We didn’t sit down and make a careful rational assessment of things like sapience, a capacity for abstract thinking or cognition before we decided to domesticate animals, and despite abstract debates about it, we don’t do it out in the world to justify further animal use. We domesticated animals because we wanted to. We use animals because we want to. We chose then and we choose now to override the animals’ interests in favor of our wishes. It’s a nice idea to think that this is being done in some interest of a given animal’s well-being in some cases, but the whole proposition of use is very heavily weighted in favor of satisfying human desires at the outset. Most of the time (nearly all of the time, I’d say) animal well-being is a secondary concern, at best. If we tell ourselves that a given animal use meets some particular desire we may have, we’re going to do it. If we can reduce suffering in some cases, some number of humans may choose to do that, but it doesn’t really change the fundamental issue. That use will happen with or without “minimal” suffering if enough humans are willing to provide an incentive for it.

We may fetishize dogs and cats in our culture (so we punish people who do things we judge cruel to dogs and cats), but we don’t fetishize pigs, cows or chickens, etc. so we don’t criminalize the same treatment (or far worse), simply because we wish to use *those* animals as food. It doesn’t ultimately matter that we may dance around making a claim of “humane” treatment of those animals. That use will persist, so long as people choose to eat animals, and actual concern for the welfare of those animals will only occur to the extent that there’s a financial incentive for it. If a majority of the market were willing to pay exorbitant prices for happy meat, factory farming would not exist. The market is completely unwilling to do this, so factory farming exists, and will persist, as long as humans continue eating these beings. This is as certain as the sunrise.

I think that humans made a wrong choice, regardless of the fact that the tradition of animal use is well-entrentched at this point. I think that the direct results of that wrong choice are suffering on a massive scale.

Folks may argue back and forth whether or not it should or shouldn’t have been done, but I think that really won’t ever get anywhere. If you think there’s no moral consequence to use, there’s no case against use you’ll ever listen to. If you think use *never could have been justified at the outset* (as I do), it doesn’t matter that some animals may be treated in relatively benign ways today, and in any event benign treatment in the edge cases doesn’t have anything to do with the routine suffering we choose to cause in the majority of cases.