You’re focusing on one aspect of dairy farming when there are a number of ethically unsound practices such as stealing the babies from their mothers and killing them for beef, even if not veal.
this is not inherently unethical. i can’t think of a single ethical system that would say this is immoral.
So causing a mother to cry for her missing baby isn’t unethical? I’m not sure what ethical system you’re referring to that would determine whether something is ethical. By all accounts, causing suffering to an animal is cruel when it’s not needed.
By all accounts, causing suffering to an animal is cruel when it’s not needed
that’s not true. but even if it were, you don’t have a monopoly on what may be considered necessary. a dairy farmer may say he needs to participate in any of the practices you find abhorrent to feed his family, and i wouldn’t tell him he’s wrong.
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Again you made the fallacy of assuming something is necessary despite it being part of an unnecessary system.
i did no such thing.
Causing unnecessary suffering isn’t cruel?
it’s only cruel if the suffering is the intention of the practice. if we could remove the suffering, we would. so it’s not cruel, it’s indifferent.
An action is cruel if it causes unnecessary suffering, period. The lack of an intention to cause suffering is irrelevant if the action does cause suffering and doesn’t need to happen, and we are aware of the harm it does. Which we are. Continuing to engage in the practice is therefore willingly causing needless suffering, which is unethical.
I’m not sure what ethical system you’re referring to that would determine whether something is ethical.
literally, any. pick one.
Pretty much every ethical framework that exists would find that causing needless harm and suffering to animals is unethical. Kicking a dog when you don’t need to is unethical. Similarly, stealing a baby from their mother, restricting them in a crate, and killing them, causing the mother extreme emotional anguish, is unethical; causing her pain from overproducing milk is unethical; given that dairy farming is itself unnecessary.
Kicking a dog when you don’t need to is unethical.
but we’re not talking about kicking dogs. we’re talking about producing food.
No, we’re talking about producing a particular kind of food that isn’t necessary. Kicking a dog isn’t necessary and neither is exploiting cows for their milk and causing them and their calves suffering and ultimately killing them at young ages. Both are harmful practices which can be avoided.