Have you been to commercial meat operations? I am not talking about millions of non human lives held in captivity, raped and slaughtered..but the condition of the labour in meat processing and meat packing industry.

It’s not a cowboy who brings your steak to the table, but probably some undocumented immigrant paid slave wages and living in a shed.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/21/life-inside-am...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-a...

https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/special-reports/dairy...

https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/smithfields-hog-f...

https://stonepierpress.org/goodfoodnews/wastelands-book-revi...

> comparing meat eating to slavery makes you seen even more unreasonable

I think that is an attitude that our culture will be ashamed of in the near future, just like we are ashamed of slavery now. The agricultural practices are almost identical (different mammal). The major difference is that we consume the flesh of one, and the produce of another.

The only reason for saying that the enslavement of other animals is ok, while the enslavement of humans is not, is if we can come up with a reason that makes us special and those other animals not. There is only shaky ground for any of those possible reasons, and believing them puts blinders on what we can know. I.e., we will not recognize things that do not fit our conceptions, which has big implications for our biological science, psychology and philosophy.

The fact is that meat eating, like slavery, is not reasonable. It is just something we grew up doing (individually and as a species). Any argument advocating it is as superficial and misleading as antebellum racial theorists. That is an uncomfortable truth.

Sometimes we compare dissimilar things and in the process discover new truths. We don't compare them to see which is worse, we don't compare to rank them, but to discern similarities and differences and, in doing so, gain a better understanding of both our subjects; even, why not, of ourselves.

It's only unreasonable to compare factory farming to human slavery if one believes that the rights of animals compared to humans is similar or worse than slaveholders believed the rights of their slaves to be compared to thme.

For the record I eat meat, but I'm under no illusions regarding the cruelty of the process. I support all laws that would increase farm animal welfare, even if it means my steak gets more expensive, it's simple enough to make good veggie dishes once in a while.

If — and I recognise that it is an "if" given the current lack of any sufficient testable definition of subjective consciousness awareness of self — if farm animals are self-aware, then slavery would be several steps up from their current existence.

We only stopped feeding cows to other cows because of a fear humans might get prion diseases.

Coming at it from the other direction, "what if humans were food?" is a horror trope, be it vampires, zombies, werewolves, or psychopath cannibals.