New Zealand pioneered this with goats painted bright pink. Our conservation workers helped out in the Galapagos.
These days they use radio collars to achieve the same.
But it's not so much about attracting other goats out in the open, it's using the desire of the Judas goat to be with other goats to make it easy to locate herds.
I've always felt a bit sorry for the Judas goat, all their new friends keep dying.
I remember listening to that and it really struck me how much a single species could change an environment. I wonder how many ecosystems we praise as natural are actually warped by human introduction of species in the last few thousand millennia.
In "Fall of civilizations" series [0] there is somewhere a mention of caravans thousands of camels long, thousands years ago, going through north africa. Imagining this one has to wonder how populous their goat herds were in that time and how much their grazing helped to degrade the pre-sahara/sahel ecosystems.
Maybe we should try to reforest those areas again.
Its inconclusive on the goats. but the overall appearing cities and nomadic lifestyle selling whool to cities might have amplified the whole situation. Todays nomads definitely amplify the situation
This is also not limited to the middle east. A surprising lots of bioms are not resistant to animal grazing and collapse/become smaller when "attacked" with it.
Wow, that is how you turn a single paragraph of information and a single photo into a whole article! Repeat youself, write about what a quote is about to say, then zoom in on the same image and show it again!
Who went to great lengths to make it easier for Cows to be slaughtered, perhaps I missed something, it talks about her efforts to empathise with the cow, at what might disturb it as it is moved into the slaughter house.
It just seemed quite jarring about being so empathetic to cows, yet making it easier to be slaughtered, a strange disconnect. I eat meat, and indeed spent summers on the family pig farm, but this documentary just seemed very strange, yet no I know of thought it was strange.
I don't find it jarring or disconnected. In many worldviews, the most problematic aspect of meat is the pain and discomfort inflicted during the rearing and slaughter process. I've met hunters who will tell you they're far more at-ease with eating meat from an animal they killed in the wild (thus knowing it did not live in a cage and died instantly) than they are with factory farming.
Other like-minded people are some of the former vegetarian/vegan run butcher shops [0]. Basic premise is they only wanted to eat meat if it was from somewhere with animal well-being and conservationism as a focus, and they came to the conclusion that the best way to do that was to source the meat themselves.
> Basic premise is they only wanted to eat meat if it was from somewhere with animal well-being and conservationism as a focus
When meat is being served, you know animal welfare is not being considered. One cannot claim to value the welfare of a being before killing it prematurely and unnecessarily. That is a simple fact.
EDIT: I'd love if someone could reply and provide an analogous situation where we can safely say that we value someone's wellbeing before causing them fatal harm, outside of mercy killings.
I think this is a matter of having different values. One can easily hold animal life at a lower value than their own dietary preferences and cultural practices, while also wanting to minimize the animal suffering involved. In fact some religions command particular practices around slaughter that are intended to be a quick as possible.
You could come up with plenty of analogies. Self defense is an easy first place to look. You can hold the value the health and wellbeing of all other people as equal to your own right up until the point that they directly threaten you with fatal harm.
Plenty of things are a matter of having different values. Eating meat, going to church, drinking alcohol, owning slaves, stealing from each other, killing, making idols of things in heaven. Some of these, despite being technically allowed by religious customs (like how the Quran sets better conditions for slaves than what they generally saw at the time, and even encourages their release, but still allows for the practice) are bad despite the religious institution having previously been an improvement. And the others, like making idols, doesn't really matter if you're outside the religion.
I’m merely using religious values as an example for why someone might eat meat but also be concerned with animal welfare, and that there exist worldviews where the two are compatible.
For myself I’m content in asserting that animals are not human and there’s no reason to afford them the same rights as humans. If I assume that I have the same faculties for reason but need to come to a conclusion behind a veil of ignorance, I would still be ok with a world in which people eat some meat.
There are some extremely relevant and notable moral differences between someone defending their own life from a threat, and raising a lamb in a cage so small that it cannot turn around, forcing it to drink it's own urine in a desperate attempt to recycle the little iron it has in it's system (gotta keep the meat anemic and tender!), before stunning it with a bolt gun and slitting it's throat. All because you enjoy the taste.
It is not a case of having different values. It is a case of being socialized from a young age to disregard the wellbeing of certain animals. The values are fundamentally the same.
You’re arguing against a stew man. I responded to a prompt about cases where one might make an argument about not causing suffering up until the point of taking lethal action with respect to people.
In fact I was making a case for considering animal welfare as a meat eater.
How exactly did I mis characterize your argument? I’ve reread it about 10 times and cannot understand how you’re advocating for animal welfare.
You say that people can easily value animals lives less than their tastebuds, but still want to minimize suffering (which is wrong, because minimizing suffering would mean not killing anyone).
Then you make the case that self defense could be a similar example of taking well-being into consideration while still causing fatal harm.
I make the point that self defense isn’t remotely like the act of killing animals for food, and you said I’m building a strawman. What exactly is being lost in translation?
who "raises a lamb in a cage so small that it cannot turn around, forcing it to drink it's own urine?"
I can find no legitimate evidence that this is even a thing. It seems a mixture of peta propaganda about various other animals but not lambs. I can't find a single example of "forced to drink it's own urine ... [for iron]".
raising an animal for meat isn't pretty but it's never in fact what this comment alleges.
but again, I can find nowhere where animals are "forced to drink it's own urine in a desperate attempt to recycle the little iron it has in it's system"
so lambs and calves are not the same, and drinking urine is not a thing. it's possible you might be getting overly upset about stuff you don't completely understand.
Whether or not you can find information on how anemic animals behave when confined to cages doesn’t change the fact that this suffering does occur. The obligation is not on me to painstakingly hold your hand through understanding how fucked up the treatment of calves raised for food is.
I understand this topic perfectly well, which is exactly why I don’t support the insanity that is animal agriculture.
clearly you do not. you watch a few videos of "cute" animals being mistreated by the worst and poorest industrial farms and think you know what goes on? you don't even know a lamb from a calf or veal from a chop.
> I don’t support the insanity that is animal agriculture
there is a wide range between ethical and despicable. the average is much closer to ethical end of that range - because it is actually more profitable to care for your crop, before eating it.
how many animals (or people) die indirectly due to farming vegetables? ever think of that? do you support the insanity of any kind of farming?
you're human. that makes you, inescapably, culpable for the destruction of nature, same as pretty much every other human. to try to paint yourself as better because you pretend you don't destroy your favorite kinds of nature makes you a hypocrite.
You think you’re making some type of well constructed argument, but it’s the same flawed reasoning that every. single. carnist. uses over and over and over. it’s extremely tiring. You’re also very hung up on my typo. Why? It just makes your argument seem fragile and you seem bitter.
I made this offer elsewhere in the thread: if you wanna discuss this further then email me and we can find time to video chat. I’m not about to spend my time patiently explaining why you’re argument is nonsensical, but if you want to chat then I’m down.
- you don't even know the difference between a sheep and a cow. that's not a "typo" - that's a clue that you are frothing at the mouth and spewing your anger so fast that you don't even know what you are saying.
- you post facts that aren't true. your original post contained 100% fiction.
- you defend them with a video that doesn't actually back you up.
- you still haven't defended that any animal production, veal, not even foie gras, has any aspect of an animal being forced to drink urine, let alone due to anemia. that's just untrue.
> "same flawed reasoning that every. single. carnist."
- it's not flawed to use logic and facts vs. the emotional appeal, such as the video you posted.
- perhaps the reason every. single. meat-loving. animal-loving. person. uses the same arguments is because they are right and are more logical and moral than your propagandized appeals (that are not really even arguments).
you are allowed to believe anything you want to - that's your prerogative. but you need to stop hallucinating that you sane and everybody else is "insane" and wrong.
you are the one making terrible attempts at arguments and sounding both quite bitter and agitated.
> we can find time to video chat.
I'll zoom you the next time it's time to kill and pluck one of the chickens. that'll definitely change your mind. <- see that's how you sound.
The same moral paradox exists elsewhere. Consider prisons and capital punishment. Can a person believe in capital punishment while simultaneously believing condemned prisoners still have certain rights and that prisons should be humane places, even on death row? Even countries that have executions do not usually sanction the physical torture of prisoners condemned to death, in large part because such cruelty is repugnant and unnecessary. (Some may say capital punishment would count as repugnant and unnecessary too, of course. But the point stands.)
Without defining welfare, you aren't really making a point.
I'd argue the following:
Imagine that tomorrow a new species pops out, they are technologically superior to humans in every way - they are generally more capable, and they completely dominate any attempt at rebellion we put up.
Afterwards - they offer us a choice between two options:
Option 1: They eliminate us entirely. We compete with resources with them, and they don't like it. They will hunt us down with not with malice - but something much worse: complete apathy. They will kill us on sight, destroy our environment, mindlessly slaughter us as they form the planet in the shape of their liking.
Option 2: They happen to find us quite tasty. They will still do the above, but they will also set aside preserves where they keep a large number of us fit and fed and generally allow us to do as we please. We can have children, hold ceremonies and holidays, continue to exist and live. The downside? Every now and then they will harvest a fair number of us to eat - because they find us quite tasty.
Which option would you take?
Because frankly - I might well choose options number 2.
Further - I'd suggest quite strongly that this is the set of options humans have currently given to basically every large animal that our habitat overlaps with (and that's most of them). We are rapidly exterminating basically every species that competes for resources with us.
If we stop eating cows - there aren't going to be many cows left. Full stop. Ex: Between the 1500s and the late 1800s, we dropped the total number of wild bison in the US from >30million to ~400. 4 fucking hundred. Today we're "preserving" them, so the number is back to around 500,000. Of those 500,000 - only about 11,000 are "wild" in any sense of the word, and most exist in national parks.
Option 2 isn't exactly reflective of how most animals are kept. If you were rewrite it to have similar conditions, it would be a far less rosy picture of rape, young being taken away at birth (because they and our milk is delicious to aliens), hands being docked at birth so humans don't cause trouble/start fights, etc. Not exactly a fun picture I would want to opt descendants into.
It also ignores that, in your parallel, we are the aliens. The aliens could make an option 3:: don't eat humans. And all they lose is something they find tasty.
Option 2 is fairly realistic for several species we keep in captivity when care is taken during the raising of the animal - ethical sourcing, exactly as the root comment of this thread mentioned. Is it going to be perfect? No, but it's a life, and they live it.
I eat meat. I also go out of my way to pay more for meat that's been raised in conditions that aren't the bare minimum we can do.
Now let's talk more seriously about this part:
>It also ignores that, in your parallel, we are the aliens. The aliens could make an option 3:: don't eat humans. And all they lose is something they find tasty.
Because honestly - I think you're taking a complete cop out here, and I think you basically stuck your fingers in your ears and went "nah nah nah nah" when reading the two options.
We aren't just raising those animals because they're tasty, and if we stopped they could go back to live in never-never land and be happy and healthy and independent.
We're allocating resources to their care because it's an efficient way to use those resources compared to the benefit we derive from those animals.
When we don't raise animals like this - historically, in EVERY fucking case since we left the hunter-gatherer stage, we destroy their habitat and repurpose it for something else - usually something that makes it inhospitable to those animals. We burn it down to clear it for crops. We pour concrete over it to make our homes. We hunt those animals not because we might eat them, but because they might harm us inadvertently, or bring disease into our communities, or harm our crops.
This is not a fairly tale - resource allocation is a real thing. If we don't allocate resources to raising livestock - we sure as fuck aren't going to leave those resources lying there for those same animals living outside captivity. We're going to allocate them to something else.
Basically - we're competing with those animals, and livestock is a form of mutualism that benefits both sides (arguably - us far more than the animals, but mutualism is hardly ever equal). We make sure they get food, water, shelter, space. We use their output - whether that's their labor, their hide, their meat, their milk, etc.
Side note - we do the same fucking thing with other humans, by the way. We just structure that mutualism in a different form.
The fact that some people need to have it explained to them that just because you _could_ cause someone more harm doesn't justify causing them a lesser amount of harm is just mind blowing.
You are more than capable of figuring out why the scenario you laid out has very little, if anything, to do with how we treat animals. I have responded the comment you just wrote _literally_ hundreds of times. I am so tired of it. You can figure it out, you seem smart.
So respond here - since I seem so smart - and lets have the discussion. Otherwise you're dicking off because you don't want to engage with the content.
I engaged at your request, and this is the best you can do... run away while claiming you're correct?
Hardly a compelling response. Again - my firm belief is that if we weren't raising them as livestock - many of them would be borderline extinct. So I've defined welfare as "they are alive, and here, and my children can interact with them." Hopefully - we can continue to move those livestock into better conditions as we become more wealthy as a society.
You're defining it as "how dare we make something bleed". I think your definition is childish.
My email is in my profile. If you want to discuss it we can schedule time to video chat. I was not exaggerating when I said that I have explained this concept hundreds of times and I am so tired of it.
The thing is, the death of the cow is necessary. It is necessary for the life of the cow. The alternative is not for the cow to go on living -- feeding and protecting and caring for cows costs money! -- the alternative is for the cow to have never been born. The death of the cow and its sale as meat is how it pays its keep. It is why the cow has a life at all.
Is that a horrible deal? Not even all humans think so. You might hear, for example, a soldier say that his job is to die for his country. Mind you, he doesn't sign up to die as a certainty -- it's probabilistic, and there is a moral difference there. But plenty have said, at the end of the day, that their death is their job. And been okay with that.
Now, humans, when they agree to die, like to die for big, noble causes. Something bigger than themselves. Religion! Politics! Or even something as small as a family. It has sometimes seemed tragic to me to consider the breeding animal: she will have generation after generation of children, and they will all die young. This would indeed be an unbearable situation for a human -- but for an animal? They don't crave the sort of impact on history that humans do. They don't think about the future. They don't think about death. They are creatures of the present and of comfort. So it seems to me that swapping a human in for a cow or a rabbit or a chicken in a "What would you die for?" question is unrealistically anthropomorphic. The attachment animals have for their young is not the same as it is for humans -- it's not even the same from animal to animal. Crows are one way, chimpanzees another; cows one way, fish another. You have to get to know the the animal to know.
To care for a human's well-being does mean you guarantee the human has a legacy, a place in history -- even if it is as small as guaranteeing their children have children. To care for a cow's... I'm really not convinced cows care about that. Could you ask a cow, "Would you rather have a stressful life in the wild, or a peaceful life on a ranch, given that the latter might be shorter?" I don't think a cow could even process that question. I think it wants to live comfortably today; I'm not convinced it has any concept of tomorrow at all.
But it could live longer?
It could, but someone has to pay for it. The cow on its own effort, paying its own way in the wild, lives a short and hard life. And the cow at a ranch is still paying its own way -- just in the form of meat -- and it gets a lot for it, between temperature controlled environments and food and treats and medical care. The cow as a pet, could live in that same human supported environment for a long time, and perhaps pays its way in love. Or as a religious symbol or something. That does happen. But there are a limited number of such jobs. Humans only need so many pet cows.
So does every cow deserve to be a pet?
I think this is really the crux of the philosophical difference: do you have to do everything for others that you can? I myself think that to answer that question in the affirmative is naive and hellish -- that questions of obligation and love and compassion are a lot more complex than that. But that is beyond the scope of this comment. But in a nutshell -- I think humans giving a cow a charmed 20 year life is a tremendous gift. I also think humans giving a cow a charmed two year life is a tremendous gift. I don't think the possibility of the first negates the goodness of the second.
I, myself, think there is absolutely nothing wrong with cows on ranches living lives of relative happiness and abundance, and in the end paying their way in meat. I think that's fair. I think the cows are happy. I think they're certainly better off than if the humans weren't involved. I think it's completelyobvious that the ranchers care for them, perhaps even love them, and I see nothing wrong or contradictory about the entire situation.
And to be terribly blunt -- I think being horrified at the situation has much more to do with the human than it does with the cow. Vegans have a reputation as obnoxiously performatively moral. Trying too hard to look better than others, the perspective having more to do with self-interest than with compassion. I don't know if that's true in every case, but I do know that people who are closest to actualbarnyardanimals don't have a problem with the situation. I can relate. I am a city girl, and I used to worry about whether slaughtering chickens was fair to them -- until I met one. At which point I immediately said, "Oh, I get it -- you're food." What am I saying? I think veganism motivated by compassion for animals would naturally spring from spending time with animals. And maybe in some cases it does. But in my experience, it's the opposite: people who spend time around animals usually have my reaction. Veganism seems to come, on a population level, from being far away from animals and narcississtically concerned with your own sin and culpability. I think, as a rule, it is about the human, not about the animal.
Maybe not everyone will feel that way. But I do think a lot of the vegan litany of concerns about animal cruelty fade pretty hard when you talk to a farmer about why things are that way. And I do think a lot of the issues turn on an anthropormiphism that isn't realistic, and that goes away when you observe the animals going through their lives. Does that cover all of the issues and differences? Probably not, but I think it covers the most driving ones.
It goes the other way, too. People who are close to animal death -- either because they raise animals or because they hunt them -- even if they are comfortable with eating meat, tend to regard that animal life and sacrifice as a sacred thing. City folks don't care one way or another about throwing out meat, whereas country folks might opine, "it is a sin to waste".
I guess what I'm trying to say with that is that there's more than one way of expressing the sentiment that life is sacred.
A lot of the vegan objection to farm life is that farms are cruel. And to be sure, some are. I think you could find common cause with a lot of non-vegans, if you wanted to improve conditions either through law or education or certification or some other means (and indeed, skipping all of that and going straight to not-very-effective self denial is part of what makes it look silly and human-centric to me). But I also think this is beside the issue, as farms are not necessarily cruel, and some very plainly aren't cruel at all. Like, I buy my beef from this place (https://www.flyingbbar.com/), and I've met the cows. They're happy. I've talked to the ranchers. They clearly care. I don't think it is fair to say that those who eat meat necessarily don't regard animal welfare -- I think it is just that they see it and express it differently than you do. To me, well-cared-for farm animals are a lovely thing, I find the fact that they are given life to be a blessing and a goodness in the world, and I don't find the death in the bargain to be unfair or cruel -- on the contrary, I think an animal's contributing to human thriving is a much nobler meaning in life than almost any animal could hope for. To me, the perspective that says it is better not to live than to live and die seems very hollow, and the perspective that says all human energy is obligated to go into making animals pets seems backwards and devoid of any sense of proportion. I think we have better things to do, and that animals helping us do those things is ennobling for everyone.
Anyway. Your mileage may vary. I'm sure it does. But perhaps that helps provide some perspective.
There is a lot here to respond to. A LOT. I could spend an hour typing out a monolithic response but that won’t be as good recommending some reading to you. “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer is a great start, and “A Plea for the Animals” is a lovely follow up written by a neuroscientist/monk.
I’d also like to extend the opportunity to talk to you about everything you said. I believe so, so, so deeply that you are incredibly wrong about most of the things you said. My email is in my profile if you’d like to set up time to chat, but other than that all I can do is suggest those books to you.
No one will be able to challenge your beliefs for you. Only you can. Please, for the animals at least, considering challenging the thoughts you laid out in your comment.
A quick scan of the books you recommended did not exactly make me want to read them - it sounded like the same sort of narcississm and bad philosophy that I've come to expect! Indeed, the apparent premise of the first - how can we eat some animals and not others - strikes me as downright inane. Probably as inane as it might strike you, if I were to rephrase the question about plants. The answer is very simple: because we choose to. Some animals we choose to befriend; some we choose to eat; some we choose to protect; some we choose to destroy. We are absolutely in the right to make those choices, and indeed I think the alternative is chaos. :)
The truth is that our perspectives are very different, at some really deep levels. I don't intent to change your mind, only to explain to you a perspective that you apparently find incomprehensible: I absolutely think compassion for animals is compatible with raising them to eat.
> I don't intent to change your mind, only to explain to you a perspective that you apparently find incomprehensible
I spent decades eating animals and claiming that I loved them. You are not exposing me to new ideas. I was a carnist for decades, just like you are now. I thought the same things you did for a long time, but I slowly realized how silly and hypocritical I was being. Those books I mentioned are great introductions to the topic. The onus is on you to expose yourself to new ideas, just like I did before becoming vegan. If you choose to ignore the resources that folks point you to, that's on you. Good luck, and please consider leaving animals off the menu. For their sake.
>> I don't intent to change your mind, only to explain to you a perspective that you apparently find incomprehensible
>I spent decades eating animals and claiming that I loved them. You are not exposing me to new ideas.
I don't mean that eating meat is a new idea. I was specific, as a longer quote will reveal: "... to explain to you a perspective that you apparently find incomprehensible: I absolutely think compassion for animals is compatible with raising them to eat." It was in response to this:
> When meat is being served, you know animal welfare is not being considered. One cannot claim to value the welfare of a being before killing it prematurely and unnecessarily. That is a simple fact.
I think I've demonstrated pretty well that your simple fact is wrong, and there's a lot of complexity that allows for meat and animal welfare to exist together. You don't -- for very convincing reasons that are apparently only available to private followers of your philosophy via video chat. ;)
I suppose that means I've failed to get you to see my point of view -- but ah well. To tell the truth, I didn't actually think I would succeed at that part, because as I've said a bunch of times, I don't think this position proceeds from reason -- I think it proceeds from emotion, and some unhealthy emotions at that. To put all the cards on the table, the quote I was initially responding to is the sort of statement that I find aggressive and morally bullying. I'm writing to remove the power from it, to articulate a good answer for people who have trouble doing that, and to demonstrate that standing up to it isn't scary -- quite the contrary, that you can't back it up because it's silly in the first place. I would like to have been able to help you, but my main motivation is actually to prevent you from hurting others.
TLDR. If you're like me, replace cow with slave and then read it again. It makes sense.
To Dove: if it's unnecessary to eat the animals, then their slaughter is cruel. See the movie Dominion to see why even "full & happy life" may may nothing compared to their final days.
People did once say such things, but they were wrong: dehumanizing humans is a mistake. But anthropomorphosizing animals is also a mistake! That people were wrong to once say humans were subhuman has nothing to do with the sense of applying the sentiment to cows. Of course they're subhuman. They're cows!
The movie you recommend sounds like a documentary about the ways people are horrible to animals. I agree people are horrible to animals sometimes, and would cheerfully make common cause with you about stopping that. At the same time, this thread began with a discussion of slaughterhouses designed along Temple Grandon's principles - and I don't think there's anything wrong with those at all. Which is to say, it's done wrong sometimes; it's also done right.
We have animal cruelty laws; sometimes they're insufficient or broken, I'm sure. That's awful. But to turn around and say we should therefore nuke the industry and never personally eat meat strikes me as a bit of a neurotic, narcissistic response. Like I said - I know where my cows are raised, and I know where they die, too, and I think it's fine. And while I know there are abuses, I also think the industry as a whole does a lot of good, and am in no way prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
You know, I feel like that wasn't a very good answer, and I'm going to try to improve on it -- not because I expect to convince you (given the nature of the forum, I doubt you're even still reading ;) -- but because the underlying philosophical issues are interesting and important to me.
It seems to me that the resources recommended by you and by the sister post here turn on horror at death and suffering, and recoiling from it personally. I think some of this is justified -- there are real abuses -- and some of it is simple shock. An attempt to reject and opt out of the principle that living things consume life.
Anything worth doing involves horror and hard things. Running a business involves being willing to fire as well as to hire. Running a forum means being willing to set rules and enforce them -- and creating a community in accordance with your vision means being willing to force people out or down who detract from that. A surprising amount of medicine involves hurting people in the process of healing them--an EMT might tell you that saving people's lives often involves wrestling them, because what you're doing hurts and they'll fight you. Writ large, I once heard it said that going to war requires accepting the fact that the war will cost lives -- the lives of soldiers, it's easy to accept; the lives of innocents caught in the war zone, that's the tough one. It is a statistical certainty that some children will be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and if you want go to war, you need to believe ahead of time that what you're fighting for is worth it, because it's a reality you will encounter on the battlefield.
There are two reactions to this.
To recoil from the horror of war by saying no war is ever worth it.
Or to look at the things war accomplishes and say that they mean thatmuch.
I'm firmly in the second camp. I think to always refuse to fight guarantees a perpetual tyranny of evil, and I think that is worth resisting -- potentially at a very high and horrible cost. And I think, in more specific cases, sometimes the independence and self-determination of a people is a bright and valuable thing that absolutely can be worth war.
Does this state of affairs mean that these horrors are okay? It absolutely does not. The medic must be as kind and compassionate to his patients as he can. The solder must check and double check and triple check his intelligence, and keep his moral sense about him on the ground, and is compelled to refuse orders that are clearly wrong. The parent must never excessively punish the child. If firing workers is necessary for the running of a business, it is nonetheless the responsibility of the boss to navigate that situation with compassion and grace.
But never lose sight of the bigger picture.
Merely recoiling from horror makes you lose track of things that are worth it. What is needed is not someone who is so horrified at terrible things that he will never do them, and not someone so callous as to never mind doing them, but someone who can feel the horror of the cost and the joy of the payoff and hold it all at once and navigate the situation with both compassion and without compromising the vision of the bigger picture. In fact, what is needed is precisely what the parent post thought impossible: someone who can kill and love the same being, at the same moment. Such a person can be both compassionate, and achieve, and to be such a person is the only way to achieve compassionately.
Anyway. It is absolutely true that animal death -- however nicely done -- is a horror. The intuition behind that goes back centuries, cross-culturally. Do you know, in the ancient world, when they sacrificed animals to the gods, they would generally still eat the animal? The sacrifice wasn't the meat, it was the life -- the sense that life is sacred and belongs to something beyond us is ancient. And if we, in our materialist world, don't invoke the gods -- even those closest to animal slaughter feel the sacredness of the animal's life, and the sense that something precious is lost. Sure. It's terrible that animals die.
I think, in writing this, I've failed to make an appeal for what the tremendous upside is, that justifies that.
It is true, that all life costs life. Veganism doesn't excuse you from this. Crops wipe out entire ecosystems -- birds and mice and whatnot can't live alongside corn fields the way they can at a ranch. Farmers are compelled to shoot feral hogs to protect crops, or to wipe out insects of one sort or another. Even the notional monk who eats from his own, extremely gently nourished vegetable garden, has to keep the rabbits and the potato-bugs away, and if nothing else, takes food they want. And of course, the sort of nutritionally complete diet you need can't be accomplished that way -- shipping in exotic foods from far away! Emissions! Nothing is blameless. (And along this metric, I'm a pretty big fan of regenerative ranching; I think it does quite well.)
But why meat? Couldn't that animal death be somehow less, or more removed or... something? What's the big up side?
I would say, "human thriving". People like meat. They thrive on it! Oh, I know you could get in a big paper fight about optimal human nutrition, but let's ride past that and talk about some facts on the ground.
Let me start with a case where I think it's pretty likely you'll agree with me: alcohol. The manufacture of alcohol necessarily involves the slaughter of yeast. And yet, when I weigh the romantic dinners over wine, the beers with friends watching a game, the cocktails and parties and Christmas wassail against all the generations of the lives of yeasts, the scale tips so hard it's like they're not there.
I submit to you that meat is not dissimilar.
We're coming up on Thanksgiving. Since antiquity, people have celebrated with big feasts centered on meat. If I look at all the Thanksgiving dinners about to happen, and all the turkeys' lives it costs, again, I find the scale tips so hard as to make the question silly. These feasts are precious.
The discarding of meat is the discarding of burgers and fries with friends. Of crispy bacon and pancakes. Of backyard barbeque. Can you do these things without meat? I think that's like suggesting you can party without booze. You can.... but it's not the same. Perhaps you see hedonism here. Me, I see joy. I see human thriving. I see precious moments worthhaving.
And I think it's not as trivial as you might think. I could talk about the health benefits of animal nutrition -- substantial, if you examine the nutritional deficiencies of past, poor populations who couldn't afford it (and hoo boy, if you set the most horrible factory farming against the suffering of poverty and malnutrition, I will pick the humans with ENTHUSIASM. Save the children and bring on the caged chickens!). I could talk about carnivore diets and autoimmune conditions. I could talk about the achievements of atheletes and their crazy diets. I could talk about rickets and milk and eggs, and the improving lives of the poor people who finally got off of nothing but rice and beans thanks to factory farms. I could talk about the theory that humans only ever became intelligent because of eating meat.
But I think what I want to talk about is a pizza commercial. It's been years -- I don't remember the specifics of the ad -- but the gist was that pizza enables things. Say what you will about kale and quinoa, pizza is there at those final exam study sessions, at the midnight engineering sessions, on the hacking runs. Look at a big and complicated and difficult thing, and you're probably seeing something where, at some awful moment along the way, pizza helped. I think that's true. I find that a compelling point.
I'm convinced meat is like that. It enables human thriving. That the joy people have in feasting isn't mere hedonism -- it's the push that gets them to the goal. It enables the inspiration and energy that drives them to be awesome. I think that joy is important, and real . . .
. . . and absolutely worth what it costs.
Can you have that without meat? To be fair, I think the Hindu population is a pretty good argument that you can get there, at least with vegetarianism. They seem pretty happy. But I'm not so convinced by that that I'm ready to prescribe it for everyone. Perhaps it turns on some peculiarity of culture or biology; perhaps they're not doing as well as it looks. I'm not going to say that's doing it wrong, but neither am I ready to buy into it for myself -- you'd have to prove it to me. For my money, the Thanksgiving dinners are not an applecart I'm ready to upset, even if people who kill turkeys sometimes do it wrong. To me, this is one of those "don't lose the big picture" things. Maybe we could have Thanksgiving with tofurkey? I think a lot of people would tell you "it's not the same". And until they feel it is the same, in full measure, leave it be. It's that important.
Human vitality is a precious thing. And one of the forms it takes is gentleness! Some people who are vegetarian out of gentleness are sincere and beautiful souls, and that is the form that their human vitality takes. I think that's beautiful, and I think it's absolutely worth the feral hogs and mice and global emissions and whatnot that it winds up costing. I also think it's incumbent on the practitioner to make it worth that. Mighty examples of gentleness can change the world, even if the people inspired by it apply it in other ways. I think Gandhi exemplifies this path. I don't think he would have been Gandhi without his vegetarianism, and I think he changed the world in some really big ways. I'm glad we had him.
But on the other hand, I worry very much that some vegans are not like this -- that they are not running towards gentleness, but away from blame; that they are not driven by generosity, but by a sense of their own smallness. That they leave in their wake, not people inspired to be gentle in other spheres, but people made sadder and smaller by the drumbeat that all that matters in life is to consume less. I wonder, how small your self-esteem must be, to avoid ice cream to spare dairy cows who are clearly, if you meet them, quite happy with their jobs. This looks less like gentleness and more like abuse to me -- just who told you you were morally compelled to impose so little, that your joy was valued so cheap? -- and I want to hug them and tell them it's okay and they're worth it. I find the situation tragic for the human, and the more angry and self-focused the person, the more I suspect this path -- anger is often a result of being hurt. And like, perhaps the people around them are telling them that their thriving isn't worth the humane death of a cow (or even the statistical inhumane death). But I would firmly disagree. It is absolutely worth it.
People are awesome. Eat bacon with relish, and grin, and go create art. That's a trade I'd take all day, on anyone's behalf.
Because you've given me no indication in this conversation that you're worth my time to talk to. :)
I don't mean that quite as rudely as it sounds, but it certainly is the case that your writing here doesn't make it sound like you'll say interesting things if I call you.
Understand your points of view. I too ate meat for a long time. I too defended that position with same ferocity you do. But I was wrong to do it.
And you're wrong on too many points to discuss it at full - sorry, no space here, also have family to feed and work to do. My bookmarks folder about dangers of animal products/agriculture has hundreds of items. I'll cherrypick just few of them to get you started.
You'll find several of your viewpoints discussed here:
- I'd recommend Dominion movie again, but you won't probably see it, and even if you do, i don't think the suffering of animals/horrors of the meat production will be enough to change your opinions, so I'll talk about it from different angle.
> "never personally eat meat strikes me as a bit of a neurotic, narcissistic response"
So avoiding killing is a neurotic, narcissistic response? Like, really?
> "to avoid ice cream to spare dairy cows who are clearly, if you meet them, quite happy with their jobs"
Are you sure? I've met a lot of them, when i was a child. You know that cows giving milk are mothers, forcefully impregnated/raped every year, with their calf taken from them on the day it's born? They loudly grieve for days/weeks, sometimes hiding the calf from the farmer only to be taken away from them days later? Do you know that producing milk on industrial scale shortens lifespan of cows to cca 1/3 (5-6 years instead of 20+), only to leave the cow exhausted/crippled and killed (changed into burgers) in the end?
Why we drink cow milk? Why not rat milk, giraffe milk, dog milk, human milk ... why it has to be cow milk? Why are cca 50-70% of people milk intolerant? Do you know about pus in the milk? About linked diseases like parkinsons and other autoimmune diseases linked to milk? That cow eating grass near industrial factory will eat more pollutants in a day than somebody living near breathing air for 14 years? About bioaccumulation of toxins in the milk/meat? About all proteins/b12 coming from plants/bacteria, not from the animals?
> And your next point - war.
You're clearly an american. Your country is the only country in the world being involved in wars constantly for 250+ years, achieving so little for so high a price. Your viewpoints mirror the indocrination you've received. It does not reflect reality either.
> You're clearly an american. Your country is the only country in the world being involved in wars constantly for 250+ years, achieving so little for so high a price. Your viewpoints mirror the indocrination you've received. It does not reflect reality either.
Impressive.
I didn't defend the average war in general, or any specific war. I certainly didn't defend perpetual war, any particularly American doctine of war, or indeed any particular philosophy of war at all.
What I said was that war is good sometimes (a viewpoint that almost all people hold -- even if we disagree strenuously about how much and when and where and why), and that its conduct, no matter how good the cause, requires the ability accept to causing some horror in the context of a bigger picture.
You read past all of that and jumped straight to a horrible example you can associate with the concept and accused me of believing in that.
That is hilariously on the nose. That is exactly what I'm talking about. That's the style of reasoning I find so typical of veganism, that appears to be to be unhinged. If I'm defending war, I must be defending industrialized perpetual war for any reason, I must be the worst possible person you could associate with any concept of war and they only way for me to have your approval is to give it up entirely. Evil, run away, run away! If I'm defending eating meat, I must be in favor of eating all animals, I must be in favor of doing absolutely anything to them along the way. If I'm willing to kill animals, I must not care about their welfare. No room for tradeoffs or distinctions. No grey. Black and white. Guilt by association is real and travels along the most logically tenuous lines and justifies extreme responses and viciously aggressive social judgement. To get anywhere close to something horrible that can be associated with a concept, anywhere, anytime, mandates running screaming in the opposite direction.
That. Looks unhinged. That is why the perspective doesn't come off to me as admirable, but as unwell.
> If I'm defending eating meat, I must be in favor of eating all animals, I must be in favor of doing absolutely anything to them along the way. If I'm willing to kill animals, I must not care about their welfare.
I've never said/meant something like this, and I don't judge you and/or see you as an evil person. I'm just trying to speak for those without voice.
>> "never personally eat meat strikes me as a bit of a neurotic, narcissistic response"
> So avoiding killing is a neurotic, narcissistic response? Like, really?
To industrialized abuse, yeah. My response is to check that the ranch I'm associated with doesn't do that, and that the laws and standard procedures are things I'm comfortable with, and move on with my life. It's pretty common for vegans to bring up that some farms are abusive and awful, and I think a psychologically normal response to that is switch and/or to try to fix farms. Responding by checking out entirely strikes me as either dishonest or narcissistic -- it says to me that it isn't about the animals, it's about you. That you don't see a problem to solve, you see guilt-by-association to run away from.
It's perfectly fair to point out that plenty of people do both. Nonetheless, it has always seemed to me that the people involved in realistic, practical efforts to improve animal welfare are also the ones that eat them. Vegan efforts seem to be, by comparison, performative. I suppose it's just an impression, but I jumping so hard and so fast to making things about you... yeah. I do find that neurotic and narcissistic.
> What the Health!
LOL. That film is legendary for having a hilariously creative relationship with medicine and science. Don't take my word for it -- go look at the Wikipedia page for the film.
Is your other stuff that good? XD
> You know that cows giving milk are mothers,
Of course. Being a mother myself, I'm actually pretty familiar with how lactation works in humans, and I'm given to understand cows follow a lot of the same principles.
> forcefully impregnated/raped every year
Well.. this may be technically true, but is a good example of being at odds with biological reality. Cows go into heat and want to get pregnant -- so badly that cows will hurt themselves letting other cows mount them, even when there's no bull available. So the idea that a cow in heat doesn't "consent" to getting pregnant is like . . . I'm not sure what sort of consent you're looking for? Like, they really, really, really obviously want to in any conventional sense of the word. Beyond that, I'm not sure the concept would even apply to cows?
If you're asking whether I have a problem with the artificial insemnation of cows in heat on an annual basis, overseen by a farmer with the health of the cow in mind, my answer is that the question itself is ... LOL. Dude. Check your anthropomorphism.
I have no idea what sort of alternative reality you have in mind for these animals. If they lived in a herd with bulls, you better darn well believe they're getting pregnant as often as biologically possible. The alternative is, I guess, living solo as a pet? I am very okay with cows living sub-pet-quality lives, yes. I think this entire line of inquiry is silly.
It's not like, if these cows could delay pregnancy, they could go to college and it would be good for their career. It's not like they're left with emotional issues that require therapy. This is what animals in general, and cows in particular, do. The whole process is like nature, but safer. This is the silliest objection EVER.
> with their calf taken from them on the day it's born?
This used to concern me, until I saw them, and they seemed chill. I dunno. Different animals have different attachment to their offspring. This would certainly be cruel to humans; it's necessary and expected with fish. Where are cows on this scale? They... seem pretty chill. Iunno, if they don't care, I don't? And the explanation that was given to me for this practice was to protect the calfs, which makes sense to me.
At any rate -- I know in humans, babies and moms heal each other, both physically and psychologically. I'm completely confident that if it worked that way in cattle, it would be done that way. The people making this tradeoff seem to be thinking of a lot of things, and they seem to love their cows. I'm pretty comfortable with them in charge of that, and at any rate, they certainly seem to have a better handle on the considerations than you do!
And anyway anyway, is the thinking that this is done to take milk away from the calf for profit? Because those calves are bottle-fed and drink... milk. So I'm really not sure what your theory is about what's going on here.
> They loudly grieve for days/weeks, sometimes hiding the calf from the farmer only to be taken away from them days later?
Um, no. I have no idea where this idea comes from, but I can say with complete confidence that it's not accurate in general. On the contrary. Sometimes they can't tell whose calf it is.
Animals. Aren't. People! Different animals are more or less like people in a lot of different ways in this area, and cows are not like people in this one.
> Do you know that producing milk on industrial scale shortens lifespan of cows to cca 1/3 (5-6 years instead of 20+), only to leave the cow exhausted/crippled
... also nowhere close to true. Producing milk does not leave the cow exhausted and crippled. It's a perfectly normal process that I personally have gone through as a human that is not damaging to the body. "Well, you didn't do it industrially" -- no listen, there are humans that do some amazing things in this department. It's hard work, but the idea that it uses up your body and shortens your life somehow is coocoo for cocoa puffs. Quite the opposite. In humans -- and in cows -- the way to high milk production is (a) lots of food and (b) low stress lifestyle and (c) lots of rest. Dairy cows live in a day spa because it's profitable. Facts. It's got to be just about one of the most charmed and comfortable examples of animal life!
Being old makes these older cows tired, but they are old! Living much longer than they normally would! Living to 20 isn't normal -- living to 20 is with humans doing their utmost to care for the cow. "Normal" is how the cows would be without human intervention, i.e., in the wild, and I don't think their wild cousins typically get to six. Yeah, humans can care for some super old cows, and that's lovely. That doesn't mean every cow is owed that. Dairy cows typically live, like, six years? I think they do well at that.
Some people who raise chickens for eggs or cows for milk give them a retirement past their productive years. That's lovely, but I don't think it's a moral obligation.
> and killed (changed into burgers) in the end?
Of course! That's part of their job!
> Why we drink cow milk? Why not rat milk, giraffe milk, dog milk, human milk ... why it has to be cow milk?
I have no idea what you're getting at. Humans drink all kinds of milk. They definitely drink human milk. I think, globally speaking, we mostly drink goat milk?
> Why are cca 50-70% of people milk intolerant?
Hehehehehe the interesting and awesome thing is that 50-30% of people (to use your numbers) are NOT! The persistence of the gene that allows the processing of lactose is SUPER advantageous and an absolute historical civilization GAME CHANGER! Cows built civilization!!! Which is awesome! Human thriving!! They're still doing it!!! :)
> Do you know about pus in the milk?
Ehhh... to me, this is a little like worrying about the presence of ground up bugs in coffee or flour or whatever. Or like, did you know basically all of your food has an allowable percentage of rat poop, and it isn't zero? Biological processes are messy. It's never gonna be zero. Sorry. But it's small and it isn't dangerous. They actually do a really good job sanitizing those cows, IMO.
> About linked diseases like parkinsons and other autoimmune diseases linked to milk?
That is a whole bucket o' worms, so I'll just say I'm hip to the medical implications of milk and not personally worried. Different people have different experiences, though I will say that fortunately, almost all the stuff people worry about in milk goes away if you focus on cream. Which is awesome anyway.
> That cow eating grass near industrial factory will eat more pollutants in a day than somebody living near breathing air for 14 years? About bioaccumulation of toxins in the milk/meat?
I know the industry is super aware of this phenomenon and is far more careful about it than I can police them to be. :) And that if this worries someone, there are all kinds of grass-fed, pampered, share-in-a-cow-you-personally-know options out there.
> About all proteins/b12 coming from plants/bacteria, not from the animals?
I did not know that about B12! Pubmed says, "We depend on B-12 producing bacteria in ruminant stomachs." Rad.
The film is (mostly) compilation of the responses of health professionals, some passages are debatable, and i'm not ready to defend the work. I haven't linked any scientific sources, because those are biased as well - you can always find sources from both camps. I've linked this film because it's easy to digest and covers some of the areas where you're so off. But you haven't looked (i'm pretty sure) at any link i've provided previously.
> The explanation that was given to me for this practice was to protect the calfs, which makes sense to me ...
Beef calves are kept with their mothers. Where there is a profit motive (milk), calves are taken away. Where there isn't, calves are kept with their mothers. Hmm. Maybe just milk cows are horrible mothers?
> That's part of their job!
Job? You're surely joking.
> Animals. Aren't. People!
They don't talk (as we do). They don't think as we do. But they have intelligence, and are capable of suffering. Isn't it enough?
> ... also nowhere close to true. Producing milk does not leave the cow exhausted and crippled ...
Absent farming needs, cows have a typical lifespan of 15 to 20 years. That lifespan could even understate their longevity. Guinness World Records lists the oldest cow as 48 years and nine months old.
This again. We don't have to cause suffering by eating meat or milk to thrive. But sure, go and rationalize your behaviour away.
> did you know basically all of your food has an allowable percentage of rat poop
Yep.
> I'm hip to the medical implications of milk and not personally worried
Until it personally touches you. All humans are like that.
> We depend on B-12 producing bacteria in ruminant stomachs...
And where those bacteria comes from? Calves stomachs are not working the same way as adults' are.
"The rumen, reticulum and omasum remain undeveloped at birth and during the first few weeks of life. The calf’s largest stomach compartment is the abomasum. At this stage of life, the rumen doesn’t function and thus some feeds that mature cows can digest, calves can not. "
"The rumen will remain undeveloped as long as the calf stays on milk. Once the calf begins eating grain and forage, a microbial population will develop in the rumen and reticulum. The end products from microbial fermentation are responsible for developing the rumen. Calves don’t need cud inoculation to start rumen development."
Hm. What about animal agriculture destroying the planet? No response there?
Anyhow. I think that it's you who see the world as black and white. You have things you choose not to see. You rationalize away your actions to be able to thrive on food your tastes buds like so much. Your critique of veganism is selective and misguided.
So let's agree to disagree. Wish you enough courage to be able to see the truth. Howgh.
Modern hunt is all about instant killing, but traditional hunting techniques (ie prior to firearms) were all about exhausting the prey by chasing it on foot for hours.
Probably still better than factory farming, but very stressful for the animal.
Dr Grandin is autistic. That jarring sense is you being normal. Normal people who feel empathy for something have a hard time killing it.
This plays out in ugly ways in that business -- they either hire psychos who enjoy being cruel _because_ then know that the animals suffer, or the people doing the work convince themselves that the animals are too "dumb" to understand what's happening, and are incapable of suffering. Grandin complains that workers often undo her changes after the fact (e.g. removing a piece of metal that blocks a view of the killing bolt) because they don't understand that the changes aren't to make _their_ jobs easier, and the workers are either constitutionally incapable of understanding how those changes serve the cows, or that the cows deserve any consideration at all.
Any fisherman will tell you that fish can't suffer.
I wasn't particularly offended by the original comment. Am vacillating a little between offended and amused by yours.
There are several autistic people in my life that I love and have watched have very real, not just semantic battles with what is considered normal. Both inward and outward struggles.
She's also a proponent of mechanically-separated meat ("pink slime") — the animal was killed, so isn't it more respectful to use as much of it as possible?
Related aside: I used to raise beef cattle, and the amount of products cow "stuff"/byproducts goes into is amazing. There's nearly nothing simply thrown out (except blood, I suppose).
Was pretty sure that blood is used for something, but still had to websearch for it in spite of working at a slaughterhouse. Linked the result (0).
Killing itself is actually a very interesting process. Cow is led through a series of corridors to a single-cow pen resembling their feeding spots in a cowshed. It puts it's head trough a familiar U-shaped opening (or has to be pushed a little by remotely controllable hind side wall/gate). There it get's calmed down by a slaughterman with a license to kill. He then grabs a big, ceiling mounted, pneumatic bolt gun and skillfully shoots the cow in a specific spot on the forehead (bolt retracts after the shot). This stuns the cow and it literally falls to the ground with it's legs straightened out(1).
After stunning, the whole single pen rotates on the back-front (in relation to cow position) axis, by 90 degrees. What was the side wall becomes floor and what was the floor becomes the wall (it's L-shaped). There the difficult part starts. A man in the other room has only seconds to tie a chain to a hind leg and lift the cow before the cow starts kicking. The smoother the process, the more time there is. Halfway trough the lifting it is paused to stab the cow in the main artery, so the cow can momentarily bleed out and as a consequence die.
This other room is a place of carnage with floor covered in blood, most of it flowing trough floor grates into big tanks on the floor below. It would be pretty problematic to have the cow aproach by itself if there was only one room with floor covered in blood. Cows still smell what's happening but this L-shaped flipper helps keep a resemblance of normality.
1: There is a phrase in Polish "Wyciągnąć kopyta" meaning "to die", which literally means "to straighten out one's hooves". Used mostly in books or by older people. I saw it used in books for many years before I witnessed it in reality at work. I guess the people of the past were much more aware of where the meat comes from.
That's a pretty story, and does not match North American practices. They vary tremendously, and extend well into the demonic.
I'm sure there is at least once slaughterhouse in Europe doing that. I am skeptical that it uniformly matches European practices, but I'm not well informed on that topic.
Is there anyone who thinks we shouldn't use the entire animal if we do kill it? As I understood it, most of the backlash against "pink slime" (lean finely textured beef)* came from the misconception that it was artificial or low quality. In reality, it's just had all the fat removed and been ground particularly fine.
*mechanically separated meat is something different, composed primarily of non-meat carcass material. Mechanically separated beef is not allowed for human consumption due to the risk of made cow disease. Mechanically separated pork is still part of hot dogs and similar meat products.
> As I understood it, most of the backlash against "pink slime" (lean finely textured beef)* came from the misconception that it was artificial or low quality.
Also it tastes bad, but that's mostly due to texture rather than taste-bud-response per se, so it presumably works fine in applications where that doesn't matter.
> Is there anyone who thinks we shouldn't use the entire animal if we do kill it?
As someone who is actively in favor of factory farming, I also don't see any reason not use every piece of the animal that can be productively used - to do otherwise would be, by definition, pointlessly inefficient.
My point was about suffering + killing of the animal. What happens after was irrelevant. 'pink slime' was irrelevant, and 'disrespectful' was a absurd term. But they move attention from the issue of suffering + killing.
FTR once you killed an animal it makes no sense not to use it fully so I agree with you - but that wasn't my point, had nothing to do with it.
No, they don't. They highlight the issue of killing. The animal is being killed, so it makes moral and practical sense to exploit the carcass as much as possible.
I'm not sure why this is hard to grasp, unless your entire premise is that killing animals for human use is innately immoral and unacceptable. To that, I simply disagree.
Using the carcass 100% or 0% after death will not affect by a jot the fact the animal was killed, nor erase in the slightest any suffering it went through. If an animal died in agony then how the carcass was used does not erase any of that suffering. That's my point you seem unable to grasp.
FYI I do not necessarily see killing an animal as wrong, though you want me to as that would fit me into a neat cliche of vegan or hippy or whatever you can file me away under (or so ISTM). People aren't necessarily that simple.
Who says there was terrible suffering? Modern slaughterhouses minimize this possibility (Grandin's legacy), and 'bespoke' slaughtering effectively eliminates it in my direct experience. One day it's munching away on some sweet feed and then BANG cow/pig/etc. heaven.
The same is true with ethical hunting — I'd far rather take a well-constructed bullet to the boiler room and quickly fade out than have predators ripping me up while I'm still alive.
The point of fully exploiting the carcass is recognizing that a life was taken, regardless of suffering, and choosing to make as much use of it as possible. Nothing I've written is intended to minimize suffering or other inhumane treatment.
> — I'd far rather take a well-constructed bullet to the boiler room and quickly fade out than
I'd want the same.
> The point of fully exploiting the carcass is recognizing that a life was taken, regardless of suffering, and choosing to make as much use of it as possible
While economically that makes sense, that is a money/efficiency issue not an ethical one. So I agree fiscally but say that has no ethical bearing.
> While economically that makes sense, that is a money/efficiency issue not an ethical one. So I agree fiscally but say that has no ethical bearing.
All else equal, extracting the maximum food products from an animal should reduce the number we have to slaughter. It would be absurd, but if we only processed half the animal, we would need to slaughter twice as many to provide the same amount of meat.
In reality, I think it's not that simple because more efficient processes lower the cost of meat which increases demand.
> She's also a proponent of mechanically-separated meat
how is that relevant?
> the animal was killed, so isn't it more respectful to use as much of it as possible
'respectful' - using that word about an animal you've killed is self-deceit. The animal is dead, and when it was alive it had no concept of 'respect'. Deluded talk.
I also don't get the point of your related aside. My post was about animal suffering, not use of the carcass so it looks like you're changing the subject.
I'm not sure I can adequately express how I feel about morally exploiting animals (because that's what it is: beef cattle exist to be slaughtered and their bodies exploited, that is their entire purpose and why they exist) to someone who at least appears to be vegan.
Similarly, as a hunter what I consider "respectful" you appear to consider "deluded." Arguing over that seems like arguing over religion and isn't something I'm interested in doing today. Have a great Friday!
It seemed strange to me as well. IIRC she cares about (empathises with) cows only as not to be a disturbance in the killing process.
Eg. single column access, remove direct sight of blood, steps to "guarantee" the painless death, etc.
But there is nothing what can be done with the smells and sounds, all animals know beforehand they're gonna be killed, and with the nature of the killing job causing unnecessary 'mistakes' and violence. It's something different to see her talking in a meat processing facility, cleaned up and ready for filming, and then see hidden recording of the process (won't describe it here, it's too gruesome).
And she can do nothing for the slaughtermen and their families themselves. They have a plethora of psychologic problems themselves, have to see a shrink every 3 months, if i'm not mistaken, and their families often have higher numbers of domestic violence than normal.
People assume that empathy is something that nice people do. It isn't. It's just another tool. Back when I cared about liberal politics [0] one of the points I constantly made was that we needed to be sympathetic and understand conservative worries even if ultimately we didn't care. I had managed to get dozens of hard right people to consider ditching the GOP when attacking the party in a way that their base understood.
[0] Having OWS raided in the middle of the night with flashbangs and killdozers made me seriously reconsider who you support politically. Thanks Obama!
At traffic lights, it's very common when one person starts crossing the street while the lights are still red, for others to follow immediately. It takes surprisingly much conscious effort to resist the instinct and look at the traffic lights first.
Sometimes this happens because people are on their phones or otherwise zoning out, and only realize it's safe to cross when somebody else starts doing it.
But I think the big reason this happens is because, if someone else starts crossing the road, then it must be because either nobody is coming, or because the drivers on the road have already indicated their willingness to yield to the pedestrians. In the latter case, it makes sense to cross directly behind somebody else who is crossing, because a yielding driver provides a short window of opportunity for crossing safely.
In general, watching somebody do something that you thought was risky tends to be a subconscious prompt at the thing was perhaps not as risky as you thought. It's a little more subtle than "animal brain bad, look at the lights you dummy".
There's also a benefit in visibility. Even if you fix everything else constant (same number of cars, at the same distance, etc.), it's safer to cross the street when someone else is already crossing than it is when no one else is crossing. It makes sense that someone being willing to cross at a red could push others over into deciding to cross.
Or there is a car coming and it isn't slowing down but there is just enough time for me to nip across in front of it. Maybe this doesn't happen in countries with jaywalking laws, but it does happen here.
How many traffic laws and safety practices did the three cops break to surround and arrest you in the middle of the road? Oh, but that's their job. Not yours.
That's at least in part because the first person is doing a great public service. Odds are once people are out in the street the oncoming cars will see them and stop. But the first person out bears way more risk for being the one to break pattern- if there's a distracted driver, they'll be the one to find out. So once I see some brave soul fail to get flattened I know I'm ready to head out.
When I was a teen, my next door neighbor raised sheep and I helped with various tasks for pocket money and sheep are indeed sheep. The large gate could be wide open, but they wouldn't go through until you got one past the line, then the rest would follow.
Similar with cattle. When pushing cattle down a run you try to leave one in the crush (cage furth down the run) when directing more in as they are more willing to go where there is another.
There is a different type of Judas goat that requires no nicotine. Essentially a single goat with a gps collar is released until it finds the local feral goat population, at which point a helicopter shows up to shoot them all. The Judas goat is then left to search for the next herd.[0]
Missing context here is that humans bring goats to islands and the goats wreak havoc on the ecosystem there, and then they are very hard to find and remove.
Goats are inherently social, and so a lone goat will find a new group to interact with. What you end up with is a single, ultra-traumatized goat repeatedly finding a group of friends who all get murdered by a flying machine. I suppose it's worth it because otherwise the whole island ecosystem collapses?
There was a wonderful radiolab episode about this in the galapagos[0]
I think all the horribleness of human-animal interactions is ripe inspiration for chillingly fascinating SF novels. What animals do to each other (esp parasites) can be great too.
The "correct" way to deal with it is the use of natural predators.
Problem is people often don't like or know how to live with proper apex predators so they get killed off and we have to artificially control animal numbers.
However, in many places, we have introduced non-native species that never had natural predators. Then what?
I can't help but thinking of the Simpsons episode "Bart the Mother"
Principal Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Principal Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Principal Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: Then we're stuck with gorillas!
Principal Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Lisa: Hmm.
EDIT: Yes, I understand you are referring to keeping predators around, and not necessarily introducing new predators. But this is still what jumped in to my mind.
I think adding another animal to the situation would only exacerbate the problem. Let's say we add lions. Then not only goats are eaten, but other animals.
Hunting goats to local extinction is the cleanest and most humane way to deal with them.
Given the references to thanksgiving and the FDA in the other top articles, the site appears catered for a US audience, and the privacy policy expects users to be over 13. What percentage of Americans over 13 wouldn't get the Judas reference? Has to be under 0.1%
A "Judas" has long been part of the popular English lexicon. Any US or UK centric blog could comfortably employ this term with a reasonable expectation that the majority of the readership would instantly understand it.
There is Czech sci-fi book series called "Legie", it's about aliens conquering planet Earth.
And making minced meat from humans, too bad it's not in English. Because it reminded me what these animals must feel like.
Also there're people which acts like sorters, they decide which human goes to meat factory and which to mines and then to meat factory :D.
Sounds like sci-fi movie "Under the Skin" with Scarlet Jojansson (based on book by Michel Faber). A beautiful girl is used to attract males to a masked alien slaughterhouse.
I watched it recently and at no point in the movie is it clear that's what's happening (is it?). They specifically show abstract scenes when she leads them to a house. As far as I could tell it was on purpose so there's no specific explanation of what's going on.
As someone who hasn't read the book but watched the movie, here's my best take (spoilers if you haven't watched it):
The main character is from an alien hive race that runs a lot like ants, with workers (main char) and drones (motorcycle man). They are on Earth trying to harvest humans for their skin, but also their meat for research purposes or something, i dunno. Something about being in close proximity to and interacting with humans causes the workers to eventually catch feelings, and need to be replaced. The replacement workers don't care - they're just ants - right up until they catch feelings themselves and the drones have to fetch them for replacement. Hence you watch one worker with her lifecycle on Earth, where she experiences all the good and bad parts of being human.
Interesting. Haven't watched the movie but your description matches the synopsis and clips I have seen.
The novel is different, though it hits some of the same notes. Here's the gist of it, and be warned these are SPOILERS:
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SPOILERS
The main character is indeed an alien. She's a non-humanoid alien, hinted at to be a quadruped somewhat similar to a dog/wolf in her home planet. It turns out that humans are a delicacy to her race, harvested for their flesh. This is a low-scale operation (in order not to alert the humans), and for this they need a lure: she undergoes irreversible surgery to turn her into something that looks like a human girl with big breasts (on close inspection, there are some signs she's a flawed imitation, but most victims don't notice until too late). She finds her human form bizarre and painful, and cannot connect either with other workers at the human meatpacking plant (they remain alien-shaped) or with humans (until very late in the novel she considers humans as barely more than cattle, incapable of real feelings). She is an outcast in her own society, very low-class -- she cannot, for example, "pay" for the human delicacy she helps harvest; it's not for the lower classes -- and this job was an alternative to dying young in some kind of high-risk mining job, reserved for the lower classes of her race. She cannot ever recover her alien form and cannot connect with anyone; she finds the planet Earth beautiful, but not the humans that inhabit it. In the end, her situation is hopeless and she dies, which is a sort of release.
Do read the novel. It's very explicit about her nature and what she's doing and why. Whether this explicitness is something good or bad is up to you, but I guarantee the novel is not confusing, just very bleak.
Haven't watched the movie (I just know from the synopsis it's not very faithful to the novel, what with all those biker dudes) but boy is the novel bleak! It's especially depressing because the main character is so unhappy and downtrodden, even though her job is to lure humans to the slaughterhouse.
My phrasing was clumsy but also spoilerish. Trust me it's not natural that she'd be depressed because she led people to their deaths (consider farmers), and in fact, that's not the root of her depression!
Let me rephrase for clarity: even though her job is to lead people to the slaughterhouse, making her a "villain" in a more traditional story, we nonetheless empathize with her and feel her pain, since she is an outcast, unhappy with her life and downtrodden by her own people. "Even though" she leads people to their deaths, she lacks any real agency in it; she's pressed into that life.
Now we call them "social influencers" convincing their followers that the latest crypto is going to the moon. The Judas goats are among us, and we are but sheep.
Orson Scott Card has a short story called "Kingsmeat" which also considers this situation. I read a lot of OSC short stories when I appreciated his fiction more, but this one has been particularly memorable.
Although they probably don't employ nicotine anymore using trained animals to guide sheep to a slaughterhouse is not a thing of the past. Another comment mentions Temple Grandin. This video of hers showcases the use of leader sheep in a short clip (WARNING: graphic content): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoB3tf9Q2AA&t=155
> A living cow, pig, or sheep entered the killing floor on top of the slaughterhouse and met with a sledgehammer or captive-bolt, and descended each floor in bits of appreciating value, i.e., eventually exiting the bottom floor as packaged bacon or a side of ribs.
regarding the bacon - is that really correct? I thought bacon-making was a longer, more involved process that would probably have been done off-site (brining,curing,smoking,etc).
I believe bacon just describes the cut. In my area of the US, you can buy a package of uncured bacon right alongside the usual cured varieties. I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine the slaughterhouses described here wouldn't be doing any processing outside of the slaughtering, butchering, and packing.
FYI, the cut is pork belly. Uncured bacon is still processed in roughly the same manner as cured bacon but without direct use of nitrates. It is dubious to call it uncured however.
It's called pipelining. If you have 5 floors of space to work with, there's no reason you couldn't run a 48 or 72 hour bacon-making process on a portion of the pork running through the facility.
For some reason, this article really resonated with me. Every time a group commits an atrocity against another, there's always someone in the abused group that facilitates the horror for a small payment or benefit. I read about it in the Holocaust and I'm would not be surprised if it happened in Rwanda, Cambodia and other places.
To hear that it happens in the animal kingdom too kinda crushed me a little bit.
Genocides in both Rwanda and Cambodia were carried out by broad swathes of the populations. In Rwanda in particular, you had neighbor killing neighbor using machetes. Something similar happened in Indonesia. Likewise the Cultural Revolution in China. There wasn't much need for a Judas as there was nowhere to hide or no small group of people to hide from.
Though given the scope of these events you'd expect to see every variation of human behavior many times over, so of course there are countless situations of betrayal and subterfuge, and these stories tend to resonate with people as they're highly personal and emotionally charged. People in more developed societies (or maybe just societies which emphasis individualism and individual moral agency, like many Western nations) find it difficult to fathom how such brutality could unfold at the hands of individuals without the interpersonal drama to help contextualize and connect to their own experiences.
You can see this if you watch the huge mobs of sheep being moved in Australia: if one of them trips, the one behind will also jump when it gets to the same point, and the next one will do the same, until one of them fails to notice and it stops. So you look across and see a small standing wave spontaneously develop in the flock, that then eventually spontaneously damps.
Another facet of this reference is that Jesus was called "the Good Shepherd", and there were analogies of protecting and leading his flock in a caring and benevolent way, rescuing a lamb who was lost, etc.:
Judas, an apostle (kind of an apprentice) of the Good Shepherd, when a slaughterhouse goat leading literal sheep to their deaths, sounds like a very Bad Shepherd.
Generally the same sheep is used for wool and slaughtered for meat. Old sheep produce subpar wool, just like old humans hair is thinner etc. You also don’t want to keep feeding an animal that’s likely to die before you can harvest the wool.
In the past, yes, you were correct, but now, you're incorrect.
For starters, no-one buys hogget or mutton anymore. The only sheep meat there's a market for is lamb.
Secondly, the largest profitable market in wool is fine wool used in clothing, like from merino sheep. They're terrible eating, but their wool is amazing.
Dual purpose breeds like the Romney provide coarse wool, which is great for carpets and blankets, but the market for both wool carpets and wool blankets has shrunk in the face of competition from synthetic fibres.
I'm a New Zealander :) And if I wanted to purchase a mutton or hogget roast, I'd have to go to a specialist butcher, and cross my fingers. Pretty much all of our sheep raised for meat are butchered as lamb, simply because it's what the world market consumes.
> Assembly ship, also known as a Judas goat, a bomber aircraft used by the U.S. Air Force in World War II to lead formations.
Imagine being the pilot. Funny name.
(I tried pasting the link too, but apparently the back button no longer remembers input text on iPad. If only there was a kill buffer. Regardless, it’s via the bottom of that page -> Judas goat -> disambiguation.)
Thought it would be Benedict Arnold for the US. Is Judas not considered a betrayer in Christian communities outside the US? Seems weird to connect Judas uniquely to American culture.
I still find it weird that his story arc made it past the editors, such as they were, and I'm not sure if I mean the people who decided what was/wasn't canon back in the day and/or the English translators from King James edition onwards.
It's a massive plot hole in the NT, that a person whose mission can only be fulfilled by a death/resurrection cycle (to the extent of making sure none of his other allies prevented the death, nor making even a cursory attempt at defence in either of the two trials) would regard Judas as a betrayer.
And yet, he is named as such even before the deed. Although, looking at this text, I assume a wild mistranslation happened somewhere and that the original word which became "betray" had a much more general sense of causing harm rather than violating trust or confidence:
> After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.”
Not much of a plot hole. Judas betrayed for greed. He fulfilled the resurrection through his evil, which does not make him good. In any random Hollywood movie, the villain would not be redeemed by accidentally helping the hero in the course of their schemes.
It's not a plot hole, it's a plot point, that makes Judas a complex, tragic character. John 13:27 addresses this a little. You might enjoy Jesus Christ Superstar, which is reasonably based on the text but takes some interpretive liberties, and is set from Judas's troubled point of view.
Interestingly, JCS was controversial among some christians for portraying Judas in a sympathetic light. But the text always did portray him in a more complex manner. He did end up hanging himself in shame over his actions very soon after, for example.
Perhaps in today's era of nonstop marvel superhero movies and super partisan political content, you have become accustomed to simple stories where all the characters and motivations are very black and white. But in older times, people were able to appreciate a good complex story told about complex characters with complex and conflicting motivations and emotions...
PS: King James is a notoriously mediocre translation whose only advantage is nostalgia for English speakers and a false patina of "ancientness" (in fact, the KJV is pretty new compared to the original texts, just as the English language is, obviously). If you are interested in learning more, I would avoid everyday bibles sold to everyday christians and look at textbooks with nice commentaries of the sorts you might see used in a college religion or theology class
I'm not invested in this story, but Voldermort doesn't get a pass because without his actions Harry wouldn't be a great wizard.
The Baron Harkonnen doesn't get a pass on killing Duke Leto cause it put Paul on the path to becoming a messiah. Dr. Yeuh doesn't get a pass on betraying the Atredies because that put Paul on the path either; of course, his situation is a bit more nuanced what with the promise of joining his wife and leaving stillsuits for Paul and Jessica.
> “Do quickly what you are going to do.”
So, maybe this is supposed to illustrate forgiveness. I know you're gonna do this thing, but it's going to work out, and I don't blame you. Or maybe it's do it or don't do it, but let's not take all day wondering about it.
Perhaps I am just dumb... but I'm not following anything you are saying. If Christ had to die to be a sacrifice, how is someone turning him in make it a "plot hole"?? Who else would it occur, just by chance?
From my recollection of Catholic school, Judas was tempted into being the betrayer, but his legacy as the betrayer is due to his abandoning his faith in Jesus and refusing to confess his sins. Both Judas and Peter are supposed to have betrayed Jesus on Good Friday, but Peter repented while Judas let his guilt drive him to suicide.
The message is supposed to be the devil tempts us all, and failure is inevitable, but God/Jesus forgives all.
It probably made it past the "editors" because the Judas betrayal actually happened (Christ myth theories aside), whereas the death/resurrection cycle... not so much.
They get tons of views but it's more difficult to know how much of that translates into sales, but this has long been a problem with advertising. There was recently an influencer who tried to sell her own line of shirts directly and went on an angry rant because of low sales despite having a large number of followers.
A lot of what is going on just looks, for instance, like "musicians talking about their tools" (selling guitar pedals) or "hikers talking about how they got the weight down to do a through hike" (selling fancy bags) or "how to bunny hop a mountain bike" (selling $6k bikes).
I can feel its pull on me: especially around the bike, as I would like to be off the ground more but don't -really- wanna drop twice what I paid for my first car on one.
The entire industry of cryptocurrency scams would evaporate without, for example, complicit scammers shilling dogecoin on Twitter. That's an influencer.
It depends on the actual definition of "influencer" (I mean, I certainly don't follow vapid TV or YouTube celebrities), but I do listen. In the niches I follow on YouTube, I certainly pay attention to the channels I enjoy and sometimes buy the products they recommend.
Absolutely - it’s no coincidence that brands throw brand deals at them. It works better than classic ads if the ad is effectively narrated by someone you’ve got a parasocial relationship with
If I may take a moment to appreciate the art of the headline:
On one hand, this headline is so densely obscure, I had no idea what the article would be about until I started reading it.
On the other, it is absolutely dazzling, in the truest, entrancingly disorienting sense of the word. The cocktail of eyebrow-raising lexical connotations it whips up is sublime.
"It strains credulity to envision the surreal parade of a lone goat leading sheep across a meatpacking facility, coaxing the flock up concrete ramps" What kind of reality-detached schoolwork essay writing is this? No, it doesn't. Anyone who's actually lived with farm animals, especially sheep, will go "yeah, that's how sheep work? Why the literary pretentiousnes, whose pants are you trying to get in?"
There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year. And every year, 55 * 10^9 animals are killed (in the U.S.). That means at a frequency of 1.743kHz, life is extinguished, day and night. Just image a single wince of pain coming from getting punched unconscious. And then in the semi-hazy state, throat is slit as life grinds to halt, skin is removed. But it doesn't happen just once... it happens so often that if there was a single faint tick of clock each time, it would blur together into a high-pitched whine in the center of the most sensitive portion of hearing (between 1kHz and 4 kHz). 24 hours per day, every day of the year!
dsp@diydsp:~/sim$ bc -l
bc 1.07.1
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
5510^9 ( 3.17*10^-8)
1743.50000000000000000000
It's not weird that you like the taste of meat. But being unable to empathize with the sentient animals that we kill so thoughtlessly, and at such a scale, even when you're confronted with that fact in this poetic yet concise fashion is more than a little callous.
Honestly, it's a massive win for cultural progress that we have even made the suffering of people with a different skin color intelligible to most people.
Intelligibility of the suffering of other species will probably take a considerably longer amount of time.
When people proudly proclaim that they simply do not care for the suffering of animals, I wonder if they realize that they sound like the millions of people who were on the wrong side of history.
The circle of moral consideration in the Western world started generally with land-owning white men, then (still generally speaking) widened to include white men without land, then women, non-white people, etc. The circle of moral consideration is slowly starting to cover non-human animals, though it will take hundreds of years before they are truly protected.
The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle, the people who stood against granting basic rights and basic consideration to those who enjoy them today.
I'll agree with the thought of "The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle", I do benefit from the status quo.
That being said, it is a huge proposition to proclaim you're on the right side of history, and that others who aren't should either reconsider or live to regret it. Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do. I'll sooner bet on the grass turning purple.
> Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do.
We can all think of a couple historical instances of radical social change which necessitated short-term economic sacrifices and paradigm shifts. Yet, the grass isn't purple.
Maybe the circle will expand to include computers; users and programmers of this century will be seen as the unforgivable oppressors and violators of innocent minds for their own profit and convenience.
I don't see value in pandering to hypothetical future moralists. If they one day resurrect my corpse and torture me for eternity as punishment for eating animals, maybe then I'll care. Best case scenario, this comment may provide the same vacant sense of superiority that quotes from dead racists do for us; worst case, society regresses to bigotry and our current social morality is derided as a failed experiment, and you and I will share a cell in the cybernetic hell the 7th Reich make for resurrected wrong-thinkers.
The fact that you see advocating for the widening of the circle of moral consideration as “pandering not hypothetical future moralists” is an embarrassing self burn.
I don't think it's so simple. I love animals and will sometimes go out of my way to rescue or assist an insect, but I also have an aggressive side and enjoy eating meat. Veganism makes perfect sense to me, but so does predation.
What I mean is that I don't think conflict is due to an inability to appreciate suffering as your first post suggested. It's fully intelligible to most people and in some respects to other animals, but empathy is situational and selective. So I don't think intelligibility is the only factor.
I like to drink tomato juice and pretend it's blood, and eat gumi bears and pretend they're little fetuses, to get all the blood sucking baby eating urges out of my system.
Me too, but I only order lamb when at a sit-down restaurant where I can enjoy it and finish it all. And I default to chicken over red meat because cows are more complex creatures. Delicious though.
Other animals do the same. Dolphins and whales will create bubble nets and dive into them scooping up fish or krill until they're completely full. Seabirds then swoop in in droves and devour any fish left as they panic and jump into the air. Lions and other predators would run killing floors if their prey weren't so unbelievably fast with dangerous hooves and antlers. We just do it so efficiently that it's disgusting, and we do it for profit rather than subsistence.
The scale and necessity are not sidenotes - those are the substance of the problem. Killing 100 animals out of necessity? Fine. Killing 1 animal for more abstract-than-subsistence needs (connection with nature, culture, etc)? Still seems dramatically less bad than killing billions of animals mechanically and without necessity.
Does factoring in population size really change things that much? 55 billion animals being killed in the US every year divided by the US population of 330 million is 167 animals killed per capita per year. So the average American is paying slaughter houses (somewhat indirectly) to kill an animal nearly every other day. That frequency doesn't seem a little excessive to you?
Not really, because if we were doing it for subsistence we wouldn't be doing it like this at all. It's incredibly inefficient even aside from the ethical considerations. The only thing that overcomes that thermodynamic inefficiency is preference, and that has nothing to do with subsistence.
if you didn't have a farm system to pull from, how many animals would you slaughter to subsist? Where would you raise the animal? what things would you give up for proper animal husbandry? I'd argue it is incredibly efficient!
It is incredibly efficient if you start with the assumption that raised meat is the required way to feed people. It's not, obviously, and less so every day.
Yep. It was the supply of cheap meat that drove demand. Before large scale animal husbandry, it was super expensive to butcher healthy animals, and comparatively cheap to keep them around for milk and cheese. Pigs and chickens are an exception because they eat everything and they thrive pretty easily.
> Few other predators take the same trouble to ensure their prey is beyond suffering before beginning to eat.
I'd argue human factory farming practices are far worse than anything other predators do. Even cats that play with their food are better. At least that's relatively quick (a few hours at most). Humans frequently cause their prey to live their entire lives in tortuous conditions. The fact that the act of death itself is relatively painless is rather besides the point.
Not to mention that humans induce the creation of these lifelong sufferers. Animals in the wild do no such thing (or at least nowhere near the scale that humans do and certainly with nothing close to the cognitive abilities of the animals we do it to).
I think there's a scale issue here. For such a parasite, the host body is an environment rather than prey. It's analogous to our species' depressingly poor record of considering negative externalities.
If that's the case, then you should be able to easily manage the scale of this event in your life.
By all means, demonstrate it for us!
"Around a year later, the adult worm migrates to an exit site – usually a lower limb – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. The blister eventually bursts to form an intensely painful open wound, from which the worm slowly crawls over several weeks. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the infected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge."
I have no idea what point you are trying to make or why you are being so sarcastic to me and other people you replied to.
A parasite doesn't stalk and hunt the same way a predator does prey. In this case, the larvae infect tiny fleas, which are then consumed by people and other animals drinking unfiltered water. It doesn't have a brain, as such; just a nerve ring and some sensory hairs that cue it to start eating once it is in the right environment.
I merely seek to laud your refined sense of responsibility and duty, and to express wholehearted agreement that humankind is the most vicious of creatures, unrivaled in the infliction of suffering.
Were you to provide yourself as a host to these poor and unfortunate organisms, you would doubtless attest that their impact upon you pales to insignificance compared with the misery imposed by our species.
It's probably worth separating slaughter and processing from raising.
In the USA, my understanding is that even small farms, using humane and environmentally friendly practices, still generally need to send the animals to a larger commercial facility for slaughter and processing. According to what I've read, this is largely due to USDA and/or FDA regulations that are cost-prohibitive to implement at a smaller scale.
This is a perfect example of how American capitalism abhors competition. I have used smaller, non-approved slaughterhouses and there's nothing wrong with them. If enough small slaughterhouses prospered to make the market for meat competitive, our masters would change the regulations again. Both farmers and consumers are at the mercy of Smithfield, Tyson, JBS, Cargill. While regulators refuse to enforce the law, we will remain so.
Who defines what “better” is? You’re a collection of atoms put together by a meaningless evolutionary process. In that sense, “better” is purely your preference not some objective truth. And in this case, some people prefer to kill and eat animals.
We're the universe trying to learn about itself. We have the duty to be best ones we can be. Agree that on the cosmic timescale it's meaningless. On the individual level it's not.
That’s just anthropomorphizing the universe, which cannot learn or think and therefore cannot impute meaning. It is simply your opinion that something has meaning on an individual level. It may to you, but it’s purely subjective.
How do you know that universe is not a giant computing device?
Or you know everything there is about infinity, other universes, how and where where "the playground" is placed (what's beyond its borders), what's the origin/meaning of life and so on?
Everything is meaningless and therefore we can do what we like? Even if it has no meaning to you, are you sure (deep down) it has no meaning for the lives you're taking (with your food choices)?
To even pose the question of animal suffering is unique to humans. After all, it's only humans who create humane societies to advocate for animal welfare.
Why?
I don't know how others belief systems would explain that, but from a Christian perspective, humans aren't exactly the same as animals. We're like animals in that humans and animals are all creatures, and yet distinctly non-animal in that we're the only creatures made in the image of God, and given rule over all creature to promote the flourishing of life---human, animal, and plant---for God's glory. And the biblical story is that humans went so far off-course in rebellion against their Creator God that the Son of God had to become human, die, and rise again to restore our ability to care rightly for creation.
Thus, concerns to minimize animal suffering are uniquely human concerns because we /aren't/ animals, but human; and the concern itself is proof we're different from other animals.
Many animals are perfectly capable of understanding the suffering of other animals. It's illustrated by menu recorded instance of one animal helping other animals in need. Even of a different species. There's probably nothing unique about humans except slightly nimbler neurons.
As for the stories humans invented to explain their grace and their horribleness I can't say much. Only that we are very creative in that regard.
I think anyone who’s been in a slaughterhouse would find it difficult to agree with that statement and even so, the sheer scale means that the amount of suffering is unfathomable.
Not to mention the terrible conditions that animals are forced to live in and injuries caused by processing (from birth to death) [1] as well as abuse by low-paid workers who are, themselves, working in poor conditions. [2] Factory farming is not clean and free of animal suffering by any means, but most people's experience with animals as food comes in neat, little, clean plastic-wrapped chunks of meat.
Sheep are stunned and are pretty much out instantly.
IDK if you've ever slaughtered a sheep the non-slaughterhouse way done where most of the people live (i.e. the third world). I've done it out in rural asia. You take a long blade and pierce the heart / surrounding blood vessels straight through the chest. It takes a second or two for it to pass out. The slaughterhouse is a slight upgrade with basically no suffering at the time of death as they're instantly knocked out by electrical impulse.
If I were the sheep I would definitely pick the slaughterhouse over being shipped alive to the average end customer which is someone in the third world with a long blade.
Without cotext sure, but if you could visit places where people prepared animal for cosumption over last few thousand years. I'd say there is a trend expressing the intent of reducing suffering.
Temporarily putting personal feelings aside, I think you've touched on interesting philosophical questions: can something so subjective as suffering ever be fathomed, does it scale, can you do math on it...
I think the complaint here is not about the moment of death, but about the literal lifetime of torment and agony leading up to that moment. Death probably comes as a relief for animals raised on factory farms.
As a scuba diver, I have seen California sea lions killing ocean sunfish (mola molas) for what appears to be pure sport. The sea lions tear the fish's fins off and play with the body like a living frisbee. Then when they get bored they let the maimed fish sink to the bottom to be eaten alive by crabs. Occasionally you'll see like a dozen of those half-dead molas clustered together on the seafloor, pathetically flopping around as the crabs close in.
There would be far less suffering if we all lived on a plant-based diet. As well it would help in the fight against climate change, reducing environmental impacts.
I’m referring to those for whom the initial response to the flavor of most vegetables is disgust. I’m talking about the signal between your taste buds and your brain, which like all signals the body uses to communicate, has a processing delay.
It's a learned response. Sometimes children have strange food preferences. Eg. can't stand chunks in their food, some food seems foreign to them so they won't eat it, somebody won't eat pasta, others fruits or vegetables.
I've just this week read about some moms trying to reverse this in young children (in adults it's worse, but not impossible), the article was not in english, so i won't link it here.
Their solution was to change the disgust with play. Like you don't like pasta? Come here, you don't have to eat it, just try if it will stick to the window. The kid plays with it, and in time it may change his perception of the food enough to try a small bite, their timescale iirc was two weeks. They explained some unexplainable occurences with prenatal conditioning ... like mum ate something and then fell, and those two unrelated things got written into child's brain.
Anecdotal evidence - my son when very young was suspicious to some fruits and veggies also. My solution was to eat the vegetables & fruits while watching tv shows with him. I've eaten whole apple, and gave him very thin, see-through slices of apple to play with, to look through, to suck and to nibble on. In a week time he was eating regular pieces with me and loves the fruits now. Small/thin pieces were the key for us.
TLDR: don't force children to eat something, it will only strenghten the problem.
Why is a reduction in suffering preferable? How do you even measure suffering? Are you certain that plants and fungi don't suffer? This all seems highly subjective.
More than 50 billion animals (land and sea) are killed each year for food in the United States, alone. Farmed animals must be fed to bring them to slaughter. If there was a reduction in farmed animals being eaten for food, far less agricultural land would be needed to feed people directly. Yes, wild animals in farmed land still would be killed, but far fewer. Not having or understanding compassion for living creatures is not something I can help you with. Cheers.
If it became technically possible to force all animals to eat a synthetic, fortified, vegetable-based diet even if they are carnivorous, would you endorse the idea?
Humans constantly try to distance themselves from nature even though at the basest level, we are still unavoidably part of it, as are all biological organisms on Earth.
In the US at least we have sufficient agricultural land.
Why do you think I need help? That seems highly presumptuous. Asking questions about the fundamental nature of suffering hardly implies a lack of compassion. Perhaps someone can help you learn how to avoid drawing illogical conclusions.
"each pound of animal flesh requires between four and thirteen pounds of plant matter to produce, depending upon species and conditions. Given that amount of plant death, a belief in the sentience of plants makes a strong pro-vegan argument"
I wouldn't say it's delicious. Try preparing meat yourself without any seasoning. It's eadible but that's the best you can say about it. We have to do additional work to make it delicious.
What? I've eaten plenty of meat without seasoning before. I question your cooking procedures if it doesn't taste good (or maybe you just don't like meat, that's a possibility too).
It's possible that it's something about my tastebuds bacause I really can't relate to people saying meat tastes good. For me salt tastes good, pepper tastes good, rosmary tastes good. Without them meat is as appealing as anything vultures dine on.
And even in well prepared meat the first bite is something I need to suffer through before I can start enjoying the meal.
To me it tastes exactly what it is. A piece of animal that died. And I have no moral qualms. It just tastes bad to me.
Most things we eat are chosen because they taste good in combination with other things, and better than the sum of the individual ingredients eaten separately. Eating a stick of butter probably isn't appetizing, but neither would your examples of eating pure salt or unprocessed pepper unless you have particularly odd tastes.
I might be weird because I love salt. I snack on it. And butter by itself is not appetizing however melted butter with just salt is delicious. As for pepper and other seasonings you are right. They don't taste good by themselves.
Many foods are delicious by themselves. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, legumes. Some cooked unsalted, some raw.
And in case of those, taste can be acquired. For example unsalted rice at first tastes bad, but when I ate it few times when I was hungry I started liking it.
Well, nobody designed us. We're a product of evolution. Had we been designed, and the designer was not a cruel monster, I'm sure they could have thought of a way for all beings to feed themselves without the monumental suffering that exists in the world.
Our tastes mostly come from our distant ancestors. Some of them are clearly harmful in the modern world, e.g. people eating too much delicious sugar leading to obesity, diabetes, etc.
Just as we evolved to mostly eat cooked meat rather than raw meat, we can also evolve to stop eating killed meat altogether.. A more environmentally sustainable & compassionate world is critically important for our future well-being (and possibly survival).
It happened with equal systematic design for our own species, for which this article prompted me to spend ten minutes to read through this [0] again.
Though to be honest, the German wikipedia article paints a way more visceral picture of the systematic murders. The english version does not scare the reader, which I see as an oversight.
Edit: The German version includes the deception of the victims, to keep them calm, which is what reminded me of the article.
I couldn't find that deception, but machine translation from German to English is almost impeccable nowadays, and there's a lot more in the german sub-article
> In order to process the murder of thousands of people, great pains were taken to deceive the victims concerning their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration camps to the death camps were unaware of what they were facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims that they were being resettled for labor, issued them work permits, told them to bring along their tools and to exchange their German marks for foreign currency. [0]
> They made you believe that life was normal [in concentration camp Westerbork, a waystation to death camps]. A lady gave birth premature, and it looked—even though Westerbork had one of the best hospitals in Holland, they didn’t have an incubator. They looked all over Holland to find an incubator, and when they found one they said to the lady, “See how good care we take of you?” Only six months later, that same lady with the baby was sent to the gas chambers. [1]
> Kurt Bolender, an SS guard in Sobibor, testified to this fact: “Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer Hermann Michel [deputy commander of the camp] made a speech to them . . . Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of diseases . . . [2]
> Wilhelm Pfannensteil, a German physician and hygienist who visited Belzec and Treblinka, also described the particularly innocuous exterior of the gas chambers in Belzec:
"The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal delousing institution. In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a sign saying ‘Hackenholt Foundation’, above which there was a Star of David. The building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to suggest that people would be killed there. From what I saw, I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had any idea of what would happen to them." [2]
[3] Ernst Klee, Willie Dressen, and Volker Reiss, editors. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Free Press, 1988), 241.
I wonder how the term "sheeplike" came into existence, because based on this article sheep are not exactly the docile, willing animals as we were told.
George Orwell's Animal Farm portrays it well. Most people are sheeplike and follow the herd. After you are fattened up, you are led into the meat grinder.
