If you’re at all aware of what goes in farming in Australia you know it’s a massive horror show. From chicken macerators to pig gas chambers animals suffer massively to end up on your plate.
Every Australian I’ve ever spoken to describes themselves as loving animals, and is horrified at things such as whaling. Most of us even find activities like puppy milling or hunting upsetting.
In light of this; and the knowledge that a few decades ago whaling was a-ok, monkeys didn’t matter, and elephants certainly didn’t feel pain; what makes you confident that what you were raised to consider beneath consideration actually is?
Eating animals is neither necessary nor nice, so why do it?
Neither chicken macerators nor pig gas chambers cause animals to “suffer massively”. The idea of that kind of industrial scale slaughter might be horrifying to you for various reasons, but those examples provide quick deaths for the animals.
There’s certainly areas of animal welfare in the agriculture industry that can be improved, but there is a big difference between things we might find disturbing and things that actually cause suffering for the animals.
Like, nature is cruel. Animals in the wild die of disease, parasites, starvation, burning to death in bushfires and getting eaten alive. Comparing the lives of animals in agriculture to animals living in the wild, in most cases I think the domestic animals (at least in Australia and other countries with strong animal welfare laws) are suffering less.