The fight over transparency in the meat industry • Hacker News Board

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#41

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:25 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #38

adamnemecek wrote: post #19

I think that fundamentally this is just a sign of people realizing that the meat industry can't ever be ethical. I'm expecting society to become maybe 50% vegetarian/vegan in the next couple of decades.

How is cultured meat unethical? Sure, it's uneconomical at this point, but I'm not sure how it's unethical. You could even go so far as to culture your own cells, and eat meat derived from yourself. That would be somewhat unappealing to most people (at least with current cultural taboos and stigmas), but I'm not sure how that could be seen as unethical.

So the ethics of cultured meat are actually interesting. IIRC you still need some cells (stem cells?, not a biologist) to start a 'cultured meat' production and you cannot make these synthetically. As a result, you might scale to something like 1 slaughtered cow producing the amount of meat equal to 10,000 slaughtered cows which somewhat changes the question.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#42

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #22

tjic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Meat CAN be ethical, and often is.

For some definition of ethical, maybe. I guess fundamentally my question to you is, why do you think that human life is worth more than animal life, because that is the foundation of our differences.

[deleted]

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#43

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:32 PM UTC

drakonandor wrote: post #35

adamnemecek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some definition of ethical, maybe. I guess fundamentally my question to you is, why do you think that human life is worth more than animal life, because that is the foundation of our differences.

If you value them as the same, you couldn't really support vegetarian diets either, as little furry mammals do die as a result of farming in general. Granted maybe less death, but you are still obviously valuing the animals as lesser than humans, as you're saying it's ok if a few field mice or rabbits die so a human can eat a tofu sandwich. Side note, if you truly believe carnivorous diets are barbaric, than you'd pr…

Lol, did you just read some listicle like "10 top anti-vegan arguments" and you are just repeating them? Because these are rehashed arguments that you can easily find convincing counter-arguments for but I can tell you haven't done the research.

> If you value them as the same,

They don't have to be the same value for one to still be valuable.

> a few field mice or rabbits die so a human can eat a tofu sandwich.

This argument is silly. How many of these do you think die from grain production? How many animals in the world are slaughtered every year? Also the ethics are also fundamentally different.

> Side note, if you truly believe carnivorous diets are barbaric, than you'd probably also have to kill all the carnivorous animals

I thought that we as humans accepted the fact that we have something called 'morals' and therefore things like killing and rape are bad. I cannot impose human morals on animals but I can impose human morals on humans.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#44

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

danellis wrote: post #37

adamnemecek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some definition of ethical, maybe. I guess fundamentally my question to you is, why do you think that human life is worth more than animal life, because that is the foundation of our differences.

Human life is worth more to us because we're humans. What's wrong or surprising about that? There are plenty of valid arguments for the humane treatment of animals, but don't sit there and pretend you value all animal life equally.

> you value all animal life equally.

Don't deal in absolutes. They don't have to be equally valuable for both of them to be valuable.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#45

Post by Guvante » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

pillowkusis wrote: post #30

tjic wrote: post #10

As I mentioned in another thread, I live on a farm. (I hack Ruby and C++ as a day job, the farm is just a hobby). One major reason for doing so is animal welfare. I'm a meat eater and will staunchly defend it...but factory farming is terrible. At this point we get most of our meat from our own pastures: chicken, goat, lamb, pork. It's much more expensive than buying factory farmed meat, and even more expensive (in la…

you seem concerned with animal welfare, or at least the minimization of suffering; how do you justify willfully killing animals (which undoubtedly creates suffering)?

There are ways to kill that minimize suffering. To counter your point, he only raised the animals to eat them, if he could not kill them they would never have existed. Is that superior?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#46

Post by 1457389 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #40

1457389 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need food to survive. Non sequitur, food isn't synonymous with killing animals >Almost all life consumes other life for survival Appeal to popularity, almost all life does all sorts of things that we don't condone or have decided is suboptimal. >There is nothing more natural than eating. Non sequitur and naturalistic fallacy. Eating is natural but that doesn't imply killing and eating animals is natural. Even if…

Those arguments could be applied to just about any behavior, including not eating meat. You're presupposing the need to justify eating meat, and then using generic arguments to dismantle specific statements without point. If you want to have a useful discussion, please provide an argument..

You shouldn't eat meat because its production causes animal suffering. It's pretty simple really.

I presuppose the need to justify just about everything actually. Your surprise at this approach kind of explains the gaping logical holes in your previous comments. Please though, continue with your "specific" statements, I'm enjoying this.

EDIT: mixed you up with the other commenter, disregard the last 3 sentences, sorry.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#47

Post by illumin8 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #18

tjic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending factory farming of chickens (I actually just adjusted our fencing to double the size of the chicken run), but the answer is: cost. Chickens in modern factory farms are stacked deep. Each has We have around 15 chickens in our flock. They share a 144 ft^2 coop and have a little chicken door that gives out onto a 400 ft^2 outdoor run. That's ~550 ft^2 for 15 chickens, or 45 ft^2 per chicken. That's 450…

I understand that the space is the big thing, but that is the only additional cost. You may actually save on antibiotics and deaths to illnesses. I think you could maybe have your chickens slightly more dense than the example you mention. For example here in South Africa we have plenty of space, and I see vast warehouses go up.

Currently, the farmers are not paying for any of the externalities(1) of their operation, including harm to the environment from waste runoff, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the overall health consequences of eating factory-farmed meat, which are still little understood.

This needs to change in order to make humane farming methods more viable, however, it is in direct conflict with the USDA's goals of reducing the price of food for consumers.

It's a tough problem to solve, but I've gotten to the point where I don't even know what meat to buy any more. So-called "grass fed beef" can be any beef, since all cows eat grass during at least part of their lives, even factory-farmed cows, and the rules are so lax that there is zero enforcement. This has to change.

1. a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved, such as the pollination of surrounding crops by bees kept for honey.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#48

Post by titanomachy » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #41

kbenson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is cultured meat unethical? Sure, it's uneconomical at this point, but I'm not sure how it's unethical. You could even go so far as to culture your own cells, and eat meat derived from yourself. That would be somewhat unappealing to most people (at least with current cultural taboos and stigmas), but I'm not sure how that could be seen as unethical.

So the ethics of cultured meat are actually interesting. IIRC you still need some cells (stem cells?, not a biologist) to start a 'cultured meat' production and you cannot make these synthetically. As a result, you might scale to something like 1 slaughtered cow producing the amount of meat equal to 10,000 slaughtered cows which somewhat changes the question.

Even if it's true that you would need some cells from a cow to get started, there's no reason you have to kill that cow or treat it inhumanely.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#49

Post by gorhill » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #31

gorhill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see this issue with default filter lists.

Well, I'm using uBlock Origin, but I haven't futzed with the default block lists from what I can remember. I'm not really sure the difference between the origin and non-origin versions, so maybe it's related to that? You're probably uniquely suited to answer that... ;)

I could finally reproduce, once in a while when I open the dev console, so there appear to be a timing issue. I added a filter in uBO's filters to deal with this.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#50

Post by 1457389 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:46 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #38

adamnemecek wrote: post #19

I think that fundamentally this is just a sign of people realizing that the meat industry can't ever be ethical. I'm expecting society to become maybe 50% vegetarian/vegan in the next couple of decades.

How is cultured meat unethical? Sure, it's uneconomical at this point, but I'm not sure how it's unethical. You could even go so far as to culture your own cells, and eat meat derived from yourself. That would be somewhat unappealing to most people (at least with current cultural taboos and stigmas), but I'm not sure how that could be seen as unethical.

You need serums and growth media derived from animals. Not derived as in scraping a few cells with a spatula but as in grinding up foetuses into fetal calf serum, or the like. Synthetic media are nowhere near as cheap or effective, at least from what I remember working in biomed research a couple years back.