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Pain-Free Animals Could Take Suffering Out of Farming
Philosopher Adam Shriver suggested that genetically engineering cows to feel no pain could be an acceptable alternative to eliminating factory farming in a paper published in Neuroscience. Work by neuroscientist Zhou-Feng Chen at Washington University may turn Shriver's suggestion a reality. Chen has been working on identifying the genes that control "affective" pain, the unpleasantness part of a painful sensation. He has managed to isolate a gene called P311, and has found that mice who do not have P311 don't have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure. This could end much of the concern about cruel farming practices, but unfortunately still leaves my design for the fiery hamburger punch in the unethical column.
This is why the pace of technological growth is slowing. 50 years ago, people would have looked at this and thought, wow, we can bbq live steak, and it won't try to run away.
Those people had ideas, big ideas. They looked at nuclear bombs and thought "Hey, we could get rid of those mountains blocking our view".
That is the spirit of innovation that drives true progress...
Precisely. If you remove their pain sensors you might also remove their fear sensors. Then we would have angry, fearless cows who can feel no pain mercilessly dealing out revenge on their former masters, burning and killing everything in their path. I think this is a bad idea.
What? Maybe for beef, I'm not sure...
But for pigs, it's really important that you kill them unexpectedly, or the meat gets an off flavor. I always used to drop mine off at the butchers, where he'd treat them nicely for a couple days for them to get content and acclimated, then he'd shoot them when they weren't expecting it.
This is why all the best butchers are ninjas and/or members of the Spanish Inquisition.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
This is why all the best butchers are ninjas and/or members of the Spanish Inquisition.
Ninjas I can understand, but I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition.