this is an interesting analysis. at the end of the day, i actually agree mostly with the rankings, but i don't think it's a fair way to arrive there. two thoughts:
1. the column in the table which attempts to normalize suffering. It (actually all of the columns) are wildly subjective. I don't think it's right at all. Beef cows do not suffer less than milk. Nor do porkers suffer more. But really it's all wildly subjective.
2. trying to reduce a "problem" like suffering of farmed animals to a trade-study matrix construct is probably as injust and inhumane as as anything else i've seen. i don't think it's OK to eat beef because a cow is .9 one the sentience, but 2 on suffering, but provides a lot of pounds of meat.
if you eat meat, and i certainly do, you should do it without guilt and without half-hearted rationalizations like this. we are all animals and have our place in the food chain. loving other animals and treating them well is not orthogonal to raising them caringly and kindly and then eventually humanely culling and eating them. if you are a grown-up, adult human, you can deal with that squarely and honestly. if you were a blade of grass would that cow think for two seconds about munching on you? it doesn't make the cow evil. Life is life and yours ain't worth more than grass just "because".
and if the problem you have is the way they are farmed then that's the problem, not the eating of said meat. and by the way, the idea that they way they are farmed is "inhumane" is more to do about misunderstanding the nature of farming and animals, anthropomorphization and dis-ingenuousness than it is reality in a overwhelming majority of cases.
trying to justify it like this is seems it might even be more of a strawman in bad faith.
1. the column in the table which attempts to normalize suffering. It (actually all of the columns) are wildly subjective. I don't think it's right at all. Beef cows do not suffer less than milk. Nor do porkers suffer more. But really it's all wildly subjective.
2. trying to reduce a "problem" like suffering of farmed animals to a trade-study matrix construct is probably as injust and inhumane as as anything else i've seen. i don't think it's OK to eat beef because a cow is .9 one the sentience, but 2 on suffering, but provides a lot of pounds of meat.
if you eat meat, and i certainly do, you should do it without guilt and without half-hearted rationalizations like this. we are all animals and have our place in the food chain. loving other animals and treating them well is not orthogonal to raising them caringly and kindly and then eventually humanely culling and eating them. if you are a grown-up, adult human, you can deal with that squarely and honestly. if you were a blade of grass would that cow think for two seconds about munching on you? it doesn't make the cow evil. Life is life and yours ain't worth more than grass just "because".
and if the problem you have is the way they are farmed then that's the problem, not the eating of said meat. and by the way, the idea that they way they are farmed is "inhumane" is more to do about misunderstanding the nature of farming and animals, anthropomorphization and dis-ingenuousness than it is reality in a overwhelming majority of cases.
trying to justify it like this is seems it might even be more of a strawman in bad faith.