FBI Hunt for 2 Missing Pigs Reveals Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms

value of those 2 piglets is pretty much 0 dollars - especially given the piles of dead and dying piglets and pigs lying around on that farm. Many of the crimes with significant value of property stolen/damaged/etc. doesn't get any real attention from local, state police nor FBI just because of sheer volume of the crimes and limited LE resources. The LE resource were prioritized to this case because of political reasons as there is no other plausible reason here.

Speaking about political motivation - there is federal AETA law (Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Enterprise_Terrorism_Ac...) which "prohibits any person from engaging in certain conduct "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise."" What can be more political reason than "terrorism" ?!

The fact that a clear line doesn't exist is used too many times as an excuse to continue doing what is obviously wrong. Logically, you could take it the other way to the extreme and say that since there is no clear line, then there isn't an obvious reason not to raise certain humans for their meat either.

The fact that life is not black and white but a lot of grey levels does not imply that there is no such thing as black or white. If one's moral compass and integrity are still intact, then even knowing the constraints, one would usually try to make the grey a little brighter.

How can you both agree that a clear line doesn't exist, while in the same sentence saying "obviously wrong"? If you mean obvious to your specific sensibilities that's fine; but if you mean global consensus or objectively, then that's self-contradictory.

Plenty of people genuinely don't care about the treatment of food animals, or even of humans outside their perceived tribe. It's just as "obvious" and consistent within those entire groups that there's no concern there. "Moral compass and integrity" are less about intact or unintact, and more about "similar to mine".

This is why pure moral arguments don't change anything, because people don't share morals. Now, some do have broader subscription, like not murdering people, and there you can defer to the shared moral. But others (like animal rights) are observably divided, so rallying on violation of local moralisms has no meaning to those outside that moral locality. It's exactly the same as religions yelling at non-adherents for acting in violation to the religion's tenets.

Wrong. It’s you who is rationalizing not living morally-consistently as yet another BS excuse. Most people are just too selfish, weak and exhibit too much cognitive dissonance to do anything but rationalize their unsustainable behavior because it costs them immediately nothing. In that case, meat needs to be heavily taxed like cigarettes and alcohol because too many people can’t or won’t give up something that is threatening the future of the planet, creates lakes of shit and is the opposite of humane. People treat their dogs and cats better than other feeling animals whom they don’t need to kill.

I suggest you watch videos on YouTube by the SHARK to see what’s really going on at CAFOs and other facilities.

The planet can’t take it (methane and CO2) and it directly causes “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” suffering and pain proportional to purchases.

I used to eat piles of meat but have not for about a decade because I became educated about the multifaceted reality of the climate, environmental, ecological and animal welfare aspects.

> Same way as I can say something is obviously a heap of sand without pointing out exactly at which point it turned into one from it's beginnings as some grains of sand (Sorites paradox)

But that's not the situation here. You're saying that there is some scale at which something is "obviously wrong" implying a convergent consensus of observance. Tying it to sorites, it would be like you claiming that there's a fuzziness beyond which the heap should be considered "obviously too big" by everyone, while to others there's no such concept as a heap that's too big (or even merely disagree that you've entered "too big" territory yet). You can't argue that it's too big, without pulling in something external that they might share.

> Regarding moral relativism, I don't buy it

It's not that morals are "relative", and I agree that's a terrible label, but more that morals are held as axiomatic. There is no and cannot be justification of morals themselves, they simply are held (or are not held) by a person as the foundational root clauses from which all their other justifications are derived.

So there's no possible way to argue or justify root morals to others who simply don't share them. You'd need to link them to morals that the other does hold for there to be any worthwhile concept conveyed at all. Otherwise it's just yelling that others are not following your particular flying spaghetti monster. If one fundamentally believes that animal suffering matters, and another fundamentally believes that it does not, what possible justification or persuasion would cross that boundary?

> You are right that pure moral arguments don't change anything, but I don't think the reason is that people don't share morals, but rather have to do with people being extremely good at rationalizing away the immorality, or never questioning it in the first place.

Re-read what you said, and consider it in the initial discussion of animal rights. You're saying that there is a morality held in a person that is invoked in an observed situation that is being rationalized away, implying that they fundamentally subscribe to the same morals as you. I think this convergence (and I'd simply call it a projection) is an extreme claim, going against the observed variety among cultures & schools of thought around the world and throughout history. That's simply not an accurate picture of humanity.

In particular, sensitivity and callousness to specific situations of harm are very trained, and degrees of harm in varied directions exist in absolutely everything, all the way down to entropy. Just look at governmental overreach to see how the concept of "harm" can be all encompassing, bringing a justification for involvement wherever they may choose, from economics to surveillance.