The thing that irks me here is that the harm to the cockroach clearly doesn't justify the disgust people are expressing towards this; we all do far worse without even thinking every day. Instead it seems to stem from some disgust at the 'violation' of the cockroach's control over its own body — what I'm trying to say is, how can you condemn that, when the process of domestication entails controlling the evolution of entire species for our own purposes?
That's exactly what I'm trying to say.
Controlling the evolution of a species is a completely different thing from controlling an individual specimen of said species. Do you think dogs express some sort of regret that they don't get to be wolves? That's a completely absurd notion.
It isn't an ethically significant problem to control the evolution of a species to create a domesticated branch or sub-species. The specimens belonging to that domesticated species can suffer from it, the species itself cannot. In fact from evolutionary perspective,
getting domesticated is a
super good strategy for any species and will give them a huge edge over any wild animal because:
-stady food supply
-protection from elements
-protection from predators
-health care
-lower litter mortality rates
-massively increased sustainable population
Individual animals typically have a massive deluge of advantages if they're domesticated pet animals (cats, dogs, etc.). On the other hand, animals bred for food production typically just get the basic advantages and then a huge caveat that their life will most likely end when they are in an ideal age to be eaten; broiler, calves, piglets - all slaughtered as they reach an optimal size that results in optimal returns in weight and quality of meat, vs. resources used to grow them. Egg chickens get to live longer, milking cows get to live longer, and animals selected for breeding get to live longer. But this has nothing to do with the domestication process itself.
Individual animals belonging to a domesticated species may be treated well and given a stimulating environment to live in, or they may be mistreated; that is a practical problem related to the keeping of said specimen of a domesticated species. But it makes absolutely no sense to talk about domestication as a process somehow denying an animal
species its "right to evolve as it wants".
Species do not choose their evolutionary direction in
any case; natural selection does. That's why selective breeding is not in any way ethically different from any other selection pressure that doesn't happen to come from humans; certain species in nature exert selection pressure towards other species all the time. It's called predator-prey relationship. Or plants secreting toxic molecules and herbivores eating them getting selected for ability to withstand said toxins. Or two species competing for same food supply and the other species ends up evolving features that give it an edge. The only thing where selective breeding is different from evolution in nature is that it's generally much faster and you see differences fairly soon; this is due to aggressive selection for desireable features and not letting the others breed (although, I should point out, too aggressive process can cause lots of problems with limited gene pool).
Related to animal quality of life: Currently, in our meat industry, treatment of animals is a huge problem. Vast majority them spend their (albeit short) lives in dull, monotonous environments in a completely unnatural existence, and as a result are subjected to lots of stress that arguable diminishes their quality of life. This is especially a problem for pig farming and chicken farming, due to their smaller size - cattle simply require more space to begin with so it is more usually economically feasible to let them pasture (at least in the summer) rather than keep them locked in all the time. Even so there are cattle farms that do keep the animals inside their whole lives whether it's sensible or not.
So here's a question. If we were to invent a virtual reality system that could make these animals living in production facilities think they're actually living in a stimulating environment, outside, pasturing and doing whatever comes naturally to them as a species - would it be ethically wrong to implement said system? Would the animals themselves care? They would have a much better environment, they would not be aware of actually being kept in pens while being hooked up to the system.
We might think it wrong to "deceive them". But, if you look at the situation - we're not willing to give up meat production, and so these animals need to be kept, slaughtered, and then processed into edible products. If we can figure out something to improve their perception of that short life, what's the problem with it as long as their physical needs are also catered to (food supply, health care, making sure their muscles develop right and don't atrophy...
inb4 the Matrix is actually ethically sustainable plan for improving the quality of farm animals' lives
