why there is no such thing as humane slaughter

"Primary of those needs, of course, is not to have its head lopped off. If we don't recognize that need, everything else is a cruel joke, meaningless."

The turkey's biological imperative is to reproduce and perpetuate its germ line as effectively as possible - for Salatin, this means animals are raised according to their biological needs.

You could argue that turkeys on Salatin's farm aren't being *stressed enoungh* according to their evolved adaptations, and are thus being done a disservice due to the obvious lack of opportunistic predators in a captive environment removing the less fit from the gene pool (ie before reproductive fitness is realized).

Beyond that, the risk of projecting meaning where perhaps there is none seems apparent.

Indeed, we can predict and imagine our own deaths, which is part human suffering.

But not all humans can do this. Young children, or the severely mentally retarded or mentally ill, cannot predict and imagine their own deaths. Does this make it okay to kill them in order to advance our own interests, if it's done "humanely"? Note that I'm talking about killing to advance our own interests; euthanasia, killing that is in the victim's (projected) interest, is a whole 'nuther can of worms.

Do turkeys experience the suffering of self-awareness? Do turkeys yearn for immortality?

Yearn for immortality, no, but any member of a species with complex social behaviors has some form of self-awareness. Turkeys are more complex and more intelligent beings than most people recognize, as are chickens.

Of course we cannot know for sure how conscious or self-aware members of other species are. But then, we cannot know for sure how conscious or self-aware members of our own species are. (Perhaps I'm the only conscious being and all the rest of you are clever automatons, "dark" inside. Of course I don't really believe that, but I don't know for sure -- I can only guess, based on the behavior you exhibit.)

I don't mean to present a false dilemma, either... pretty sure sentience, consciousness, whatever we should choose to call it, exists along a continuum; However, it seems safe to say that a turkey resides closer to the "dim" end of the spectrum than the African Grey parrot, the dolphin, a bonobo, or human.

Sure, there's a continuum, and (on average) turkeys are at the dimmer end than humans. So what? There's a continuum within each species; if the Dalai Lama or Shakespeare or whoever you think is a really wise person, is more "conscious" than the rest of us, does that grant them some right to snuff us for his or her benefit? Do we have the right to slaughter children whose "light" hasn't come all the way on yet, or the mentally handicapped who are "dimmer" than us? I trust you agree that we do not!

It's only where you get down to the level that there's no "light" of consciousness at all, that we can consider an organism as solely an object and not a subject -- to extend the original metaphor, as a "payday" existing solely for our benefit, and not as an "employee" with interests of his/her/its own.

Where's that line? Again, without telepathy we can't be completely sure. But based on behavior and neurological complexity, I'd certainly have to include all the vertebrates on the "lit" side, as well as octopus and squid. Clams and oysters, probably not -- they're basically a muscle and a digestive system, not a lot of neurological or behavioral complexity. Singer says "somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most" [_Animal Liberation_, the 1975 Avon/Discus edition, p. 179], and I'd more or less agree with that; but having no need, no justification other than my own pleasure (if I took pleasure in eating them, which I never did), to disturb the clams and oysters, I figure I might as well be generous and let them be.

Mr. Jones would likely react in terror and unimaginably painful dread if he were still in possession of his faculties: he would experience the horror of understanding that he would be killed, that he would cease to exist, and he could do nothing to change his fate.

So would it be acceptable then if he were not in possession of his faculties, if he were humanely killed while he was sleeping? Would it be okay if he shot by a skilled sniper without warning? No fear, no pain, just walking down the street and bam! Clean headshot and Mr. Jones ceases to be.

but if the turkey can be killed without incurring suffering... well, then what? I'm sort of without a compass at this point, because I'm not certain what the grave error you refer to might be.

Take your question and substitute a human. "If Mr. Jones can be killed without incurring suffering... well, then what?" If your answer is different for Mr. Jones than for Tom Turkey, and you do not have an ethically relevant characteristic to appeal to in order to justify the difference, that is the grave error of ethical anthrocentrism.

Such a characteristic must apply to all humans (assuming you extend ethical consideration to all humans), so "ability to predict and imagine our own deaths" is out, as are contractualistic considerations. It must not apply to non-human animals that you are not willing to protect, so the ability to suffer, to feel pain, or to experience emotion are out. It should -- since we are in the fantasy land of gedankenexperment -- apply to hypothetical alien life-forms we would recognize as sentient and want to protect. And it must be ethically relevant -- "is or is not a biped" is no more relevant to an organism's ethical status than is "has light or dark skin".

(We also must realize that the idea that "the turkey can be killed without incurring suffering", in any sort of large-scale agriculture (including "small" farms), is sheerest fantasy.)

Tom Swiss - proprietor, unreasonable.org