Please do not hesitate to make several arguments at once. — LFranc

Ecology and climate change.
Cattle grazing takes huge tracts of land from the natural environment, displacing wildlife, causing massive loss of oxygen-producing forest, and polluting. On a small scale - independent family farms with a few milk cows - this causes no problem, as the cattle can browse in orchards and fallow fields; on the industrial scale, it wreaks havoc
The beef and dairy industries contribute substantially to global CO2 and methane emissions. Not just from the infamous bovine belches, but from all of the machinery involved in their slaughter, processing, transport and refrigeration.
While a lot of people don't mind about the animals' suffering, they might consider the health effects on humans of a meat-heavy diet.

The subject has come around a few times before, so don't be upset is people have lost interest.

Synthetic meat is something that hasn't yet flourished in economies yet. Imagine McDonalds making $1 hamburgers with synthetic meat. Imagine the astronomical profits! :cool:

I do agree that factory farming is often extremely inhumane and that animals suffer through it.

We've been consuming Impossible Meat (plant-based mince products) for a couple of years, but it is literally twice the cost of regular mince. I've often admired vegetarianism, and have even tried to 'go vegetarian' for quite long periods, but living in a meat-based culture, and having been brought up consuming meat, it's hard to find the motivation to continue with it.

It turns out that lab-grown meat is astronomically expensive. See this gift link to long essay on the problems besetting lab-grown meat, NY Times, February 2024.

how can we still justify livestock farming? — LFranc

I created a similar discussion 4 years ago: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9917/is-purchasing-factory-farmed-animal-products-ethical/p1

Justifications included:

1. Not being sure that factory farmed animals experience suffering

2. That people need to eat

3. That we cause suffering by driving vehicles but don't ban that

4. That if it wasn't for that outlet the workers would just take their frustrations out on society and their intimate partners

5. That it's no worse than exploitative third world factories that we also contribute to

6. Factory farming is not inherently cruel and abusive. Cruelty and abuse occur in human workplaces and shelters too

7. We are playing a game with each other. There are clear winners and losers.

8. It's more rational to be an egoist and prize our hedonic welfare over others

9. We shouldn't interfere with nature

10. Animals are an easy source of protein

11. Eating animals is responsible for our evolutionary success

plant-based meat alternatives — LFranc

Yeaaaaah... no. All the power to them, but let's not throw reality out of the window. Same with solar panels.

I've often admired vegetarianism, and have even tried to 'go vegetarian' for quite long periods, but living in a meat-based culture, and having been brought up consuming meat, it's hard to find the motivation to continue with it. — Wayfarer

Ours wasn't that hard. After we moved to the country, my SO asked where to build the chicken coop. I said I didn't want chickens. "Why not?" "Who's going to kill them? Not me!" "Me either. But wait, that's hypocrisy, having other people do your killing." "Yes, it is." "So what's the alternative?"
We bought a vegetarian cookbook and agreed to try it for a month. Turned out okay. Turned into a year, then 35 years.
We still eat eggs (free range, local) and some dairy products (oat milk mostly, but real sour cream and cheese) and I put some chicken soup on the dry cat food.
We're still hypocrites, but feel a little better about it.

many farming systems are now capable of developing plant-based meat alternatives — LFranc

I'd rather not have the meat substitute. Vegetarianism is good enough.
If you are still craving meat, so you turn to fake meat, then that's not sustainable in the long run. The idea is to knowingly removing meat from your recipes.

I appreciate the article. It seems like the economics for synthetically grown meat is still in its infancy. I hope for it to be a catalyst for cheaper food that doesn't entail slaughterhouses of livestock. Some of those videos of what goes on there really can have an impact on a compassionate person.

- no livestock farming can take place without causing suffering to the animals — LFranc

In an ideal situation, livestock farming could possibly reduce suffering/pain below the level that happens in nature. All animals die but under controlled conditions they could go unconscious without having any anticipatory stress. When we put animals down due to illness/disability we often believe this to be a humane act. However, in the never ceasing drive toward the economic bottom line, abject forms of negligence and abuse are probably inevitable.

Often I feel we project our own capacity to suffer onto animals but I think we're far worse off in terms of our capacity to suffer. For example, we suffer the guilt/awareness of doing harm in the satisfaction of our pleasure, where animals have no concern. They don't know the globe is warming and that their burps/farts are doing it on our behalf. We're each materially responsible for so much, so much hinges on our ability to perform toward a complicated future which we desire but never really reach (we're always reaching, have the most insatiable/paradoxical needs), while animals just get to be. Humans are probably the most angst ridden animal in the history of Earth.

I love eating meat (in smaller portions and less frequently than I used to decades ago). Neither periods of being a vegetarian nor a vegan had been nutritious enough or made me anything but miserable. I'm still waiting for vat-grown meat to become a sustainable, economically feasible and appetizing alternative to industrial livestock meat production. Until then, I remain an 'immoral' (guilt-free) carnivore.

(2021)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/582423

Often I feel we project our own capacity to suffer onto animals but I think we're far worse off in terms of our capacity to suffer. — Nils Loc

That must be comforting.
Still, it's not entirely about 'capacity', is it? It's more about how many of us - the ones who use most of the world's resources and gobble up most of the animals - escape suffering, or hope to; whereas, for a steer, piglet or fryer chicken, a horrible death in adolescence is inevitable.

Humans are probably the most angst ridden animal in the history of Earth. — Nils Loc

With excellent reason. As Mark Twain said: "Humans are the only animal that blushes - or needs to."

All of nature hunts, kills, consumes, devours; vines strangle, weeds crowd out and take over, each animals draws oxygen from the air leaving waste in its path.

The question becomes whether we can give more than we consume, whether we can do something unnatural, and NOT consume meat, not crowd thing out, and whether this would be better for us and the animals and plants we don’t consume (because they will all go on devouring, hunting, eating meat, causing suffering and torturing each other).

It becomes a moral question by choosing not to be natural, but to be human.

All of nature hunts, kills, consumes, devours; vines strangle, weeds crowd out and take over, each animals draws oxygen from the air leaving waste in its path. — Fire Ologist

Just so, and well farmed animals will suffer less stress, be better fed, and protected from disease and parasites than their wild cousins. Even the most organic and vegan farmer has to control their plot and slaughter the pests that will seek to exploit her industry - slugs, caterpillars, aphids, wire-worms, etc. Suffering is part of life, as is consumption of other life. Not to mention the starving rabbits and feral goats that gather along the fence-line looking longingly at the lush vegetation they are being deprived of.

Like, , I don't eat meat because I don't like killing it, but do eat eggs and cheese. And I feed my vegetables with sheep and goat droppings and dead seaweed. Real experience of the natural world encourages a more realistic attitude to life; the problem with humans is not their cruelty but their proliferation.

We are in overshoot. This is a natural phenomenon that can happen to any species when it becomes out of balance with its environment. Dutch Elm disease, for instance, rampaged through Europe some years ago and killed off most of the elm trees. And now it is not rampaging much any more because it has killed off most of the elm trees that it used to live on. Humans are likewise destroying the ecosystem that they depend on, and the population is about to crash. Unfortunately, that crash is worldwide and will take many many species and whole eco-systems with it. And the human suffering along with it is already growing and will be huge.

Just so, and well farmed animals will suffer less stress, be better fed, and protected from disease and parasites than their wild cousins. — unenlightened

I don't think any comparison to nature is valid. We took ourselves out of nature a long time ago, and have done everything our clever imagination could invent to protect ourselves from nature. The only thing nature gives animals that we refuse them is liberty - one of the things we most prize for ourselves.

The operative word there is "well". Factory farming doesn't do well by animals and factory living doesn't do well by humans. With an industrial mindset, we tend not to do things well - just more. It's the same with travel and dwellings and clothing and work. Not better, just bigger, taller, slicker, faster, more.
(I lived on a small family farm in my youth, where the life of the pigs and chickens was comfortable enough, if short, but I hated the more gentle killing, too. I hated gutting, plucking and cleaning the entrails - kids' work. I hated the smells, the fluids, the mess. Milking the goat and looking for the eggs was all right.)

Maybe its hard to justify livestock farming but maybe a livestock farmer can still justify livestock farming in order to make a living with little other alternative.

Maybe he doesn't need to justify it. Not everyone has the same sensibilities.
But I do question why a farmer who operates on a large enough scale to make a living in the livestock side of agribusiness wouldn't have choices, both is what he cultivates and how he goes about it.

Maybe he doesn't need to justify it. Not everyone has the same sensibilities. — Vera Mont

Well yes but I am not sure those kinds of answers are the ones you had in mind when you brought up the question. That seems implied when you gave the question: "How can we still justify... "

agribusiness wouldn't have choices, both is what he cultivates and how he goes about it. — Vera Mont

I guess it depends on economics. I'm sure if more ethical choices were economically more lucrative, farmers would jump on it. I can't speak for whether such possible changes present significant economic risk to farmers that threaten their livelihoods. Possibly for some in some places.

That seems implied when you gave the question: "How can we still justify... " — Apustimelogist

Only I didn't ask that question, and I don't think the OP was asking how the farmer justifies his living, but how the consumer justifies his food choices. That's just a guess, of course.

I guess it depends on economics. I'm sure if more ethical choices were economically more lucrative, farmers would jump on it. I can't speak for whether such possible changes present significant economic risk to farmers that threaten thwie livelihoods. Possibly for some in some places. — Apustimelogist

Most agribusiness is not owned by 'a farmer'. Many farms are held by families, so the decisions are made by several senior members. The living they provide can be precarious, but many of these farmers have changed their methods according to the consumers' changing preferences and to reduce their dependence on suppliers. However, the corporate investors don't need to be responsive to public sentiment or local market conditions.
There is always risk. But there is also much to be gained - and not strictly in terms of financial return. Farmers who adopt sustainable methods, stop using chemical fertilizers, etc. do have smaller yields in the first couple of years, but also save money, as well as their own health and that of their soil. Dairy farmers who don't remove newborn calves from their mothers do have to give up part of their milk quota for six months, but the cows produce better quality milk and live twice as long, and the calves thrive. The long term benefits of an ecological or ethical choice are not immediately obvious. There is always choice.

Only I didn't ask that question — Vera Mont

Aha, apologies!

and I don't think the OP was asking how the farmer justifies his living, but how the consumer justifies his food choices. That's just a guess, of course. — Vera Mont

Well my perception is the phrase "how can we still justify livestock farming?" could conceivably include all of these kinds of moral predicaments and similar.

There is always a choice. — Vera Mont

So you think that sustaining their living is not a justification because the risks from making changes are not risky enough?

So you think that sustaining their living is not a justification because the risks from making changes are not risky enough? — Apustimelogist

Not from my POV. (Remember, I didn't ask anyone to justify anything.) We all have different perspectives, convictions and sensibilities. Whether a justification is valid, each person has to negotiate with their own conscience. But it's an interesting question.

Nothing is guaranteed. Many farmers do not sustain their living when they refuse to change. Many lose their farms and livelihood, are bought out by corporations or foreclosed by banks. There is risk in change and risk in no change; there is risk in farming and in every walk of life; there is risk in life. I'm saying, consider your options, your long-term goals and your priorities.

their farts are doing it on our behalf — Nils Loc

It's their belching rather than their farting.

I like meat. I do not object to the more traditional farming practices of producing and slaughtering animals for food.

I do object to heavily industrialized agriculture -- for both animals and plant crops -- which is driven by the usual capitalist impulse to cut costs and maximize profits. Two examples: a) producing corn for ethanol as 10% gasoline and b) massive feedlots which are harmful to both ecology and animal health.

The way we produce plant food, requiring heavy inputs of petroleum and chemicals, is a disaster area.

We are in overshoot. — unenlightened

It isn't clear to me, at this point, what a "balance" between our species and "nature" would look like. When were we in balance with nature, and what did that look like? We could at least move toward balance, even if we can't reach it.

Rural life in the 1950s looked more balanced. Farms tended to be quite a bit smaller; herds of beef and hogs were tiny, compared to the huge feed lot operations now. Farming was mechanized, but the equipment was not yet gargantuan. Nostalgia? Probably -- back then agriculture was changing towards what it is now.

Dutch Elm Disease took out elm trees across this continent in the 1960s -1970s, just as another blight took out chestnut trees years earlier. There are some presumably DED resistant varieties available. Two trees of this variety are doing well on my street.

What's wrong with solar panels? I live in the desert and my panels have saved me over ten thousand over the years. I lease them through Solar City.

When future generations judge us harshly, it will be for how we treat and eat animals. It doesn't bother me enough to change my behavior, but I would pay twice as much for meat if there was a lab-grown alternative that was as good.

Future generations (if there are any) will have a long list of things about which to judge us harshly. Unfortunately, we will not be able to criticize them for their heinous errors.

Yeah, but I think animal rights will be near the top of the list.

Could be.

Future generations will be far too busy trying to dig basic necessities out of the rubble to give us much thought beyond the odd "bastards" over their shoulder. And they won't have any animals to think or care about, except maybe some rats to hunt for dinner.

Yes, fair enough; and I guess most people (I think... in normal societal circumstances anyway... not sure about some extreme kinds of moral trolley-esque thought experiment) would say it was not justified if the topic was human life, regardless of these risks, so not without precedent.