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The fight over transparency in the meat industry

nytimes.com

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Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#91

Post by dpeck »

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…

| The hand shapes the tool and the tool shapes the hand

I really like that line a lot. I've used a similar phrase to describe the relation between the data you're generating and consuming and the code doing so.

Very eloquent, I'm going to have to remember that one.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#92

Post by endisukaj »

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…

Not the parent but I have some knowledge on this.

[Blood sausage][1] is made using pork blood. I have never tried it myself though. What I have tried is [Sanguinaccio][2] made in southern Italy. It's absolutely delicious. I imagine there are plenty of other recipes that use pork blood as an ingredient too.

[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_sausage)

[2](http://www.chicagonow.com/cooking-cop/2014/03/sanguinaccio-d...)

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#93

Post by PerfectElement »

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.

I think most people in this thread are new to animal rights theory.

This TED talk from Dr. Melanie Joy is a good introduction to Carnism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#94

Post by psj »

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…

I just logged in for the first time in forever to say thanks for a really interesting and thought-provoking read.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#95

Post by sctbpwn »

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…

Zuck?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#96

Post by nkoren »

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…

Thank you for writing this. If one is going to eat meat, this is how one should do it.

I myself would not do this, and therefore (and for a few other tangential reasons), I'm a vegetarian. But I fully respect how you're living. If you're going to be a carnivore, BE a carnivore. Don't be under any illusions to the contrary.

You talk about having a dissociative experience, but it sounds like, on the whole, you're having a far more associative experience than most people. When I see people casually munching on cheap store-bought ham sandwiches, having no particular concept of what they're eating or how it got there -- and who would in fact recoil in horror if confronted with that reality -- then it seems to me like they are the ones who are being fundamentally dissociative. Not you.

Anyhow, ramble ramble, but from a person with a very different approach to life: respect.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#97

Post by josho »

grandalf wrote: post #25

It would be one thing if someone sneaking into a factory farm and filming the operation were subject to the same penalties as someone sneaking into any other business, but due to the horrific nature of what goes on, laws have been passed that result in significantly harsher penalties for secretly obtaining footage of the farms. We should all be able to see what goes on in our prisons, in our concentration camps (Gitm…

I couldn't believe that there would be special laws for filming agriculture.. It seems I'm wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag

Of note:

- prohibits "entering an animal or research facility to take pictures

- crates a "terrorist registry" for those convicted under the law

Fortunately it seems primarily only in the US and in a minority of states.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#98

Post by 1457389 »

wildmusings wrote: post #78
1457389 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> as in grinding up foetuses into fetal calf serum, or the like. You must not be paying attention to how little we care about human fetuses.

I see your point, though probably not in the way you mean. So let's pay attention shall we? FCS and FBS are collected from slaughtered dairy cows once they have exhausted their productive lifespans and rendered into meat. Details:

>After slaughter and bleeding of the cow at an abattoir, the mother's uterus containing the calf fetus is removed during the evisceration process (removal of the mother's internal organs) and transferred to the blood collection room. (3). A needle is then inserted between the fetus's ribs directly into its heart and the blood is vacuumed into a sterile collection bag. This process is aimed at minimizing the risk of contamination of the serum with micro-organisms from the fetus and its environment. Only fetuses over the age of three months are used otherwise the heart is considered too small to puncture. (4)

>Once collected, the blood is allowed to clot at room temperature and the serum separated through a process known as refrigerated centrifugation.

>It remains questionable as to whether or not fetuses have already died from anoxia (deprivation of oxygen) prior to serum collection. Nevertheless, no anesthesia is given, despite their possible ability to experience pain and discomfort.

Gestation period for a cow is around 7 months. Drawing an analogy to studies of human sentience (I am not an expert though), this is proprtionally well past the 1st trimester point where foetuses can feel pain. To speak in your language, FCS and FBS are essentially sourced from blood sucked out of the hearts of late-stage unanaesthetized 2nd-3rd trimester abortions. In this light it is not very difficult to see why vegans such as myself still have reservations about cultured meat.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#99

Post by PerfectElement »

titanomachy wrote: post #51
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.

It's not that simple. If the world consumes a million less pigs every year, that's not a million pigs that get to live happy, wild pig lives; it's a million pigs that will never exist, because we don't need to make them. You could certainly make the argument that non-existence is preferable to the life of a present-day factory-farmed animal. I wouldn't contest that. But perhaps there is some value of ethical treatmen…

You are ignoring the fact that when you raise animals for profit, there will always be a conflict of interests between what you want and what the animals want.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#100

Post by 1457389 »

in_the_sticks wrote: post #85
1457389 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

plants -> livestock -> meat -> metabolic energy is less efficient than plants->metabolic energy. In the interest of minimizing suffering caused there is an obviously superior approach to providing our society with metabolic energy. Your move.
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