Bundesverfassungsgericht untersagt erneut Käfighaltung von Hühnern
In short, battery laying hens are forbidden.
You know where.
Because it is inhuman.
My input: Nice Legs.
8 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Chickens are not human to begin with so how can it be inhuman to cage them? And why is it OK to eat them? Isn't murder worse than imprisonment? This is a symptom of a confused society - their future Muslim population will have no problem caging chickens or killing infidels.
But they have legally banned caging chickens but not murdering them. Maybe the activists felt that public would be happier to impose costs on the farmers than to deprive themselves.
So if we were to kill other humans for the purpose of eating them, that would not be murder? Keep in mind that we can eat soyburgers - there is not real "necessity" to eat chicken.
I think ultimately what will happen is that they will develop methods to grow meat cells outside of an animal. This will be much less messy (no chicken shit to deal with), efficient( more than half the chicken is not meat - it's bones, feathers, guts, etc.) and humane. At that point chicken will become contraband, like ortolans - consumed only by the elite to whom the usual rules do not apply.
The fact that you can kill something to eat its flesh doesn't mean that you can treat it as you please. You can raise animals and kill them humanely, without inflicting unnecessary suffering. Even the Noahide laws, for instance, prohibit the consumption of the flesh of animals that are still alive, or the flesh that was torn from a living animal (which is why I stopped eating non-Kosher slaughtered livestock-they get disassembled while still alive.) I'm not sure if it's inhumane to cage chickens, but cows, sheep and goats would surely suffer in such conditions.
Certainly in the case of chickens they are not dismantled before they are dead. I have no experience with the larger animals so I can't say. After their necks are cut, they bleed for a while and then are scalded (for non-kosher birds) and their feathers removed. Only then are any further cuts made (to eviscerate them) and by then they are long dead. Other than the fact that the process is automated, kosher and non-kosher poultry slaughter are not that different - both involve the cutting of the jugular and carotid so the animal bleeds to death. The machines cut both sides of the neck so they actually bleed out and die faster than the shochet, who cuts only 1 side. Non-kosher birds are often stunned unconscious first with electricity or gas (required by law in Europe), which some would argue is MORE humane. As far as I am concerned, dead is dead. It is not a pretty process I can say from personal experience but we are omnivores with a taste for meat so that's the way it is.
We have progressed to the pioint tht the whole food industry, including the chicken breeding industry, is unnecessary. We can have a complete and balanced diet based on petroleum products (during the war Germans ate ersatz marmelade) and algae or soya. Yet we spend a lot of money on elaborate processed and packaged food. There is no ethical defense of eating our fellow living creatures except that it is natural and we are evolved to this reality. I dont think we should spend much time worrying about this and feeling guilty.
8 comments:
Chickens are not human to begin with so how can it be inhuman to cage them? And why is it OK to eat them? Isn't murder worse than imprisonment? This is a symptom of a confused society - their future Muslim population will have no problem caging chickens or killing infidels.
K
Presumably, chicken freedom fighters are vegetarians.
But they have legally banned caging chickens but not murdering them. Maybe the activists felt that public would be happier to impose costs on the farmers than to deprive themselves.
K
"Murder"? Murder presupposes an evil intention but killing chickens is for eating and the motive is to survive. If murder, it is in self defense.
It would be "homicide" but chicken are not Homo.
So if we were to kill other humans for the purpose of eating them, that would not be murder? Keep in mind that we can eat soyburgers - there is not real "necessity" to eat chicken.
I think ultimately what will happen is that they will develop methods to grow meat cells outside of an animal. This will be much less messy (no chicken shit to deal with), efficient( more than half the chicken is not meat - it's bones, feathers, guts, etc.) and humane. At that point chicken will become contraband, like ortolans - consumed only by the elite to whom the usual rules do not apply.
K
K,
The fact that you can kill something to eat its flesh doesn't mean that you can treat it as you please. You can raise animals and kill them humanely, without inflicting unnecessary suffering. Even the Noahide laws, for instance, prohibit the consumption of the flesh of animals that are still alive, or the flesh that was torn from a living animal (which is why I stopped eating non-Kosher slaughtered livestock-they get disassembled while still alive.) I'm not sure if it's inhumane to cage chickens, but cows, sheep and goats would surely suffer in such conditions.
Certainly in the case of chickens they are not dismantled before they are dead. I have no experience with the larger animals so I can't say. After their necks are cut, they bleed for a while and then are scalded (for non-kosher birds) and their feathers removed. Only then are any further cuts made (to eviscerate them) and by then they are long dead. Other than the fact that the process is automated, kosher and non-kosher poultry slaughter are not that different - both involve the cutting of the jugular and carotid so the animal bleeds to death. The machines cut both sides of the neck so they actually bleed out and die faster than the shochet, who cuts only 1 side. Non-kosher birds are often stunned unconscious first with electricity or gas (required by law in Europe), which some would argue is MORE humane. As far as I am concerned, dead is dead. It is not a pretty process I can say from personal experience but we are omnivores with a taste for meat so that's the way it is.
K
We have progressed to the pioint tht the whole food industry, including the chicken breeding industry, is unnecessary. We can have a complete and balanced diet based on petroleum products (during the war Germans ate ersatz marmelade) and algae or soya. Yet we spend a lot of money on elaborate processed and packaged food. There is no ethical defense of eating our fellow living creatures except that it is natural and we are evolved to this reality.
I dont think we should spend much time worrying about this and feeling guilty.
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