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Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

thelocal.dk

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Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#111

Post by mcguire »

tyre wrote: post #76
mschuster91 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially. Only on the vaccination / immunity front - the biggest problem was that there initially were no tests or lab capacities for tests, plus a total collapse of PPE stockpiles and supply. That's ... at least decently solved.

Depends on where you are. The US has significantly improved testing (I work for a COVID-19 testing company) but people don't socially isolate or wear their damn masks. We had issues in the election yesterday of poll workers not wearing masks. People just don't get it, and this behavior clearly isn't "fixed" as the winter surge is well under way.

A question: Why aren't we running randomized survey testing to determine the extent of infections?

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#112

Post by setgree »

autosharp wrote: post #49
koala_man wrote: post #20

Norway's Fur Farming Prohibition Act is set to take effect in 2025. May this neighboring scare hasten the demise of this abusive and unnecessary industry.

Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrific.

This question is easy for me — hog farming is, overall, a greater harm because we are talking about more pigs and more horrendous conditions. Both are morally impermissible, in my opinion, which is why I keep to a vegan diet and don’t wear fur.

Putting aside the harms to animals for a moment, we might consider both mink farms and hog farms to be part of a larger problem, which is monoculture agriculture. Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together, and neither were hogs, and weird ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (life out of balance) things are going to happen when we do that — just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil.

This isn’t some subtle act of interpretation; the evidence is all around us that industrial-style practices applied to living things have negative externalities that plausibly outweigh their benefits.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#113

Post by danielmain »

j_4 wrote: post #78
autosharp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is very much analogous. Lots of pigs getting culled (in many cases burned and/or buried alive on a grand scale) because they are infected with diseases that are dangerous to humans. Corona included. I just keep being surprised that there is consensus forming around mink but the hog issue, which is very similar and actually a bigger problem by numbers, is not really part of the mainstream debate. For some re…

A single hog being killed for 150000 kcal of sustenance is a lot more morally acceptable than 50 minks being killed for a single luxury coat. It's not cognitive dissonance to think this. (numbers from quick, non-exhaustive googling)

Have a Whale more calories than a person?

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#114

Post by core-questions »

autosharp wrote: post #49
koala_man wrote: post #20

Norway's Fur Farming Prohibition Act is set to take effect in 2025. May this neighboring scare hasten the demise of this abusive and unnecessary industry.

Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrific.

Contrasting opinion here (and that of the majority): stop anthropomorphizing animals.

They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter - what matters is ensuring that we have reliable, self-reproducing, adaptable sources of protein for the population. Your lab-grown burgers that depend on thousands of years of technological development and piles of infrastructure are not the solution. Forcing everyone to become vegetarians is not even an option at all; the market demands meat and factory farms have stepped up to fill that niche at scale, reliably delivering meat to everyone in the first world even in extenuating circumstances. It's quite phenomenal, what we have accomplished in terms of livestock agriculture, and to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry keeping humans fed while keeping costs to a minimum.

I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Accepting that is simply part of being the omnivorous animal that millions of years of evolution has produced.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#115

Post by mensetmanusman »

I wonder if we will have future discussions about different programming decisions to cull various general intelligent computer programs that have converged on dangerous thought patterns (e.g. destruction focused).

These GI systems will have more advanced capabilities/intelligence than any known animal, and one could therefore argue they have higher moral standing. They will have evolved just like the animals, but on a vastly accelerated timescale due to parallelization.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#116

Post by ornornor »

logifail wrote: post #107
ornornor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree. Pigs are on the same cognitive level as dogs. Would it be morally acceptable to kill and eat a (big) dog for its 150000 calories after raising in terrible conditions for a few years?

> raising in terrible conditions ...source? Farming doesn't have to be intensive. We get milk from a nearby farm. Given we mostly walk there the "food miles" would be precisely zero.

Not intensive farming is less bad than intensive farming but in your example, a cow still needs to have a calf and that calf slaughtered for milk to keep coming. And that cow will be killed off the moment it stops making enough milk which is a fraction of its natural life span. It’s not like not intensive farming is innocent either.

And for shit and giggles, check what’s the proportion of industrially farmed meat vs non intensive that’s sold every day.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#117

Post by pinipedman »

rootsudo wrote: post #66
learnstats2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit self-referential. 'Humans are the best therefore human measures are the best therefore humans are the best' [Caged] minks probably don't think that humans > minks by any measure that they value.

Can you prove minks reason, think or have values? The fact that we're arguing this, means that it's understood it isn't a win/win factor.

I can't prove that a sufficiently impaired mentally disabled human can reason, think, or have values.

But I suppose if I wanted to raise thousands of mentally disabled humans in cages for the purpose of skinning them and selling their hides I would probably justify it to myself by asserting my inherent superiority based on their potential inability to replicate certain biological processes in the fatty organ within their craniums.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#118

Post by jen20 »

ornornor wrote: post #100
j_4 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single hog being killed for 150000 kcal of sustenance is a lot more morally acceptable than 50 minks being killed for a single luxury coat. It's not cognitive dissonance to think this. (numbers from quick, non-exhaustive googling)

I don’t agree. Pigs are on the same cognitive level as dogs. Would it be morally acceptable to kill and eat a (big) dog for its 150000 calories after raising in terrible conditions for a few years?

It seems to be becoming less acceptable in one of the few places to actually do that.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#119

Post by vanderZwan »

koala_man wrote: post #20

Norway's Fur Farming Prohibition Act is set to take effect in 2025. May this neighboring scare hasten the demise of this abusive and unnecessary industry.

I just learned that the Netherlands also was going to prohibit fur framing in 2025 but changed this to 2021 due to multiple cases of covid jumping from minks to humans.

I don't really get why we don't outright ban it immediately and compensate the farmers a bit more for their troubles, since the "return on investment" for not creating another covid strain is a lot higher than that, but ok.

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