I strongly disagree with your position, Christoph.
First, I agree with Marc: this argument to eat ‘happy meat’ (from happy animals) can be easily applied to justify slavery and cannibalism: let’s breed happy slaves, let’s give birth to happy babies and then eat them.
In population ethical terms: once you bring into existence a farmed animal, that animal would be better-off on an animal sanctuary, so they you have a duty not to kill it but to take care of it on a sanctuary. I wrote a paper on this (Population ethics and animal farming, Bruers 2022, https://www.pdcnet.org/enviroethics/content/enviroethics_2022_0999_10_26_45). It also follows from my moral theory ‘mild welfarism’, as explained here: https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2022/08/23/mild-welfarism-avoiding-the-demandingness-of-totalitarian-welfarism/ . All population ethical views that use cardinal interpersonally comparable welfare and that say that eating happy meat is always better than not breeding farmed animals (e.g. total utilitarianism), entail the repugnant conclusion which in this case means we should breed a huge number of animals, sacrifice ourselves to take care of them on animal sanctuaries such that they have positive lives barely worth living, and definitely not slaughter them. If you believe that the life/welfare of an animal can be compared with non-existence but cannot be compared with the welfare of a human, then you cannot apply those population ethical views like total utilitarianism, and then you can take a view that entails it is permissible or good to eat happy meat. But I think those conditions are very unlikely: if animal welfare can be compared with non-existence, and human welfare can be compared with non-existence, then it is weird why animal and human welfare cannot be compared with each other. It is like heaving a measure with a zero point but no scale. Possible, but weird.
Actually, my theory of mild welfarism gives two reasons why eating happy meat is not allowed: one based on population ethical preferences (to avoid the repugnant conclusion, to respect the procreation asymmetry, to have a more person-affecting view, to be dynamically consistent,...), the other on a deontological principle (not use someone as a means against their will).
So, a coherent ethical theory that gives two arguments against eating happy meat, plus strong intuitions against eating happy babies and breeding happy slaves, makes me pretty confident that eating happy meat is impermissible.
From a practical viewpoint: I think it is harder for consumers to find cheap, tasty, healthy animal-based meat products of which the animals had clearly positive lives and where the animals were treated according to their personal animal welfare standards that they would apply to other animals such as dogs, than to find cheap, tasty, healthy animal-free meat products. Organic meat is more expensive than a lot of plant-based meats, and even with organic farming people do not seem to be very confident that those animals have positive lives. People would not eat organic dog meat, for example.
Your claim: “I personally don’t think that alt-protein will result in everybody stopping to eat meat”. I also personally don’t think organic meat will result in everybody stopping eating conventional meat. After all, we have organic meat on the market for more decades than plant-based meat and still not many people are buying organic meat. The organic meat market is growing less than the plant-based meat market.
“So going from a messaging of “ideally everybody should be vegan and let’s trust tech to solve it” to “ideally everybody should treat animal products as something sacred and really care for how they are treated” is something that probably the majority of people could get on board with.” Many people also get on board with cultivated meat tech development.
I strongly disagree with your position, Christoph.
First, I agree with Marc: this argument to eat ‘happy meat’ (from happy animals) can be easily applied to justify slavery and cannibalism: let’s breed happy slaves, let’s give birth to happy babies and then eat them.
In population ethical terms: once you bring into existence a farmed animal, that animal would be better-off on an animal sanctuary, so they you have a duty not to kill it but to take care of it on a sanctuary. I wrote a paper on this (Population ethics and animal farming, Bruers 2022, https://www.pdcnet.org/enviroethics/content/enviroethics_2022_0999_10_26_45). It also follows from my moral theory ‘mild welfarism’, as explained here: https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2022/08/23/mild-welfarism-avoiding-the-demandingness-of-totalitarian-welfarism/ . All population ethical views that use cardinal interpersonally comparable welfare and that say that eating happy meat is always better than not breeding farmed animals (e.g. total utilitarianism), entail the repugnant conclusion which in this case means we should breed a huge number of animals, sacrifice ourselves to take care of them on animal sanctuaries such that they have positive lives barely worth living, and definitely not slaughter them. If you believe that the life/welfare of an animal can be compared with non-existence but cannot be compared with the welfare of a human, then you cannot apply those population ethical views like total utilitarianism, and then you can take a view that entails it is permissible or good to eat happy meat. But I think those conditions are very unlikely: if animal welfare can be compared with non-existence, and human welfare can be compared with non-existence, then it is weird why animal and human welfare cannot be compared with each other. It is like heaving a measure with a zero point but no scale. Possible, but weird.
Actually, my theory of mild welfarism gives two reasons why eating happy meat is not allowed: one based on population ethical preferences (to avoid the repugnant conclusion, to respect the procreation asymmetry, to have a more person-affecting view, to be dynamically consistent,...), the other on a deontological principle (not use someone as a means against their will).
So, a coherent ethical theory that gives two arguments against eating happy meat, plus strong intuitions against eating happy babies and breeding happy slaves, makes me pretty confident that eating happy meat is impermissible.
From a practical viewpoint: I think it is harder for consumers to find cheap, tasty, healthy animal-based meat products of which the animals had clearly positive lives and where the animals were treated according to their personal animal welfare standards that they would apply to other animals such as dogs, than to find cheap, tasty, healthy animal-free meat products. Organic meat is more expensive than a lot of plant-based meats, and even with organic farming people do not seem to be very confident that those animals have positive lives. People would not eat organic dog meat, for example.
Your claim: “I personally don’t think that alt-protein will result in everybody stopping to eat meat”. I also personally don’t think organic meat will result in everybody stopping eating conventional meat. After all, we have organic meat on the market for more decades than plant-based meat and still not many people are buying organic meat. The organic meat market is growing less than the plant-based meat market.
“So going from a messaging of “ideally everybody should be vegan and let’s trust tech to solve it” to “ideally everybody should treat animal products as something sacred and really care for how they are treated” is something that probably the majority of people could get on board with.” Many people also get on board with cultivated meat tech development.