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even if farm animals were slaughtered in the most humane and painless of ways, the way they’re treated while they’re alive is still horrifyingly atrocious
if farm animals were slaughtered in the most humane and painless of ways
This sounds like a juxtaposition to me. You cannot slaughter a healthy animal in a humane way. “Slaughter” excludes “humane”. I’m not a vegan/vegetarian but it seems to me like this idea that if we just raised happy healthy animals and found a way to kill it nicely then eating meat would be ethically ok. We don’t need to eat meat anymore. Any killing of an animal to make it into food is unnecessary and could be avoided. I think it is important that we meat eaters really internalize this. Every time we eat meat we caused absolutely unnecessary suffering for a quick moment of pleasure.
Culling is not cruel or even morally ambiguous. It is morally and ethically right to cull out of control populations of animals for the betterment of the whole. Culling isn’t even necessarily for the sick or weak. Sometimes healthy young animals have to be put down for the betterment of the environment. Look into native American hunting practice and land conservation methodology.
Modern farming is very much none of those things though.
Honestly, culling is besides the point I am making, since the primary goal of culling is not meat production.
There are morally more ambiguous cases (than with slaughter for meat) in which killing an animal can be arguably better than to let it live. Putting down a terminally sick pet is an example. Culling might also be argued, but I would not say that it is “not cruel or even morally ambiguous”.
With culling, my thoughts on it are these. When we refer to culling, we most often talk about culling in farm animal situation. As in, there is a sick animal that has to be culled so that the population doesn’t become infected. Or we kill the male chicks because we cannot raise them to become egg producing hens and keeping a lot of roosters together can cause problems. The killing of farm cows that underproduce is also a form of culling. I would argue that none of these killings would be necessary in the first place if we didn’t have big scale farming (or, for that matter, farming of any kind) of lifestock. My guess is that with
Modern farming is very much none of those things though.
we agree here.
Culling of wild animals is more controversial. As far as I am aware of, hunters are being told how many animals of a certain species and sex they can kill in a hunting season and it is regardes as population control. (Whilst we ofter created conditions in which the population cannot control itself.) Or they get an order from a farmer etc. to kill a chicken ripping wolf. If you have to kill a wolf because it regularly attacks your chicken farm, then the chicken farm is the actual problem, not the wolf. Apart from that, you’ll end up fucking with natural selection. Arguably not very great. But since we can’t just go back to the caves and restore nature the way it was before civilization and so on, some form of culling of wild animals will probably stay necessary for human survival and artifical balance of and artificialized nature - even without farming of lifestock. I would not call this ethical or morally right, but a realistic, awful necessity.
I’m not sure about the point you’re making with native americans. When I search for native american hunting practices the first thing that pops up is how they hunted bisons and nearly drove them to extinction, which is also the most prominent example I know of. This goes into the territory of the idea of the Noble Native. But I doubt you meant that as an example.
Native Americans curated bison populations for thousands of years. Idk where you’re getting “almost drove the bison to extinction” from. In 1850, there were between 30 and 60 million bison on the plains. By 1870, there were less than 500 wild bison left. That’s not native American hunting. That’s white genocide. Don’t get it confused. Some plains Indians even claim kinship with the Bison as their spiritual totem.
Look into accounts by settlers first traveling the America’s. They often wonder at how the forests seem to have wild orchards of berries and fruits, or how certain woods seem to have been maintained almost as if by a forester. It’s no coincidence. The plagues brought by the settlers killed 95% of my people, and those same settlers came and occupied the same space where me and mine had lived for eons. And then they had the temerity to call it divine providence. Filthy diseased savages tend to build filthy diseased societies, and here we are now.
Native Americans curated bison populations for thousands of years. Idk where you’re getting “almost drove the bison to extinction” from. In 1850, there were between 30 and 60 million bison on the plains. By 1870, there were less than 500 wild bison left. That’s not native American hunting. That’s white genocide. Don’t get it confused. Some plains Indians even claim kinship with the Bison as their spiritual totem.
Yep, I was totally wrong about that. I apologize. I don’t know where I had that info from, I think either school or I was distracted at the point about bison when I listened to Guns Germs and Steel. Anyway, I take that back and you are absolutely right here.
And I’m very sorry about what happened to your people.
But to go back to meat eating, I’m not sure it plays a big role for today. Hunting bison without rifles while living with rather low population density in nature is not the same as farming. I’m not sure whether meat eating was necessary for survival back then, it probably was an important source of nutrients. Plus the sacred aspects, the cultural ones, the actual gratitude, the use of the whole animal… But this is not how we use livestock today at all. And most importantly: we don’t need it. We have an abundance of alternatives.
But again, I don’t ask anyone to quit meat all together. I don’t think it is fair to ask this from individuals and attribute all of the responsibility to them. If we want to decrease meat production and consumption, we need to do this from a regulatory basis. So all I am saying is that we meat eaters should simply be aware of it. That it is neither necessary from a nutritional point of view, nor that any kind of farming and slaughtering can be seen as “humane”. We cause suffering with our choice and keep promoting a system that will always be cruel. You take away babies from their mothers. You raise animals in unnatural conditions. If they are lucky, they end up at the butcher healthy enough so that their short and miserable life will be terminated untimely and with them very likely experiencing existential threat. For nothing more than us having a moment of joy, convenience, pleasure. Their carcass becomes a banality.
Step away from the emotional argument for a bit and simply consider the logistics. There is no evil in profiting from the cycle of life. Do you also believe herding to be cruel and unnatural? What about other animal product harvesting, like bee keeping or silkworm cultivation? Is it ethically dubious to mine limestone because the ancient crustaceans couldn’t consent?
In my mind, the real problem is cruelty for profit. It should not be profitable to treat animals cruel, and that can only change with legislation. The system is too easy to abuse, and humans will almost always make pick the easy option over anything else.
Humanity made the Amazon rainforest. It wasn’t easy. It probably wasn’t even on purpose. But the existence of the Amazon Rainforest as we know it today is the direct result of millions of people working hard for generations. The difference between the tens of millions of today and those millions of before is the mindset. The modern world has forgotten respect for the ground that births us. They do not see the creatures as brothers or cousins, but as resources to put on a spreadsheet. Everyone is so focused on wealth that they forget to consider the cycles all around us. Hell, when was the last time you considered that our planet is in the middle of an ice age? We’ve had 10,000 years of warmth and we so easily forget. How well do you think a plant based diet is going to work on a glacier?
Step away from the emotional argument for a bit and simply consider the logistics. There is no evil in profiting from the cycle of life. Do you also believe herding to be cruel and unnatural? What about other animal product harvesting, like bee keeping or silkworm cultivation? Is it ethically dubious to mine limestone because the ancient crustaceans couldn’t consent?
These are good questions. I’m not too sure about bee keeping or silk production since I don’t know exactly how their products are being harvested and what happens to the insects during this. With herding, it’s not the herding I have a problem with but what it is done for. I would not say we are profiting from the cycle of life if we kill a cow. The premature separation of cow and calf to gain more milk is another thing. If we just got milk by pumping a “breastfeeding” cow (as you might have guessed English is not my first language) and otherwise let it be - go for it. I wouldn’t see anything wrong with that. But this isn’t how it works, and you are very right that profit is to blame.
In my mind, the real problem is cruelty for profit. It should not be profitable to treat animals cruel, and that can only change with legislation. The system is too easy to abuse, and humans will almost always make pick the easy option over anything else.
I agree with this absolutelty.
Maybe if we found a way to go back to eating meat on very rare occasions, eating mostly game that was hunted for other reasons than meat or something alike, we could find a balance with it as a product for consumption.
I mean, would you want to be reborn as a cow on a free range organic farm? Where you are still being inseminated without ever having seen a bull or knowing what’s going on. Where you give birth to a baby that you still will be separated from before it’s time. Where your kid will have a similar destiny as you. If it even makes it to adulthood. Most likely it will be killed and eaten while you are still being pumped. Where your life is ended by a machine and your body sold to people who toss half of you in the trash because they cooked too big of a portion. Like, yeah, maybe you get to keep your horns and see some grass once in a while and your cage is slightly bigger than the low class conventional farming cows but at the end of the day it is still a miserable life.
How well do you think a plant based diet is going to work on a glacier?
Fwiw, I enjoyed the paragraph that led to that sentence, it was beautifully written. Just so that there are no misunderstandings: I’m not necessarily for a plant based diet under any circumstances. There are people with metabolic diseases that might need to eat more animal products for their health. Or nomadic cultures, indigenous tribes with hunter gatherer societies, and also people on glaciers.
And this is actually exactly why I do have a guilty conscience when I personally consume meat (and again, I am a huge hypocrite, I do eat meat!). I don’t need to. There is a time and place where hunting and killing and slaughtering and herding are necessary for survival, but it is not in my life. I can buy a B12 supplement that will last me a year for like 10€, probably less. I can choose from a huge variety of plant milk alternatives in every supermarket. Let’s not kid ourselves, nothing I eat is “natural”. It’s not natural to get a huge watermelon or a cloned banana or refrigerated milk in tetra packs and avocado from the other side of the world. If I drink carbonated soda or an energy drink that tastes like gummi bears then I can also not claim that supplements are “unnatural” and not what nature intended. Nothing I do is natural. I wake up by an electricity powered alarm clock. But with all of that privilege, advancement, technology and detachment I am supposed to somehow justify cruel animal farming and killing?
You cannot slaughter a healthy animal in a humane way. “Slaughter” excludes “humane”.
this is just a semantic game. there are human slaughter laws in most of the developed world. maybe all of it. and some in the developing world, too.
Actually my point is exactly that it isn’t just semantics. If anything, semantics is used to make pretty euphemisms about what is happening. You are ending the life of a sentient being that feels pain and has feelings/emotions, that has family of one kind or another, for no benefit other than your own pleasure. Whether the death is slow or fast, painful or not, anticipated or not, is very secondary.
A bit off topic but I hate that there are discussions on whether or not it is ethical to farm organs from donor pigs. Like, this at least saves a life (or multiple), while eating meat is absolutely unnecessary nowadays but it still happens all the time.
You are ending the life of a sentient being that feels pain and has feelings/emotions, that has family of one kind or another, for no benefit other than your own pleasure.
there are reasons to eat meat besides"pleasure". like nutrients or convenience or cost, and it’s unlikely that most meat eaters are killing anything.
nutrients
In the abundance of products in the 21st century you can absolutely get all the nutrients you need in excess without touching animal products, let alone meat.
convenience
Not sure how cooking pea protein sausage is less convenient than cooking a pork sausage. There are tons of vegan/vegetarian convenience products in the fridge aisle. Even if there was indeed some very minor convenience to cooking meat (which I am really in the dark about), are you really arguing your minimally bigger convenience is a good enough reason to kill a living being?
cost
In some way I agree with you here, meat is heavily subsidized while vegetables aren’t (at least where I live) and it is a shame. Chicken wings can be cheaper per kg than some kind of vegetables. That’s a systemic problem and needs to be taken care of not by the consumer, but government regulations. But a) you know it is bad quality meat that is on the cheaper side, b) most people aren’t in a position where you have such financial pressure (food stamps etc) where you have to weigh calories per cent, c) vegan/vegetarian diets can still be cheap af as long as you don’t try to do instagrammable kale quinoa brokkoli sprouts smoothies with avocado and chia seed granola or some crap like that. Potato wedges with sour cream are a vegetarian dish. Beans with rice. Noodles and tomato sauce. It doesn’t have to get expensive or complicated.
Not sure how cooking pea protein sausage is less convenient than cooking a pork sausage.
if you’re cooking it’s probably roughly the same. but if you’re out and about, whether at a drive through or a neighborhood cookout, the meat might just be more convenient.
That’s one not on you though. There are what I think is called food deserts where there just aren’t a lot of vegetarian options around. But I think that’s changing. Even McDonald’s has a decent vegan/vegetarian menu by now.
i never suggested you couldn’t get nutrients other places. but meat is one option for nutrients.
b) most people aren’t in a position where you have such financial pressure (food stamps etc) where you have to weigh calories per cent
i am barely middle class, but i still shop on calories per penny.
Every time we eat meat we caused absolutely unnecessary suffering for a quick moment of pleasure.
you might mean “all of humanity” or “all meat eaters” caused suffering, but, in fact only the individuals who cause suffering have done so, and eating meat does not, in and of itself, cause any suffering at all. if there is any suffering involved, it happens before the meat-eating, and thus cannot be caused by the meat-eating, since an event in the future cannot cause an event in the past.
This is about the logic of “bullets kill people, not guns”
no, it’s not. bullets fired from guns kill people, but there is no similar causal system at play that can traverse time and kill animals in the past
Come on, you’re better than that. I don’t buy that you actually think this is a valid argument.
This logic would apply if you ate the leftovers of game that was culled for specific reasons like keeping the population of deer or whatever at bay. The meat is already there.
But as long as the meat is produced and the animal killed for the purpose of consumption your argument goes down the drain. While supply and demand economics might not be exactly as we were taught in school, you can’t deny that a demand for meat influences the scale of meat production. Everyone in the production and consumption chain has blood on their hands.
All I am asking for is for people to be aware of that. You can eat meat. But be aware that there is no good reason to.
you can’t deny that a demand for meat influences the scale of meat production. Everyone in the production and consumption chain has blood on their hands.
“influences” is so weak that i am going to say that you meant “causes”. is this a strawman? maybe. but if you’re argument relies on the ambiguity of “influence” as opposed to the much stronger “cause” then you’re not really saying anything of substance anyway.
so does the decision to eat meat cause meat production in the future? no. a thousand times no. first, and this should be all that needs to be said, farmers and abottoir workers are agents with free will, so their decisions cannot in any meaningful sense be said to be caused by anything except their own will. that should be the beginning and end of it, but consider this additional hypothetical:
if there are three blue pigs in the world, and i kill all three and send them to the butcher shop, when someone buys that pork or bacon or ham, how do we kill more blue pigs? it’s impossible. so we can see that even if people lack free will and there is some economic theory that actually showed some causal link where consumption causes production (which is impossible), then we can see that consumption still can’t actually cause later production in even this one case, but probably many others.
If everyone stopped eating meat, would there still be slaughter houses in 5 years?
At this point I really am unsure whether you are just trolling since this is not rocket science.
“Directly impacts” or “contributes to” would be more fitting but weren’t you the one talking about semantics?
if there are three blue pigs in the world, and i kill all three and send them to the butcher shop, when someone buys that pork or bacon or ham, how do we kill more blue pigs? it’s impossible. so we can see that even if people lack free will and there is some economic theory that actually showed some causal link where consumption causes production (which is impossible), then we can see that consumption still can’t actually cause later production in even this one case, but probably many others.
This is an absolutely unfitting hypothetical because you just rotted out that animal. Have you seen Futurama? The episode about popplers would be more fitting. But ok, I’ll roll with the pigs.
You discovered an island with 10 grown blue pigs. You killed two and brought the meat home. You are trying to sell it. Three things can happen.
- People are disgusted and don’t buy it from you.
- People buy it from you and give you feedback that they hated it and would not buy it again.
- People buy it and give you feedback that it’s amazing and they want more of it.
So far, two animals have died. In which of the three scenarios do you think more animals will be killed in the future?
And even if they were treated well during their lifetime, the way we’ve bred them to produce enormous quantities of eggs, milk and meat would still result in short, horrific lives. It’s atrocious any way you look at it.
We’ve lost so many heirloom breeds of plants and animals to industrial farming. Pigs used to be raised for their lard, but the anti-fat movement - which was caused by the food lobby - they bred them to be almost completely lean. Now they can’t live outside anymore because they don’t have fat or thick hair. And their meat is dry and flavorless. The pigs are less happy, and diners are less happy.
Same goes for grocery store vegetables, which aren’t bred for flavor or texture but for shipping durability. Grocery store tomatoes, for example. And this must contribute to the fact that lots of people don’t like vegetables.
Grocery store tomatoes are the worst. They were bred to not be completely squashed by the harvesting equipment resulting in hard, flavorless tomatoes.
Go vegan
No
You’re so brave
Bravest thing I’ve done today is engage with the trolls in this thread.
OP is a troll for saying go vegan on an animal cruelty thread huh?..ok…
Instead, she suggests pigs could be genetically bred to have a less violent reaction to CO2
there’s a lot of messed up shit in that article but this is so sinister
did anything ever happen after the videos were released?
There’s been more videos about this too since. This article only looked at the US, but this stuff also exists elsewhere. In the UK they simply arrested people filming some of the slaughterhouses using CO2 gas chambers.
Ag-gag laws and similar kinds of stuff are fun. Problems apparently don’t exist if you just can’t film them :/
No I don’t think they can; that’s how your body knows to breathe. CO2 is just the wrong gas to use to kill something if you want it done quietly. I honestly think I’d rather be strangled, there’s a chance I’d die of lack of blood flow to the brain before CO2 poisoning set in.
did anything ever happen after the videos were released?
What do you mean? The video shows the intended effect, I don’t think any regulatory place wants to change anything about that.
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Holocaust survivors like Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz and Alex Hershaft have been trying to point it out but most people don’t listen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_analogy_in_animal_rights
I think it is sorta well-known that the meat industry is doing evil practices, but we just sorta unfortunately roll with it, because it would require to majorly change our lifestyle, most likely not being able to use like 50-70% of family recipes, opting for noticeably pricier free range type of meats, or growing their own chickens (with today’s property sizes, it’s pretty challenging) etc.
That also includes me too, I was enjoying homemade chickens for a long time, but that have came to a halt. I will definitely try out a 1 month vegetarian challenge, but I don’t it would be feasible for me for the rest of my life.
I hope others will be mightier and stronger than I am tho. You are doing noble things, dear vegans and vegetarians.
I’m glad you’ll try to stop eating animal products 👍
that said, any time there is systematic injustice, of course the oppressors will have to make “major lifestyle changes” to stop oppressing. That’s the whole point, the oppression needs to end
Look I believe in you and remember goodness isn’t a place you reach it’s a path you walk. If you stray a little that’s no reason to stop trying. Everyone has bad days when we don’t behave to standards that we want to, the important thing is that we keep trying and do better next time.
Just follow your heart and don’t give up :)
Repeating the post body context in the comments: Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers
Also before someone comes here commenting about nitrogen as if it’s a perfect painless method, it’s got problems too:
Hypoxia produced by N2 and Ar appears to reduce, but not eliminate, aversive responses [escape attempts and gasping] in pigs
[…]
These gases [Nitrogen and Argon] tend to cause more convulsive wing flapping in poultry than CO2 in air mixtures
https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Guidelines-on-Euthanasia-2020.pdf
Asphyxiation is a uniquely terrifying way to die. People who have lost their ability to feel most fear through the destruction of their amygdala still panicked under simulated drowning.
These gas chambers are almost certainly used for the same reasons the Nazis used them on people: they’re economical. The Nazis found bullets to the back of the head and mass graves to be inadequate for dealing with the sheer volume of people they wanted to murder, so they settled on the gas chambers next to furnaces because it allowed them to kill mass quantities the quickest.
There is no way of executing living animals that cannot be botched; no ethical way to kill animals bred and caged for their entire lives. The expectation of being able to have it both ways is unreasonable. No free lunches liberals.
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Ffs, learn a little about veganism. I’m really tired of the “Nothing’s perfect so I don’t have to evaluate my behavior” argument over and over. Veganism is a way to reduce suffering, not eliminate it, and vegans already know that. The inputs and output that go into and come out of producing plants as food are less than producing animals and have far fewer determination effects on the environment. The balance is so far in veganism’s favor that bringing it up is ridiculous. Any edge cases currently are an issue of either distribution or capitalism, so don’t bother asking about herders in the middle of nowhere or people that only eat whale fat or whatever. It’s irrelevant. Even if none of the edge cases converted, the impact of a general shift for the rest of the world would blow them out of the water. Please stop using this argument. It’s not convincing or clever and people who have thought about the subject for any amount of time will think less of you for your willful ignorance.
How do you know somebody’s a vegan? Don’t worry, you’ll be able to tell by the number of people desperately trying to justify eating animals to them.
I don’t intend to read your response, so take the time you would have used writing it and use it to actually think about what you said or look up the nirvana fallacy.
Veganism is a way to reduce suffering, not eliminate it, and vegans already know that.
but it doesn’t work.
Well geeze, can’t argue with that solid and well thought out argument. Apparently you put about as much effort into your research as your replies, so I won’t be reading anything else from you.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
can you point to the day you went vegan?
Yeah, I figured before reading this would fly like the nitrogen gas executions that some state penal systems are trying. (As revealed on _Last Week Tonight.) Sure enough it’s awful.
Right now, my household is drastically reducing meat as we can (which is made easier by the rising prices of meat). Whether we have good tasty fake meat made out of vegetable matter or cultured meat that was never a full animal, I’ll be glad for when it’s affordable.
A somber thing about nitrogen gas executions:
People generally agree that nitrogen (or any inert) gas asphyxiation is a relatively painless and peaceful way to go. People have been using it for (animal and human) euthanasia for years without incident. Seems appropriate, right?
So how did it work in capital punishment scenario the first time around? The guards slapped the face mask on the condemned. Then they asked them for their last statement. Quote: “Mffmfmf, Mffafam fmfmfm mfffmfmf mf mfmf f mfmf mfffmfmmf. Mfffm mfm mfm mfmfffmfmf mf. Mfff mff mf mff.” (Transcribed as: “Tonight, Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. Thank you for supporting me. Love all of you.”) Then they opened the gas valves. It took too long. …OK, it’s time to pause now, let’s see how many problems you can spot with this procedure.
Problem: They’re continuing to use “medical” and “painless” and whatnot procedures, administered by unqualified staff, on unwilling participants. Look, I’m not an advocate of death penalty at all and I think it should be abolished everywhere, but even I know that the guillotine designers were up to something. You need to minimise the amount of fuck-ups at all levels.
Pignorant is another investigation into UK gas chambers for pigs that’s available on Prime video btw.
Let’s abolish slaughterhouses.
Who doesn’t want to leave a sparkly, effervescent corpse after dying of asphyxiation and painful organ failure due to excessive carbonic acid buildup?
I’ll have the brain bullet, thanks.
Hell. O would take a bullet to the head right now if guns were legal in my country.
Is this another vegan circlejerk channel now?
I vote we eat this guy instead of the animals. Everybody wins.
Wow, not liking animal cruelty = veganism
If you don’t like animal cruelty but aren’t vegan you are a hypocrite 🤷
Consuming animal products doesn’t inherently lead to animal cruelty. It’s the fact that the vast majority of these products are produced through factory farming, which has little regard for the animals, in the search for the most efficient manner of farming possible. This does lead to animal cruelty. On the other hand, it is definitely possible to consume animal products ethically, if they are raised on a small family farm which genuinely cares and takes time for their animals, and doesn’t take every shortcut possible to produce more.
So I could cut your throat without being cruel as long as we are on a small farm?
If you are humanely killing the animals, then yes. Eating meat is a part of human nature, one that I personally object from but still one that isn’t immoral to act on.
spreading your genes without consent is also part of human nature and just like killing animals, it can’t be done humanely.
Kinda yeah.
Comments about going vegan = veganism
What else do you expect the comments under a post about an animal holocaust to be about?
Depends how many insufferable twats there are, I suppose.
Listen mate, I know you really don’t like to be challenged on the ethics of something that you really don’t want to change, but most of the replies here seem to be civil and pretty well-informed discussions. You knew that a lot of vegans and vegetarians would show up under a post about animals being gassed, you could have scrolled down if that made you uncomfortable, or written actual arguments for your current beliefs, but instead you decided to write replies that add nothing to the conversation, making you the insufferable twat.
Ps: yes, I know this is an insufferable reply. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Have a nice day!
No, I’m not “uncomfortable.” Yes, you are self-aware.
Just like those annoying abolitionists, always talking about ending slavery. Ugh. It’s like so annoying, you know?
🙄
Animal rights/sentientism/antispeciesism are the logical next step for leftist/progressive/compassionate ideologies, 196 tends to attract mostly leftist/etc folks, so it makes sense
What is wrong with vegan? Did you even read the article?
We can’t show how fucked it is? Sorry that you would rather stay ignorant on the issue.
You’re making quite a few assumptions.
Answer the questions
Don’t put words in my mouth
You ask if this is now a vegan circle jerk because of posting a vegan article.
Nobody is making assumptions. It’s literally what you said…
Well 196 got some uptake in terms of animal cruelty posts, but it gives a good highlight to us about this issue.
Typing as a meat eater.
As a fellow meat eater, I appreciate the spotlight being shown on the cruelty of the meat industry at large, as well as you do. It has made me more conscious of my meat consumption, and I have reduced my consumption of it. It has also made me aware of sourcing more ethical meat from local butchers that are supplied by local free range farms.
I hope that this awareness continues to spread, and it helps speed up the development of things like lab grown meat and other more ethical sources of meat, in general.
Healthy property prices could greatly help too, in terms of having more locally nurtured chickens as an example.
If that’s your interpretation of this post, sure.
I’ve read the article and damn, this is disturbing af. Isn’t this pig killing method basically the same as what nazi used on humans?
…I’ll try to reduce the amount of meat in my diet
It’s actually pretty easy to. you probably wont have a great time if you try eat meatsm based dishes without the meat because they’ll taste lacking and be unbalanced.
Almost all poverty food around the world historically is vegan or at least vegetarian though so there’s huge variety to choose from. In chinese food there’s Buddhist influenced food like: https://thewoksoflife.com/buddhas-delight-lo-han-jai/, lots of African food is vegetarian or vegan (Ethiopian is stand out here), much south Indian food is and a lot of the stuff with yogurt can be made with soy yoghurt (easy to diy if you like) or cashew cream and a sour note, mexican dishes are easily adaptable too.
Then there are some other hacks like black bean paste and breadcrumbs pressed into patties just works as something you can fry and chuck on a burger (add a few spices to taste), TVP will sub for mince in many saucy dishes where it can absorb the flavour.
You’ll have fun, it’s an adventure that will teach you so much about how food works around the world!
Also you can start immediately by just ordering a vegan option every time you eat out. You don’t have to worry about having the skills or ingredients to do that.
Good luck!
I don’t want to learn new things, I’m just going to eat human, thanks
Sorry if anyone you like goes missing
Not only is it carbon-neutral but actually carbon-negative!
If I may give you one simple piece of advice: meat substitutes, at least in my experience, aren’t the best. They’re not terrible, some are actually even good, but they’re not the same and it’s noticable. I learned to just embrace veggie food and eat it for what it is, not as something trying to taste like meat, and found those dishes to be much tastier.
India has a large vegetarian population that doesn’t try to make vegetable versions of dishes that are mostly meat, so I suggest looking at Indian cuisine for meat-free recipe ideas.
Co2 is the worst gad to suffocate in. Please just put me in a room full of nitrogen instead
Omfg I once took a hit of CO2 as I thought my CO2 capsules were my N2O capsules.
Fuckin’ 'orrible
Laughing gas is sweet and soft, taking a hit of CO2 is like choking on cactuses.
I had exposure to tear gas in the army and while it was a milder version (simulating mild-moderate exposure), I definitely preferred it to CO2.
Are you totally fine with the moral consequences of enforced veganism on the entire human population? I’m asking this because you must also understand that there are going to be seriously detrimental and inescapable outcomes associated with that as well. Life only comes from death. You can fundamentally dislike the arrangement, but as far as we are aware that is a necessary input-output relationship. Choosing which deaths you are okay with is simply trading one Faustian bargain for another.
This is the argument that I used when I was an adolescent who thought himself very wise and smart but in reality just wanted an excuse to not have to change the lifestyle that I was comfortable with.
Saying “life only comes from death” is a cowardly reductionism. It creates a false equivalence between plant and animal life that lets you ignore the fact that sustaining human life does not require the wanton suffering of animals. And it certainly doesn’t require animals to be suffering at such massive scales and in such cruel ways.
You’re probably someone who will cite studies which indicate that plants emit distress signals when they take physical damage, and you’ll argue that therefore plants suffer the same as animals. But that’s an intellectually dishonest argument. Suffering as we understand it is more than just a chemical reaction to stimulus; it emerges from an awareness of being alive and an instinctual desire to remain alive and unharmed. Plants do not have that kind of awareness.
There are predators in nature that only know how to hunt to survive. Their digestive systems are specialized to consume the bodies of other smaller animals. And their ecosystems depend on those predators to balance out the reproductive cycles of their prey, otherwise the prey animals would become overpopulated and wipe out life forms lower on the food chain.
The fact of the matter is that humans have not been a collaborative member of any ecosystem for tens of thousands of years. We cause massive harm to every ecosystem that we’re a part of, and the mass slaughter of farm animals is the worst thing we’ve done to this planet yet, even more harmful overall than CO2 emissions. We’re eroding the soil and using up the fresh water in ways we can’t sustain, and then to top it all off we’re inflicting the largest scale unnecessary suffering in the history of this planet. And all of it is being done so that humans can enjoy a pleasure that is both unnecessary and easily replaced with a small amount of agricultural and supply chain reform.
Humans are omnivores and the simple reality is that as an omnivore with options at your disposal you have a choice about whether the process of sustaining your life involves wanton suffering at a massive scale or not. If you think the suffering of animals is worth the pleasure you derive from eating their flesh then just be honest and say so. Don’t be a coward like I used to be by pretending that animals and plants are the same.
Not that I particularly disagree with you, but I think that calling the eradication of the entire meat industry, “a small amount of agricultural and supply chain reform” is a little disingenuous.
A little disingenuous, yes, but the reality is that if we redirected the meat industry’s subsidies towards a supply chain that centers around plant based diets, we’d have a more sustainable industry as well as a more affordable food supply for everyone.
Sustaining the status quo of meat consumption is a constant battle against the laws of physics.
/agree
First, I just want to say that this isn’t personal to me. I am concerned with the overarching ramifications of dismantling the current industrial meat, animal, and agricultural industries without first having sufficiently scalable solutions to replace them. This will kill a lot of people, and they will die in horrible ways. If you want to stop the suffering of animals you better know how to do so in a way that won’t cause additional suffering to humanity, otherwise you are never going to reach the critical mass necessary to make the change. I’m also more than willing to admit that the greed and corruption in the governmental and economic systems of the world would need to be changed as well. Good luck with that, I fully support it.
Saying “life only comes from death” is a cowardly reductionism.
No, it is an objectively verifiable fact that is backed up by even the most basic level of scientific literacy. You are confusing the higher order ethical dilemmas of sentient consciousness with the fundamental realities of nature. You can dislike it, and I understand that. I don’t like it either, but I am also not naive enough to simply ignore reality because it makes me feel bad. You are using the same kind of blind dogmatism in your response that you are accusing me of using even though I did no such thing.
sustaining human life does not require the wanton suffering of animals.
That is entirely dependant upon your interpretation of “wanton”. There is currently no other way for us to sustain life on this planet with the same degree of convenience that is afforded to us by the industrialization of the food system. Can it be made better? Sure, and I am 1000% in favor of that. But suggesting that we are going to be able to eliminate the need for animals in the supply chain anytime soon is a complete fantasy. Even if we could, there will be other health considerations that come from that which need to be researched, and well understood before we bank our survival on them. That will take many decades at best.
Don’t be a coward like I used to be by pretending that animals and plants are the same.
I literally never said that. You’re projecting here, which is whatever honestly. I get people make this argument. I’m just not one of them.
The fact of the matter is that humans have not been a collaborative member of any ecosystem for tens of thousands of years.
I’m not sure it has been quite that long, but I agree with your general premise. Overall humanity is a destructive force if you consider the preservation of nature in its pre-industrial form to be optimal. I can appreciate that argument. I’m not entirely convinced that human life is more valuable than any other life. I’m also not entirely convinced that the proliferation of life more generally has any objectively quantifiable value. That is a philosophical argument that is beyond the scope of this conversation. Again, I’m only interested in logistically feasible goals that can be realistically implemented.
Humans are omnivores and the simple reality is that as an omnivore with options at your disposal you have a choice about whether the process of sustaining your life involves wanton suffering at a massive scale or not.
Not really. What I do personally is entirely inconsequential. Systems matter. People don’t. I don’t enjoy killing things. I don’t “derive pleasure” from the suffering of others in the way you are accusing me of. However, I am willing to accept the ethical realities of eating animal protein, and I understand that I would not be alive today if my ancestors had not done the same for billions of years. So no, I don’t enjoy it, but unlike you I do accept it. I am perfectly willing to facilitate moving the system in a more humane direction in whatever small ways I can make an impact, but I’m also not stressing about livestock having to die in order to feed people either. On some level it just is what it is.
Afaik, we could produce food way more efficiently if we did not produce meat. Meat takes a lot of land, food, water and energy, because the animals use a lot of the energy they are fed in the form of crops just to live. That doesn’t all get converted to meat. In terms of pure energy, being vegan is way more efficient.
Animal agriculture is comically inefficient, produces pathetically small amounts of protein for the amount of pesticides, fresh water, and sheer unimaginable pollution it requires, and to top it all off, it’s nutritionally unhealthy.
The only human suffering that “forced” veganism would cause is having to endure dumb people living longer lives due to better health. Imagine all those steak-eating morons no longer dying of heart attacks and diabetes at age 60. The horror of their protracted existence.
If you have concerns about plant agriculture, they are only magnified by animal agriculture which uses a lot more of it for animal feed
1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
Or in environmental terms:
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
To produce 1 kg of protein from kidney beans required approximately eighteen times less land, ten times less water, nine times less fuel, twelve times less fertilizer and ten times less pesticide in comparison to producing 1 kg of protein from beef
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25374332/
or for overall diets
The diet containing more animal products required an additional 10 252 litres of water, 9910 kJ of energy, 186 g of fertilizer and 6 g of pesticides per week in comparison to the diet containing less animal products
Data for the production of alfalfa( Reference Mathews, Canevari and Frate 51 , Reference Vargas, Mueller and Frate 52 ) and maize( Reference Vargas, Frate and Mathews 53 , Reference Brittan, Muiner and Klonsky 54 ) used for animal feed were obtained from CRS and were added to the direct water used by the animals using a net feed consumption rate of 5·62 kg maize/kg beef and 2·66 kg alfalfa/kg beef. A feed conversion efficiency of 7·0 was assumed( Reference Horrigan, Lawrence and Walker 10 ). Soya in the feed formulations for beef and poultry was excluded.
since most beef cattle graze for the first year, where they put on the majority of their weight, then why would you attribute all the meat production to feedlots? shouldn’t it be halved at least?
I think you’re reaching there a bit, because no one said anything about forced veganism. You can eat meat and be against the horrors of (the vast majority of) the meat industry.
(If I read your reply wrong, let me know and I will delete this)
I was using that as an extreme hypothetical. You can call that disingenuous if you like. I just don’t see how you can remove “animal suffering” from the equation without enforcing that measure. Otherwise all you are doing is drawing a subjective line around what suffering is acceptable and what isn’t. I’m personally fine with trying to make that determination in the least arbitrary way possible with the best technology possible so we can progress society forward, but let’s not act like there still won’t be people who see that cost as unacceptable.
the meat industry wasn’t planned out and implemented, you could argue it literally took all of human existence working on it to get to this point.
People can complain about the system and try to make it better without having all of the answers
People can complain about the system and try to make it better without having all of the answers.
I totally agree, and I’m fine with that.
sure, but you also said the following in reaction to the OP link
Are you totally fine with the moral consequences of enforced veganism on the entire human population? I’m asking this because you must also understand that there are going to be seriously detrimental and inescapable outcomes associated with that as well.
No one said “enforced veganism.” it’s weird that your reaction to this article is to dismiss it because forcing the world to be vegan overnight isn’t feasible.
Again, it was an extreme hypothetical. There were multiple people in this thread who outright suggested that as an option, which is why I asked the question.
Life only comes from death.
No? The recombination of genetic material results in complex life forms. That’s why we have multicellular organisms. Heck, in fact mitochondrial DNA proves that humans have a symbiotic relationship with microbes. So I guess I’d say the quoted text above is an unqualified statement.
Besides all that, humans are the only living organism that we know of capable of probing the nature of reality and existence. So simply put, it’s okay for us to hold ourselves to higher standard than the “reptile” or “monkey” brain.
Imagine if there was a life form stronger or smarter than humans, what would you want to say to it? “Life only comes from death so eat me or abuse me”. We can and should do better.
Imagine if there was a life form stronger or smarter than humans, what would you want to say to it? “Life only comes from death so eat me or abuse me”. We can and should do better.
As far as we know the propagation of life requires the consumption of other life as inputs, or in other words every single living thing on this planet must consume material from other organic life to subsist.
Therefore, in your hypothetical I would expect that any life form that required the domestication and industrial consumption of sentient life-forms or their byproducts as a matter of survival to absolutely do so regardless of the ethical implications. If it was a matter of survival, we would become an input. Absolutely zero question about it.
You can be the first input in such situation then, but I prefer that humans can show they’re capable of better discourse than “eat or be eaten”. That’s kinda limited and trite in light of our more developed cognitive abilities, honestly. Also, the universe is literally limitless, so we don’t need to think in terms of zero sum games or resource limitations 🤷♀️
Regarding inputs: Eating fruits and seeds doesn’t kill anything, in fact plants evolved tasty fruits so that they’d be eaten and propagate. Vegetables and fungi can be eaten without killing the organism. You can consume eggs and milk without abusing or killing the animal
Regarding your first paragraph: I was operating based on a very loose hypothetical question that you posed. So, I think you’re unintentionally strawmanning me here a little bit…
As far as the second paragraph is concerned I see your point. However, I specifically said life had to consume other organic material to survive, but not necessarily kill in the process. At some level of the food chain it does ultimately become a necessity though, and I do not see that as an ethical dilemma per se.
For the first para, I was responding to this
If it was a matter of survival, we would become an input.
I was responding to this for the second para
As far as we know the propagation of life requires the consumption of other life as inputs
The point being there are many ways to survive without consuming life. Fruits and seeds are not living things. Anyway, I think the main point I’d like to highlight is that there’s no need to think we’re constrained to a singular way of being for anything we do
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If it is a matter of survival, sure. But if it is a luxury, like it is for many of the people who consume the most?
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I’m recently diagnosed diabetic so this shit just angers me on multiple levels. Good job, body. Now we have to limit carbs, and all the meat is cruel, guess I’ll live on fucking greens and cheese.
Ouch 😅 …at least a (non junk food) vegan diet has been shown to improve people’s diabetes symptoms. If you ever go for it, I hope that ends up being the case with you!
Do beans have a lot of carbs? I genuinely don’t know.
Typically yes, though there are some that are low enough even for people on keto in small amounts.
Yeah, but also fiber, I know some diabetics avoid beans but I don’t mind them in chili or whatnot.
I just saw that the american diabetes association has a vegan meal planning guide. Maybe that can help you? =)
https://diabetes.org/food-nutrition/meal-planning/vegan-meal-planning-tips
What? Jesus man come on!
Oh yeah. The gas dissolves in the mucose around their eyes too, acidifying it like soda water.
Male chickens discarded from hatcheries are thrown live into a blender, “maceration”, or gassed.
Don’t ask about what happens to the male babies from dairy cow pregnancies for milk, or why veal is so tender.
There are… reasons why people go vegan despite all the vitriol we get thrown our way for daring to not be silent about this nightmare. Slaughterhouse workers get PTSD, even the people most ok with actually doing this shit have their minds recoil and fold in on themselves in the face of the sheer horror.
The vitriol is unreal, you’ll get it just for asking for the vegan option at lunch.
You should try Indian food if you haven’t yet.
They have an ungodly amount of vegan and veggie dishes.
If I do ever go vegan, I’m moving to a place with a lot of Indians
Usually I would be one of the people bitching about you shoehorning, but in this case it’s relevant
Thanks for letting us talk about one of the largest ongoing horrors as a treat.
Perhaps in time you would consider not enthusiastically supporting and partaking in it?
It’s always nice when someone knows their place and waits for permission to speak.
Good job!
I ate a steak for dinner from a local farm where the cows get to just walk around and eat all they want, my milk is usually raw, my eggs are local and unwashed, and the freezer is full of deer that spent their lives in the woods until the very last second, and even that is a cleaner death than nature would give.
I’m handling my meat consumption pretty well I would say.
I am hoping to get into some kind of poultry other than chickens soon to have access to meat.
My chicken meat consumption does still come from the store unfortunately.
You drink raw milk?.. 😑
Not for long with this new virus going around ;-)
I shouldn’t laugh but it’s astonishing how rude they are being.
Like most problems with modern agriculture, you can avoid most of the negative consequences y going with a local farm that takes care of their animals.
Good living conditions for the animals not only make for higher quality products, but also much healthier animals.
With less animals, they actually get the care and cleaning they should instead of rushing through everything.
Yes, I eat and drink animal products, but I do my best to find places where the animals aren’t mistreated.
It’s a positive feedback loop.
The more I purchase and get into to, the more connections I find, and so on.
Well there are ethical meats out there, right? I have always eaten my grandma’s homemade chickens.
I am not sure how you ethically kill someone who doesn’t want to die.
On principle I don’t object to scavenging, I find it repulsive but just like how if you ate your parents when they died nobody would be hurt per se collecting road kill or something is not unusually cruel. Just creepy and gross given the lack of necessity.
But chickens are bred, the excess are killed young, chickens themselves have been selected for some pretty nasty traits in favour of making them more useful to us. Their ancestors live much longer, lay 10x fewer eggs, and don’t grow oversized straining their skeletons. It’s like pugs and stuff, we’ve bred in pain. I doubt your grandmother would give them medical care and comfort aimed at optimising their lives and happiness and only eating them after natural passing.
It’s like when people try to say “oh but such and such a slavery was better than this other slavery” or something. Like ok it’s probably true idk Roman house slaves had better lives than medieval Russian serfs but it doesn’t fundamentally change how unjust the social relation was and how unnecessary that injustice was.
Except in rare circumstances, mostly human ones, animals (including humans) don’t want to die, and die anyways.
The best we can give them is a
fervent (typo)decent life and a humane death. The meat industry is atrocious at this, and carbon dioxide is a terrible idea - particularly when nitrogen is readily available, humane, and cheap.I’m not sure how you get “Breeding people to kill them in their prime and eat their bodies” from “death is inevitable”.
Could you step through your chain of reasoning please?
I am not sure how you ethically kill someone who doesn’t want to die.
On principle I don’t object to scavenging, I find it repulsive but just like how if you ate your parents when they died nobody would be hurt per se collecting road kill or something is not unusually cruel. Just creepy and gross given the lack of necessity.
How do you feel about “this animal has to be culled for the good of the ecosystem, and incidentally makes good eating”?
Where I live, Australia, we have the issue that kangaroos have few predators (dingoes and wedge-tailed eagles have to attack in groups to even bring down one (plus both are rare nowadays and prefer to poach farm animals now anyway) and the predators who could have soloed a kangaroo, like thylacoleo, megalania, and quinkana, are all 40000 years extinct, give or take), but they still breed like animals expecting to meet their end to some manner of predator. So in place of the predators that would usually keep their numbers down, hunting quotas are used to keep their numbers at an appropriate level. And as a side effect of this, a large amount of kangaroo meat enters the market, because they’re not exactly small animals and they’re perfectly edible.
We also have issues with feral pigs, rabbits, cats, camels and horses (among other animals, most of which are either too small to eat and/or have horrible fucking toxins in their flesh) that should not be here at all, given the horrific amount of damage they do to the native ecosystem on account of evolving in a far more competitive environment. The end goal is that they all fucking die, so it’s not a totally sustainable business to hunt them for meat, plus the pigs and rabbits are disease-ridden (some of which we gave them in order to achieve the objective of total eradication) and the public has issues with eating cat meat, but we could totally do the same with the camels and horses, at least until the feral populations cease existing.
I always find this kind of thought process fascinating because I’m also australian and as aussies we use much more than our fair share of resources in this planet. We pollute excessively, drive cars that are much too large, have excessively large homes and use ridiculous amounts of energy. I don’t belong in our ecosystem, my ancestors were brought over by the english same as the bunnies, cats and foxes. Well half the line anyway, the other half is a more recent transplant from post war Poland.
So uhhh I’m pretty sure I’m fucking terrible for the environment, and odds are you are too. Here’s the sticky point though: I actually don’t want to die. I would be pretty fucking upset if you told me I had to get culled to preserve ecosystem balance and prevent “overhousing” of bushland or whatever. Now the way I see it, any right I might have to exist unmolested is predicated on the notion that sentient beings’ desire to live matters, that while I’m not free to do whatever I like and have some responsibility to try and mitigate the harm to others I cause by being alive I am allowed to be alive.
So I’d ask you: why is it OK to shoot kangaroos but not humans? Why are we special? I think I have a life a little more complex than a kangaroo but I’m just guessing and that’s scary anyway because some humans might have more complex lives than me, and some less (e.g. the very young, old, or people with brain injuries) and that seems like a fucked up to all hell calculus to start doing. The kangaroos seem to want to keep being alive, I mean they eat, drink, run away when people start shooting them (the few that jump in front of traffic might be suicidal I’ll pay that but we can’t know).
Also like, those kangaroos are a way lower ecological load than idk all the animal ag we have and we actually have a way to reduce that load without murder. We can just stop breeding them! A plant based agriculture would be much less hard on the land which would allow us a lot more time to find some other way to manage populations, the same compassion we extend to ourselves! Maybe we could teach them about birth control, or less flippantly maybe we could reduce fertility somehow.
Shit maybe the only way for the next little while is killing but that doesn’t mean each death is ethical. They didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just doing a mass murder to avoid a complete murder and tbh if we think we’re being reasonable we ought to be completely comfortable applying the same reasoning to ourselves and I see absolutely nobody signing up eagerly to be population controlled.
I feel like the vitriol also in large part comes from this. A lot of people know that it is unethical and wrong but in order to acknowledge that they would either have to change their behaviour radically or acknowledge that according to their own morals they are bad people. Most people can pretend that they don’t really have a choice or can’t really change, but when they meet someone who has made these radical changes, they get confronted with the reality and get instantly defensive in order to keep the illusion intact that they are “morally good”, taking out their own insecurity on the person that made the choice that they haven’t made.
Meat is tasty, all you have to do is try and look for people who respect their animals.
Yes their end destination is death, but we all die in the end, so you should look for those that made the journey the best.
Couldn’t care less about killing and eating animals, but it’s pretty fucked how we go about it.
It’s all fucked, from the way we’ve bred them, to how we treat them while they’re alive, to how we kill them. To me, perhaps the worst part is we do it almost exclusively for enjoyment.
What? The meat industry is for food. What are you actually talking about
It’s an inefficient form of food, requiring more nutrients than we get out of it. But we like eating meat (it’s delicious after all), so in theory it is purely for our enjoyment.
Though we also use it to feed our cats I suppose.
It’s also a great way of turning food that grows in soil too poor to plant anything else in that humans can’t get any nutrition out of at all, like grass, into food we can
Most people eat animal products because they enjoy them more than the available plant-based alternatives.
I appreciate the B99 reference, but the difference between animal products and the plant based alternatives is small and getting smaller by the day. At the end of the day, it’s that difference in enjoyment you get that you are weighing against supporting inhumane practices like the one in this post
As Holt demonstrates, not everyone chooses the more enjoyable and less moral choice. (For Holt there isn’t a moral reason, he’s just disinterested, but nonetheless makes the same choice of not choosing to enjoy food.)
At the end of the day, it’s why there are so many so viable vegan alternatives nowadays.
Nowadays it’d be somewhat easy to fool a non-vegan into thinking they’re eating meat, occasionally at least. Trying to pull that off 20 years ago would’ve been impossible.
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