You make it sound like they have a choice in the matter.

Every time a new life is fertilized, a soul *must* enter it, right?

So wherever the soul-stuff comes from, we are wholly responsible for their misery.

"Maybe it wants to serve humanity"? Or maybe it doesn't want to have its throat slit any more than you or I do ...
I think you'll find that life is dear to ALL

Your theory could be readily proved - or disproved.

Open the cage doors of the battery cages, open the doors of the factory farm sheds, open the doors of the slaughterhouse, let them show us how 'eager' they are to be denied their liberty; to be confined in cramped, crowded, miserable conditions; to meet a terrifying, violent death ....

I strongly suspect we wouldn't see them for dust.

I have often wondered why any Soul would choose to come into a life where there was to be pain, suffering, torture.
I do not have any answer. I don't yet have the perspective which may show me reasons.
The only thing which comes to mind is that we humans often have control of the physical lives of animals. And as humankind, we should all make sure we honour those Souls and never degrade them or damage them, and certainly never make them suffer in the most horrendous ways -as we do.

Again, supposing chicken souls DIDN'T want to reincarnate??? What would happen? They cannot go "on strike," refusing to enter bodies. We can't have soulless husks running around.

Every time we breed a chicken for our own purposes, we are creating a being with a soul. Forcing it through this. End of story.

We are custodians of the earth (- though we act like feudal barons!)

We have a duty of care to the Animal Kingdom, and Mother Earth.

Well said, Noble Knight! On an animal forum of which I am one of the admins, along with another member of this forum, there have been a few threads recently about animals escaping from slaughterhouses. Any animal, given the chance, will seek to avoid pain and suffering; they are no different than humans.

Anyone who suggests that animals choose to be eaten is flying in the face of facts. Just look at a mouse; it will always try to run away from a snake, cat or other predator. Try to catch a fish with your hands in the water; the fish will do its best to slip away. Watch an antelope desperately trying to evade a lion. Watch any animal in a slaughter house, prior to being stunned - if they are stunned that is, as in the USA chickens are not protected at all by federal animal welfare laws. "Because they have no federal legal protection (birds are exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act), almost all chickens are still conscious when their throats are cut, and many are literally scalded to death in the feather-removal tanks after missing the throat cutter." This is from the following web source: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-u...rming/chickens

If you have the stomach to watch, just Google "animals terrified in slaughter houses"....That should scotch any doubts about whether animals (even free range ones, who also land up in slaughter houses just the same) are happily surrendering.

We humans should be thoroughly ashamed of what some of us do to animals just for food....

Well said, dear Peter.

In the case of chickens, yes, an automated knife throat-slitting method is used, which is not infallible, many chickens are not killed but mutilated and enter the next stage of the process, which is, being submerged, whilst hanging upside down, into a vat of boiling hot water ....
I'm sure there are 'nice' ways of dying. That isn't one of them

Yeah, now reading this thread, I almost want to take down my other one:

http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/sh...ad.php?t=99821

If your vegetarianism is founded upon the principle that we have no right to take the life of another, then it doesn't really matter whether the animal's organic or not. If it were possible to communicate with a 6 week old chicken on its very last day (bearing in mind they can happily scratch around until they are 8 years old), I wonder what their response would be to the statement 'you had a good life'?

Whoops, just realised I'd been reading the beginning of this thread, without noticing the end of it (on a phone in bed, and not overly familiar with the forum software), so my above post will read very much out of context!