Here's a more in depth article about Mr Hatch and his penguins
The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
11–20 of 58 posts
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The image of thousands of penguins every day being rendered into oil makes me deeply sad, and I've no idea why it affects me more than the other animals we raise as livestock. It's not just that they're cute - since cows are IMO quite adorable - I cannot put my finger on it.
The other thing I don't entirely get -- and I am not entirely sure I want to know -- is why penguins . The article highlights that they're a bad "oil" animal. Rendering livestock remains down is not a new idea and is something that would have been done industrially on land at the time of this expedition. I am a lifelong vegetarian, but I am not sure that my partner would let me get away with going totally vegan. Thin…
>The other thing I don't entirely get -- and I am not entirely sure I want to know -- is why penguins. The article highlights that they're a bad "oil" animal.
Because they're so easy to catch. Also,the advantage (from a purely economic, not moral or ecological, point of view) of using wild marine animals for this is that you don't have to grow fodder for them or even set aside land for grazing.
Penguin eggs are still eaten in the Falkland Islands, though AFAIK commercial harvesting is illegal. Apparently the white remains translucent even when hard-boiled.
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#13This is a gruesome reminder of the easy-to-overlook practices of industrialised meat and dairy that lie behind many normalised diets and lifestyles today.
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#14[deleted]
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#15The article lacks IMO the most gruesome tool that was used for processing penguins, the penguin press : https://ssz.fr/brdl/presse-manchots.jpg I took it on Kerguelen island, that's not a very good picture but you get the idea, a nice engineering detail is that the handle that turns the spiked rollers also has a blade and slices the pressed penguins into smaller slices. Most of the time though (at least on Kerguelen)…
That doesn’t look much different than macerators which are used on male chicks in the egg industry.
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#16>> Penguins have a high fat content, owing to their Subantarctic habitat. However, each penguin produced a measly 400 ml of oil. That’s five penguin lives for just 2 litres! Each digester could hold approximately 3,000-4,000 pounds of oil. However, much of the oil produced was wasted, as penguin oil came with one major drawback – it was often contaminated with feathers, and thus was discarded because it was ‘not pure’.
Complete disrespect of other living creatures.
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#17The article lacks IMO the most gruesome tool that was used for processing penguins, the penguin press : https://ssz.fr/brdl/presse-manchots.jpg I took it on Kerguelen island, that's not a very good picture but you get the idea, a nice engineering detail is that the handle that turns the spiked rollers also has a blade and slices the pressed penguins into smaller slices. Most of the time though (at least on Kerguelen)…
Do you put the whole thing in there live or only the “oily” parts?
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#18>> Penguins have a high fat content, owing to their Subantarctic habitat. However, each penguin produced a measly 400 ml of oil. That’s five penguin lives for just 2 litres! Each digester could hold approximately 3,000-4,000 pounds of oil. However, much of the oil produced was wasted, as penguin oil came with one major drawback – it was often contaminated with feathers, and thus was discarded because it was ‘not pure…
When you teach an entire civilization that nature is for man’s exploitation, other living creatures have only the value that can be extracted.
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#19This article is unimaginably bleak. Fascinating, morbid, and just plain gruesome. I wonder how long until descendants of ours look back on our existence with similar gut-wrenching sensations of "that's...evil" .
The image of thousands of penguins every day being rendered into oil makes me deeply sad, and I've no idea why it affects me more than the other animals we raise as livestock. It's not just that they're cute - since cows are IMO quite adorable - I cannot put my finger on it.
Penguins are alien, we think of them as living in the last places untouched by civilisation. They feel like the opposite of a domestic animal.
Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)
#20This article is unimaginably bleak. Fascinating, morbid, and just plain gruesome. I wonder how long until descendants of ours look back on our existence with similar gut-wrenching sensations of "that's...evil" .
The image of thousands of penguins every day being rendered into oil makes me deeply sad, and I've no idea why it affects me more than the other animals we raise as livestock. It's not just that they're cute - since cows are IMO quite adorable - I cannot put my finger on it.
I thought about this too. The explanation I've reached is that when it comes to livestock, there is a certain amount of.. respect? going into the process. We are raising and exploiting cattle for thousands of years now, and every part of an animal is either directly consumed or used in other ways. Many cultures have elaborate rituals surrounding the slaughter, etc. This, I think, gives the impression of value to us.
But for these penguins, there is no respect (still not sure if this is the best word) to speak of. You just cut them into pieces and boil thousands of them in a steampot, then discard most of it. The oil you get is in small quantities and is not even of high quality. The animal is treated as a thing to be used up, without any value.