“The Circle of Life argument simply doesn’t take into account the brutal and completely unnatural way in which meat, eggs, and dairy are produced on the overwhelming majority of modern farms.”
This is an argument often loftily put forth by those who take comfort in the childish notion that by eating animals they are somehow playing an important role in a glorious and unending cycle of life, death, and rebirth. These people fancy themselves as players in a Great Cosmic Drama, in which the dead are consumed by the living who will eventually die themselves and be consumed in their turn. It's Nature, don't you see?
The biggest problem with this line of reasoning (or should we say, “rationalizing”) is that it is based on a naïve and absurd fantasy. The Circle of Life argument simply doesn't take into account the brutal and completely unnatural way in which meat, eggs, and dairy are produced on the overwhelming majority of modern farms.
The life of a pig on a modern factory farm provides a representative example. Pigs on modern factory farms are separated into two categories, “breeder sows” and “meat breeds”. You know, just like in Nature. The natural life-span of a pig is between ten and twelve years, but on modern farms, breeder sows seldom live beyond five years, at which point they are sent to slaughter, and pigs raised specifically for slaughter will generally be killed at the age of six months, about one-twentieth of their natural life-span. The modern breeder sow is often kept in a gestation crate, a metal enclosure so small that she cannot stand up or turn around. She is fed enormous quantities of antibiotics, is kept indoors her entire life, and will be impregnated (either artificially or by a boar) as many as six times in the course of her unnaturally brief and miserable life. When the sow gives birth, her male babies will be castrated without anesthetic and the males and females alike will have their tails docked, their ears notched, and their tusks clipped, also without any anesthetic.
The runts of the litter, those piglets who have the misfortune of being born smaller than their siblings and who therefore show little promise of growing to market size, will be destroyed by any of a number of different methods, a common one being simply to pick the pig up by her hind legs and smash her violently against the concrete floor until she is dead or unconscious. This is often done in full view of both the mother pig and her other offspring.
Those piglets who have been deemed suitable for eventual slaughter will then suckle from their mother until they are large enough to be placed inside a metal stall with a concrete floor and in which they too are unable to turn around. They will be fed a diet unlike anything an omnivorous pig in the wild would ever eat, consisting mostly of cereal grains supplemented with antibiotics and synthetic vitamins. And whereas it takes about five years for a wild hog to reach 250 pounds, modern “meat” pigs will swell to that unnatural weight in just six months, at which point they will be sent to slaughter.
“Whereas it takes about five years for a wild hog to reach 250 pounds, modern ‘meat’ pigs will swell to that unnatural weight in just six months, at which point they will be sent to slaughter.”
If the pigs survive the agonizing trip from the CAFO to the slaughterhouse, they will be taken from the transport truck and shot in the head with a captive-bolt stun gun, which may or may not render them unconscious. They will then be hoisted into the air on a chain by one leg and their throats will be slit in full view of other pigs. At this point they will be conveyed, sometimes still fully conscious, along the disassembly line which begins with a vat of boiling water, into which they are dunked, the intention being to soften their hides for the butchering that is to follow. The pigs are very often still alive at this point in the process and they react in exactly the way you would expect them to: by screaming, wailing, and fighting in vain for what little remains of their lives.
After the boiling, their hides are ripped from their sometimes still breathing bodies and they are then carved up piece by piece, each bloody morsel wrapped in plastic, as Nature intended. The pieces are then placed into a refrigerated truck and shipped to a supermarket near you. It is there, under the fluorescent lights, that consumers purchase the corpses piecemeal, take them home to their families, and eat them, thus bringing the glorious cycle to its magnificent conclusion.
Only in the most Orwellian, Kafka-esque dystopia could such a system be considered “natural” or in accordance with anything that resembles the natural order.
Your argument is invalid.