People, pets and pot roasts

[spot]

I wonder whether we could discuss the difference in the attitude of Western society between these five categories of mammal:

• humancommercially farmed meatpetwild but niceand the othersTo humans we apply the concept of inalienable rights - the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for example. Those rights are more honoured in the breach than the observance but they do form the basis of social care.
  
  Commercially farmed meat mammals are given the most cost-effective treatment capable of processing a product into the shop. This tends toward unnatural environments, overfeeding, deliberate hormone imbalance, confinement, inhumane handling and premature death.
  
  Pet mammals in Western society on the other hand - including the horse though I might exclude rodents here - tend to be lavished with love and affection, medical care, more resources each than the poor in developing countries can muster and a life prolonged to the point where cruelty would otherwise be apparent in maintaining it further.
  
  Nice wild mammals are paid lip-service in the form of protection from hunters some of the time and the allocation of reserves on which they may roam free, though these get smaller as time progresses.
  
  The others are ruthlessly exterminated whenever they become apparent unless they have the advantage of nearing extinction, at which point they automatically qualify as nice wild mammals.
  
  It is obviously important, if you're a mammal, to fall into the right category these days.
  
  I note that attitudes can and do change though. Not a hundred years ago things were different - I have a school geography text book in front of me which describes with satisfaction the progress toward exterminating the tiger worldwide, the bison of the plains and the African elephant. I might add that it speaks in similar terms about the aboriginal peoples of the British Empire (except, of course, those of India).
  
  People recognize that another human is capable of emotion, feeling, suffering and a sense of comfort. People who can't recognize that are described as autistic. Pet owners recognize those capacities in their pets and the rest of us presumably accept their findings. What is it about the other categories that makes us feel confident that humans and pets are exclusive in those regards?

[JacksDad]

Good question. Limiting the discussion to Western society it does seems odd our choices in meat. Although where I live people fight with vultures over roadkill.

I can't say I've ever looked at my dog or cat and thought about stew.

It's simply a "civilized" upbringing.

I've often thought I was missing out when I see Anthony Bourdain and others eating delicacies in foreign lands.

Have you ever seen the live sushi video?

Yum!

[drumbunny1]

:-1Maybe the "commercial" animals are treated with a lack of compassion because if you become attached to an animal (most people) don't want to kill or eat that animal....very good question though...I still feel for all the cows and pigs in the world...I was actually watching a show on TV and some woman came up with a harness that vibrates..and the cows hang in them before they are slaughtered and the vibrations soothe them. Well apparently cows can sense the "danger" the other cows are in when they are being slaughtered and it freaks them out!!! How freakin' sad is THAT!

[koan]

I recall the woman in Michael Moore's Roger & Me who had the sign "Rabbits - For Pets or Food" in front of her house. He went back to interview her after she'd been shut down by the inspectors for selling food. She was petting a cute, white rabbit and when he asked her about killing them she looked around furtively and said "I'm not supposed to do this, but..." then killed the cute bunny right there and stripped the skin off it within minutes. She'd been handling it as a pet moments earlier.



Found it really interesting.

[JacksDad]

There ya go, Koan.

Breeding for food or a someone that enjoys killing wild but nice?

[Sheryl]

We ran a small cow/calf operation. Several we sold to people to have slaughtered for beef, others went to auction. I can say our cattle were not given hormones, mistreated, ect. And several were like pets to us. Especially one of the bulls.

[spot]

Would you consider that a typical commercial approach to meat farming? I'm told there's an antipathy in some circles to PETA but they have a 12-minute emote which shows unacted footage of, among other things, a dairy operation and beef processing which didn't surprise me when I watched it.

In the UK there's a wide gap between "organic" standards and larger scale units, and an equivalent price variation in the shops which in theory pays for the increased care and concern shown to the farmed animals and allows cost-effective considerations to still apply. A small number of farms treat their animal rearing as a tradition which they're prepared to subsidize from their crop ventures rather than let go of, perhaps they qualify as professional hobbyists rather than exploiters.

Did your pet bull die a natural death or prematurely?

[JacksDad]

spot;739135 wrote: Would you consider that a typical commercial approach to meat farming? I'm told there's an antipathy in some circles to PETA but they have a 12-minute emote which shows unacted footage of, among other things, a dairy operation and beef processing which didn't surprise me when I watched it.

In the UK there's a wide gap between "organic" standards and larger scale units, and an equivalent price variation in the shops which in theory pays for the increased care and concern shown to the farmed animals and allows cost-effective considerations to still apply. A small number of farms treat their animal rearing as a tradition which they're prepared to subsidize from their crop ventures rather than let go of, perhaps they qualify as professional hobbyists rather than exploiters.


Nice, Sheryl. No profit?

That same gap is in the US, Spot.

Maybe some are hobbyists but most do feel they can make a difference.

Unfortunately there is no money in tradition.

[Sheryl]

spot;739135 wrote: Would you consider that a typical commercial approach to meat farming? I'm told there's an antipathy in some circles to PETA but they have a 12-minute emote which shows unacted footage of, among other things, a dairy operation and beef processing which didn't surprise me when I watched it.

In the UK there's a wide gap between "organic" standards and larger scale units, and an equivalent price variation in the shops which in theory pays for the increased care and concern shown to the farmed animals and allows cost-effective considerations to still apply. A small number of farms treat their animal rearing as a tradition which they're prepared to subsidize from their crop ventures rather than let go of, perhaps they qualify as professional hobbyists rather than exploiters.

Did your pet bull die a natural death or prematurely?




I don't know how he died. I'm sure he led a long life, since he was for breeding. We sold out of the cattle business to try to make it farming.

JacksDad;739137 wrote: Nice, Sheryl. No profit?

That same gap is in the US, Spot.

Maybe some are hobbyists but most do feel they can make a difference.

Unfortunately there is no money in tradition.


We made a profit here and there. But ended up selling out like I said up there.

To make a huge profit you have to have huge herds and hope mother nature and the market are with you. There are many different types of ranching though. Some breed stock just for rodeos (which is a whole new argument on animal rights), others have the feedyard operations, specific cattle breeding, and cow/calf operations. Spot is right in the fact that the market prices you pay show a huge difference in the quality of meat. I hate having to buy beef in a grocery store when I know how much better the beef was that we raised.

[spot]

drumbunny1;739115 wrote: :-1Maybe the "commercial" animals are treated with a lack of compassion because if you become attached to an animal (most people) don't want to kill or eat that animal....very good question though...I still feel for all the cows and pigs in the world...I was actually watching a show on TV and some woman came up with a harness that vibrates..and the cows hang in them before they are slaughtered and the vibrations soothe them. Well apparently cows can sense the "danger" the other cows are in when they are being slaughtered and it freaks them out!!! How freakin' sad is THAT!


So which position is the odd one? An empathic love of mammals in Western society which is deliberately suppressed both for commercially farmed meat animals and for vermin, or an uncompassionate view of mammals which is overridden where pets and humans are concerned because pets and humans are somehow different?

I note that there are many people who have little compassion for other humans unless they're acquainted or can somehow empathize because of contact through the media but for whom pet mammal species are invariably lovable. I note also that the seeming majority of posters here class all criminals as vermin and have the same attitude toward their disposal as they would to an infestation of rats. We're in the curious position where the only invariant is that all pet and endangered mammals are to be protected and nurtured but no other mammal automatically qualifies.

[lemon_and_mint]

what about insects?

Many people kill flies, spiders, etc without considrering them to have emotion like people or pets.

When i see programmes on tv where people are eating maggots i feel very sorry for the maggots.

[spot]

lemon_and_mint;739782 wrote: what about insects?What indeed. I'm sure a very exciting thread could be developed from the question. I only focused this one on mammals because I'm trying to chase down a particular train of thought within which I find it hard to incorporate other forms of life. If you think insects have a place in a discussion on compassion by all means extend matters here, nobody else is much enthused by the way I started things.

The reason I had mammals in mind is that their emotional capacity, their innate ability to suffer and to enjoy, is unquestioned while other animals - insects, for example - have a harder case to prove.

[lemon_and_mint]

i suppose if you want to go further you could discuss whether or not plants and trees and fruits/vegetables have feelings.

I do often wonder that as i cut up vegetables.

[lemon_and_mint]

Even insects can be taught to do tricks, in exchange for food, so does this prove that they have emotions - eg recognise hunger/desire and intelligence eg they can work out cause and effect?And is this what we attribute to humans and pets which makes us different from other types of mammals?

[YZGI]

Every time I cut a stem of broccoli off the plant i grew I sense a little squeal. But if I had not grown the broccoli would its life matter?

[lemon_and_mint]

YZGI;740029 wrote: Every time I cut a stem of broccoli off the plant i grew I sense a little squeal. But if I had not grown the broccoli would its life matter?


very deep philosophical questions here.

If it was discovered that vegetables feel pain, would vegetarians refuse to eat them on principal?

[spot]

lemon_and_mint;739789 wrote: Even insects can be taught to do tricks, in exchange for food, so does this prove that they have emotions - eg recognise hunger/desire and intelligence eg they can work out cause and effect?And is this what we attribute to humans and pets which makes us different from other types of mammals?


I went for a walk this afternoon to try to get my ideas a bit more ordered about this. I watched a couple of dogs chasing each other around a park, obviously playing. I stopped for a while at the City Farm and looked at the pigs interacting with each other.

The swing against anthropomorphic interpretations of mammalian socialization has swung over the years to a complete rejection and through to the other side. Experiments, where they've been devised (and that's not a simple process) have shown equivalence between human attributes like depression and addictive response and the reactions of the simplest of mammal species. Pet owners certainly claim to know this and yet we ignore these processes in commercially farmed meat mammals, hunted species and vermin because it's presumably too uncomfortable to consider while continuing to prematurely kill them in huge numbers, or even to consider having inflicted such a restricted and exploited life on them beforehand.

I'm not sure how one gets into the mental process of an insect or interprets their responses. I do know they're not hunted or farmed though. Perhaps if they were, instead of mammal species, I'd have fewer qualms about the nature of farming and hunting.

[lemon_and_mint]

ok, what about this, you say they are not hunted or farmed, but they are exterminated en masse - think of rat poison, wasp eradicators (there can be thousands in a nest), ant killing powder.That's whole generations of those creatures being destroyed.

[spot]

And, indeed, in the case of the rats I've included both a category (ruthlessly exterminated whenever they become apparent) and the beginnings of a discussion. I can enter into the mind of a rat if I employ a degree of imagination perhaps. I have no basis whatever of understanding the emotional backdrop of a wasp. I have no empathy for the wasp if it comes to that. I have considerable empathy for the rat and I note that they make wonderful pets. Pet rats are lavished with care, their wild cousins are painfully destroyed without remorse. What is it about pets that puts them on this isolated pedestal?

[lemon_and_mint]

Also you could take into account the reactions of various creatures when one of their kind dies -sadness has been noted in cows, elephants, rabbits, fish, swans, possibly others.

[spot]

Fish???????

Where!

[lemon_and_mint]

spot;740170 wrote: And, indeed, in the case of the rats I've included both a category (ruthlessly exterminated whenever they become apparent) and the beginnings of a discussion. I can enter into the mind of a rat if I employ a degree of imagination perhaps. I have no basis whatever how understanding the emotional backdrop of a wasp. I have no empathy for the wasp if it comes to that. I have considerable empathy for the rat and I note that they make wonderful pets. Pet rats are lavished with care, their wild cousins are painfully destroyed without remorse. What is it about pets that puts them on this isolated pedestal?


i guess i am unusual in that i have had several pets of wild creatures i have found outside, which other people may consider not interesting or vermin.And with all of them i have found that if you build a personal relationship with them , they will react to you like a pet.I haven't tried it with wasps as i am afraid of them but i see no reason why this couldn't be done in much the same way as a beekeeper interacts with his bees.

[lemon_and_mint]

people have reported that their pet fish became lethargic (sad may be an exaggeration) but they felt something when one of them died.

[spot]

It's the words sad and felt that I'd have difficulty exploring in any animal other than a human, perhaps they need tightening to words which can be demonstrated.

[lemon_and_mint]

you are trying to split real human emotion from learned behaviour in other words.

eg a cat may not be happy when you stroke it but it's natural learned response to being warm and safe is to purr, it may just be that pet owners attribute happiness to their cat - is that what you are saying?

[spot]

No, I think in the case of a cat it's a reasonable extrapolation. Mammalian brains are very equivalent, they've not diverged so much that such fundamental behaviours should have different interpretations. In the case of a fish I'd find it far harder to justify any emotional comparison other than fear which seems built in to any centralized nervous system. I'd exclude single-celled animals and worms as too simple but not much else where fear's concerned.

Once you reach mammals they're all complex and they're all quite alike. That's why I tried to focus the OP on them so we'd have a restricted set of conditions to negotiate. Once you bring in fish and fowl matters get far more uncertain but as far as mammals go I'm perplexed at the lack of empathy.

[Snooze]

I'd probably eat my own leg if I was starving.

[lemon_and_mint]

i can't think though of any kind of mammal which people do not keep as a pet, and therefore if it can be observed in domestic mammals, it would be logical that the same applies to wild mammals of the same species.

The only difference that i can see is that the wild ones are not indoors.And I am sure that the people who keep various mammals as pets do empathise with the wild ones, but people who are not familiar with those types of mammals maybe don't appreciate how developed their emotions are.

[spot]

Snooze;740202 wrote: I'd probably eat my own leg if I was starving.


I'd probably eat your leg if I were starving too. I might even share it around among the hungrier of my friends.

[spot]

lemon_and_mint;740206 wrote: i can't think though of any kind of mammal which people do not keep as a pet, and therefore if it can be observed in domestic mammals, it would be logical that the same applies to wild mammals of the same species.

The only difference that i can see is that the wild ones are not indoors.And I am sure that the people who keep various mammals as pets do empathise with the wild ones, but people who are not familiar with those types of mammals maybe don't appreciate how developed their emotions are.


I agree with you entirely. People who keep a pet pig or pet rabbit are shocked at the suggestion that it might be eaten or made into clothing. They empathize with the mammal in question. Alongside that you have huge industries keeping both pigs and rabbits in squalor and torment until they're killed before their time. Those mammals, by nature of their being farmed, are not given empathy. I think most people would adopt both positions at the same time. How is it that the average person can behave in such different ways depending only on the nature of their relationship with the animal? Why is there no overspill?

[lemon_and_mint]

while i consider your question here is an interesting video - wrongly labelled, it's a slug, not a snail.

Cat is aware of slug and sniffs it, slug is aware of cat and recoils when cat breathes on it, but what is each thinking?

By the way it is dangerous to give a chicken carcass to a cat, the bone splinters can pierce its stomaach, my vetinary surgeon said this.

[RedGlitter]

spot;740214 wrote: I agree with you entirely. People who keep a pet pig or pet rabbit are shocked at the suggestion that it might be eaten or made into clothing. They empathize with the mammal in question. Alongside that you have huge industries keeping both pigs and rabbits in squalor and torment until they're killed before their time. Those mammals, by nature of their being farmed, are not given empathy. I think most people would adopt both positions at the same time. How is it that the average person can behave in such different ways depending only on the nature of their relationship with the animal? Why is there no overspill?


Not all people are like that. There are people the world over whose hearts break for animals destined for slaughter. And they are the ones everyone thinks are weird. Perhaps the problem lies not with the few empathizers but with the rest of the "average" people.

[lemon_and_mint]

RedGlitter;740232 wrote: Not all people are like that. There are people the world over whose hearts break for animals destined for slaughter. And they are the ones everyone thinks are weird. Perhaps the problem lies not with the few empathizers but with the rest of the "average" people.


I agree with you red but in my opinion that's why spot's question is hard to answer.

[spot]

lemon_and_mint;740219 wrote: Cat is aware of slug and sniffs it, slug is aware of cat and recoils when cat breathes on it, but what is each thinking?

By the way it is dangerous to give a chicken carcass to a cat, the bone splinters can pierce its stomaach, my vetinary surgeon said this.


The cat is exhibiting curiosity, learning from its environment and will change its future behaviour depending on the outcome. The slug isn't thinking in any meaningful sense of the word, it's displaying a hard-wired response that won't result in adapted learned behaviour depending on the outcome. I often do as the cat does, I can't think of any instances where it behave like a slug.

Your veterinary surgeon smells of elderberries.

[lemon_and_mint]

these cats have obviously grown up with the baby birds and are fed enough not to try to catch them.

[spot]

RedGlitter;740232 wrote: Not all people are like that. There are people the world over whose hearts break for animals destined for slaughter. And they are the ones everyone thinks are weird. Perhaps the problem lies not with the few empathizers but with the rest of the "average" people.


Where does your position differ from mine? I did use the word "most", I think we've stated the same viewpoint.

[lemon_and_mint]

spot;740239 wrote: The cat is exhibiting curiosity, learning from its environment and will change its future behaviour depending on the outcome. The slug isn't thinking in any meaningful sense of the word, it's displaying a hard-wired response that won't result in adapted learned behaviour depending on the outcome. I often do as the cat does, I can't think of any instances where it behave like a slug.

Your veterinary surgeon smells of elderberries.


wrong.Slugs can learn.If you stroke them they like it and will rub their heads on your fingers hoping to be stroked.They will play a kind of game in which you approach their eyes with your fingers and they recoil, but after a while if they think you don't mean it, they don't do that any more.They learn that if you call their name you usually have lettuce, and will turn towards you to find it and eat it from your fingers.

[lemon_and_mint]

amendment to that last post - i was unsure if the slug could hear me calling it, or if it reacted to the feel of my breath on its skin - it was on the back of my hand at the time.

As seen in that video, it should have recoiled from this, not turned to seek lettuce.

[lemon_and_mint]

in case you are wondering spot as i said i quite often study strange creatures to see how they work.

[lemon_and_mint]

ok, having thought about it -

people are able to dissasociate from others emptions, whether this is human or animal emotions, if there is something to be gained - this can be seen by what goes on in business and politics.Therefore those involved in gaining money through slaughtering animals can disassociate from the animals distress.Those who do not gain money from it, ie the oprotesters, can still see the emotional aspects of it.

[spot]

lemon_and_mint;740250 wrote: amendment to that last post - i was unsure if the slug could hear me calling it, or if it reacted to the feel of my breath on its skin - it was on the back of my hand at the time.I hate quoting large chunks but this extract from Science, December 16, 1983, "Debate on learning theory is shifting; though many psychologists and ethologists now agree on using a mechanistic approach, some linguists doubt its adequacy" by Jeffrey L. Fox is both interesting and, at the slug level, relevant. I merely add it to the thread as information:Many scientists who study learning seem increasingly inclined to ignore theory and, instead, embrace the approach of the neuroscientists. This latter rests on describing the structure, chemistry, and physiology of the nervous system as a way of divining its higher principles. Though growing steadily, faith in this reductionist approach is by no means universal. For example, several scientists at the workshop, who are interested in language acquisition, asserted that there is little correspondence between various models for how learning occurs and what is known of the underlying biology. Especially in cases of language relearning for patients with aphasia, they note, "A particular functional unit may or may not correspond to a particular anatomical locus." Or, to paraphrase the more graphic tems employed by one learning theorist, "The brain could be a bowl of porridge so far as I'm concerned."

This view is not intended to discredit the neuroscientists' contributions so much as to question whether they can provide a rich enough theoretical base for describing and understanding learning. Such skepticism from various squarters, however, does not keep the neuroscientists from forging ahead and making enough progress to impress many psychologists and ethologists. The greatest successes are being registered by studying some of the simplest members of the animal kingdom, such as the sea mollusk Aplysia, championed for some years now by Eric Kandel of Columbia University and his many collaborators. Other invertebrates, including other mollusks (such as Hermissenda), a slug (Limax), the fruit fly (Drosophila), and various species of bee also are being studied. When their behavior conforms to some of the rules formulated by learning theorists, this is seen as an encouraging countervailing force against the fragmentation of learning theory.

Though no genius, Aplysia can learn in the same sense that the Pavlov dog learns to salivate when a bell rings. the mollusk displays two forms of modifiable behavior: When its siphon is touched repeatedly, its reflex withdrawal of that organ wanes ("habituates" is the term used by psychologists). That same withdrawal response becomes accentuated ("sensitized") when the animal is given a mild electric shock in its tail. An example of associate learning occurs when an animal is touched lightly at two different sites, with one of those stimuli administered along with a mild shock, the other not. Later, touching the animal at the site that was matched up with the shock elicits a much greater siphon withdrawal response than does touching the other site.

"We've focused on one aspect, the way animals connect two stimuli separated in time," says Kandel's former collaborator Thomas Carew, who now is at Yale University. Because Aplysia is such a simple organism, it's possible to study at the cellular level changes that accompany the behavioral modifications. Several rules thus are established, according to Kandel and another collaborator, Robert D. Hawkins. This kind of learning is localized in specific nerve cells; it produces changes in membrane properties in synapses between nerve cells; and those changes consist not in the laying down of new synapses but in the modulation of existing ones, a phenomenon whose chemistry is being studied in considerable detail.

It is tempting to accept this mechanism and apply it to other instances of learning willy-nilly. The rich details of the chemistry involved are in many ways consonant with that foud in other nervous systems. Nonetheless, chemical disrepancies can be identified between one system and the next. And from a psychologist's perspective, Aplysia does not seem to account for all, and perhaps not for many, kinds of conditioning. One drawback is that these studies describe learning in terms of a "prewired" circuit that becomes appropriately strengthened or weakened.

In this vein, the Aplysia-based model suffers from providing a "local" instead of a "network" theory, according to William Quinn, a neurobiologist from Princeton University. The mollusk's simple learning behavior is furnishing insights into the learning problem at the level of single synapses. "The first problem is not solved but it is providing some building blocks," Quinn says. But regarding the second problem of building a theory to encompass networks, "We don't know how to deal with it, and we don't have deep solutions in sight," he adds.

[spot]

lemon_and_mint;740274 wrote: ok, having thought about it -

people are able to dissasociate from others emptions, whether this is human or animal emotions, if there is something to be gained - this can be seen by what goes on in business and politics.Therefore those involved in gaining money through slaughtering animals can disassociate from the animals distress.Those who do not gain money from it, ie the oprotesters, can still see the emotional aspects of it.


That leaves the vast majority, who empathize perfectly well with pets, unaddressed. They gain nothing financially by ignoring the dreadful conditions farmed animals suffer but they do it anyway. How can they behave so callously and still care about pets?

[lemon_and_mint]

it's all very interesting - that habituating was what i noticed with my slugs then.

Anyway i am going to bed as i'm geting too tired to think about this but hopefully we will explore it some more tomorrow as it is very interesting.