Let us follow Bentham and say we seek the greatest good for the greatest number (cows included).  You can’t get more bleeding-heart than that.

Let us look at it from the point of view of the cow.  Humans are looking after their own point of view.  (Yum, yum, tasty cow!)

If you put a cow down on the Serengeti, it won’t last more than an hour or two.  So, in its current configuration, it would prefer to live on a farm.  But what if it had its original form?  It’s now an auroch (the progenitor of domestic cows), and the question is whether it would like to live out in the wild or not.  It doesn’t get to live in a Walt Disney movie.  This is the real wild we’re talking about.

How is it, really?  Well, the auroch is constantly fearful that one of the big predators or a pack of hyenas or dogs is going to attack it.  When the attack comes, it had better be fleeing within a second or two.  This is its life, night and day.  There is no sanctuary.

Its life span is three or four years.  Here’s the proof.  Each female will have a calf every year.  So, although they are not monogamous or anything like that, each pair (male and female) produces a calf every year, and in two years, they have replaced themselves in the herd.  If the younger calves last for four years, and the parents last for five, you have double the population.  That doesn’t happen, so aurochs can live for only three or four years.

Largely, they die from teeth and claws.  They are captured, and while one predator throttles them, the rest start eating them.  How un–Walt Disney can you get?

While they are living, they are always infested with parasites, not to mention ticks and flies.  Okay, Mr. Auroch — do you agree that life in the wild is short and grim?

What would you like then, in an ideal world?  Well, I’d like to be safe from predators — you know, not worry all the time.  And I’d like adequate food — no famines. And I’d like a vet in attendance and modern medicines to handle the parasites and flies.  And particularly, I’d like to avoid the being eaten alive thing — give me a stun bolt every time.  It just puts out the lights.

Here’s a deeper question, perhaps a bit hard for a cow.  Do you actually want to have a life?  Because if people can’t eat you, they’re not going use the land to keep you, so you’ll never be born.  What do you think?

I’m only a cow, and my morality is really that of my genes.  From their point of view, we’re doing great.  We’ve got a totally huge population.  This is the definition of success.  Not only that, but I’m steadily evolving to be more suited to my environment — the better my genes do at pleasing the farmer, the better for my genes.

So you are grateful to humans for breeding, raising, and eating you?  Hell, yes!

Image via Pxhere.