Inside the Republican effort to force millions of farm animals back into cages
Inside the Republican effort to force millions of farm animals back into cages
Decades of progress for animal welfare are potentially at risk.
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As always, the cruelty is the point.
The fact is, most animals in our food system live under dismal conditions, and the pitifully low bar for their treatment was set in directives from the same industry’s leaders who today are so upset about being vilified. “Forget the pig is an animal—treat him just like a machine in a factory,” recommended Hog Farm Managementin 1976. Two years later, National Hog Farmer advised: “The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.”
And farmers, eager to squeeze every dollar from their crops, complied. Today, nearly 5 million of these smart, social animals (representing over 80 percent of all sows in pork production) are confined to tiny gestation crates—cages so narrow the animals can’t even turn around. They spend their lives lined up like cars in a parking lot, barely able to move an inch and driven insane from the extreme deprivation
I went vegetarian this year (vegan when it’s possible) mostly because of the horrors of factory farming. I could not continue to participate in such a horrific system anymore.
We don’t eat cats or dogs, so why is it okay to eat other animals? They all have thoughts and feelings.
I'm also returning to a more plant based diet in part because of animal cruelty but also because creating demand for plant based meat alternatives could potentially reduce the need for agricultural land use by ~70%. But not all animal production has the same impact on climate change: just cutting out beef and eating more nuts will help.
Ideally, pasture-raised and kosher or halal meats would be more (at all) prevalent. That's what ethical meat consumption looks like.
Alternately, lab grown.
Grass-fed production doesn't really scale, so there's not much way around consumption changes here. It also comes with a side effect of raising methane emissions
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf
To be fair, pasture raised is more expensive, so people would eat less beef. I don't think it's fair to talk about scaling current consumption.
You say that, but it's not really just about grass-feeding. Cows are already fed almost 90% inedible crop materials that would be getting disposed of anyway. We could be doing better, but cattle's food source is sorta the wrong focus.
And as much methane is in manure, it's better for the environment (including GHG) than synthetic fertilizers.
The real answer is changing our meat/vegetable balance AND improve the process AND continue to improve humane regulations (and those 3 goals often synergize with each other).
The % that's edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed
1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
Synthetic fertilizer usage is greatly reduced by eating plants directly even compared to the best-case use of animal manure
Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
The % that’s edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed
Not really. Definitely not if you consider the nutritional quality of the meat. And that's beef, the worst example. (Feed to meat conversion from 6x to 25x, the higher number generally for free-range). Chickens are only x2 in ideal situations (closer to 5x when free-range since their calorie intake is not as well-managed). And from a health viewpoint, 100kcal of chicken is a better-balanced calorie than 200kcal of feed
But that is before accounting for the fact that about 165 of those feed kcals are inedible, meaning you're trading around 35 edible kcals of corn for 100 edible kcals of chicken. Would you agree from a purely health and efficiency point of view (leaving out ethics), that 35 edible calories of a "non-nutritional grain" for 100 edible calories of a protein superfood is a pretty fair trade?
Synthetic fertilizer usage is greatly reduced by eating plants directly even compared to the best-case use of animal manure
Missed this one, so jumping back. It's hard for me to respond because I don't have access to the whole paper. There seem to be fairly significant issues with it, however. For one, I can't find any corroboration that isn't merely citing this paper. For another, I can't find any critical responses either (the lack of them is worse than a half-decent one IMO). Nonetheless, there's a few things I find interesting from the summary the seem to make it hard to just accept an argument using it
- The killer, to me. This paper actively presumes that all crop farms that produce crops that have inedible components that cows will eat (like corn) will pivot to 100% vegetable. But a vast majority of that crop's output is in explicit demand and corn farms are not just going to fold up. They will start destroying their excess waste instead of reselling it as feed. That ruins his math. But he also failed to take into account what a world horticulture setup would look like that actually sustains humanity, and merely counting IFE is just not enough.
- This paper seems to claim a 65% reduction in fertilizer usage, but doesn't account for the fact it would HAVE to primarily be synthetic fertilizer if we stopped eating cows. This is a huge problem for me because I'm an outspoken advocate of collaborative farming, to reduce the disgusting use of synthetic fertilizer by regulating and enforcing better use of manure and localization of animal farms. There's far more than 3x as many cows in the world than can be maintained if they aren't being consumed. He does not cite or comment on how much worse synthetic fertilizer is than manure fertilizer. And if I'm reading right, that's his high end. It might only be more like 30%. I would rather 100 units of manure used than 70 units of synthetic fertilizer without a second thought.
And your second link... I'm not sure why you cited it. It appears to be arguing for my side, defending the figures I used. Thank you?
Cropland usage is still lower when looking at the nutrition of it all
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
Further, we can plant other crops on that land growing feed crops. The greatly lower cropland usage offers quite a bit of flexibility to shift around production
Cropland usage is still lower when looking at the nutrition of it all
I disagree with you and that paper's abstract. They're comparing worst-case current aggriculture with a hypothetical improved horticulture.
Also, I extended my previous post; you might have missed it.
Further, we can plant other crops on that land growing feed crops
How do you intend to kill off the demand for those crops? Or do you intend to forbid people and businesses from consuming crops with a lot of feed-waste like corn or soy?
Why is it ideal or even ethical to kill others "kosher or halal" when we don't have to kill in any way? How does this relate to them living in cages before?
Both kosher and halal require you to kill the animal quickly and painlessly. I'd say the pasture raised is more important, since that's every other day of the animal's life, but I'd like the last day to also not suck.
Is the act of killing someone who does not want to die and does not need to die ethical if painless?
Have you seen non human animals that want to die for humans to be consumed by them? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmIqdlomtuSsJEoFi_L_pfEAPIxDRo4DB
I mean, if you're coming at it from the point of "there is no ethical meat consumption," then you're right, none of this means anything. It's a simple "don't ever eat meat."
In which case, kosher and halal are irrelevant. Pasture raised is still relevant because we need to discuss what ethical production of things like eggs and milk looks like.
I come from the point that if we don't have to kill or abuse others we should not. That is the case for most of us. You can't ethical impregnate a cow, steal the baby and drink their milk. Raising chicken breeds which can't stand on their own feet or get infections and tumors and just live to be exploited is not justifiable with taste.
You don't eat dogs and cats, other cultures absolutely do and billions of people are 100% ok with eating animals. Don't be a cultural imperialist.
Kinda missing the point, ain't ye?
Quite the thing to claim someone else being an imperialist for not supporting this:
- How Cattle Ranchers in the West Cut Off Indigenous Water Rights
- How Industrial Meat Oppresses Indigenous People
- How Black North Carolinians pay the price for the world’s cheap bacon
- “When We’re Dead and Buried, Our Bones Will Keep Hurting” Workers’ Rights Under Threat in US Meat and Poultry Plants
- etc.
I hate to be "that guy", but I feel like none of your references are really properly rebutting his valid point. "We don't eat cats and dogs" is a common anti-balanced-diet dogwhistle that tries to touch on heartstrings instead of logic or even ethical behavior. You might not have meant it that way, but he was justified in pointing out the cultural bias of it.
And "cultural imperialism" is different from "literal imperialism", but that also means your rebuttal was a gishgallop, changing the topic. I'm ASSUMING you didn't mean to secretly change the topic to prevent losing on that previous point, but that's what the reply looks like anyway.
The original point they made talking about how people commonly hold contradictory beliefs regarding dogs and cats compared to other animals is pointing out cultural bias. It is an appeal for logical consistency in ethical beliefs
Actually, their original point was "We don't eat cats and dogs". You seem to be drawing a lot of foundation they did not lay. We cannot presume that foundation, or its solidity, because they are controversial and MIGHT have been rebuttable.
Ultimately, it was a meme-worthy throw out of one sentence trying to pull at heartstrings. If he intended more or something defensible, he failed to prove it.
At this point, I'm pretty sure you're a vegan from your replies to me. Even if you were on the right side of ethics by some agreeable system, that doesn't make his original point more than it actually was. You can argue for the right thing with a bad or lacking argument, and you can (and should) be called on that.
Look at the words that immediately follow. "We don’t eat cats or dogs, so why is it okay to eat other animals" is a statement looking at contradictions. I don't see much point in continuing this conversation if we're going to be arguing over semantics/sentence meaning here. I don't think anyone gets much out of that. Also because for some reason, replies are not showing up in my inbox so I can't see your responses easily anyway (I think lemmy.ml is having some issues again)
Bingo, heartstrings of an unsubstantiated argument. Thank you for quoting him.
is a statement looking at contradictions
No, it's a statement accusing contradictions without substantiating them. It's no different than if I said "we don't eat cats and dogs, so why is it ok to eat other things in nature like tomatoes?" Except that is OBVIOUSLY the nonsense to who anyone who wants to not die of starvation where his statement merely secretly is. Creating a special category/line of "the animal kingdom" in a flippant unfounded way creates a false likeness between cats&dogs and pork. Add lobsters and other insect-like animals, then add insects, then add bacteria, and then plants. Every one of those steps can be justified if no additional argument is provided. It's all about making someone feel bad for a poor cute fluffy puppy, even if not intended that way. There is a difference between emotions and ethics.
I don’t see much point in continuing this conversation if we’re going to be arguing over semantics/sentence meaning here
With all due respect, that's on you. I'm not sure if you followed me from our other discussions or simply found my calling the bad argument what it was. I have very strong opinoins about people, especially zealots, trying to push their pseudoreligious views on others using bad-but-convincing arguments. It's my thing. It's not everyone's thing, especially if they personally support the belief that's being defended badly.
(I think lemmy.ml is having some issues again)
Probably yes :(. Lemmy.ml was not prepared. But it's home.
Nah, they really only care about $$. Money is the point. They literally care about nothing else.
Unfortunately this just isn't always true. They also care deeply about the maintenance of existing hierarchies and will cheerfully vote against their own financial interests in order to maintain them.
That's only poor Republicans who do that. Ultimately it will line the pockets of some rich piece of shit one way or another. I hate this place.
Example?