this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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I personally don't eat red meat, and I agree it's worse for climate change, but I've heard the argument that meat from larger animals is more ethical, because to get the same amount of meat from smaller animals means a much larger number of them have to die, and I'm not sure how to weigh that against the climate, assuming that someone isn't going to give up meat entirely.
That doesn't add up at all because cattle ranches are notoriously known for pretty low quality of life environments if they arent pasture raised or free range
Then again that basically goes for all farm animals that aren't considered free range, but it's a lot easier to have free range chickens than it is to have cows doing the same.
The solution for meat eaters is something like a farm co-op where you can literally drive by your food and see how it is. We used to buy half a cow from a local farmer and his cows were in nice fields etc.
this is why i think chicken is the best meat, no other animal is so easy and normal to literally raise in your backyard, plus they can get a decent amount of their food from bugs and foodscraps
it's entirely feasible for basically everyone with a yard to own chickens and call the butcher when they get too old to lay eggs (or just near death), and this would make eggs basically free and meat very cheap, plus massive quantities of free fertilizer for farmers!
Yes, this is the gold standard (owning your own food sources) but owning your own land has become vanishingly rare these days
I don't know about that, it's pretty difficult to keep (what I would consider) genuinely free range chickens because of predators and various other factors (the need to keep them away from wild birds because of bird flu comes to mind), and the commercial definition of free range doesn't necessarily guarantee a good quality of life. There's also how meat chickens are mostly all a specific type of crossbreed that is perpetually hungry, prone to cannibalism and health problems, and not meant to live longer than a few months.
But even if you could say that the average chicken raised for meat is better off than the average cow raised for meat, there's still how you need vastly more of them for the same amount of meat, so if their lives are still a net negative and you're weighing it by sum of individual experiences, it could be considered worse from a utilitarian perspective because of the numbers.
Yea in fairness to (genuinely) free range, it's probably best if chickens are raised in just not cages but still within an area a farmer can manage. I was thinking of free range as moreso outdoors, with a minimum area per livestock.
For meat chickens, yes they probably have the lowest quality of life. The ones that aren't stuffed in cages are usually not meat chickens though, but a different breed. I'd say they have a decent life because they're not being stuffed full of steroids and are given space to roam.
I'm not sure on bird flu. From what I've read, the conditions of meat chickens living in cages is the reason why bird flu spread so much. The chickens are so cramped, and so unsanitary that they essentially need to be pumped with antibiotics, which caused bird flu to develop a resistant strain. If companies weren't so hellbent at maximizing value, providing just an increase in living space would have hindered the spread of bird flu.
My perspective is that it's more ethical to be able to provide a good quality of life for the animals you raise. One cow with a low quality of life imo is less ethical than a bunch of chickens with a decent quality of life, even if we consider numbers. If you can provide that to a cow, then yea it's probably more ethical than a bunch of chickens. It's just a lot easier to have a chicken live a good life than it is for a cow.
This is all my perspective though
There is actually a bad epidemic in wild birds recently, and there is a big risk of it transferring from them to chicken flocks when they have access to the same space.
I guess that makes sense, if you can make an animal's life good overall, in that situation maybe it wouldn't be a net negative to farm more of them. Though realistically I think it's going to be very difficult to have any confidence you're buying such meat at the grocery (if you can even afford the stuff claiming to be more ethical) and you'd probably have to raise the animals yourself for that.
Plants are great and sidestep this quandary entirely.
Sure, but this is more addressed to the people who do not intend to go vegan, but are considering replacing the red meat in their diet with other meat for ethical reasons.
Right, and I'm just saying why expend so much energy on a Gordian knot, when there's a much more effective, reasonable way to cut right through it? The puzzle is essentially saying, "how can I do a thing that is like the thing I'm trying to avoid doing." Just do the thing! π
That's like saying "it's more ethical if Nazis killed only adults, because they take up more space than kids in a gas chamber."
The needless suffering and killing of any animal is horrifically unethical, and if we can, we should actively stop participating in it.
There are a ton of mental gymnastics used to justify the consumption of animals. Almost none apply to modern civilization.