"Martin Willett" > wrote
> ant and dec wrote:

>> But not much respect for the pig?
>
> If we didn't eat the pigs they would never exist at all. As long as most
> of their life is happy and content it must surely better to live and die
> than not to.
>
> Of course I know there's a qualifier in that statement. I put it there, so
> don't bother pointing it out.

I really like your posts Martin, I agree with everything you have said up to
now, but that is a fallacy. You cannot compare living and dying to *not*
living, since never being born, never existing is not a real state. This is
called "The Logic of the Larder" and there is one fruitcake here who has
already replied to you who makes it his life's work to promote this idea.

http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/salt02.pdf
There, in brief, is the key to the whole matter.
The fallacy lies in the confusion of thought which attempts to
compare existence with non-existence. A person who is already in existence
may feel that he
would rather have lived than not, but he must first have the terra firma of
existence to argue
from; the moment he begins to argue as if from the abyss of the
non-existent, he talks
nonsense, by predicating good or evil, happiness or unhappiness, of that of
which we can
predicate nothing.

When, therefore, we talk of "bringing a being," as we vaguely express it,
"into the world," we
cannot claim from that being any gratitude for our action, or drive a
bargain with him, and a
very shabby one, on that account; nor can our duties to him be evaded by any
such quibble, in
which the wish is so obviously father to the thought. Nor, in this
connection, is it necessary to
enter on the question of ante-natal existence, because, if such existence
there be, we have no
reason for assuming that it is less happy than the present existence; and
thus equally the
argument falls to the ground. It is absurd to compare a supposed
preexistence, or non-
existence, with actual individual life as known to us here. All reasoning
based on such
comparison must necessarily be false, and will lead to grotesque
conclusions.