Maybe I'm a psycho, but it's interesting how pity and empathy extend to all living beings for some (most?) people
The fight over transparency in the meat industry
161–170 of 187 posts
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sa…
The topic of whether sharks feel pain is contested at best.
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#163I grew up on a ranch. Watched my dad slaughter cows, chickens, rabbits, goats... watched him put down old / injured horses, dogs, and cats. When I got old enough I helped. Hardest time was killing and butchering a steer I had trained, and showed in 4H. I think I was like 12 at the time, but you work with an animal all summer... get it trained to follow you around and not pull on the halter... and then the reward is s…
If only all of this were unnecessary. Oh wait...
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting! Do you know of an open data source for that information?
h1bdata.info has everything searchable by city, employer or title. eg: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=MANAGER+TRAINEE&city=&... http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Murphy-brown+Llc&job=&city=...
Perfect. Thank you.
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#165Earlier 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…
"But I'm curious, what use(s) does the blood have? "
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#166Earlier 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 way you slaughter a pig is shoot them in the forehead. This gives them a concussion and drops them, but does not kill them."
I'm not a farmer (though your lifestyle is a dream of mine), but couldn't you just use bigger caliber? I'm sure .45 would do the trick. Shooting and killing a pig instantly in one blow is one thing, but putting a knife through a still living creature.. that would be too much for me.
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#167My 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.
We could suck Earth dry with such attitude.
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#168Earlier 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.
This is very similar to the arguments people who discriminate against other people use based on factors like race, sex, skin color, sexual orientation, gender identification and others.
The point is that many humans have evolved to or desire to becoming more compassionate and inclusive over time, and this, the species difference, is one more barrier to cross. Instead of arguing about what will happen or what will never happen, humans will always continue to look at improving things. That's why even though we still have wars after thousands of years of civilization, we still want those to reduce and stop, and take actions that will help. It will take time to manifest changes in different spheres of discrimination and oppression, but as a species this is an inherent quality that takes us all forward.
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#169I 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.
Not all cultured meat is unethical or needs a regular supply of bovine calf serum and such. There was a recent crowdfunding campaign by SuperMeat [1] that focused on bringing cultured chicken meat to the market. It didn't reach the funding goals necessary to work on commercial production in about five years time though. With SuperMeat's method, a tiny painless biopsy would help in the creation of a few hundred tons of chicken meat.
There needs to be more work on such methods even if there are failures or if the initial costs seem higher.
[1]: http://supermeat.com
Re: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They aren't like normal cells. IIRC you have to abort a late stage fetus to obtain them.
Please see my other comment about SuperMeat. Ventures like those don't need fetuses, don't need to kill an animal or don't even need an animal to suffer to get started. It sounds like fantasy, but we will get to these while at the same time companies are innovating by making plant based "meat" realistic, tasty and closer to the price of meat.