I didn't read your post in detail, but I think these kinds of discussions often miss considerations around fine-grained vs coarse decision criteria.

• It's really hard to try to minimise animal deaths in whatever you do
• It's also really hard to stick by 'I try to drive as little as possible, especially when it's raining, except in emergencies where considering whether to drive would cost precious time and worsen the outcome, or when, by refusing to drive, I would cause reputational harm to utilitarians by seeming too weird, or...'
• It's (comparatively) really easy to stick by the rule 'I don't eat animal products.'

Sure, there are edge cases/confusing things e.g. cross-contamination, but there's a whole community of vegans who have thought about those cases, and have generally converged on some sensible-ish ways to handle them.

I think, in our moral decision-making, we should usually strive to find not-always-optimal-but-decent, relatively-easy-to-follow criteria, like:

• Be kind
• Be honest
• Don't eat animal products
• Donate ~10%

I think the term I've heard (from non-EAs) is 'freegan' (they'll eat it if it didn't cause more animal products to be purchased!)

Not opining on the overall question, but FWIW I'm not sure on-farm slaughter is better. Reason being — I think that large slaughterhouses have "smoother" processes and (per animal killed) are less likely to end up with e.g. no stunning, stunning but resuscitation before being killed, etc.

But this does have to be weighed against the stress of transport, and I bet in a lot of cases it'd have been better to have on-farm slaughter given the length & conditions of transport.

Hey Sam — thanks for this really helpful comment. I think I will do this & do so at any future places I live with wool carpets.

This summary was helpful — I've tried a couple times to engage with the original paper but found it hard, whereas this was very readable & I now think I understand the main points at a basic level :)

(& let's not forget the fetal calves who are still gestating when their mothers go to slaughter. They're killed slowly, if they ever get purposefully slaughtered at all rather than just left to asphyxiate. Obviously, it's unclear whether they're conscious, but I've read accounts of them moving, opening eyes, trying to breathe, etc.).

Just adding: the discussion of dairy cows, here and elsewhere, tends to focus on the experience of the adult cattle & the suffering for them of being milked, deprived of their babies, etc.

But it's not implausible to me that the majority of the disvalue from dairy is in the lives of the calves born to dairy cows. In typical milk-producing operations, adult cows have 1 calf every 18 months or so; 50% of them are male, and so are killed within a few hours to a few months after birth.

(& these lives more likely to be net negative because they have less time to experience positive things to outweigh the terror and pain of death. Undoubtedly, some of their deaths will be quite quick, but others are slow and brutal.)

(Also, veal calves are treated very badly - intense confinement to reduce movement to keep the meat tender, dietary restriction to keep the meat pale, individual confinement in a tiny 'hutch', etc.)

The idea behind why eating babies is more likely to be net negative is that there's a shorter lifespan of positive experiences to balance out the terror and pain of death.

From my experience watching lots of slaughterhouse footage and reading accounts from workers, even the best humane conditions still involve, routinely, a (shorter or longer) period in which the animal goes through the process of dying. This is probably pretty bad. If they only lived for a few weeks before that, it's harder to imagine it's a good deal overall.

all aspects effective autism

Can't tell if joke or typo, but I enjoyed it either way