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im talking about mutiliating animals while they are still alive.

like cutting tentacles off an octapus/squid while its still alive

throwing a live lobster into hot water and let it slowly boil to death

shoving a hose down a goose's throat and force-feed it so that it will have a large liver.

none of these is secret, there are plenty of videos showing these scenes with hideous comments like "humans rule this world they deserve to do whatever they want" "stop caring, its tasty as f**k"

so i must ask with all honesty, what the hell. how can people be ok with torturing, and inflicting unfatomable pain upon innocent creatures. JUST FOR IMPROVED FLAVOR.

im not vegeterian, i belive its ok to kill an animal in order to eat it because it was fed, raised and taken care of. they might have short lives but at least it was reletivly peaceful and the end was quick and painless.

this mutilation, is beyond inhuman, how on earth can anyone be ok. they seriously think an animal doesn't feel a thing when its having its limbs slowly cut off?

is the added flavor really that important, that you have to torture the animal to death instead of killing it painlessly? i really hope the stuff i saw i lillgalized in most nations

Think of it this way, would you rather eat a bad tasting dead animal or a good tasting dead animal?

I rest my case.

"Tear-free" cosmetics are tested by putting them into the eyes of small animals. Things like this are what happens when corporations can get away with whatever the fuck they want.

You could really make the argument that none of it is humane in the end since we're still killing them. It's not just a matter of "ruling the world", it's a matter of being the only sapient species on the planet that has evolved to the point of intellectual superiority. They may feel, but they don't think.

Doesn't mean we should be careless and just kill any and all animals for food or profit; we have conservation laws against that to prevent extinction of important species and reduction of over-reproducing animals in some areas. It's a thing we need to take care of, but in the end its just a thing.

{ They may feel, but they don’t think. }

Not just wrong, but scarily wrong. Which still doesn't make it "wrong" to boil lobsters/etc, that's the difference between factually wrong and morally wrong.

You live your life according to your morals, OP. Don't buy any dishes/food items that require these techniques of you don't support them. That's really all you can do.

Do you consider a spider cruel for keeping its victim alive as it digest it in the web? How about many poisonous animals whose victim dies a slow agonizing death so even if they get away, it won't be getting very far? Or any animals who eat still living creatures? Are the feasters of carrion the only moral beings on this planet to you?

Also, if you're going to eat stuff like crab it has to be cooked alive. It's body releases toxins rapidly upon death that soak into the meat. This is why crab fisherman don't want their catches to die, because the toxins released can kill or signal the ither crabs to start dying as wel, leading to the whole cstch potentially being ruined.

I'm sorry but the "humans are the most intelligent creatures and thus other animals can't think" argument has been shown to be wrong so many times and is so annoyingly human-centric I can't even believe people are still saying it. Animal intelligence in many cases is quite different from human intelligence, that does not narrow out sentience.

Shit, my freaking pet lovebirds show evidence for thought – maybe not as advanced as a human being, but considering they can plan together to try to thwart my attempts to prevent them from eating their treats, chewing up parts of the apartment or going into forbidden places makes it pretty clear that at least some animals are capable of these things. Sorry, this is a major peeve of mine.

To address the original post – I don't think that torturing animals in most cases is used to "make them taste better" (there are exceptions such as Foie gras) but to rather increase production. Personally I wish there was a better solution but I can't offer one since I'm not educated well enough on the industry. For the few foods that indeed are abusing animals to "make it taste better", it's fairly clearly animal abuse that has no reasonable justification. Ultimately it is your choice to indulge in foods or other products that engage in these acts.

In the case of boiling lobster, the animal is dead relatively quickly (less than 5 minutes) so I'm not sure if that would be really on the same level of something like foie gras or chopping off an animal's limbs while it's still alive.

Pardon my previous statement on animal's not thinking, I rushed that post. I should know better considering I've read stories about ravens and dolphins exhibiting very intelligent behaviors I was a bit under the impression that they had very strong instincts or perhaps only basic thoughts at best, but not higher thought patterns or full sapience. I am probably wrong in that regard and will educate myself further.

I'm still with Chris on the matter though, if you're going to kill an animal for food at least make it WORTH it. It may be cold and heartless of me to say but its just so inefficient to do it the "all-natural" way when you're breeding animals that exist to die for your food anyway, y'know?

The same goes for lobsters, for similar if not the exact same reasons.

As for that "humanocentric" remark, well no shit. We're the only species on the globe with a writing system. Animals may exhibit thought and emotions, but only a handful of species approach our level.

Is it justifiable to use those who cannot write or cannot communicate on the same level as most people to use in experiments involving chemicals? Many people with severe mental disabilities can struggle far more with their thought and emotions than an average human can, does that justify experimentation on them?

Anyways, what owes to human success is not emotion or thought, but rather extremely adaptable communication (which allows humans to share ideas and build off of each other) and the ability to use tools (which is augmented by intelligence, being bipedal and having hands with thumbs). In addition, intelligence is not something that is really a requirement for success – intelligence is metabolically expensive and most animals can survive with quite a bit less than humans have. In a way, humans are extremely specialized creatures in this sense.

In terms of successful species, intelligence is not a requirement to success. The Barn Owl for example is a fairly average creature in terms of bird intelligence but has dominated every continent in the world, bar Asia. Dinosaurs were less intelligent than modern birds and yet they dominated the earth for hundreds of millions of years.

A lot of people have a tendency to have an anthropomorphic perspective on the idea of intelligence, which can actually present itself in a huge variety of ways – ways that humans are inferior to other animals in (such as memory). Your post reeks of it.

Ultimately the problem here is not whether or not they have a human experience but rather a sentient one. Sentience is, after all, what allows us to understand and interpret pain and suffering – people with the intellectual capability but who are in an induced coma are unable to be sentient of the pain or suffering they may experience during surgery, for example.

Since this sort of experimentation has unknown effects that can induce great pain or suffering permanently, it is not justified like surgery is, and such an induced coma is most times reversed after the surgery is performed. But what about those in a permanently induced non-sentient state? Should those people (or animals for that matter) be used for experimental purposes on the physical resistance of the body to certain chemicals?

That's a question to take home with you all today.

Snakes/spiders/etc have to do that to survive. We humans don't. We inflict cruelty not to survive, but to have better-tasting food.

And, no, I don't eat crab, or any kind of seafood.

In a sense though, the "boiling the crab so that it doesn't poison you" thing IS a form of survival – it gives human beings access to a food source that was previously not available. In some places, seafood is the most viable option for food.

Also, boiling an animal like that alive is going to kill it relatively quickly, and crustaceans doesn't react to pain. It's not even comparable to using rabbits for testing or something like that.

I'm pretty sure octopi and squids can feel pain, and I know fish can't but reptiles, birds and mammals can. Not sure about crabs and lobsters though. Either way, most animals in the wild (that can feel pain) are destined to die a short painful death, or a prolonged slightly less painful death.

Don't really have much of a stance on the issue since I pretty much only eat beef and occasionally some turkey (just because I'm picky, not out of any conscious desire) but that's what I know about the issue.

I suppose the way I look at it is, suffering and death are inseparable aspects of complex life. They are directly responsible for it thriving on Earth, and our blind hatred of them can often be misguided. Of course we should actively consider our practices in relation to other species and change them to more humane alternatives when reasonable, but ultimately, obsessing over it doesn't exactly lead to a good place- breaking down emotionally, or becoming the kind of person that throws Molotov cocktails into facilities working to cure the worst of diseases because they utilize animal testing.
The key word above is reasonable. Suggesting a change that in theory would reduce suffering doesn't automatically put you in the right, with those that demand worldwide transition to veganism being a prime example.
And in regards to this "human superiority" debate that never seems to die in the forums, I'm still waiting for evidence of another species that has ascended in its purpose beyond survival and, at most, relatively simple pleasure-seeking. Where is the dolphin's theory on the origin of existence?

You are aware that invertebrates and arthropods can't feel pain right? They lack a central nervous system (kinda the reason why when take off parts of their body then they still keep moving). So you shouldn't feel too bad about the lobsters.

blindspy: Yes yes, it may reek of it, but you haven't proved me wrong with that wall.

I've always felt like this is one of those debates that people argue with too much emotion and not a lot of thought. Yes, it's sad that animals have to suffer to feed us but are we really going to cripple our production of food (when we already don't have enough to feed everyone mind you) for the sake of making an animals last moments more comfortable?

I was always on the middle ground when it comes to the whole "Are humans above nature or not" debate. On the one and, yes, we Humans, while not the only animals capable of thought, are on a whole different plane in regards to it. We are able to reason unlike any other creature and have a seat of dominance on this planet, not just trying to survive but thrive.

On the the other hand, we are flesh and blood creatures who needs to eat, gets sick and dies like any other animal. While we are in an elevated position from all other life on Earth, we are still a part of nature, still animals, and thus still binded by the same rules. We kill to eat, mark our territory, do crazy things in the pursuit to reproduce, and do what we do for the collective survival or out kind, just like evolution has programmed us, and all animals to do.

It's fair to say we hold a special spot on Earth, but to say that we are completely separate from nature and above it's rules is preposterous. Humans are omnivorous, with meat being a very important part of our diet, and the quality and survival of Human life means more to us than the lives of our food, these are inescapable truths (until we hit the singularity and become robots that is ;) )

Humans are at the top of the food chain and are in a position where they simply cannot survive without cultivating large amounts of animals and plants to feed our species. Outside of letting billions die there isn't a whole lot we can do till science finds a way to feed huge amounts of people.

We can either continue what we do till we find another way, or we start letting tons of people starve. This is just another logic vs emotion debate.

If you really wanna stop animal suffering should donate to labs that are trying to create plants that can feed our species, such as plants that look, smell, taste and feel like meat.

You know, either way you swing the "humans are superior or not" angle when it comes to talking about nature and how we interact with it, we are still acting in the right even with the cruelest of actions.

Animals are cruel, this is just a fact of life. From the tiniest of creatures who make their homes and incubators within other living creatures, driving them to their deaths so they can live and breed; to the largest creatures such as killer whales, whose techniques for hunting seals if done by humans would have had PETA demanding for their imprisonment long ago. I don't think we've proven animals have enough empathy for others, not just members of their immediate group or species but a multitude of species and members of their species, to really care what they do. They haven't demonstrated an ability to acknowledge their actions, let alone feel any sort of regret, nor hindsight to avoid regret, within said actions.

And before you bring up the mentally challenge, let me ask you this. Do they get treated any differently from that of a pet? They're fed regularly, cleaned regularly, shown pity and great care from their care givers/providers whether they're family or not, and constantly condescended to in our attempt to humor whatever they say or do in a non-hurtful and damaging way. It's incredibly fucked up but in truth, we treat the mentally disabled like we do treat animals, just animals we like and or care about.

So humans in their interactions with nature are somewhat superior due to the introspective ability to judge our actions, and our giving two shits about stuff like morality and empathy. But if you don't believe we are superior, then all we're doing by being cruel is acting out our natural tendancies, doing what any other animal would do in our place.

So if we're superior we're just acting as the superior life form by doing whatever we want with only ourselves and our individual conscious decisions to guide us. If we are just another animals then our actions are merely those of any other dominant animals, and thus our "cruelty" is no more cruel then a dog who catches a wild rabbit.

sorry for being blatant, but this post is 100% BULLS**T

first. we already have a a crap ton of plants engineered to replace meat, mainly soy and mushrooms.

and secondly, am much more imporantantly, no one, NO ONE, will starve if we will stop torturing animals.

people can eat goose livers without forcing a metal tube down their throat

people can eat squids AFTER they stabbed their brain.

it boggles my mind to no end what kind of excuses people make to justify torture.

so if we will go further with this dumb "humans are superior, therefore can mutilate innocent creatures as much as they like" why not skin cats and dogs alive? i heard it tastes much better that way.

how about chopping off limbs from human babies and and mentally retared? they are obviously inferior and incapble of complex human thought.

and i can go further, justifying hurridying cruelety with "human superiority" can only allow worse things to come.

but ill just say that this cruelity CAN be justified, but only when it comes to life saving medical research, and i don't think force feeding geese till their stomach errupt has to do with research

Intent is vital in this situation.

Torturing animals is unacceptable. However, this is not a matter of "torturing" animals for shits and giggles.

Let's take veal, for example. Veal comes from young cattle. The farmers that raise the young cows aren't rubbing their hands in glee over the prospect of "torturing" them. They know that they'll eventually be slaughtered for the sake of food.

As a matter of fact, the U.S. government has stepped in and imposed regulations on how farmers are supposed to raise calves for veal. For example, some states have banned the use of crates to confine calves. The country as a whole plans to universally ban all crate-confinement by 2017, according to Wikipedia.

"how about chopping off limbs from human babies and and mentally retared? they are obviously inferior and incapble of complex human thought."

Okay, you're taking it to 100 here.

Maiming an animal is completely different, especially if the person doing the deed is intending to keep the animal alive afterwards.

For some humans, food and water is no longer just a necessity, but it's also a luxury. We go through great length to make food taste, well, wonderful. Not just for ourselves now, but even the animals we've domesticated. I mean, John and Fido ain't got love handles from hunting in the wilderness. No, they're like that, because they shared potato chips while maranthoning Scrubs on Netflix.
If torturing an animal will make certain food taste good, I doubt the person who figured this out and/or people who follow them really care. It's a money maker. Unfortunately money screams louder than the pained shrills of an animal. For the consumer who buys this and eats it, all they know that it taste delicious.

Morally, it feels wrong to me. I would never do it. I rather have my food taste bland, than hurt an animal. I rather not eat if I have to kill an animal. But, I will still eat meat. It sounds hypocritical, but I didn't kill the animal. Right now, all I see is a slab of meat which was once an animal. I had no connections to it, so doesn't weigh heavily on my conscious that's it's dead. Hell, I'll share the meat with my pets. They would happily eat it as much as I would. As long as you don't tell me the grisly details on how this slab of meat got to my plate, I'm not going to question it.

You, also, have to realize that some people just don't care. How much it disgusts and outrages you, there's gonna be that group who wants it. Just the same, they're gonna give you the same annoyed and disgusted looks back at you.
Welcome to humanity, don't bother being in the neutral party, the opposing sides well have your head mounted first, before the they go at each others throats.

Seriously, I could probably write a small novel on how radically similar and non similar humanity is to the rest of the animal kingdom. In the end, it's up to the person to think what's right or wrong. And no amount of screaming, typing in all caps, threatening, or actually physically harming people will get your point across. God forbid you bring up facts or facts that dismiss no longer factual things.