Science, Can You Give Us Vat-Grown Meat Already?

I had a post all written last week about factory-farmed eggs and chickens, and I ended up not posting it. Because I don't want to be Angry Vegetarian Girl, and because it was too sad. (An anonymous animal rights group in Israel put a hidden camera in a battery farming operation so you can see chickens stuffed three to cage without enough space to stand up straight, let alone stretch out their wings--on a live feed. It is, needless to say, DEEPLY DISTURBING.)

Battery cages are what the vast majority of chickens producing eggs and meat live in--the hidden camera shows the norm for chicken farming, not some horrifying violation. I find it deeply disturbing, yes--which is why I don't eat chicken and buy "beyond cage free" eggs--but I find it really depressing, too: I may care about chicken welfare, but most of the world either likes $1 chicken sandwiches too much or really believes that food animals are too stupid to notice how they're raised.

Obviously, I disagree. (I've always liked the Jeremy Benthem quote,"The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?' ") So I was pretty happy to read an article in Time yesterday about animal intelligence. In a nice, non-Angry Vegetarian way it pointed out that yes, animals should probably be treated better because they're actually not too stupid to feel things:

If animals can reason — even if it's in a way we'd consider crude — the unavoidable question becomes, Can they feel?...And what does it say about how we treat them?

[...]No matter what any one scientist thinks of animal cognition, nearly all agree that the way we treat domesticated animals is indefensible — though in certain parts of the world, improvements are being made . The European Union's official animal-welfare policies begin with the premise that animals are sentient beings and must be treated accordingly.

Ultimately, a mainstream article like this is going to change more opinions than radical hidden cameras in chicken farms or earnest blog posts from vegetarians. But I dare you to read up on chicken farming anyway.