Domesticated animals don’t feel stress about the future, because they don’t have an understanding of their future in the same way we do. A cow doesn’t live a more stressed or unhappy life than a dog or a deer because it is destined to be killed for its meat. Cows aren’t upset that they will end up as steaks because, as Michael Pollan phrased it, "in a bovine brain the concept of nonexistence is blissfully absent."

Domesticated animals don’t feel stress about the future, because they don’t have an understanding of their future in the same way we do. A cow doesn’t live a more stressed or unhappy life than a dog or a deer because it is destined to be killed for its meat. Cows aren’t upset that they will end up as steaks because, as Michael Pollan phrased it, "in a bovine brain the concept of nonexistence is blissfully absent."