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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

#111

Post by ekzy »

PerfectElement wrote: post #93
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

This video made me vegetarian eight months ago. Then I watched Cowspiracy. And then I started to read more about the meat industry.

There is no going back when you realise how fucked up this industry is. HN fellows, we are willing to make the world a better place, right? How about not taking part in one of the worst crimes in history?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#112

Post by asciimo »

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 act of sliding a 12" knife deep into a living, breathing thing is irrevocable, undeniable, and challenging.

It's amazing what some people are willing to do for pleasure. I wish that everyone who consumed animal products had to do it your way. I couldn't do this, so I don't eat animal products. (Yet, I don't suffer a pleasure deficit or any other ill effects, but that's my personal experience.)

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#113

Post by Falling3 »

ewzimm wrote: post #89
howling wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

>Taken to its extreme, we'd end up with a world where we tried to save everything, even every insect

That's a Nirvana Fallacy. I can only imagine you'd never try to apply the same reasoning to humans. That since it's wrong to cause harm to them, you're now responsible to ensuring that no harm of any kind comes to any human anywhere.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#114

Post by Falling3 »

sambobeckingham wrote: post #34
pillowkusis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Humane killing, I imagine? Stun gun or that bolt hammer thing right to the brain, over in a flash as far as the animal is concerned. Far more pleasant than the natural way - 6 of us chasing it round the prairie chucking spears.

Just because it's better than "the natural way" doesn't make it humane. How is the idea of humanely killing someone unnecessarily who wants to live not an oxymoron?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#115

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#116

Post by Falling3 »

josho wrote: post #97
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.

The animal ag lobby is strong here unfortunately.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#117

Post by Falling3 »

tjic wrote: post #21
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 disagree. Meat CAN be ethical, and often is.

I've never spoken to anyone who actually believes eating animals in modern society is morally defensible.

They'll defend it in a very ad-hoc fashion, but almost no one's moral axioms coincide with the belief that eating other individuals is morally acceptable.

Do you believe it's ethical to unnecessarily kill another sentient individual?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#118

Post by kbenson »

1457389 wrote: post #50
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.

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.

> Synthetic media are nowhere near as cheap or effective, at least from what I remember working in biomed research a couple years back.

That's an argument against the current capabilities of the technology, not against the concept itself. Given that I raised the possibility of eating your own cultured meat right after that, I think it's fairly obvious I'm not limiting the discussion to current technology (also since it's not economically feasible at the moment). But given cultured meat grown in a synthetic medium, are there ethical questions that I'm not accounting for? I can't think of any, so this may be a counter to the argument in the GP statement that "the meat industry can't ever be ethical."

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#119

Post by Zigurd »

1457389 wrote: post #102
Zigurd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the negative effects of visa holders that are completely dependent on their employers is that working conditions don't matter as much. That's probably true in abattoirs as it is in coding shops.

What isn't as true in coding shops is the torture and killing of sentient creatures, which was the whole point of this article. I think my point about the fixation of certain elements of this forum on inappropriately narrow and pecuniary perspectives still stands given that the comment I responded to was one of the first posted.

Well, yes, that's the point. Bad working conditions, and H1-Bs that have to tolerate them or go home empty-handed, have worse consequences, at least morally, when making meat.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#120

Post by kbenson »

gorhill wrote: post #49
kbenson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for your good work!
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