There has to be a better way to slaughter cows than some medieval torture device that leaves the beast scrambling in its own blood. The problem is that cows are huge, heavy, dumb beasts. Perhaps a guillotine? The fear pumped into the meat as they wallow to death can't be good for the beef.

Chickens, meanwhile, are fairly simple creatures. While it does seem a bit cruel to cramp them into boxes as egg laying machines, chickens, if left to their own devices, will kill the weaker bird, equating to a loss of potentially thousands of eggs. Genetically altered wingless chickens seem like a really good idea--their wings are useless anyway.

As for giving old chickens a retirement home? That just seems silly; Henrietta has served her purpose, we don't need Farside chickens smoking cigarretes on their retirement farm.

The one-for-all of Utilitarianism has always been a bit maddening. Protecting two strangers over your own daughter? Yeah, right. That works in theory, but I'm willing to bet you'd kill two people before you'd let harm come to one of your own children.

I eat meat, vegetables, and organic food, and organic food is a sham. Vons has the "O" brand now, which is the equivalent of generic Oreos. If you want to make the world a better place, do your homework and make the right choices; chances are there's going to be something wrong with everything.

Soy beans, for instance, were one of the first genetically modified food items, and they're supposed to be the healthiest and most viable alternative to a carnivorous diet. GMOs are bad too. What's a human to do?

[i]I don't know that anyone would have a good argument against the alleviation of suffering; no one would say that suffering should continue.[/i]

That's right, suffering should continue and should never be alleviated. The reasons are manyfold, but the most important is that suffering itself is personally subjective.

Too many people confuse needless suffering or intentional infliction of suffering with suffering as a whole.

A lost love is suffering, whether that person dies or leaves. Hence the phrase, "Better to have loved and lost than never love'd at all."

When my grandfather died I was miserable for years, my suffering would have been less had I not loved him so much, but feelings and caring is part of human nature.

I can hear the arguments now, but that's not the kind of suffering we are talking about. That's the problem, suffering cannot be defined to the satisfication of most, much less everyone.

Suffering drives humanity forward, while both good and evil are done in the name of reducing suffering, without "suffering" humanity stagnates to a meaningless existence.

Imagine literature and art without suffering. It doesn't exist as we know it, because the concept of suffering is linked with empathy. Without empathy there is no art, there is no literature, there is meaningless drawings and empty words on paper.

This doesn't mean we should try to harm others, or enjoy their torments, or not try to reduce misery in the world, but our definition of suffering is going to change, and it cannot nor should not be eliminated.

Chickens, meanwhile, are fairly simple creatures.

Q: What do you call a chicken running around with its head cut off?

A: Poultry in motion!

Ain't nothin like startin' the day w/ some fresh-kilt turducken, haw. Dem spiked tires really do the trick, slice dem heads clean off. Litl salt, litl hossraditch, down de hatch. Oh Yam!

What a couple of letter writers have touched on is completely missing in this article: Singer's most controversial ideas have to do with how the disabled should be treated, and they are nothing short of reprehensible. A man who is concerned with the feeling states of chickens and not with those of "defective" human beings has nothing to say that compels me to pay attention to him.

Please don't confuse him with someone who is arguing for an unlimited respect for all life: there are plenty of human lives Singer considers to have little worth. Singer actually doesn't seem to get the insanity of an attempt to weigh which human lives are valuable and which aren't -- and we're not talking about Terri Schiavo here, we're talking about kids with Downs syndrome or cerebral palsy. I don 't know why this article completely leaves out this strain of Singer's thought, making him seem much more sympathetic and humane than he actually is. Don't be fooled.

Is it wrong to torture animals?

Why?

What if I enjoy it, is it still wrong?

What if (Mr. Kant) I'm able to divorce my torturing of animals from mistreatment of people (Kant's arguement against torturing animals was that if someone did it they would go on to hurt people. He didn't attach any actual value to the animal.)?

Everyone agrees that it's wrong to torture animals, but what exactly is the difference -- for people without unique health requirements that necessitate eating meat -- between torturing animals for pleasure and eating animals for pleasure? Is the difference a matter of degree -- no one can possibly enjoy torturing a pig as much as I enjoy a ham sandwich, and a pig doesn't suffer from being made into a ham sandwich nearly as much as it suffers from being tortured?

People are more important than animals. Absolutely. But people are not so much more important than animals that people should eat animals because they're more tasty -- that is, more fun to eat -- than beans.

Mr. Morling: there's a third option you're ignoring in your rhetorical scenario. Most people eat meat not "for fun," but because of its nutritional value. Meat has a unique nutritional profile that's hard to duplicate: very high in protein, contains many important minerals and unique amino acids that simply aren't available in a vegetarian diet. Meat historically has been an integral source of nutrition for human beings. So perhaps we eat meat because it's necessary.

If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?