Yes, I have recently stopped eating pigs for similar reasons. I live in the UK and was horrified to find they are killed by CO2 gas. I am lucky enough to experience breathing in my own CO2, and I can tell you that it feels like you're suffocating. Your main respiratory drive is driven by CO2 levels and it induces panic and heavy breathing.
Aside from how they die, pigs are pretty intelligent animals, and I think an adult pig is similar in mental capacity to a 6 yr old or higher.
If they lived better fulfilling lives and died peacefully I might feel like I could eat pork. But not at the moment.
Actually it becomes a rabbit-hole. I then discovered how baby male chicks are killed...
At the moment I feel like eating meat requires a mental disconnect from the suffering if the animal and what we think is ok, and the act of eating food.
Farm beside me when I was growing up would kill them with a sledgehammer. So, err, yeah. I'm less concerned about the death (as long as it's over as quickly as possible) than the living conditions.
Either way, I'm basically vegetarian these days. I'll pay for something someone promises me is really organic acorn fed pork or some kind of super happy cow, but I'm not even really sure how much I believe that anymore.
Venison, however, I think is basically guilt free. It's never farmed (at least, where I am from) and it tastes better than beef..
> Venison, however, I think is basically guilt free.
Yes, but only for sociopaths who can not feel guilt.
I live in a rural area, farmland and timber. Hunters come for deer in season, whenever that was. Coming home at a certain time in the evening, I always seemed to interrupt some does and fawns crossing the road in the same place, so I know to be cautious and drive slow. But lately it had seemed to me that I never see any deer, which is unusual. Two weeks ago, I'm out early at sunup, I turn a corner, and I see about 40 fawns in a field, they all look up at me at the same time, then dart across the field. There isn't one there that's more than a year old. No deer, just a large amount of fawns. So this last season the hunters apparently killed every deer in the area. All that are left are the fawns, dozens and dozens of them, motherless. Seeing all those fawns was the saddest thing I have witnessed in recent memory.
Hunting is not good, and those that hunt, suck, for the needless killing for sport, but also for their extreme, unbounded entitlement. If someone can't enjoy themselves without killing something, there is something terribly wrong with them. But with any luck, they'll all die of rectal cancer.
Saying pigs are smart as a human six years old sounded pretty crazy so I looked it up. Mostly I see claims that they are comparable to a human three year old. A six year old can hold basic conversations, they are starting to learn how to read and write, starting basic arithmetic. No way pigs are even close to six year old.
You will be happy to know at least one company started sexing chickens before they even hatch by pricking with a needle and taking a very small sample of the egg prior to it really developing. That way they don’t have to birth male chicks and avoid culling them.
Aside from how they die, pigs are pretty intelligent animals, and I think an adult pig is similar in mental capacity to a 6 yr old or higher.
If they lived better fulfilling lives and died peacefully I might feel like I could eat pork. But not at the moment.
Actually it becomes a rabbit-hole. I then discovered how baby male chicks are killed...
At the moment I feel like eating meat requires a mental disconnect from the suffering if the animal and what we think is ok, and the act of eating food.