The original post was talking about factory farmed chickens, and whether we can reduce their suffering by reducing their population. I don’t think the natural lifespan comes into it—however much we reduce the population of farmed chickens by convincing people not to eat them, we’re not expecting any of the chickens under consideration to live a full and happy life.
It’s hard to frame this as a trolley problem though—we’re not actually comparing human deaths to chicken deaths. The trolley would have to kill 1 human along one path and create 12,000 farmed chickens along the other path.
I think you should consider normal life span. Then, humans live around 8 to 16 times as long as chickens. “Chickens may live for five to ten years, depending on the breed.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken#General_biology_and_habitat
The original post was talking about factory farmed chickens, and whether we can reduce their suffering by reducing their population. I don’t think the natural lifespan comes into it—however much we reduce the population of farmed chickens by convincing people not to eat them, we’re not expecting any of the chickens under consideration to live a full and happy life.
It’s hard to frame this as a trolley problem though—we’re not actually comparing human deaths to chicken deaths. The trolley would have to kill 1 human along one path and create 12,000 farmed chickens along the other path.