As we have the financial industry, entertainment industry, technology industry, energy industry, music industry, and construction industry, we have the meat industry and mass genocide industry.
Of course, the people who perished in the Holocaust were Jews, Romani people, or culturally Slavic people (and I am not trying to lessen their suffering). Yes, people.
However, the same people that have consciousness as animals have (subjectivity, self-awareness at some, intentionality, unity, continuity).
While we may object the latter are intended to be eaten and wouldn’t have been born without the intention of meat consumption. And that’s the deal.
I wish for the animals to never have been born. They are being tortured, live in high-density conditions, are confined, suffer from untreated health issues (especially the bred fast-growing chickens), have enormous environmental stress, have physical altercations with each other, are separated from offspring (just like mammal human mothers cannot put away their children) and lack of natural behavior.
Pigs are territorial and very hygienic, so shitting (pardon my French) under is something they detest. And when the livestock is being transported, it is something so mentally unbearable such as people running away from a mass shooting.
And don’t forget I am talking about absolute terms (sic). Billions of chickens are raised for meat (broilers) and egg production (layers) each year, the global population of pigs is also in the billions, another billion of sheep, a billion of goats, billion of ducks. And around a quarter billion turkeys. Millions of cattle are bred for beef and dairy production.
Even if only one of 10000 livestock was tortured (and that is grossly incorrect), the history of meat consumption is far worse than the Holocaust in absolute terms. The human tragedy was finite in time, this is infinite.
Even though the whole process is more “humane”, the scope of it drastically beats the Holocaust if we admit both the kind of creatures had or have consciousness
If you are clear of cognitive biases, fallacies and formal logical mistakes (and the majority of people are not), you have to conclude that statistically Holocaust was quite insignificant in absolute terms of suffering compared to the worldwide meat industry. No matter how our predator-dominating culture teaches.
There is also one notable difference – we can replace meat or don’t eat it. Jews, Romani people and Slavs didn’t vote Hitler to power.
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