system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: There's no 'ethical' way to kill a healthy animal

I see a lot of people who are opposed to factory farming or disagree with factory farming say that they want 'ethical' farming practices where animals are given better conditions and then killed in a better way than they are currently, ideally without causing undue stress to the animal. This is a noble cause but simply is not realistic for a few reasons. 

a) animals would still have to be killed in their prime in order to produce the best quality meat. They wouldn't have 'long and fulfilling' lives as one might imagine 

and 

b) even if you guarantee they have a fulfilling life, no healthy animal wants to die. They all have a survival instinct and even if you slaughter them in a 'humane' way per HMSA (by either electrocuting them, gassing them, or shooting them in the head before slaughter) they still feel pain and fear before these moments of being incapacitated. If we are going to argue 'ethics', any killing of an animal that otherwise would live a full life is unethical. 

This excludes extremely old and/or injured beyond healing animals. Putting an animal with a poor quality of life out of it's misery is different than slaughtering an otherwise healthy animal for it's meat. Especially if an injection is used rather than 'taking it out back'. 

I'm by no means arguing that we should all be vegan, I just think it's weird to argue that there is an ethical way of killing something that otherwise wants to live. I believe it's an argument borne to justify cognitive dissonance. 

CMV

Edit: taking a little break, but I'll be back later to respond to the rest. Thank you so much for having this discussion with me :)
gpt
When a bear eats and kills an elk, in that order, it that ethical? Is it more or less ethical if a human gets to that elk first? There is a very short list of possible fates for an elk. Either get hunted, eaten, and killed by a predator, or they get injured fighting other elks and THEN get hunted, eaten, and killed by a predator, or they live to old age, when they are too tired to escape being hunted, eaten, and killed by a predator. Might get lucky and no predators are around, and simply starve to death or succumb to disease/infection, but as deaths go, the most merciful death possible is to be hunted by a human, whose goal is to kill you as instantly as possible. To me, that's far more ethical than the way a bear or wolf pack does it, which usually involves being eaten ass first while still struggling.