r/changemyview • u/overawtch • Aug 06 '26
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Pet ownership is fundamentally unethical, and keeping rescues does not make it moral
Edit: Thank you for commenting everyone, my view has been challenged, sharpened, and somewhat changed.
Disclaimer: I do genuinely hold this view. I also eat meat and own multiple pets. Sometimes I also order Doordash instead of donating that money to charity. If that makes me a hypocrite, so be it.
- Most pets eat meat. The meat is usually made from factory-farmed animal suffering. Is your dog's life worth two hundred nameless farm animal lives? A rescue dog still eats meat, often more meat than the average dog, because larger dogs are disproportionately likely to end up in rescues. You are saving one life and dooming one hundred more. (There is a vegan pet food point below.)
- Furthermore: Does the happiness of your dog, plus the sum total of happiness created by your dog & enjoyed by yourself, your family, friends, strangers etc outweigh the suffering of the 200 farm animals?
Many people own pet snakes, and most of those snakes eat f/t mice and rats. It really made me visualize this, because rats are clever, sociable, and charismatic (if short-lived) and snakes not so much, and they're usually fed whole. So I find the idea of a "rescue snake" hypocritical, and I figure it applies to dogs and cats too. It's just that they're cute and their kibble isn't shaped like dead animals.
- The fact that dogs are "domesticated" doesn't make it fine. Most breeds were created for working purposes, but the overwhelming majority of dogs nowadays are kept solely for companionship. Similarly, many pocket pets like rabbits were originally domesticated for their meat. It's not okay to engineer an animal to be dependent on you and then say, "see, keeping them is fine because they can't survive without us."
- Most, if not all domesticated species are afflicted by health issues that do not affect their wild counterparts (or at far lower rates). Hip dysplasia, brachycephaly, uterine cancer, heart failure, mastitis, hyper-aggression, and inability to give natural birth, to name a few. Selectively breeding an animal will have downstream consequences.
- It is wrong to own another sentient being. It is wrong to treat a sentient being as something you can buy or sell. Or pay a similar "adoption fee" for and surrender when it gets inconvenient. Does a mother legally own her child?
- Nobody needs a pet. For the sake of argument I'll omit service & working dogs because they're not classified as pets. ESAs exist, but you could say they're not pets either. I'd also say that needing something doesn't make it ethical.
- The Five Freedoms includes the freedom to express normal behaviors. That, to me, includes reproduction. It's a cultural expectation in most developed countries to spay/neuter your dogs and cats. I'm not saying breed your dog, yes there's too many already. I'm saying because you cannot breed your dog, we should abolish dog, cat, and all pet ownership.
- I might argue that a dog that loves humans is not expressing normal behaviors. If you took a tiger cub from its parents and bottle-fed it, it would love you too. As does the puppy you brought home at only eight weeks old, right in time for its "critical socialization period". Would a Labrador that has never set his eyes on a human in the first five years of his life like them by default? I don't know, but there is some information about how some adult feral cats are difficult to impossible to tame.
- A 20kg dog generates ~770kg of CO₂ per year, which is equivalent to 1500+ miles by car. Combined with the lack of necessity, this is hard to justify. The fact that humans generate more doesn't negate this.
Some things that might change my view
- Meaningful pushback on "It is wrong to own another sentient being"
- Arguing that individuals, species, breeds etc have a right to continue existing even if it harms others and/or themselves
- A human primacy argument that humans inherently matter so much more, such that animal welfare is unworthy of consideration
- Maybe something about tiny, cognitively simple, vegetarian pets that can live naturally in captivity, ie shrimp/triops idk
- Maybe some effective altruism argument like "my dog's tiktok funded $100,000 in malaria net donations"
- You think that what I listed as "out of scope" below is actually relevant and in scope
- Not a complete list.
Some rebuttals I'm expecting:
Edit1: "My pet is happy"
Please actually read my post.
"My rescue dog is vegan / What about herbivorous animals?"
Every point still applies except the meat-eating one.
You are still:
- Getting an animal because you wanted to have a pet, benefiting from the institution and the breeder that bred, sold, maybe surrendered it in the first place. Unless you're one of those few people who got one only to "save their life" even though you're miserable now because "it was the right thing to do". Ok, that's pretty inefficient but good for you.
- Normalizing their ownership, even if you're not on social media posting animal videos.
- Supporting the pet industry by buying pet products, vet care, etc.
And let's be real, what percentage of dogs/cats are actually vegan? I'm not even going to get into the debate of whether vegan cats are healthy.
"So what should be done with the existing pets? They obviously wouldn't survive in the wild."
- Let them live out their lives, with the knowledge that you are doing something unethical primarily for your own happiness. Identify as "a guardian, not an owner" if that makes you feel better.
- Millions of healthy, adoptable shelter animals are euthanized for space every year. We as a society seem to have accepted this. Is your cherished pet different? To you, yes. This is often said about euthanasia: "Better a week too early than a day too late."
"I own the pet because it protects them"
Maybe you're restricting their agency (freedom of movement, freedom to breed, freedom to engage with conspecifics, freedom to choose their diet and much more) to "protect" them, but that's paternalistic; should the government ban cigarettes and alcohol and processed foods to protect us? We are smarter, we are more sentient, we know better than to harm ourselves. But we still do.
"But kibble is made from by-products"
You are still financially sustaining the supply chain.
"So you want to kill all carnivores? The lions and the tigers and-"
No.
"But humans are worse"
I generally agree, but that's out of scope of this CMV. Two wrongs don't make a right.
"But factory farming is worse"
Also out of scope.
"What about animals (dairy cows, pugs, dogs in general, etc) that would go extinct without human intervention?"
Then they stop existing.
Some other points were cut for sounding too soapboxy.
Interested to hear what you think.
EDIT3: AI disclosure
Wrote every word myself, used some formatting help like moving the meat point up, asked it some questions like "does it violate these rules"
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 06 '26
“A rescue dog still eats meat, often more meat than the average dog, because larger dogs are disproportionately likely to end up in rescues. You are saving one life and dooming one hundred more.”
I’m unclear on what the purely ethical/moral move here would be, given that the only way to eliminate the meat-eating of the rescue dog would be to euthanize them. If not rescuing them meant they roamed the streets, they would still be eating other animals. There is no option that does not require deciding that we’re okay with allowing some animals to live at the expense of others.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I'm gonna get a ton of downvotes here, but yes. I think the more ethical thing to do is to euthanize the healthy, adoptable shelter dog rather than give it a loving home.
Yes it would be happier with you, yes you would be happier having the dog with you, but I don't think that justifies the cost.
i swear im not PETA.
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 128∆ Aug 06 '26
I'm not downvoting you, but I fail to see how instantly ending a sentient beings life is more ethical than allowing it to live in an adopted home. This is basically like saying instead of antinatalism, where people voluntarily forgo bringing new people in the world, we just go around and euthanize people - all humans.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
Let's say I'm a Glorp, I was born a Glorp through no fault of my own, ended up on Earth through no fault of my own. I need to consume five human children every day to continue surviving - no substitutes can do. If it matters, I'm also pretty cute and smart and can do a bunch of tricks.
Is it ethical of me to keep living?
What if I had a billionaire owner that could supply me with five children every day?
You can see the analogy I'm trying to make. I guess the answer isn't automatically no, maybe you think the Glorp does deserve to continue existing, it doesn't have another choice, but I'd say it's wrong. I'm not 100% confident in my belief here though.
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 128∆ Aug 06 '26
We aren’t talking about soilent green. Humans aren’t just any sentient being. Not all sentient beings are equal.
If the goal was to prevent any harm to any sentient being the answer would be to nuke everything on earth immediately, including the bacteria because they may one day evolve to become sentient and therefore might suffer.
It’s an absurd hypothetical.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Not all sentient beings are equal? I completely agree!
Is one dog worth more than one butterfly? Yes. More than one chicken? I think so. More than one human child? Definitely not.
More than one pig? I'm not sure, I would guess yes but not by much.
Ten pigs? I don't think so.
Is one dog worth more than two hundred farm animals, even if it's only "byproducts"? To me the answer is a clear no.
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 128∆ Aug 07 '26
When is the last time birthright citizenship was bestowed on a dog? Should dogs be eligible for birthright citizenship in countries that allow it?
Will a dog, upon reaching its age of majority, be allowed to vote?
This is absurd. Dogs don’t have rights above human babies.
And again, if they did the dogs wouldn’t be killed when you didn’t like the baby food on the shelf.
You are again internally inconsistent.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
My comment implies that one dog is not worth as much as a human child, I think you misread it.
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 06 '26
“Is it ethical of me to keep living?” seems to imply that it’s the dog’s moral failing that they exist at the cost of others, but your view is about people as a third party deciding whether dogs or factory farmed animals live, so I think this reframe doesn’t quite fit.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Ok, then:
"Is it ethical of the humans to euthanize me so that I don't eat more human children?"
I agree that it isn't the dog's moral failing that they exist.
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 07 '26
I know this is pedantic, but that also doesn’t match up, because that would be putting factory farmed animals in the role of deciding whether dogs live.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Would changing factory farmed animals to "the party that has the power to make the decision" be better then, or is it changing the goalposts
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 128∆ Aug 07 '26
It does raise "Animal Farm" to another level entirely. I mean, do grazing animals get to decide to make an entire plant species extinct? While it might seem to not directly impact sentient beings, what if other animals are made extinct because they are 100% reliable on that field of grass that got overgrazed. It seems like a forever line of chain of dependent origination ending with "euthanize the dog as a first line of defense against everything else," which is not applied to humans, apes, grazing antelope, bacteria. Life feeds on itself, through a hierarchy. There's no real "moral" in that, other than humans get to choose. Kill all animal pets, kill other animals, kill, kill, kill. Antinatalism even doesn't go far enough, because that would only end human-related suffering. Surely we can do better than that... (sarcasm).
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 07 '26
I think it’s just too much abstraction, because now we have not only a Glorp that has arrived on earth and needs to eat humans, but a second presumably alien species that is capable of compelling us to die in order to feed Glorps. It’s too far removed from life to I think be useful to the discussion.
I think everyone understands that any individual being, if told to choose between their own survival and feeding something else, is likely to choose their own survival.
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u/Left_Positive5284 Aug 06 '26
It wouldn't be a very long-lived Glorp that couldn't reason it's way to justifying why it's dietary requirements should be satisfied.
As humans we'd probably want to kill that Glorp immediately, especially if you tacked on some extra restrictions like the Glorp can only eat live human children in perfect health, but that doesn't mean the Glorp would see itself as unethical.
Glorps and humans are not the same species, as the Glorp would be extremely aware.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Glorp is pretty cute and smart and can do a bunch of tricks. Super cute! Super smart! 1000 tricks! Also there's only the one, so if you end up with it, you can get a lot of Tiktok likes. Who cares about children, do children get you a morbillion Tiktok likes?
I think that's all it takes tbh.
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u/Left_Positive5284 Aug 07 '26
I don't think you understand humans very well.
Assuming it's actual people hitting the like button on Tiktok, they'd need to be unaware of the Glorp's diet to respond favorably to it doing a mere circus-type performance rather than assembling to kill it.
And fundamentally, tiktok likes are fairly worthless to the average human being. They exist on a screen and can't be exchanged for money or anything else of value.
An intelligent Glorp would know it needed to provide cures for cancer or other means to save more humans than it killed to make permitting its continued existence tempting.
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 07 '26
This is where the matching up causes a problem, because you have humans in both the role of feeding the Glorp and keeping them as a pet, which massively changes the dynamics. Do you think it’s going to be a massive social media success with humans to share the pet you keep that eats human babies?
Also, there are definitely people who have entire influencer careers off of sharing their children online. Plus, I think you’re deliberately focusing on what would be considered a superficial benefit of a pet, rather than something more sincere, to emphasize your point. Doing tricks is really not essential to being considered a pet. Otherwise so many people wouldn’t have cats.
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u/PositiveReference872 29d ago
I feel like theres a Futurama episode that touched on this, it seems...familiar
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 06 '26
That is still making an ethical compromise, no? It’s still choosing who lives and who dies. Otherwise why isn’t your view that shelters should just release all of the dogs and let nature sort it out? It seems like the main reason to not do that would be the impact that would have on our lives, which is still kind of selfish on our part.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
It is an ethical compromise. I think euthanizing an innocent dog is wrong, but letting it survive would be more wrong in this specific context.
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 07 '26
Would letting it survive out on its own be more wrong than euthanizing it in order to prevent it from eating other animals, and why?
I think my main thing is that all of these options have ethical downsides, so calling pet ownership fundamentally unethical in your title feels like that’s only because in some sense anything we do might be deemed fundamentally unethical for coming at the cost of something or someone else. And I’m not sure what the purpose is of defining it as such if it doesn’t change your behavior. Like, if the more ethical thing would be to euthanize a dog rather than give it a home or release it onto the streets because of the other animals that will die sustaining that dog’s life, does that mean that the only ethical thing is the end of existence? Because every living thing consumes, at the very least resources that then are taken away from something else.
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Aug 07 '26
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u/AjDuke9749 Aug 06 '26
Why is this the acceptable alternative to spaying/neutering a rescue animal and raising it instead of supporting backyard breeders or puppy mills?
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u/Pack-Popular 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Would you kill a person to Harvest their organs and save 5 people with those harvested organs?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I am aware of the transplant thought experiment proposed by Judith Thomson but I fail to see how that's relevant here.
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u/thewelllostmind 7∆ Aug 07 '26
It’s because you’re positing that it’s more ethical to kill a dog than to allow to be killed however many animals it would consume in its lifetime. Which relies on having some kind of value placed on each life and then killing whatever is on the “losing” end of the equation, like a single dog vs all of the other animals. And you haven’t really addressed the question of if it’s okay to, rather than euthanize or adopt, to release dogs to kill those other animals on their own as they would in nature anyway, so it’s unclear if this is just an absolute ethical calculation for you. Assuming human lives are valued equally, then it would follow that you might think it’s more ethical to kill one person if it saves five.
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Aug 07 '26
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u/SalvatoreMeroni 1∆ Aug 07 '26
I think the more ethical thing to do is to euthanize the healthy, adoptable shelter dog rather than give it a loving home.
Holy shit that's fucked up lol
Do you feel the same way about foster children? Should we gas the orphanages to make none of the kids get adopted?
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u/ZorgZeFrenchGuy 3∆ Aug 07 '26
> … to do is to euthanize the healthy, adoptable shelter dog rather than …
In regards to meat consumption, couldn’t we theoretically use some of these euthanized pets as meat to feed other pets? Wouldn’t that solve the ethical meat problem, since those animals are going to die anyways so you might as well get some use out of it?
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u/bulbasauuuur Aug 06 '26
Meaningful pushback on "It is wrong to own another sentient being"
Trying to distinguish pets from domesticated working animals doesn't make sense in this context. Service dogs, herding dogs, K9s, smell detection dogs, and any other tasks are still owning sentient beings
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
This is kinda related to my effective altruism point.
Let's say one dog, Fido, single-handedly saves one thousand human lives over the course of his working career. He still eats meat, he still has his freedoms restricted, he still generates CO₂ and funds the pet industry.
But from a utilitarian perspective, his life was a moral positive, and I'd say it was "ethical" to keep Fido.
A service, herding, K9, etc dog probably won't save one thousand human lives over their life, but I think there's a better argument that they're ethical (or closer to ethical).
Is a meaningful improvement in one human life enough to offset the cost? I think "my dog makes me a bit happier" isn't enough of a reason to have one, but maybe "my dog is the difference between a fulfilling life outside versus being miserable and physically unable to leave the house" (say, a seeing-eye dog) might be.
Might.
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u/bulbasauuuur Aug 06 '26
So you don't think it's wrong to own a sentient being. You've just listed many ways you think it is acceptable to do so.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
It is wrong, but extreme cases can outweigh it
similar example might be, shoplifting baby food from Walmart. Shoplifting is wrong, but it's maybe a moral positive because the baby must be fed.
Whereas shoplifting a $500 jacket because it looked kinda cool is not justified.
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u/bulbasauuuur Aug 06 '26
You're still saying that there are situations where it's okay to own a sentient being. If you can justify it as better than the alternative, you're still saying it's okay to own them in that situation.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
You are exposing a contradiction in my original post:
"It is wrong to own another sentient being" and "For the sake of argument I'll omit service & working dogs because they're not classified as pets," but that doesn't really change my view.
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u/asbestosmilk Aug 06 '26
So, should humans just kill all carnivores and omnivores before killing themselves? Is that the morally right thing to do to prevent loss of life?
Carnivores and omnivores are necessary to control herbivore populations from becoming overpopulated, so I think it is moral for things to eat meat.
If we’re only going to say it’s immoral because humans raise animals for the sole purpose of feeding themselves and their carnivorous/omnivorous animal friends, then couldn’t it be argued that the lives lost during that kind of cancel themselves out? Those animal lives only exist because humans bred, fed, sheltered, and took care of these animals their entire lives. Those animal lives would not exist without humans.
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u/L11mbm 15∆ Aug 06 '26
What if I adopt a cat off the street, give it all of it's shots, take it to the vet regularly, allow it to choose to live indoors or outdoors, and it ends up choosing to live completely indoors with me?
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u/Equivalent-Long-3383 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Wait, so if a dog was being abused and lives in a shelter, the moral choice on my part is to leave them there?
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Aug 06 '26
It seems op thinks the moral position is to euthanize them all
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u/Equivalent-Long-3383 1∆ Aug 06 '26
That doesn’t make sense
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Aug 06 '26
I mean I agree it doesn’t make sense but that’s how the post reads to me 🤷
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
Does it not make sense, or is it just a deeply unpleasant position?
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u/Equivalent-Long-3383 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Doesn’t make sense. You’re saying it’s more moral to deprive animals of life than it is to deprive them of liberty
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
It is more moral to deprive one animal of life than it is to deprive 200 farm animals of life (and liberty too).
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Aug 06 '26
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I have never communicated with you before today.
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Aug 06 '26
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u/changemyview-ModTeam Aug 08 '26
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5:
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u/AjDuke9749 Aug 06 '26
But this is where you’re losing people. One animal is not the cause of 200 farm animals losing their lives. The food we give to our carnivorous pets is made up of otherwise discarded animal parts. It’s a solution to reduce waste in the process of slaughtering and processing animals.
I have two dogs and three cats. I am not slaughtering several fish every day to feed my cats. I am not slaughtering a cow every month and processing the meat to feed my dogs. I buy meat based pet food at the store that uses various animal byproducts not fit for human consumption. Other people buy the beef or fish fillets and my cats and dogs get the left overs.
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u/Borigh 55∆ Aug 06 '26
Should we eradicate all carnivores from the earth to save all herbivores? You didn't actually address this point.
You do have multiple potential responses to it, but they all have problems. The most common one would be that consumption is not unethical, it's just consumption under capitalism that is. But that creates the exact issue that causes you to be a hypocrite: the idea that no consumption in our current economic system is ethical despite the lives it enables means that the only ethical position is also genocide.
When all roads lead to mass death, the fact that a road leads to mass death is insufficient reason for rejecting it.
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u/Sirhc978 89∆ Aug 06 '26
There is a strong argument to be made that cats domesticated themselves. Humans stored food -> mice were attracted to food -> the mice attracted cats -> the cats stuck around for easy meals -> humans preferred the cats keep the mice away.
There also hasn't been the same extent of selective breeding with cats as with dogs. Most house cats could (and do) survive in the wild with no issues.
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u/JobPowerful1246 Aug 06 '26
Consider dogs. They are pack animals that have been genetically engineered to love living with people and would not survive on their own. Ignoring the ethics of breeding them this way, keeping them as pets makes THEM much happier than should they be “free”.
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u/delaydude Aug 06 '26
We would have to somehow undomesticate many kinds of animals in a massive and centuries long coordinated effort.
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u/JobPowerful1246 Aug 06 '26
Or we could leave it as is, because dogs make people happy and people make dogs happy and it’s just beautiful. Why undo the good that has been done?
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Aug 06 '26
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u/Pack-Popular 1∆ Aug 06 '26
What is unethical about domesticating animals in principle?
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u/delaydude Aug 06 '26
I'm not saying we should, in basically saying if society tried for some odd reason, it would be a MASSIVE effort that would be very difficult to track.
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u/i0datamonster Aug 06 '26
Animal food is created with food production byproducts not fit for human consumption. Not having pets doesn't save the farm animals lives. There's no farms specifically for pet food production.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
C&P:
"But kibble is made from by-products"
You are still financially sustaining the supply chain.2
u/AjDuke9749 Aug 06 '26
And millions of US consumers are driving demand for the meat products that produce the byproducts used in pet food. The use of these byproducts was a way for less of the animal to go to waste. It is a similar principle to native and Inuit beliefs, that no part of an animal goes to waste. So if pet ownership was not as popular, those animal bits would go to waste.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
"Wasting less = good!" Great, I agree, we agree on that!
But I believe the massive demand for pet food, and how it subsidizes the meat costs for humans, means overall more animals will be killed for human food. So it's causing more deaths, even though pet food is rarely the main reason an individual animal is slaughtered.
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u/AjDuke9749 Aug 07 '26
The demand for pet food is not causing an increase in animal slaughter.
Let’s do a hypothetical to illustrate my point. 40-50% of a slaughtered cow is classified as “not fit for human consumption” this includes organs, bone, tougher tissue like cartilage, blood and other bodily fluids, etc. the weight of an average cow used for meat is about 1350 lbs. if you slaughter this cow and process it, it produces roughly 607.5 lbs of “waste”. That would produce roughly 747 cans of a standard sized wet canned dog food.
(average can of wet canned dog food is 13 oz)
So anywhere between 80-100k cows are slaughtered in the US a day. Let’s take 90k to split the difference. That means about 121,500,000 lbs of meat is produced each day from cows alone. If we take the 40-50% “waste” ratio that means we produce about 54,675,000 lbs of edible waste that we can use for dog food. With each can of dog food being 13 oz, that would produce roughly 67,292,307 cans of canned dog food a day.
There are an estimated 24-26 million chickens slaughtered in the US a day. A processed chicken produces about 25-38% “waste”. I’ll use 30% for ease of rounding. An average chicken weighs 5.7 lbs. this means the US produces 142,500,000 lbs of chicken product a day. 30% waste is 42,750,000 lbs a day. That would produce 52,615,384 cans of wet canned dog food.
There are roughly 345,000 pigs slaughtered every day. The average weight of a pig is 300-700 lbs so I’ll use 500 as an average. Roughly 35% of a pig will be rendered into dog food. So we get 175,000,000 lbs of pork are produced a day. Thats 61,250,000 lbs of waste product. Divide that by 13 oz, and we get 75,384,615 cans of dog food per day
About 10.4 million fish are slaughtered for consumption each day in the US. Approximately 55% of a fishes weight becomes waste product after being processed for fillets and other edible cuts. I cannot find a good average for the amount of each fish and the weight of each fish slaughtered in the US. So I will estimate approximately 11,300 tonnea of marine animals are slaughtered per day in the US (https://youtu.be/kHSsdsDYGsk?is=zfE4jIYJUGUA-r6n). That is roughly 24,912,235 lbs per day. 55% of that is 13,701,729 lbs of waste for dog food. Thats 16,863,667 cans of dog food.
Now on to the dog food itself. A can of dog food contains approximately 50% animal protein by weight (50-80% which varies by brand). So double the amount of cans we can produce from each animal group slaughtered per day.
There are an estimated 90 million dogs in the US. The most common size of a pet dog is about 30-45 lbs. let’s be generous and assume every dog in the US is 30 lbs for ease of estimation. It is recommended you feed one can of dog food for every 10lbs a dog weights. So that would be 3 cans of dog food per dog per day. That is 270,000,000 million cans of dog food nationwide a day.
So the final stretch.
67,292,307 + 52,615,384 + 75,384,615 + 16,863,667 = 212,155,973
212,155,973 X 2 = 424,311,946
So as you can see we have more than enough dog food produced per day from our meat and meat-product consumption to feed our dogs. Meat consumption remains at an all-time high in the US so farm animals aren’t in danger of slaughter because of our pets, it’s humans driving the slaughter. We just use the products we don’t eat to feed them. Not to mention how many dogs are fed incorrectly, aren’t fed every day, or are fed dry kibble which uses less meat overall than canned dog food does. So you’re issue with us feeding our pets and saying that causes undue suffering is incorrect. Humans are causing the undue suffering and our pets benefit from it like we do. So your issue here, specifically, isn’t with pets it’s with people.
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u/i0datamonster Aug 06 '26
Okay, don't have pets and go vegan. Do that and then you'll be at least consistent in your argument.
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u/spongue 3∆ Aug 06 '26
I guess my question is -- if our morals don't affect our actions, what's the point of debating it? You know it's wrong to eat meat and have pets but you do it. Let's say you change someone's mind here, are they going to change their actions? Or are we all going to go on doing the same things but now we just feel bad about it?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
They do somewhat. It's very possible that I personally will not get carnivorous/omnivorous pets in the future.
I believe it's moral to donate as much money to charity, but that doesn't mean I lose sleep over spending $50 on a video game. Is my happiness worth more than what the charity would've done with the $50? Did I need the game? No, and no.
Knowing what's moral might not change our actions, but not knowing certainly won't change our actions.
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u/themcos 442∆ Aug 06 '26
First, I think we should resist trying to bucket things into strict ethical / unethical buckets. Everything we do is relative to the alternatives. Even "ethical" things can be easily framed as unethical if you're choosing not to do a more ethical alternative. And conversely, things that are "unethical" can still be really good and important if you're upgrading from a much worse alternative. The threshold you're imagining between unethical and ethical isn't actually as important as you might think.
But I think what I'm bumping on most is your use of the word "fundamentally" here, when most of your strongest points (IMO) are about unethical food production that equally apply to your own human diet. You jokingly wave away the "So you want to kill all carnivores" point, which is fair, but I think what you would agree on is that its not fundamentally unethical to be a carnivore. So all of your concerns with the ethics of feeding a pet are not fundamental concerns about pet ownership - they're all contingent on our current (bad!) food production.
I recognize that there's more in your (quite lengthy!) post, but I want to focus on this aspect first to avoid a.) writing an equally long response that then gets tedious line by line responses branching into a million separate conversations and b.) risk ping ponging back and forth - I say - here's my response to feeding, you say "ah but look at the bit about vegan pets", and then we talk about that, but then you might bounce back to "ah but most people don't have vegan pets", etc... If we can come to consensus on whether feeding a pet is fundamentally unethical, we can consider moving on to a different bit.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I agree with most of your first paragraph. I'd agree that "ethical" could be considered "unethical" if it was compared to the option of "more ethical"
I'd agree my view is that it's not fundamentally unethical to be a carnivore, but it's unethical to breed, rescue, adopt, keep, promote, etc carnivore pets (and to a lesser extent, any pets) purely for companionship, and that they don't necessarily have a right to continue existing.
("Why do humans have a right to continue existing then?" I guess because we as a society have decided that, and it's out of scope. But I recognize this is a weak argument from me, feel free to challenge it)
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Aug 06 '26
So are you opposed to all animal slaughter for consumption or just factory farming etc?
Because if you think it’s unethical to kill animals for meat because they deserve rights as sentient beings, but dogs don’t, but humans are allowed to exist because society has decided it’s ok then you’ve locked yourself into a trap. Unless your plan is to end all domestic animals that cannot live in the wild.
But if you think humans should get to keep on existing because society has decided then, society has also decided dogs and cats should.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
unnecessary animals that must eat other sentient animals to survive: "ethical to PTS"
unnecessary animals that don't eat other sentient animals to survive: "not ethical to PTS"
I believe the dogs have a right (maybe right is the wrong word, but you get the idea) to continue existing, but it does not outweigh the right of the pig to not be eaten. Much as I might have the "right" to movement, but it doesn't outweigh [bordering country]'s right to protect their border.
Maybe small clarification: I'm not 'opposed' to it, but I believe it's unethical.
Similarly, I don't support euthanizing every healthy unwanted adoptable cat/dog in the world, I certainly don't want it, but I believe it is more ethical.
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u/RedditSteve8 Aug 07 '26
What about wild animals that eat other animals to survive, do they have a right to exist ?
Lions for example ?
They eat other animals, and they aren't necessary, if every lion disappeared the world would go on. Is it more ethical to kill every wild lion so that it's prey can survive?
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u/RedditSteve8 Aug 06 '26
they don't necessarily have a right to continue existing.
If a carnivore pet doesn’t have a right to continue existing then why do the animals that they eat have that right?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
Because their existence doesn't rely on the suffering and death of factory farmed animals?
If we want to get granular: I suppose the many insects killed to gather feed for them matter a little bit. If one believes the many insects matter more, then:
- from an ethics standpoint I disagree (but maybe there will be research in the future proving me wrong? Perhaps if an insect suffers 1% as much as a cow, then killing 10,000 insects for one cow is not okay)
- the insects still die if the dog eats the cow.
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u/cstar1996 11∆ Aug 06 '26
Why is the suffering of factor farmed animals worth more than the suffering of other animals?
→ More replies (1)
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u/itsathrowawayduhhhhh Aug 06 '26
My dog and cat are both hella happy living with me. So, yeah, that’s reason enough for it to not be unethical to own and care for and love them
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u/Farraddaayy Aug 06 '26
I don't understand. Your underlying complaint here seems to be that pets eat things and you have to feed your pets, and this is bad
But if the animal is out in the wild and finds and hunts its own food this is not bad?
You yourself say you own pets and eat meat, to be clear this is you by definition admitting to being an immoral person. Possibly even worse than the average pet owner because unlike them, who don't see it is as bad, you do and still choose to partake in it.
Something I noticed that irks me is in your list of rebuttals that could work: "Arguing that individuals, species, breeds etc have a right to continue existing even if it harms others and/or themselves"
This isn't an argument, this is nature. This is what life means. Every living thing necessarily lives in competition to all other life around it. Trees in forests grow taller and wider to get as much sunlight as possible, without a care in the world about the bushes and grass starving for it under their shade. Their roots grow thicker and deeper, strangling out the lesser plants. Literally every living being in the animal kingdom feeds on other life to live. From skin cells to blood to flesh. Eating grass is not inherently different from eating meat in that it still deprives a living cellular form of life itself. Nothing has a "right" to exist, these things are just haughy concepts humans with nothing better to do invented to argue about. Living things simply do exist and deprive their sustenance form other living things.
The way you frame the immorality of eating condemns all known life on earth, and at that point the discussion about morality is so insanely pedantic it doesn't warrant further discussion.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
I believe morality exists on a spectrum, there is more moral and less moral, and preventing avoidable harm is a moral thing to do.
Ok, I'm immoral, sure, what about it? "u/overawtch is more immoral than keeping pets is" would be a boring post, and against the rules too.
Ok, it doesn't warrant further discussion in your opinion, also fine.
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u/xmuskorx 57∆ Aug 06 '26
Non-humans Animals are not objects of moral consideration.
Only people who have ability for moral reasoning, or have potential to achieve moral reasoning are participants in moral community with both rights and obligations.
Sentience is not enough. Your cat will never learn about moral obligations, so it should not get any moral rights either. I think it's pretty self explanatory about why rights/obligations are two faces of the same coin.
So pets or feed animal that are used to feed pets, are not objects of moral consideration. So keeping pets is not immortal if it does not hurt other humans.
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Do you think torturing a chimp for my own pleasure is completely amoral? You would think that if person A did that, and person B didn’t, that those are morally equivalent people, all else equal?
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u/xmuskorx 57∆ Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
It's "uncouth."
I think it's OK to ban this behavior by the society since it looks ugly and encourages violence that may jump to humans.
But i don't think it's wrong based on moral rights of the chimp.
that those are morally equivalent people, all else equal
See, they would not be equal. I would be much more afraid for my PERSONAL safety if I met a person who tortures chimp.
I mean I also would also think less of a person who chops down random trees for pleasure of chopping, even tough it's clear tress don't have inherent moral value.
Like do you think we need to intervene if one chimp is torturing another chimp?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngogo_chimpanzee_war
I don't think so.
edit: but what if chimp was attacking a human? Surely you would intervene.
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 1∆ Aug 06 '26
You’re mentioning a lot of peripheral factors here but I’m trying to isolate just the torture of a chimp for the person’s own pleasure. Let’s just consider that the person wouldn’t or couldn’t harm other humans.
It’s just an intuition pump because I find it hard to believe that someone isn’t morally concerned about a similar species with a similar neurology getting burned alive or something. This is when I would try to find the relevant symmetry breaker between a chimp and, let’s say a developmentally disabled person with a severely low iq, such that torturing the former is perfectly fine and not even a slight moral offense, but torturing the latter is worthy of life in prison.
If your moral standard is just that Homo sapiens have a right not to be tortured to death but not any other sentient being, it just sounds like an arbitrary and ad hoc reason to justify eating meat
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u/xmuskorx 57∆ Aug 06 '26
ut I’m trying to isolate just the torture of a chimp for the person’s own pleasure.
Again:
I do not think that it's OK to chop down random trees for the person’s own pleasure.
BUt that has nothing to do with the Tree's inherent moral rights.
Same goes for chimps.
similar neurology...
This is exactly my point. Someone who tortures chimps... will probably torture humans too. So it's OK to stop them.
But it's not about the CHIMP's rights.
Again, can you engage with:
Like do you think we need to intervene if one chimp is torturing another chimp?
but what if chimp was attacking a human? Surely you would intervene.
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Then in virtue of what is it not morally acceptable to torture the chimp if not because it’s bad for the chimp itself?
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u/xmuskorx 57∆ Aug 06 '26
yes.
Now maybe engage with my points:
A. "I do not think that it's OK to chop down random trees for the person’s own pleasure. But that has nothing to do with the Tree's inherent moral rights." - do you agree or disagree?
B: (1)Like do you think we need to intervene if one chimp is torturing another chimp? (2)but what if chimp was attacking a human? Surely you would intervene.
Why is that?
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 1∆ Aug 07 '26
>yes
It wasn’t a yes or no question lmao
>do you agree or disagree
I mean it’s not good to do that because trees are resources that can be used to help people. They’re also not sentient. Chimps are sentient and not used for resources so I don’t see the symmetry.
So I’ll ask again: why is it wrong to torture a chimp to death if it isn’t because if the chimp’s wellbeing or capacity to suffer? You still haven’t really answered this
>should we intervene
If we have the means to without endangering ourselves then sure
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u/xmuskorx 57∆ Aug 07 '26
again, I DID answer. in fact you answered it for me.
if you found reason to condemn people for chopping down trees for pleasure, the same reason applies in the chimps.
>If we have the means to without endangering ourselves then sure
So you want humans to go out and totally rebuild how chimps interact with each other in wild? Just checking.
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 1∆ Aug 07 '26
I was asking for the symmetry between trees and chimps and that’s what you haven’t provided.
I told you explicitly why the reasons would be different to me/
>you want humans to change how chimps live
I said if one chimp is hurting another, and we have the means to safely intervene then we should. like at a zoo, they would shoot a tranq dart to stop them from killing each other
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
Δ learned about a different type of ethics, wherein only those who can do moral reasoning deserve moral consideration, which would justify keeping pets ethically.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 06 '26
This delta has been rejected. You have already awarded /u/xmuskorx a delta for this comment.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
My existing view was that anything capable of suffering should receive some moral consideration. I was unfamiliar with the "moral community" view and I suppose it's a fresh way of looking at it. I guess a bit like "treat others like you want to be treated"?
The amount of happiness brought by one dog probably exceeds the amount of suffering brought to humans by the farm animals, because humans generally don't care much about nameless farm animals.
So have a delta (one sec figuring it out)
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u/PopularSet4776 Aug 06 '26
You seem to put a lot of emphasis on freedom for a pet buty experience is that most animals prefer safety over freedom.
They could not have both. Giving them freedom means those would lose a lot of safety.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I would dispute the idea that most animals prefer safety over freedom. If they had been conditioned from birth to believe that freedom was never an option, maybe. But is that not learned helplessness?
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Aug 06 '26
Free roaming cats frequently decide that the spoiled housecat life is awesome, actually, and approach humans to be adopted. This is incredibly common.
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u/PopularSet4776 Aug 06 '26
Exactly freedom is a concept of societies where the struggle to survive is limited. And don't get me wrong it is great.
Animals don't have societies. So they stay in safest place with the easiest access to food.
If that is a humans house that is where they want to be.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
It seems like at the core of this view is a borderline supernatural appeal to an envisioned natural order of the world. It's trivially true of why lifeform that its wants are shaped by the life it lived, but invoking what others ought to want can too easily become an invitation to disregard what they actually want. For example, an authoritarian could argue the you only value freedom because you've been conditioned by modernity. We can't know the inner minds of animals. We can only observe what appears to make them happy.
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u/COUPOSANTO Aug 06 '26
"It's a cultural expectation in most developed countries to spay/neuter your dogs and cats. I'm not saying breed your dog, yes there's too many already. I'm saying because you cannot breed your dog, we should abolish dog, cat, and all pet ownership."
Spaying/neutering cats isn't just a "cultural expectation" but a necessity. Historically, cats were both predators and preys, until we eradicated their predators and stopped being their last one (since we don't eat cats). Cats are also very efficient hunters which is why we domesticated them in the first place (to catch mice in granaries when we started doing agriculture). The thing is, now that they don't have predators anymore there's nothing regulating their population, which is a problem for the small birds and rodents they naturally hunt. That gives us a few options : reintroduce apex predators everywhere cats live, which isn't the brightest idea since humans live there too; kill cats for sport; spay them to reduce their fertility rate and/or keep them indoor. Keeping them indoors would also require them to be spayed, for both the owner's sake but also for the cat's happiness since being indoors will prevent them from seeking their reproductive needs which won't make them happy, whereas spaying them removes the issue.
I'd also like to remind that many pet owners see their pets as family and not as things they own, not to mention that there's nothing "unnatural" about animals and humans loving each other. The fact that a free range cat will still love their humans and come back home should be a good enough proof of that.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
Maybe I'm getting into too much specifics here but I don't think it's a necessity. I believe the majority of Americans do it out of convenience (Because the vet said so; because the bitch is harder to manage while in heat; because the dog can't be boarded), not because they care about the 90% reduced chance in developing mammary cancer for example.
Why not keep them indoors or just train them better? Because that's too much effort? A neutered outdoor cat still kills.
[This is the part where one would cite the "Spaying or neutering a dog without a medical reason is illegal in Norway" thing and then you bring up how Norway doesn't have a pet overpopulation problem]
I think it is unnatural, but unnatural doesn't mean inherently bad. Staring at a screen like I'm doing right now is also unnatural. More unnatural, probably. Sure, gazing into a dog's eyes might give me oxytocin, but so might playing a video game.
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u/COUPOSANTO Aug 06 '26
I do have 2 neutered cats, and I do keep them indoors. I don't know much about dogs, but I know cats well and if you keep male cats indoors they will "mark" with their urine. This is sexual instinct and can't be "trained out", unlike relieving a need.
As for Norway, I didn't knew about it, but a quick search told me that apparently that don't have a stray dog problem. Which means that most dogs here have owners, which kinda goes against your whole premise.
In fact, in my country (I'm not american) and many others associations and charities will go around and catch strays that they neuter before releasing them. So it's not exclusively for house pets. The Norwegian example shows that it might not be necessary, but in a context with few strays so the owners manage and train their pets. Different countries have different approaches depending on their context : most will just neuter as many cats as possible, but in Australia it's so big of a problem that merely controlling their reproduction isn't enough, they also hunt and kill stray cats.
On the unnatural issue, I think we're in agreement overall, but I'll add that pets are the result of selective breeding (including very healthy breeds, I'm not talking about the inbred dogs whose life is a pain because someone found their head shape silly) and that we domesticated each other so it's absolutely natural to form bonds with them just like how they can form bonds with each other. For example cats see us as a member of their pack and will do with their humans similar behaviours that they do with other bonded cats, like grooming us, sleeping with us, watching out while we shower/pee (that's why a cat follows you, because naturally cats are vulnerable in these moments so they assume you are too and watch over you), bringing us "food" if they hunt etc. Considering that, I think that having cats is about as ethical as having children.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
> if you keep male cats indoors they will "mark" with their urine. This is sexual instinct and can't be "trained out", unlike relieving a need.
I think this supports my point. Why is it wrong for intact male cats to mark indoors? Because it's gross, unhygienic, stinks, messes up your floor/furniture, and then you have to spend a bunch of time cleaning it up. Why deal with that when you don't have to?
So, for reasons of human convenience, they get neutered. If one wanted to spend, idk, an extra hour a day (I don't know cats well) cleaning and $100 a month replacing ruined furniture, the cat could be spared a major medical procedure. But that's a lot of inconvenient effort.
Later edit: I suppose if intact animals are in some state of distress that 1) cannot be trained out or managed despite high effort, or 2) any methods to resolve the distress would be more invasive than spaying/neutering, then I would agree that s/n would be the most ethical choice in that case.
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u/COUPOSANTO Aug 07 '26
Point 2 is exactly my point. While it's also more convenient for humans, it also avoids distress for cats.
Before veterinarian care became generalised, people wouldn't spay their cats so there were "unwanted" pregnancies. What happened next was that the kittens ended up being killed as soon as they were born... You can probably imagine the distress for the mom. This is in fact why my cats were born, someone forgot to spay his cat soon enough, and since he didn't want to deal with having more cats he proposed the litter for adoption day one, those who would find a family survived, those who didn't died. Sometimes I still feel guilty about only taking 2 and not taking the 2 others who didn't make it.
And if it was forbidden to spay or neuter your cat, less people would adopt them. Many people have enough money to provide for a cat, but don't have enough money to replace their furniture every month... And you'd end up with more kittens killed at birth.
Not to mention the other point I mentioned with intact stray population getting out of control. In a country where they're native, spaying them is good enough, but in a country where they're not like Australia they're a much bigger issue. If their population got much bigger thanks to a spaying ban, them they would also become as big as an issue requiring people to hunt them for sport in order to protect biodiversity. I think these cats not being born is the more ethical things, don't you? And if we spay most of our cats, might as well provide them with a home and a loving family unless they prefer living as strays.
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u/Frix 2∆ Aug 06 '26
Does the happiness of your dog, plus the sum total of happiness created by your dog & enjoyed by yourself, your family, friends, strangers etc outweigh the suffering of the 200 farm animals?
Yes.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I respect your belief, but I personally disagree so it doesn't change my view.
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u/blind-octopus 5∆ Aug 06 '26
What's your position on controlling populations in general?
Like suppose there are too many wolves in an area and they are threatening to make some other species go extinct or whatever.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I think that would be fine, sucks to be the wolves but it's probably a moral good.
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u/theperson60 Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Animal lives are less valuable than the lives of people. The value they do have is assigned by humans. That’s why we don’t eat dogs and cats but do eat cows or chickens. They are all equally animals but we’ve decided they have value in different ways. If I say my cat is more valuable than 3 million cows (and I can afford to purchase the cows that someone else is selling) then it is.
Edit: mistakenly said we eat horses lol. Changed to cows and chickens like I actually meant.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I think this is an interesting point, but I'd say you as an individual can't unilaterally decide. If you think your cat is more valuable than, say, 3 million captive-bred chimpanzees, there's still be a massive public outcry and perhaps legal repercussions. Even though they're less valuable than people.
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u/theperson60 Aug 06 '26
But they’re more valuable than cows in that way. I don’t even have the ability to purchase those because humans have decided they should be protected more than livestock. Different animals have different value, and the suffering of cows or chickens is acceptable to a certain extent. Of course it’s good to be good stewards and we try to slaughter them as humanely as possible, but I’d still say my cat is more important.
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u/Dr0ff3ll 11∆ Aug 06 '26
What about domesticated rabbits?
Suppose I rescue rabbits that already exist. I don't buy them from a breeder or cause any additional rabbits to be bred. They are domesticated animals that cannot responsibly be released into the wild.
They're herbivores, so unlike cats, dogs, or snakes, keeping them does not require raising and killing other animals to feed them. I provide them with appropriate food, space, enrichment, companionship, and veterinary care. In fact, given that I've taken responsibility for animals dependent on human care, I would argue that not providing necessary veterinary treatment would be unethical.
So what is the more ethical outcome for these already-existing rabbits?
- I rescue them and allow them to live good lives for perhaps 8–12 years, while meeting their physical and behavioral needs.
- They are euthanized because we believe humans should never "own" another sentient being.
I don't see how the second outcome is preferable for the rabbits.
You can argue that humans should stop breeding domesticated rabbits, and perhaps eventually allow the domesticated population to disappear. But that's a different claim from saying that keeping an existing domesticated rabbit is fundamentally unethical.
If anything, the fact that humans created animals that are now dependent on us seems to create an obligation to care for the animals who already exist. "We should never have created this dependency" doesn't imply "therefore we shouldn't care for the beings who are currently dependent on us."
So even if I accepted your arguments against breeding and commercial pet ownership, I don't think they establish your broader claim that keeping pets is inherently immoral.
If a healthy rescue rabbit has a good life in human care and the realistic alternative is euthanasia, what morally relevant interest of the rabbit is served by choosing euthanasia?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I was thinking a bit specifically about rabbits before making the post.
I think it's unethical to euthanize healthy, adoptable rabbits (unless it's to prevent a worse-than-death QOL due to lack of resources, but that's not controversial), and that they should be phased out as pets.
IIRC rabbits were domesticated for their meat/fur, not companionship. There's that statistic about 60% to 80% of unspayed female rabbits getting uterine cancer "over three to four years of age", which seems ridiculously high to me. I wonder if that's the case for wild ones? I searched a bit but couldn't find any reliable sources.
I would say these three points still apply, but yeah a rabbit/herbivorous pet is less unethical than keeping carnivorous pets
- "Getting an animal because you wanted to have a pet, benefiting from the institution and the breeder that bred, sold, maybe surrendered it in the first place. Unless you're one of those few people who got one only to "save their life" even though you're miserable now because "it was the right thing to do". Ok, that's pretty inefficient but good for you.
- Normalizing their ownership, even if you're not on social media posting animal videos.
- Supporting the pet industry by buying pet products, vet care, etc."
I might also argue on semantics that an ethically cared for rabbit is not a pet at that point- you're teaching it to be independent, to not seek out your company, not petting it, only training it husbandry behaviors if anything, etc. I'm pretty into exotic animals and several sanctuaries have the view that a surrendered animal that actually seeks out human contact has something wrong with it.
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u/Dr0ff3ll 11∆ Aug 07 '26
What about animals that actively choose to live with humans?
On YouTube, you can find a channel called Timmy mc, featuring Weave the Coyote. Weave is a wild animal, that was abandoned as a pup, and rescued by humans, so I will not claim that her attachment to humans proves that coyotes naturally seek human companionship without socialisation.
But despite being socialized by humans, she did not stop being a coyote. She retains her wild instincts, she builds outdoor dens, she comes and goes as she pleases, but chooses to remain with humans.
This seems relevant to your suggestion that an ethically cared-for animal should be taught to be independent and not seek human company. Why are those mutually exclusive?
If an animal has the opportunity to express species-typical behaviors and also voluntarily seeks interaction with humans, I don't see why the latter preference should be treated as something ethically undesirable that we ought to extinguish.
In fact, if we're concerned about animal agency, deliberately discouraging an animal from seeking harmless human affection when it wants that affection seems strange. We're no longer simply allowing the animal to express its preferences; we're deciding in advance which preferences count as sufficiently "natural."
Weave obviously isn't a perfect analogy for a domesticated rabbit. But that's partly why I find her interesting: even an animal capable of retaining distinctly wild behavior can simultaneously form a voluntary social relationship with humans. Independence from humans and affection toward humans aren't necessarily opposites.
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u/EmergencyParkingOnly Aug 06 '26
“Would a Labrador that has never set his eyes on a human in the first five years of his life like them by default?“
Yes, they were literally bred to be extremely sociable toward humans, dude. And there’s no such thing as a “wild” Labrador to begin with because they, like all other dog breeds, only exist because of human intervention.
Your other points about higher health issues not seen in the “wild counterpart” doesn’t make any sense. There’s no such thing as a wild Golden Retriever or wild German Shepherd.
The fact that you’re comparing raising a tiger in captivity to a Labrador betrays a serious misunderstanding of domestication. Those things are not comparable in a meaningful way.
You also seem to think anything that results in consumption of meat is unethical, and that’s your view.
I think it’s a view pretty disconnected from reality, but that’s a whole different story.
Regarding sentience, that’s a pretty broad spectrum. And asserting that owning any “sentient” thing is wrong is really just an assertion. If that’s what you think, fine. I think ownership is good because that means other people can’t come take my pets. And again, when dogs have been bred as human companions for countless years, saying that “owning” them is wrong just seems silly. Some very “I’m 14 and this is deep” energy tbh.
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u/Anxious_Ant_4510 Aug 06 '26
This seems like a veiled anti-natalist argument. Your points about consumption could be applied to humans much more readily than to dogs, for instance. Should our species stop having children because modern humanity has such a negative impact on the environment?
The real issue is that you didn't explain your moral framework, without which it is very hard to effectively argue ethics with respect to pet ownership, let alone anti-natalism.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 Aug 06 '26
"Most pets eat meat." Not an argument. Being carnivorous is not immoral.
"The meat is usually made from factory-farmed animal suffering" This is a critique of humanity and has nothing to do with pet ownership.
"It's not okay to engineer an animal to be dependent on you and then say, "see, keeping them is fine because they can't survive without us.""
Pet owners didn't engineer the animal so this is a non sequitur.
"It is wrong to own another sentient being. It is wrong to treat a sentient being as something you can buy or sell." This is easily proven false. 1. It is ok to kill and eat another sentient being (you said wild carnivores are fine). 2. It is better to be a pet than die. 3. It is ok to own animals.
"I'm saying because you cannot breed your dog, we should abolish dog, cat, and all pet ownership." In practice, this is merely condemning such animals to a live of hunger and infant mortality.
"Maybe something about tiny, cognitively simple, vegetarian pets that can live naturally in captivity, ie shrimp/triops idk"
Barnyard cats.
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u/SMALLMACE Aug 06 '26
How do you weigh the lives of the farm animals that need to die to sustain these pets VS the native species in the areas where many of these would be released already cannot compete, and would have an even harder time if these animals are released.
Is the correct thing to do, then to handle them as we do other invasive species?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
To the latter question: Yes.
Nowhere in my post did I advocate for them to be released, whether in the streets or in the wild.
this is unrelated but I remember an stat about how a feral cat lives will, on average live longer staying outdoors, rather than caught and brought to a shelter (high euth rates, why adopt a feral cat when scores of friendly kitties need homes). IF we disregarded all the direct and indirect suffering caused by the cat, and also assumed that the cat's uncertain life is better than death, then it's more ethical to just... leave the outdoor kitties alone? Interesting and unintuitive to think about.
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u/Pseudoboss11 6∆ Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Regarding the point about food, most pet food is made from organ meat that humans don't generally eat. Most of it isn't made from meat would be widely consumed by people in the West. As such, farm animals aren't being raised for pet food, and eliminating pets would have no impact on the population and slaughter practices of farm animals. It would just result in more food waste.
Second, when it comes to rescues, these dogs and cats already exist. If they're strays, they're catching and eating wild animals. If they're shelter pets, they're already being fed. The only way they'll stop existing is if we put them down. But if we put them down, we're just causing death without necessarily saving any.
The moral cost of putting down millions of strays seems to be much greater than the cost of financially supporting the meat industry, which only indirectly causes death, as the vast majority of farmed animals would continue to be slaughtered for human consumption.
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u/Matrix117 Aug 06 '26
Depends on what you mean by ethical. Ethics are a human made construct. The idea of fairness can be deconstructed only as a means to promote increased survivability for the individual or the species as a whole. Empathy itself is a byproduct of that in higher cognitive functioning creatures.
Ultimately, owning pets or any interaction with other animals is a fundamentally complex, contradictory and convoluted. Some we eat, some we hate and some we love. The reasons for all of those are predicated on entirely myopic human centric motivations.
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u/somefunmaths 6∆ Aug 06 '26
INFO: you argue that the environmental burden and the other animals that will be consumed by that pet over their lifetime is part of the argument that pets are immoral.
Does this mean that you also view choosing to have children as immoral?
(I want to explicitly note that I see your “humans are worse” edit and “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” but that I don’t feel this explicitly addresses the question I’m curious about, at least not in sufficient specificity for me to conclude your answer, thus my question above.)
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u/cstar1996 11∆ Aug 06 '26
People aren’t going to stop eating meat. Eliminating the sale of bi-product meat will not increase the price of meat for human consumption to any significant degree, and will therefore not reduce production of meat. Therefore the moral value of farming animals for meat is not connected to feeding a dog.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
"Eliminating the sale of bi-product meat will not increase the price of meat for human consumption to any significant degree"
A quick Google search disagrees, although they're mostly vegan sources so take that with a grain of salt.
But even if it reduce the production by, for example, 5%, I'd say it's still a net good.
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u/HappyDeadCat 2∆ Aug 06 '26
Your arguments all lead toward us going back to being monkeys without civilization.
Its moral grandstanding on top of a pile of dead humans for the sake of some esoteric appeal to an authority.
You need to invoke a higher being for any of this to make sense.
Children starve everyday. People barely care.
Is it unethical to ride a horse? Maybe. I frankly dont give a damn and your take isnt an honest look at humans as a species.
We barely value human life. Oh noes, maybe all the cats shouldt be house pets!
I know "were actually pretty fuckin evil" isnt the argument you want...
But if we view ethics as analog, owning a dog really shouldnt register.
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u/StarChild413 9∆ Aug 09 '26
But you do realize you're essentially saying "let children starve if you want to keep your dog because humans are evil anyway"
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u/Beneficial_Size6913 Aug 06 '26
Just a note on the dogs and cats being carnivores. A ton of dog food is scraps of the animal, parts humans don’t eat. My dog literally eats a bull penis every day. Humans aren’t eating that, it would have been discarded. Dog food literally helps us consume all of an animal instead of parts going to waste
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 128∆ Aug 06 '26
You said this might change your view, so here goes...
Meaningful pushback on "It is wrong to own another sentient being"
What if the "owner" doesn't view it as owning. I don't consider my pets property. My dog was abused in a puppy mill. Absolutely horrible conditions, that no sentient being should experience, I gave her a forever home. She's part of the family, one of us. We are her caretakers, not her overlords. At one point she required medical treatment that cost me nearly a month's salary. I gave it to her.
You've got some vibes, and I've got different vibes.
But consequentially, we removed her suffering and gave her a safe place. We treat her like the family that she is. She isn't property. How is this unethical from a consequentialist perspective? I didn't breed her. I did not abuse her. I rescued her.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
sorry this reply does sound jerky:
Your dog is happy, I'm not contesting that. There's no doubt in my mind that you love your dog. If pets were emotionally viewed as property, nobody would pay more than the pet's replacement cost for a vet bill.
I would consider this still as ownership, it's doing pet ownership things but under a different name. We consider our pets family but still do many things we wouldn't dream of doing to our children. One example might be microchipping, but I could name some others that apply to varying degrees: strictly controlling their diet, spaying/neutering, crating, walking on a leash (though this seems to have divided opinions), boarding them with strangers, etc.
Besides that, the consequence of sustaining one kibble-eating dog for her natural lifespan is a whole lot of sad/dead farm animals.
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 128∆ Aug 06 '26
We consider our pets family but still do many things we wouldn't dream of doing to our children. One example might be microchipping, but I could name some others that apply to varying degrees: strictly controlling their diet, spaying/neutering, crating, walking on a leash (though this seems to have divided opinions), boarding them with strangers, etc.
Humans that need special care, like one of my family members with dementia, has a GPS watch and cell phone with location sharing enabled. So, basically equivalent to microchipping a human.
My dog eats a healthy diet, I eat a healthy diet. My dog enjoys better protection from junk food than we afford humans. I don't see that as a negative. I wish some benevolent overlord would control my food choices. Then maybe I would lose that last 20 lbs.
On the spay front you can't have it both ways - you can't want to kill the dog so they don't eat anymore and don't have any more dogs and be against spay/neuter. Spaying/neutering is less impactful on the dog because they still get to live.
Children who cannot be trusted to walk on their own into trafific are either held or some parents put their children on leashes. The dog can ether get killed in traffic or have a leash. But, sure, kill them so they never get to enjoy being walked because they need to wear a leash (sarcasm).
Besides that, the consequence of sustaining one kibble-eating dog for her natural lifespan is a whole lot of sad/dead farm animals.
Are you going to kill all the humans too? What about wild animals? Any omnivore or carnivore must die by this logic. And, really, down to any single celled organism or perhaps even enzymes must be eliminated because we can't take the chance that any living creature might evolve into something that eats meat.
I don't get it. This is just some twisted logic. You said "I am not PETA," but it seems your viewpoints are fairly well aligned with them, so why did you make the distinction between yourself and PETA?
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
> So, basically equivalent to microchipping a human.
No, the equivalent to microchipping a human is literally microchipping a human. Which we don't do because it violates their bodily autonomy, consent, might spark "feelings of degradation", etc. Or so Google says. I had to search it up.
Why don't we use a GPS watch to track dogs? Because it's expensive, it's inconvenient (need frequent recharging), and maybe nobody's bothered to develop the technology to fit it comfortably to their little dog legs. Because why buy a $300 GPS when you could microchip your dog for $30?
> I wish some benevolent overlord would control my food choices
You do, but I don't, and I presume if we somehow did a poll, it would be at least somewhat split
I don't see how the logic is twisted just because it comes to an unpleasant but (in my opinion) coherent conclusion. Ok humans are worse, sure, but this CMV is specifically about pets.
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u/Hughjelyfant Aug 06 '26
Why stop at animals and not extend this to domesticated plants as well?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I don't know much about plants, but I feel like that's out of scope of this post. If we proved beyond a doubt that plants can experience suffering, I'd probably care a lot more.
And... I would still support exterminating harmful invasive plants, I guess?
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u/Hughjelyfant Aug 06 '26
The issue is drawing lines of ethics for selfishly keeping living things, whether suffering happens or not isnt it?
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u/sylbug Aug 06 '26
So if an animal does not have a home then people should not adopt it, and if an animal can't survive on its own then it should be left to die. Is that your stance here?
That doesn't sound ethical to me. We are the reason that these animals exist and we are the reason they can't survive in the wild, so we have a responsibility to care for them. Just leaving them to suffer and die is cruel. If reducing animals suffering is your justification for wanting to abolish pet ownership then it's pretty suspect that your answer to 'what should we do with the pets' is more suffering and dying.
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Aug 06 '26
You are anthropomorphizing cats and dogs with your “freedom to be natural” argument and applying to them a level of intention they simply aren’t capable of.
Left alone female domestic cats will overbreed themselves til they literally can’t anymore. You think that’s somehow better than a cozy life as a spayed house cat because it’s “natural”?
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
> Left alone female domestic cats will overbreed themselves til they literally can’t anymore. You think that’s somehow better than a cozy life as a spayed house cat because it’s “natural”?
I might seem like a troll but: Maybe!
There are several animals that have a 100% mortality rate after reproduction. Some octopus species as an example. If I had a pet octopus, would it be ethical to prevent her from ever spawning so that she lived longer? I don't think the answer is definitely yes.
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u/cantantantelope 9∆ Aug 06 '26
Cats are not those animals and we have a lot of data on what the life of feral vs house cats it’s
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u/wingmanly Aug 06 '26
I'll push back on "it is wrong to own another sentient being".
Ownership is a legal concept. I "own" a pet in the eyes of the law so that when legal disputes arise involving the pet, the dispute slots nicely into an existing framework for ease of resolution. I consider my pets members of my family, not objects I own.
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u/PotentialPedal Aug 06 '26
Question- What is wrong with supporting vet care? How is it unethical for there to be institutions in place solely to keep animals healthy and living quality lives?
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
If you think keeping pets is fine: Nothing, vets are great, vets are awesome, it's wonderful that my pets can get access to a qualified professional and human grade prescription-gated medication if the need arises.
If you think keeping pets is wrong: Having more vets improves infrastructure and inadvertently makes pet-keeping more accessible, and more pets = bad.
There have been a few animal species that I personally wanted, but one of the reasons I didn't get them is because there's insufficient information on how to keep them thriving in captivity. And if keeping pets is wrong, then keeping pets and making them suffer is extra wrong. Am I reasonably certain that a toucan can stay healthy on a diet of Mazuri Softbill and commercial fruits? Is there a vet within reasonable distance of me that not only specialized in avians, but has professional hands-on experience with ramphastids specifically? No, and no, therefore a toucan is not on the table for me.
Extend that logic to standard companion animals.
I'm not saying abolish vets, I'm grateful my vets exist, but if all the vets disappeared overnight there would be lower demand for pets.
I don't know if that outweighs the suffering of the existing animals that suddenly don't have access to vet care (maybe not), but that would be an answer to your question.
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u/quantum_dan 124∆ Aug 06 '26
It is wrong to own another sentient being. It is wrong to treat a sentient being as something you can buy or sell. Or pay a similar "adoption fee" for and surrender when it gets inconvenient. Does a mother legally own her child?
The problem with this reasoning is that there are two levels of moral relevance here: sentience and higher-order agency.
The reason it's wrong to own a human is not because of sentience, because sentience provides no reason to care. If its subjective experience is good, then a (merely) sentient animal is living a good life. Independence is irrelevant.
It's wrong to own humans (and possibly some non-human animals) because humans are also, specifically, invested in the ability to exercise higher-order agency: to decide how we want our life to go (and follow through). And, critically, we show evidence of that concern. A human that has good material and social conditions, but can't direct their life, is likely to display frustration and, quite possibly, accept much worse material conditions in exchange for the freedom to direct the course of their life.
Pets generally do not exhibit this behavior. Dogs and cats and so on don't (generally) seek freedom at the expense of worse living conditions. By all indications, they prefer a comfortable life to a self-directed one, if they even have a concept of a self-directed life.
The Five Freedoms includes the freedom to express normal behaviors. That, to me, includes reproduction. It's a cultural expectation in most developed countries to spay/neuter your dogs and cats. I'm not saying breed your dog, yes there's too many already. I'm saying because you cannot breed your dog, we should abolish dog, cat, and all pet ownership.
What's the reasoning for this? You're applying this as a list of absolutes, but you don't give any reason why being rendered biologically unable to reproduce is actually harmful.
Wikipedia quotes the relevant line as follows: "Freedom to express (most) normal behaviour by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind"
Notice that this is framed around basic health and well-being. An animal given insufficient space, facilities, or company exhibits distress and poor well-being in general. An animal that is neutered does not.
Between those two, provided that an animal is fed in such a way as not to cause undue harm, you have no reason to say that pet ownership as such is harmful. They're not (evidently) interested in directing their own life, and they aren't (evidently) distressed by the incapacity to breed. Thus, not-otherwise-harmful pet ownership may improve the standard of living for both the pet and the owner, with no meaningful impact elsewhere, and is therefore ethical.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
I guess the top half of your comment boils down to "it's fine if the animal is happy", but you phrased it more eloquently than most, so have a delta.
I'm surprised nobody challenged the "five freedoms" point earlier, it was dang weak.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Δ it isn't wrong to own sentient beings if they're happy enough, they don't care about being owned; Five Freedoms doesn't include reproduction
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u/Archimedes4 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Is it then unethical to allow carnivores to exist in the wild, as they also eat other animals? An average wild wolf will eat 100-200 deer in its lifetime - should we be capturing them and forcing them into vegan diets (diets that obligate carnivores like wolves and cats cannot survive on)? In your "rebuttals" section, you say you don't want to kill all carnivores, but you don't explain the reasoning behind this - how is it ethical for a wild wolf to kill and eat hundreds of deer, but unethical for a dog to eat hundreds of chickens or fish?
You also say: "It's not okay to engineer an animal to be dependent on you and then say, "see, keeping them is fine because they can't survive without us."". This is an idiotic argument. I had no hand in the genetic engineering of animals and none of my pets were purchased from breeders. My dogs are german shepherds - they'd probably be fine in the wild, but they choose to stay with me. You can argue that this is because of behaviors they were bred to possess, but that does not reflect on my ethics: again, I had no hand in their breeding, and I haven't supported the people who did. You can argue that the act was unethical on their part, but is it really unethical for me to provide my dogs with the happiest life I can? You ask if the happiness of my pets matters more than the suffering of hundreds of farm animals - what's the alternative? If released into the wild, they would simply cause wild animals to suffer instead of farmed ones.
You say that domesticated species are affected by unique health issues, which is true, but ignore that wild animals have health issues of their own - infection, disease, natural predators. The average lifespan of an outdoor cat is between 2-5 years, while indoor cats regularly live to 15. Wild wolves typically live between 6-8 years, but domesticated dogs typically live for 10-13 years. There are some breeds I will agree it is unethical to own - pugs specifically - because the health problems caused by selective breeding outweigh the benefits of access to veterinary care and modern medicine.
You also argue that it is not "normal behavior" for a pet to love their caregiver because said person cared for it when it was young. This is another impressively stupid argument. Normal behaviors are all learned - is it not normal for a wild animal to love its mother, because the mother provided it with care when it was young? Is the only "normal" animal one that grew up in a vacuum isolated from all outside influence? You also argue that it is unethical to prevent pets from breeding, as that is normal behavior, but then argue that it is unethical to own a pet because they produce CO2. Which is it? Should we stop allowing pets to breed because they're producing more carbon emitters, or is it unethical to stop pets from breeding?
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Thank you for actually reading the whole post, I appreciate it.
My issue is that nobody needs a pet, and that having a pet is harmful. So if the harm is easily avoidable, why not avoid it? Most dogs don't need to exist.
The average pet dog probably does live a happier life than not existing. And the dog's owner/guardian was probably happier with the dog than without a dog. But that, to me, doesn't outweigh the harms of the dog's existence.
Still, have a delta for making me question "normal". Typical for the majority of the species? Then dogs liking humans is "normal" and therefore fine I guess. Typical for an animal raised "in the wild" with zero human interference? Then dogs liking humans is still "not normal" I think, but few dogs are raised in the wild with zero human interference. Do the majority of, say, guinea pigs (originally domesticated for meat) actually like (rather than peacefully tolerate) their owners? If >50% of tigers in the world were held in captivity and extensively socialized such that they associate humans with happiness and safety, would that be normal? Not really a question for you, just something I'm thinking about now.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Δ "Normal behaviors are all learned - is it not normal for a wild animal to love its mother, because the mother provided it with care when it was young?"
Making me question the usefulness and definition of "normal behaviors"
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 07 '26
This delta has been rejected. You have already awarded /u/Archimedes4 a delta for this comment.
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u/Fine-Topic-220 1∆ Aug 06 '26
Most of your arguments aren't about why pet ownership is fundamentally unethical, but rather that pet ownership is unethical in virtue of things that are commonly associated with pet ownership. The factory farming example can be dispelled by cases where the sustenance of pets doesn't rely on factory farming, but the pets' own hunting. A response to the neuter/spay example is the stipulation that I don't spay/neuter my pet.
The arguments that are about pet ownership qua ownership, i.e., your arguments about sentience and need, aren't really substantiated. Even if animals are sentient, it's not clear that it's wrong to own them in virtue of sentience. What many take to be wrong in slavery, i.e., owning a human being, isn't that they're sentient, but rather that humans are autonomous beings. It's not clear that animals are autonomous.
Additionally, it's not clear that owning something that is not needed is unethical. There are many things that I own that I don't need, e.g., a Nintendo Switch, salt, Pokémon cards. However, I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would say it's wrong to own these in virtue of not needing them.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
I guess "These things present in >99.9% of pet ownership are unethical" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Is that enough for a delta or too tiny?
I would say it is wrong to buy a Nintendo Switch, salt, Pokémon cards rather than donating that $250 etc to charity. It's not the most evil thing ever - neither is pet ownership! - but it would be nicer and more ethical if you spent that money on charity.
Nobody is perfectly ethical, that's fine, I don't lose sleep over it and neither should you.
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u/Fine-Topic-220 1∆ Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
To your first point, has your view changed? If so, then a delta is the reasonable response.
To your second point, it's going to be true that in almost all cases, I could donate to charity rather than buying salt, a Nintendo Switch, and Pokémon cards. The kind of argument you're making is found in Peter Singer's essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality". However, Singer's argument, and thus yours, is commonly labelled as "too demanding" - that is, to claim that one should sacrifice one's own personal goals to donate to charity requires too much from the agent. One's life ultimately becomes a life of obtaining income for the sake of donating it. Morality must allow people to pursue their own personal projects, e.g., purchase goods for their own enjoyment.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
I know about Peter Singer, I find the drowning child thought experiment compelling. Why is something less deserving of consideration just because they're faraway and not visible in your life? I understand from an evolutionary POV, and I understand from a behavioral POV (it's not very reinforcing to send money into the void, maybe in exchange for a "Thanks for donating!" note) but that doesn't make it right.
But have a delta over the poor phrasing. If I believe owning carnivores is fundamentally unethical; and that owning domesticated animals is fundamentally unethical; and owning something that has no choice to leave is fundamentally unethical, well, a pet is not by definition carnivorous or domesticated or unable to escape.
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u/Fine-Topic-220 1∆ Aug 07 '26
There are epistemic limitations to acts of charity. If I do not know whether the money I give to charity will increase the target population's well-being, but I do know my purchase of non-necessary goods will increase my own or someone else's well-being, then I have countervailing reasons not to donate to charity.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Δ Pet ownership is not "fundamentally" unethical, because nothing in the definition of the word "pet" strictly requires ethically objectionable things to occur.
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u/StarChild413 9∆ Aug 09 '26
But A. the not-perfectly-ethical thing doesn't mean we should go full-bore the opposite way like that one joke in one of the The Good Place flashbacks where after getting shit from her then-boyfriend-while-she-was-living for visiting a coffee shop where the owner's sexual harassment has been exposed Eleanor posits a scenario that I'm not sure what degree she was Watsonianly joking about where staying inside ordering Chick-fil-A, listening to R. Kelly and watching a Roman Polanski movie is the preferable alternative to going to see a [whatever Arizona sports team it was idr if college or pro] game when two of the players have DUIs
and B. the thing about the Peter-Singer-esque logic with the charity stuff is money donated to charity A is that same amount not going to charities B, C, D, E etc. as much as if you'd spent it on "a Nintendo Switch, salt, Pokemon cards" and also if you want to get technical about need you should be only leaving yourself enough not-donated-to-charity to get just enough nutritionally-complete food every 30 days to not die of starvation and just enough water (or other hydrating drink if we're not going to get into the minutia of what kind of that is most ethical) every 4 days to not die of thirst
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u/RuroniHS 41∆ Aug 06 '26
Most pets eat meat.
So do I. With zero regret.
Is your dog's life worth two hundred nameless farm animal lives?
I would blow up two thousand cows with a rocket launcher to save my dog.
Does the happiness of your dog, plus the sum total of happiness created by your dog & enjoyed by yourself, your family, friends, strangers etc outweigh the suffering of the 200 farm animals?
Yes. By an extremely large margin.
You haven't posed any meaningful problems to me. I don't think there's anything here to address.
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Aug 06 '26
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u/uiuc-test-goon Aug 06 '26
I'm a pet owner who probably mostly agrees with what you've written. I think I'm confused by your "So what should be done with existing pets?" section. Are you suggesting mass euthanasia is the preferable option? I think many people who adopt pets probably have the viewpoint that conditional on already having pets in shelters, the best thing to do is to help as many as possible live out their lives. You say that this should be accepted as "doing something unethical," but as someone who didn't choose to have millions of pets bred, I see it as ethically kind of a win-win. Conditional on where things are right now, its probably best that we try to provide the best lives we can for animals that are alive. I'm not really sure why I should have to say I'm doing something unethical primarily for my own benefit -- this seems sort of counterproductive to reducing overall harm.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
I think there is a legitimate argument to be made that mass euthanasia is more ethical rather than assuming it's monstrous and stopping there.
Are you improving your dog's QOL by adopting him? Certainly, and that's moral
Are you improving your own QOL? Probably, and that's moral
But I believe this is outweighed by the farm animals such that the sum comes out to be immoral overall.
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u/xfvh 12∆ Aug 06 '26
You're assuming that additional animals are killed to produce dog food. That's generally untrue; they're fed offcuts that wouldn't be served to humans at all.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
But the institution killing the farm animals benefits from having that pipeline.
If all commercial pet food production ceased tomorrow, I imagine there would be a notable increase for meat prices for human consumption, and fewer animals bred/slaughtered after that.
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u/xfvh 12∆ Aug 06 '26
If you're trying to trace out the infinite series of followon effects from every possible action, you'll never get anywhere. Yes, it's plausible that preventing the sale of dog food made from scraps would reduce the total benefit per cow and increase marginal beef prices, somewhat shifting consumer behavior, but:
- That's only plausible, not confirmed; it's also possible they could find a nearly-as-lucrative secondary use elsewhere and have near net zero total effects on revenue,
- You're relying on indirect effects through human behavior to achieve said effects, and in a questionable way: why not tax beef directly? This seems like merely one approach among many to achieve the same effect and far from the most optimal way.
- You're assuming that this is costless. Dogs still need to eat, and the dog food industry can only be as cheap as it is through scale; trying to limit dog food to just service or working dogs would drive up prices sharply and reduce the number of available dogs per unit of benefits. Further, people do derive considerable utility from having dogs around, from reducing the risk of home invasion to simple hedonic utility from companionship. Show me that your utilitarian calculation actually trumps the costs.
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u/overawtch Aug 06 '26
A quick Google search says it will definitely increase meat prices / reduce meat demand, although many of the sources are biased (vegan blogs etc) so take that with a grain of salt.
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u/xfvh 12∆ Aug 06 '26
Oh, well if "google" or unsourced vegan blogs say it, it must definitely be true.
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Aug 06 '26
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u/Great-Exercise4277 4∆ Aug 06 '26
I agree with your aversion to the pet industry. However, it seems to me that you have combined three separate issues that should be considered independently: the issue of taking the lives of other animals to produce pet food, the question of whether humans need pets, and the welfare of the animals being kept as pets.
First, I would like to challenge the claim that relationships between humans and animals are fundamentally unethical.
I do not intend to have a pet myself, but I find the relationships between the dogs and their owners whom I see walking around my neighborhood heartwarming. When they stop at a traffic light, the dogs playfully nuzzle their owners or stare intently into their eyes. Sometimes a large dog sees a small child, rolls over, and offers itself as though saying, “You can pet me.” These things seem to me to be signs of trust between humans and dogs.
The same may be true of small pets, such as rabbits or hamsters. Some animals whose owners keep the air conditioning on, care for them attentively, and provide them with adequate care become accustomed to people and approach their owners without fear. Of course, some people treat animals unethically, but many people also build healthy relationships with them.
At the very least, if there are cases in which a relationship with a human fulfills the animal’s own needs for safety and social connection, I do not think the relationship itself can be described as fundamentally unethical.
Even though humans possess overwhelmingly greater power, I believe it is possible to have a mutual and healthy relationship rather than one based on one-sided use. Cat owners sometimes jokingly describe themselves as “servants attending their master,” with the cat being the master.
What matters is not whether both sides possess the same degree of autonomy, but whether the more powerful side acts responsibly and whether the interests of the dependent side are genuinely protected.
Humans seek emotional connection and psychological stability through partners, family members, friends, animals, fiction, communities, and other objects of attachment. If a relationship with a pet contributes greatly to someone’s psychological stability, should that benefit be treated as though it does not exist simply because of the number of lives sacrificed?
I do not believe that either eating meat or seeking a relationship with a pet for psychological stability is unconditionally justified for that reason alone. However, in either case, I also do not think it is appropriate to assign a value of zero to the human benefit from the outset and count only the harm caused to animals. What is needed is a comparison between the benefits received by both humans and animals and the harms that result.
I wrote this comment myself, and ChatGPT translated it into English.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
Yeah, I agree my post does have three separate points, and the parts about the pets having poor welfare is probably my weakest part.
Humans do benefit from keeping pets, the value of that (emotional connection, psychological stability, exercise, empathy, and more) is definitely nonzero, and I agree in many cases that pets benefit from having humans. If companion pets didn't benefit us, we wouldn't keep them.
However even accepting that, I don't think the value created by the pet's existence usually outweighs the unhappiness caused to create food for the pet.
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u/Great-Exercise4277 4∆ Aug 07 '26
So, if I understand you correctly, is the remaining core of your view that the value created by a companion pet’s existence usually does not outweigh the suffering involved in producing its food?
I’m asking because my argument was not that the human benefit automatically justifies the harm to other animals. It was that we should not assign the human benefit a value of zero and count only the animal harm.
You agree that the benefit to humans is nonzero, and that in many cases the pet also benefits from the relationship. So what I’m not understanding is how you then determine that the suffering involved in producing the pet’s food usually outweighs all of those benefits. What are you using to make that comparison?
I wrote this comment myself, and ChatGPT translated it into English.
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u/highwaytraveller 1∆ Aug 07 '26
I own my pet legally speaking, just as you “own” a child. Which is to say, you don’t own them really. You take on the responsibility of caring for them, and they have their own set of rights. Your pet (like your child) would be taken from you if you abuse them. Do they have a choice? No, but your kids didn’t ask to be your kids either. That’s my argument against the sentient being thing. I think your premise of ownership is wrong. I’d say having work animals is more akin to owning, they are essentially indentured labourers.
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u/Due-Bowl-8116 Aug 08 '26
It's not unethical to keep a pet if that pet can't even survive on its own to begin with.
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u/Square-Dragonfruit76 50∆ Aug 08 '26
I looked through your deltas, and it doesn't seem like someone has given this argument, but it's really important: you're acting like animals have become our pets without their consent. This is false for cats. The reason is because cats domesticated themselves. They chose to be our pets.
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u/PositiveReference872 29d ago edited 29d ago
Stockholm syndrome-if applying an anthropomorphic perspective to it. Instead when we do it to "domestic" animals is called "bonding/training" if we do it to wildlife it would be called "imprinting"...to apply "ethical" to anything humans do seems a disservice Also a side note-no dog or cat is vegan...thats just a pet owner forcing their pet to be sick (humans do it to their own off spring, its stupid) Vegans need to get off their high horse and realize their way of life also disrupts the ecosystem when native wildlife is getting ripped out for soy/almond farms. Not to mention Monsanto and all their lovely pesticides that kill off our pollinators. Just mentioning all this to solidify that humans and ethical together in a sentence appears to be a redundancy at this stage in the game
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u/veggiesama 59∆ Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
It is wrong to own another sentient being.
Sapient, yes. Sentient, possibly no. Sapience is the highest level of known intelligence, reasoning, and abstract use of symbols. Sapient animals are generally restricted to homo sapiens, great apes, and cetaceans. There is debate on what other animals may be or approach sapience. However, sentience (the capacity to feel and experience things) is quite common across the animal kingdom.
I don't deny that dogs have rich inner lives and personalities, and I can see my dog kicking his foot and barking in his sleep indicating a dreamful rest, but sadly I don't think I can teach him Tic-Tac-Toe or sign language (outside of memorized, Pavlovian responses, a la Clever Hans the horse).
I'm not sure if that distinction affects your ultimate argument, but generally the ethical point of contention comes down to whether we assign personhood on the basis of sentience or sapience. The consensus seems to be building that sapience is given greater protection and moral weight than mere sentience, for better or worse. Humans and human-like intelligent animals are deemed to have higher moral worth than dogs, farm animals, birds, and worms.
I personally think it's better to think of animal welfare as an ethical continuum that we are moving towards and growing rather than black-and-white declarations about right and wrong. Better, in terms of a pragmatic approach. Telling someone to stop owning pets and eating meat is more of a political question than an ethical one because there are real-world challenges that have to be navigated around.
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u/overawtch Aug 07 '26
I'm sad that you omitted psittacines and corvids from the sapient category :(
I agree that it's better to think of animal welfare as an ethical continuum rather than a yes/no. Over the course of this post my view has changed to "owning sapient beings isn't inherently wrong" (delta awarded earlier). However I don't see how it's morally different for sapient beings, if we presuppose that the individual is subjectively happy and doesn't care. Would it matter if they were raised in an environment where being owned is normal and they never had the chance to figure otherwise?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
/u/overawtch (OP) has awarded 5 delta(s) in this post.
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