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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

#151

Post by tomp »

ekzy wrote: post #111
PerfectElement wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's about as effective as saying that Americans should stop working so they won't support US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia and Syria with their taxes.

In other words, it won't work until you give people a reasonable alternative (lab-grown meat, anyone?).

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#152

Post by teach »

wildmusings wrote: post #80

My concern for animal welfare ends when it imposes any significant burden on human interests. Billions of people want cheap meat, so let's make sure they keep getting it.

How about climate change? Producing staggering quantities of meat is responsible for an awful lot of greenhouse gas emissions and uses a ton of fossil fuels.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#153

Post by tomp »

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…

If animals are raised responsibly (free-range, good food) and killed unconscious, there's no suffering, no?

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#155

Post by 1457389 »

tomp wrote: post #153
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…

If animals are raised responsibly (free-range, good food) and killed unconscious, there's no suffering, no?

Yup this is true when defined narrowly enough, but impossible in practice. Plus you'd have to address the argument that cutting short a happy life is a moral harm.

If we were a society that was capable of doing this at scale, there would certainly be far less of a reason to be vegan, but I hesitate to say there would be no reason at all.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#156

Post by sedachv »

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…

> My wife ended up not wanting to eat goat, so I ate a fair bit of goat after that. ...and she learned never to name or play with the livestock.

So treat the animals like objects to make it easier to kill them? That also works for humans:

https://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Treblinka-Treatment-Animals-H...

> I had a dissociative event the first time I did this.

Dissociation happens for a reason. Slaughterhouse workers get PTSD.

> I think that killing and eating animals is fundamental to who we are (and I don't mean "we've evolved incisors"; I mean "the rituals and process are encoded in our minds". The hand shapes the tool and the tool shapes the hand).

The same argument could have been made for cannibalism, but somehow we managed to get over that.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#157

Post by h4nkoslo »

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.

That is extremely unlikely if current demographic trends continue, unless by "society" you mean wealthy whites and Indians.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#158

Post by andreareina »

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…

We tried the gun, it didn't at all work that way for us -- we had a terrified pig running around with a hole in its forehead. Would you mind me picking your brain? Let me know your preferred method and I'll reply with my handle.

EDIT: just saw the email address on your first post.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#159

Post by h4nkoslo »

titanomachy wrote: post #55
wmil wrote: post #3

What's really interesting is that slaughterhouses are major users of H1B visas.

I guess there aren't enough Americans who are willing to do soul-crushing unskilled labour for minimum wage.

The "minimum wage" aspect is an artifact of the imported labor (and mostly the "soul crushing"; you can lower labor costs by cutting wages, or working conditions). There is a reason they decided to be called the Green Bay Packers, and it's not because the jobs were associated with poverty & soul-crushing.

Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry

#160

Post by kazagistar »

nkoren wrote: post #96
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…

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 havin…

I don't think he was using the word that way. I interpreted "dissociation" as the more clinical and formally defined psychological term for a mental state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)

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