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2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

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Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#81

Post by enneff »

zhte415 wrote: post #59

I'd say set them free. But given the breeding of commercial chickens they'd simply not survive in the wild - not stop growing and after just days be unable to move, and easy prey. If you're fortunate enough to have land, use it, even a balcony or window sill can be put to good use. There are plenty of guides on YouTube, and for a window sill no need to spend money on herbs again. For food or for leisure (or both) - i…

Releasing them would be dooming them to a horrible death. They'd end up ripped apart by wild animals or otherwise injured and live in pain until they die.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#82

Post by jhanschoo »

zhte415 wrote: post #59

I'd say set them free. But given the breeding of commercial chickens they'd simply not survive in the wild - not stop growing and after just days be unable to move, and easy prey. If you're fortunate enough to have land, use it, even a balcony or window sill can be put to good use. There are plenty of guides on YouTube, and for a window sill no need to spend money on herbs again. For food or for leisure (or both) - i…

If you set them free they are going to cause a mess and potentially destabilize the local ecosystem.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#83

Post by LaEc »

dmitriid wrote: post #16
sytelus wrote: post #13

I don't remember who but someone (Naval?) had this quote that generations 100 years from now will think of us as utterly barbaric for eating animals. When I look around how we treat animals as if they were just sacs of meat, its amazingly heart wrenching. In Alaska I saw a casual 4th of July competitions where you throw dead fish and other person catches it. Sometime fish fall apart and all its guts spread out during…

I hate to break it to you, but in general our treatment of animals is way better than a 100 years ago. Animal shelters? Animal cruelty laws? Etc. That fish throwing contest? Oh, it's almost definitely older than 100 years (as are dog fights, dolphin slaughter, goose pulling, cock throwing and other wonderful traditions from around the world).

There isn't extensive documentation on the welfare of animals in large farms in history, but if you knew what goes on today, you wouldn't even dare write that. Chicks sent to the shredder, cramped living conditions for the entirety of their lives, untreated medical conditions, anal rape-assisted insemination, halal and Kosher slaughters. Watch Dominion (2018) or just the trailer and see for yourself.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#84

Post by ben_w »

orbifold wrote: post #72
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly 40% of food created, is wasted: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report....

Well the alternative would probably be empty food shelves like you had in planned economies like the DDR and Soviet Union. Just in time food production just doesn't work for things that have to start production ~2-6 months before they are delivered and have a shelf life of ~1-2 weeks. Fresh bread delivered to bakeries regularly sells out here and this is expected, same with Meat and some vegetables. But there is no w…

Part of the current waste is a desire for photogenic foods; minor blemishes don’t sell as well as pristine items.

Another part (not counted in the statistics if I understand right), is obesity. We over-consume to the point of illness.

Another part is deliberate over-production in good years so that we don’t go hungry in bad years. This part ought to be considered as unavoidable.

Another part is the types of food. Meat is, in general, a wasteful indirection between sunlight and us. Even ignoring any argument about vegetarian/vegan diets, I accept that this isn’t universally so, as some land (I don’t know about fish vs. seaweed) is unsuitable for growing human crops. However, it remains broadly true.

In principle, though perhaps not in practice, indoor farming (not just artificial lighting, also greenhouses etc.) could supply a more consistent yield. I can’t comment on the economics of that, not even a little. However, as farming as a whole represents a very small, and still diminishing, fraction of the west’s GDP, my guess is that it could become achievable even if it is not yet achievable.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#85

Post by LaEc »

dmitriid wrote: post #45
317070 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one side of the scale. The other side of the scale has the meat industry in it (which is absolutely not like 100 years ago). As someone who used to work in a slaughter house, I am not convinced that today is better. I can see our children looking back in a few generations and think of us as barbaric. I thought of it as barbaric and surreal when working there.

The scale? Yeah, the scale is much bigger. Conditions for animals? Not much different than 100 years ago [1]. And I'd argue they are better in many cases (and in many countries). [1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/utterly-disturbing-century-old-photo...

Those open-air stockyards in Chicago look like crap, and even then still miles better than what pigs go through today. At least they saw the sky for more than the few minutes just before their deaths.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#86

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

naruvimama wrote: post #58

It is our collective karma, to outsource cruelty to industrial animal farming. Even though I have become mostly vegetarian, it is quite tempting to buy meat for the convenience and the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west). Human progress and social evolution has somehow come with greater compassion for fellow beings. Will our coming generations value compassion in itself…

> the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west).

You need to eat vegetables anyway. You just replace meat with cheese, eggs and beans; all of them are cheaper.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#87

Post by LaEc »

sfj wrote: post #63
jamil7 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being downvoted because it doesn't really make sense. Plants lack a central nervous system, so vegans tend to draw the line somewhere there. Regardless if we did find out that plants somehow where conscious and could feel pain we need to feed animals a huge amount of plant matter in order for us to eat them. If vegans are trying to minimise harm done then it'd still make sense to eat them directly than eat anima…

But what if the plants we like to eat are more conscious than the plants that animals like to eat? Or even more conscious than the animals themselves? How do we really know? What if there is a God in every peanut?

How much of your consciousness is grounded in sight, sound, taste, touch and smells? How many plants have eyes or ears or any kind of vivid sensory organ? Your argument lacks any kind of credulity.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#88

Post by LaEc »

sfj wrote: post #69
naruvimama wrote: post #58

It is our collective karma, to outsource cruelty to industrial animal farming. Even though I have become mostly vegetarian, it is quite tempting to buy meat for the convenience and the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west). Human progress and social evolution has somehow come with greater compassion for fellow beings. Will our coming generations value compassion in itself…

I find the assumptions embedded in this argument very strange. It brings up a huge number of questions. Only a conscious being would feel pain, so what is consciousness? Does it come down and embed itself into creatures that are born? If so, if they weren't born, would that be necessarily better? What if consciousness, if it didn't have a body to enter into, appeared in a different universe from ours with its own, po…

So much metaphysical blabbery to justify cruelty.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#90

Post by _trampeltier »

msie wrote: post #5

Just today I saw the news about famine in West Africa. Sigh...

It is not so easy with Africa. They already getting a lot of chicken wings and legs for very cheap from europe, because we in europe just like the bigger chicken breast. So legs and wings are send to africa for almost free, because nobody would like to eat it in europe. The result is, chicken from europe is so cheap in africa, no african farmer can compete with that price. So there are now no almost no chicken farms in africa because of this.
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