Morality of Using Artificial Meat to Feed Carnivorous Animals

[xerx]

Lab-grown meat could, in theory, be used to feed more than carnivorous humans, but to feed carnivorous animals as well. Resource constraints notwithstanding, what is the morality of inhibiting such animals from predation and transitioning their diets to the cruelty-free alternative?

[xerx]

Bonus points for mentioning the Fermi Paradox.

[Millen]

It sounds cancerous. Also human "morality" cant be trusted.

[The Reality Denialist]

It seems kind of natural progression when it comes to pets and zoos (to an extent) if we see those as extensions of what humans do. Anyway, setting morality aside as this resource allocation is pretty dang important as it would screw up how nature works... dragonflies eating mosquitoes is already not the highest level. So the human paradigm should only work where humans work and this should be more indicative of the base where we can look at the morality because it is more or less connected to our instincts than we would like to admit. If we could change the driving instincts... now that is an interesting problem what might make the "social" bio engineering a lot more fussy.

[ouronis]

If we do not switch to lab-grown meats, animals will slowly adapt to their captivity and become clever and capable of conspiracies to kill and overthrow humans from the inside, thus proving to be humanity's great filter, and contributing to the ruthless immutability of the fermi paradox.

Serious answer is that I think transitioning to lab-grown meats is a step in the right direction and even if we cannot feel the pain of another, that does not mean we should enslave and kill it. But I still want bacon

[BrainlessSquid]

I think we should give it a try and see the consequences of it.
In the worst case they will develop some abnormal health condition

[Beautiful sky]

Lab grown meat is a great use

[RBRS]

If you're talking feral it would probably result in a very difficult demographic situation for the animals that were prey for the carnivores

[Adam Strange]

It takes about ten pounds of feed to produce one pound of edible meat.

Here Is a chart showing the mass of humans, feed animals, and wild animals on the earth.

...https://xkcd.com/1338/

It takes about seven calories of oil to produce one calorie of food. Eat less meat.

https://sustainability.emory.edu/wp-...Production.pdf

[Eliza Thomason]

I think we should give it a try and see the consequences of it.
In the worst case they will develop some abnormal health condition

But don't the animals have any choice in the matter? What if they DON'T WANT to be an experiment? What if they DON'T WANT their natural instincts manipulated?? Maybe they want to stay like how they were BORN.

Today a Vegan today explained that she does not use wool yarn because it supports being unkind to animals who DIDN'T ASK to have their wool shaved off. ("Doesn't shaving it off make them cooler and more comfortable in the hot summers?", I asked. But no reply to that was offered.)

That sheep wool dilemma seems to juxtopose with the fake meat one posed here.

[BrainlessSquid]

But don't the animals have any choice in the matter? What if they DON'T WANT to be an experiment? What if they DON'T WANT their natural instincts manipulated?? Maybe they want to stay like how they were BORN.

Today a Vegan today explained that she does not use wool yarn because it supports being unkind to animals who DIDN'T ASK to have their wool shaved off. ("Doesn't shaving it off make them cooler and more comfortable in the hot summers?", I asked. But no reply to that was offered.)

That sheep wool dilemma seems to juxtopose with the fake meat one posed here.

I mean, this choice is very difficult to solve, but they could be presented both artificial and real meat to see what they choose and if there's any repulsion on their part. We as humans don't know exactly what we eat most of the time, it's culture and science who say what we should eat but no one really knows if it's the best option anyway.

A lot of people have no idea what they eat is what I mean. Of course this doesn't imply that animals should follow the same path.

I feel like I don't have a choice to what I eat either, but that's a topic for another discussion

[AWellArmedCat]

Lab-grown meat could, in theory, be used to feed more than carnivorous humans, but to feed carnivorous animals as well. Resource constraints notwithstanding, what is the morality of inhibiting such animals from predation and transitioning their diets to the cruelty-free alternative?

It's neither moral nor immoral to my mind. Just sounds like another bizarre way humans came up with to screw with animals.

Also "cruelty" implies that carnivorous animals are going out of their way to cause suffering in prey animals because they sadistically derive enjoyment from the pain they cause their prey. While some animals are known to do this, I don't think there's evidence that most carnivores do. Just primates, dolphins, and a handful of others perhaps. Cruelty is mostly a human thing, so I find it weird to apply the word to animals generally

[thistle]

The closest current equivalent would be farmed salmon (later smoked and sold as fillets or shaved slices).

Salmon in the wild would eat other fish, and krill which gives them their pink-ish colour. Farmed salmon is said to be more sustainable because their feed is supplemented with land based protein - abattoir offcuts that would otherwise be waste product.

Fish oil can be added to the farmed salmon's feed to increase the omega 3 in their bodies. Wild salmon would naturally be rich in Omega 3 because of marine-based diet.
The idea is that the already overfished ocean does not need to feed this farmed source of protein. Humans benefit from eating the salmon's wild food, and (farmed) salmon too.

That is not entirely on topic, but I raised it because something about introducing synthetic sudden change to a creature's long-adapted diet seems cruel to me and too risky.

I suspect it would become about "meeting ends" and not focusing on the quality of life of the animal.
They would become unfit, possibly malnourished and suffer illness in their organs due to the changed composition and frequency of what they are digesting.

Based on the diet alone and inactivity (no need to hunt) their lifespan could be shortened, is my worry.