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Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

oceana.org

121–130 of 187 posts

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#121
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you need to invoke concentration camps here, true as it may be in some cases. They use antibiotics to make them grow faster. That’s half the reason.

What's the difference then? Piling up living beings in awful conditions to kill them in the most cost-effective way is pretty much the definition of a concentration camp. And making them grow faster than they're supposed to at the expense of everything isn't very nice either.

The metaphor is backward actually. The Nazis transitioned to gassing and extermination camps because the leadership saw first hand the psychological problems of having ordinary people commit mass murder, not because it was cheap. It was probably far more expensive. Think of all the war time train and supply usage.

> During a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. By November he made arrangements for any SS men suffering ill health from having participated in executions to be provided with rest and mental health care. He also decided a transition should be made to gassing the victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. Gas vans, which had been used previously to kill mental patients, began to see service by all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942. However, the gas vans were not popular with the Einsatzkommandos, because removing the dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen#Transition_to_g...

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#122
post #6

Do you feel helpless to stop the problem of antibiotics use in the meat industry? You’re not! Here’s a simple easy trick you can use to reduce its impact on the world: eat less meat. You don’t need meat in 3 meals a day. Reduce it to 1 meal a day and you’ve already reduced your antibiotics impact by 2/3. Cut down to one meat meal a week and that’s a 96% reduction. You’re not powerless. Vote with your wallet and your…

[deleted]

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#123
post #6

Do you feel helpless to stop the problem of antibiotics use in the meat industry? You’re not! Here’s a simple easy trick you can use to reduce its impact on the world: eat less meat. You don’t need meat in 3 meals a day. Reduce it to 1 meal a day and you’ve already reduced your antibiotics impact by 2/3. Cut down to one meat meal a week and that’s a 96% reduction. You’re not powerless. Vote with your wallet and your…

"You don’t need meat in 3 meals a day"

You don't need 3 meals a day.

If you are at all open-minded about eating less meat, you should also (if only for your own health, fitness and longevity) open your mind to eating fewer meals.

Eating less[1] is one of only two things I have ever done[2] that made a noticeable impact in my health, fitness and athletic output.[3]

[1] Total calories are actually about the same since I have an exercise regimen that requires a floor on calories, but feeding window is reduced (sometimes dramatically) putting me into a fasted state more than half of my life.

[2] The other was shifting almost 30% of my caloric intake to almonds, walnuts, almond butter and sunflower seeds.

[3] I am a competitive BJJ player.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#124
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A personal anecdote: I've tried cutting my meat consumption many times in the past, but I ultimately fail to keep up a low-meat diet for the following reasons: - Vegetarian food is really not that tasty in my opinion. (edit: the kind I can reasonably prepare myself) - It's very difficult to eat enough vegetarian food for me to meet my Calorie requirements (I target 3500/day). - Eating a balanced diet of vegetarian fo…

Why are you trying to eat less meat? P.S. Good luck on a vegetarian diet with a 3500+ caloric intake. You'll be eating all day.

"P.S. Good luck on a vegetarian diet with a 3500+ caloric intake. You'll be eating all day."

Nuts and nut butters make this very easy. Just 1/4 cup of almond butter, for instance, is over 350 calories.

I'm not a vegetarian but I have cut out a lot of meat and maintained a relatively high (3000+) daily caloric intake without any difficulty.

Almonds, walnuts and sunflower seeds.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#125
post #120
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an age of increasing nationalistic sentiments and military escalation, it's become a common trope that there's almost no one left to remember the tragedies of WWII. Coincidentally there's certainly nobody alive who remembers the previous pandemic, Spanish Flu. (I say "previous" - there's an ongoing pandemic of HIV/aids, albeit a more gradual affair, but that's happening to Other People (TM))

The Spanish Flu epidemic was 1918-1920. There are quite a few who will remember that still.

Of the centenarians who were alive, very few were old enough then to remember anything.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone and everything dies in the end. It's fairly common among religions to presume that fate is inexorable and already written, with free-will being only an illusion working towards the predestined plan of god(s).

The crucial difference of course is that most of us aren't forced to live day to day in horrifically cruel conditions and then killed about one tenth of the way into our natural lifespan, purely for the pleasure of others.

Cruel conditions aside (which could be argued as morally bad thing), this:

> then killed about one tenth of the way into our natural lifespan, purely for the pleasure of others

does not seem to be rational. Humans and animals don't eat only for the pleasure, then need to eat something in order to live. Your stomach and other organs do not really care about your conscientious choices about what to eat, whether you had to kill for that or not. The natural lifespan is also partially influenced by 'demand' for the species by the predators, so the fact that some animal populations in wildlife have ten times the lifespan can be explained by the fact that those animals do not have humans in their natural habitat. Those which do end up in farms and their natural lifespan is lower.

Anyway, I believe eating meat is so profound on moral debates only because humans are apex predators and no one preys on us. If there were such things then maybe our moral choices about animals could be more compassionate (in order to possibly influence moral choices of the human-eating predators).

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#127
post #6

Do you feel helpless to stop the problem of antibiotics use in the meat industry? You’re not! Here’s a simple easy trick you can use to reduce its impact on the world: eat less meat. You don’t need meat in 3 meals a day. Reduce it to 1 meal a day and you’ve already reduced your antibiotics impact by 2/3. Cut down to one meat meal a week and that’s a 96% reduction. You’re not powerless. Vote with your wallet and your…

I never eat farmed fish because I don't trust fish farms and it seems that there are not enough regulations to make farmed fish healthy.

I don't buy industrial beef neither and only eat high quality beef that is certified to have had a good diet and no hormones or antibiotics.

I don't eat cheap Brazilian chickens neither.

That means that I eat quite less fish and meat than other people, but every time I eat, I enjoy a good product. Also, that makes me not responsible of all the externalities generated by the meat and fish industry.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#128
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A personal anecdote: I've tried cutting my meat consumption many times in the past, but I ultimately fail to keep up a low-meat diet for the following reasons: - Vegetarian food is really not that tasty in my opinion. (edit: the kind I can reasonably prepare myself) - It's very difficult to eat enough vegetarian food for me to meet my Calorie requirements (I target 3500/day). - Eating a balanced diet of vegetarian fo…

Why are you trying to eat less meat? P.S. Good luck on a vegetarian diet with a 3500+ caloric intake. You'll be eating all day.

These people are all vegan:

https://www.peta.org/living/other/vegan-bodybuilders/

You can definitely get 3500 calories per day on a meat-free diet, although it may take a bit more effort.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#129
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crucial difference of course is that most of us aren't forced to live day to day in horrifically cruel conditions and then killed about one tenth of the way into our natural lifespan, purely for the pleasure of others.

Cruel conditions aside (which could be argued as morally bad thing), this: > then killed about one tenth of the way into our natural lifespan, purely for the pleasure of others does not seem to be rational. Humans and animals don't eat only for the pleasure, then need to eat something in order to live. Your stomach and other organs do not really care about your conscientious choices about what to eat, whether you had…

It's easy to live a long healthy life without ever eating meat, so, with a few exceptional cases, yeah it's completely a question of what you prefer to eat.

A cow will live about 20 years on average. A dairy cow will live about 4. I'm having a hard time coming up with a definition of "natural" that fits the latter. And for most of human history it was a small fraction of animals in the wild that would up on a human's dinner table (American Buffalo, for example).

It doesn't seem likely that humans are ever going to have to worry about predators again but meat production is a huge contributor to climate change so we are going to pay for our meat habit one way or the other.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#130
post #11
post #6

Do you feel helpless to stop the problem of antibiotics use in the meat industry? You’re not! Here’s a simple easy trick you can use to reduce its impact on the world: eat less meat. You don’t need meat in 3 meals a day. Reduce it to 1 meal a day and you’ve already reduced your antibiotics impact by 2/3. Cut down to one meat meal a week and that’s a 96% reduction. You’re not powerless. Vote with your wallet and your…

What if I'd rather eat meat all day? Is there any way to stop the antibiotics use without eating like a rabbit?

You can spend more and buy hormone-free and antibiotic-free products.

One of the weirdest things, for me, is to spend a few weeks eating cheap, delicious, and relatively natural food in Latin America, and then returning to the USA where people get excited to buy groceries that are "made with real* ingredients!".

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