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

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#81

Post by PerfectElement » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:27 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.

It's not surprising, considering our own bias, but that doesn't mean it's ethical to exploit them for our pleasure and convenience.

Your line of thought is the basis for most human atrocities ever committed; you see your own group (species, race, gender, class, nationality, etc.) as more valuable, so you dismiss their own interests in favour of your own.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#82

Post by howling » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

tjic wrote: post #61

HSO wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just put a new idea about "the good life" into my head… This sounds positively delightful, to combine tech with rural living. I just might give that a try someday! As someone who has struggled with his diet for ethical reasons for a long time, I have a question though. You say > at the end of the season, when it's time to turn living creatures into meat, doing it yourself ensures that it's done well, and with…

Glad you're intrigued! Feel free to reach my by email with any questions! > Do you not get cognitive dissonance from killing "your children"? Well, first, they're not my children. I don't mean that flippantly, and it's a great question to ask, it's just that my answer is: my wife is my wife, my dogs are my dogs (and, yes, family), pigs are livestock...and chickens are sort of walking squawking vegetables. :) I should…

If you have to force yourself not to name and play animals to be able to kill them eventually, it is probably wrong to kill them.

Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#83

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:28 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.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Why do you prefer spinach to collard greens? Why do you like Van Gogh more than Matisse? Why do you eat fries more often than onion rings?

I can advance dozens of rationalizations as to why other people should share my opinion that human life is worth more than nonhuman animal life, but most of them will not find traction in any person not already at least slightly predisposed towards that opinion. The value of nonhuman animal life is very much like a religious belief.

If we deconstructed the differing opinions down to their foundations and really examined them, we would likely recoil away in existential horror. The truth is that life has no inherent, objective value at all. The universe is very large, and collides a lot of random atoms and molecules together, and will be entirely unaffected on a large scale whenever some of those random reaction products develop some self-reinforcing complexity.

The only value life has is that which we subjectively impart onto it. And summing up the opinions of 7 billion humans, I generally find that we tend to have a rather higher opinion of ourselves than of any other animal, and the other animals are ranked by some combination of cuteness, cleverness, market price, and deliciousness. But since that's all just subjective anyway, I could still tell the rest of the world to get bent, and just go by my own preferences.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#84

Post by ansible » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:31 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #75

hx87 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of the population being 100% vegetarian/vegan is bit much to ask, but I can certainly see 100% of the population being 50% vegetarian/vegan, i.e. eating 50% less meat and using 50% less animal products.

That's a good point actually. Yeah, that would be a big win but I also expect more people to be making the switch.

After seeing that Rolling Stone article on Smithfield Farms, I've cut back on my meat consumption.

The 'typical USA' diet of lots of meat for all three meals of the day doesn't seem sustainable to me. If we all cut back at least some, that will greatly reduce the environmental impact.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#85

Post by in_the_sticks » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:32 PM UTC

1457389 wrote: post #46

kbenson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, sorr…

You shouldn't eat veggies because their production causes animal suffering. Ever hear of pesticide runoff?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#86

Post by korethr » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:38 PM UTC

tjic wrote: post #61

HSO wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just put a new idea about "the good life" into my head… This sounds positively delightful, to combine tech with rural living. I just might give that a try someday! As someone who has struggled with his diet for ethical reasons for a long time, I have a question though. You say > at the end of the season, when it's time to turn living creatures into meat, doing it yourself ensures that it's done well, and with…

Glad you're intrigued! Feel free to reach my by email with any questions! > Do you not get cognitive dissonance from killing "your children"? Well, first, they're not my children. I don't mean that flippantly, and it's a great question to ask, it's just that my answer is: my wife is my wife, my dogs are my dogs (and, yes, family), pigs are livestock...and chickens are sort of walking squawking vegetables. :) I should…

> Because of my ethics re animals, if I'm going to take a life, I want to use every last bit of the animal. This meant capturing the gallons of blood in a five gallon bucket.

I buy whole chickens and part them out myself, and I do use every bit of the chicken that comes in the package. The bones are used for stocks, skin gets rendered for fat, etc. So I like to think I (can?) get using every last bit of the animal.

But I'm curious, what use(s) does the blood have? I was of the impression that like the viscera, the blood is something that necessarily must be disposed -- it cannot safely be used. Is that not the case?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#87

Post by CarpetBench » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

PerfectElement wrote: post #74

CarpetBench wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question because it informs where we draw arbitrary lines about what's ok to eat and what's not. Honestly, and not to just be a smart-ass, but what are the acceptable life forms to eat? We've drawn the arbitrary line that "humans aren't ok to eat," but that's really about the only nearly-unanimous thing we can agree upon. If we move the line further, to say, "no intelligent animals," then we're st…

I think most animal rights advocates draw the line at sentience. If a being is capable of suffering, then this suffering needs to be justified. If an animal has their own desires, those desires should be taken into consideration. Intelligence is not a justifiable metric, e.g. some individual humans are less intelligent than some animal species. Yet, we don't use those humans for our own interests.

Even that is a little contentious though, no? Even if we define sentience as the ability to feel pain (which is a bit of a simplification of sentience), the definition of pain seems fairly vague when talking about non-human animals.

AFAIK for certain groups of animals (one that comes to mind is sharks) it's very unlikely they feel anything approximating what we would call pain. Still, I imagine few advocates would say that eating shark meat is ethical behavior.

Certain animals could barely be said to do anything approximating feeling pain besides responding to external stimuli, which plants do as well.

It's a fascinating, complex topic though.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#88

Post by PerfectElement » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:48 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…

> Side note, if you truly believe carnivorous diets are barbaric, than you'd probably also have to kill all the carnivorous animals (especially considering many of them torture their prey, rather than quickly killing it).

I don't understand your logic. If we can't stop all suffering in the world, we should participate and financially support it?

I assume you are against rape, and for this reason, you are not a rapist. The fact that some species mainly use rape as a reproductive strategy will convince you that raping is somehow ethical?

Regarding animals being accidentally killed in the harvesting of plant foods, do some research on veganic farming. We are moving in the right direction, your "all or nothing" argument is not very productive.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#89

Post by ewzimm » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

howling wrote: post #82

tjic wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you're intrigued! Feel free to reach my by email with any questions! > Do you not get cognitive dissonance from killing "your children"? Well, first, they're not my children. I don't mean that flippantly, and it's a great question to ask, it's just that my answer is: my wife is my wife, my dogs are my dogs (and, yes, family), pigs are livestock...and chickens are sort of walking squawking vegetables. :) I should…

If you have to force yourself not to name and play animals to be able to kill them eventually, it is probably wrong to kill them. Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian.

Some people might say that our instincts are often wrong. A lot of people use tricks to do something other than what their emotions are telling them. They get angry and contain it. They feel jealous that someone else is getting attention and ignore it. We tend to divide emotions into bad ones like that and good ones like empathy, but there's an argument to be made that the natural empathy we feel toward animals is wrong in some cases and should be suppressed. Taken to its extreme, we'd end up with a world where we tried to save everything, even every insect, and we'd end up with an unsustainable world or at best a planet-sized zoo where everything was controlled and coddled. Maybe the natural world, as messy and bloody as it is, is better than one in which every living thing is protected and loved. Maybe empathy is an emotion that was beneficial to our evolution as mammals but has grown out of control as we gained intelligence and the ability to see beyond our family and clan needs and we're better off slaughtering animals which we raise because at least they get to live better lives than any animal would live in the wild before that slaughter comes, making way for a new generation to be raised in a pastoral situation.

I'm only speaking in hypotheticals because I'm also a vegetarian and don't personally subscribe to that idea, but I think it's not necessarily cut and dry that avoiding killing for food is absolutely the right thing to do. Personally, I think the normalization of dominating animals is what led to a lot of bad behaviors toward humans like slavery and subjugation and that we would be better off cultivating more empathy rather than accepting the order of nature as we were born into it. There was a time before hunting and slaughtering, and I think there will be a time after it, and I think we will be better of once we have moved past it. But I also have to consider that I might be wrong.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#90

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

korethr wrote: post #86

tjic wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you're intrigued! Feel free to reach my by email with any questions! > Do you not get cognitive dissonance from killing "your children"? Well, first, they're not my children. I don't mean that flippantly, and it's a great question to ask, it's just that my answer is: my wife is my wife, my dogs are my dogs (and, yes, family), pigs are livestock...and chickens are sort of walking squawking vegetables. :) I should…

> Because of my ethics re animals, if I'm going to take a life, I want to use every last bit of the animal. This meant capturing the gallons of blood in a five gallon bucket. I buy whole chickens and part them out myself, and I do use every bit of the chicken that comes in the package. The bones are used for stocks, skin gets rendered for fat, etc. So I like to think I (can?) get using every last bit of the animal. B…

Black pudding (blood sausage) would be my pick, but there are also a lot of good Chinese recipes that include pork blood curd.

The only danger I am aware of--beyond the risks of eating pork products in general--is iron overdose, which means you have to ration your consumption appropriately.

The viscera may also be used, though not necessarily for food. Whatever cannot be eaten can likely be turned into glue, leather, fertilizer, string, etc.