Well, you are growing muscle cells and killing them... but it is a step forward.

You mean "living things that look cute on pictures"? Cell cultures are alive too, and have to die for you to consume them.

Are you seriously trying to compare individual cells and fully grown mammals? Or are you just trying to be contrarian.

It said "living things". If it said "sentient things", that'd be different.

I think sentient is probably closer to his definition. Yes, vegetables are 'alive', but (as current knowledge) they do not feel. Which reduces the apprehension of eating it.

This line of thinking drifts into uncomfortable territory relating to cannibalism of euthanized elders, after all if they're not sentient around the time of death and those at the bedside vigil are hungry ... Just saying that as a moral/ethical argument its a minefield, not simple.

As a worse example of the same path, castration of bulls has always been seen as "OK" for convenience in raising beef, none the less I'm thinking a somewhat higher "brain-ectomy" of livestock isn't going to fix everything up for vegetarians.

>As a worse example of the same path, castration of bulls has always been seen as "OK" for convenience in raising beef, none the less I'm thinking a somewhat higher "brain-ectomy" of livestock isn't going to fix everything up for vegetarians.

Well of course not. You're still ending a sentient life. You're just separate out the sentience ending from the life ending.

So? Cannibalism of euthanized elders doesn't seem immoral. It is not an accepted practice in most human cultures, because of emotional ties. Cannibalism itself was a prevalent phenomenon throughout human history. Although, my view of ethics mostly aligns with Peter Singer.

"This line of thinking drifts into uncomfortable territory relating to cannibalism of euthanized elders"

Obviously, being such a common practice.

Are you implying the primary difference between cell cultures and animals is that the latter 'look cute on pictures'?

I mean "things with nervous systems that can feel pain".

Pain is not a necessary component of the animal being eaten (unless it's being hunted down in the wild, of course, but most animals that are consumed by humans aren't), so if that is the problem it can be (and, as far as I know, is being) dealt with without reinventing the whole lifecycle in the lab.

Apart from pain, I would not like to die, and thus I would not kill anything that also does not want to die.

Two questions:

1) No species on earth "wants" to die. Every living organism has defence systems that it will try to prevent/repair any damage made to it.

Even more, (some) plants communicate and use signaling system to warn their neighbours about threats. Clearly, any species try to avoid death

How do you define "does not want to die"? 2) What about carnivorus species? Do they "allowed" to eat meat? If they are allowed, why humans can't? And more specifically, why you can't?

1) I'd say "being sentient" is a good definition for that. What exactly is sentient is left open to interpretation a bit, but I know big animals are, and I know plants aren't.

2) Eating meat is immoral, animals can't reason about morality, therefore they do whatever they do. Morality is the domain of beings intelligent enough to think about it. I consider killing animals immoral. That said, I do eat meat, because it's so tasty, in full conscience that I am immoral.

If you are so inclined, you could try being a weekday vegetarian - http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html. For me, the two hardest things, when finally quitting eating meat a year ago, were convincing everybody around me that was serious about it, and finding alternative foods. I still occasionally eat fish. I try to justify it to myself as fish being of lesser intelligence and sentience.

That would have been much easier if I liked fish, plants, etc :/ I'm a pretty fussy eater, sadly.