Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective • Hacker News Board

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#311

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #310

cheese_goddess wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over 99% of all animals killed are killed on factory farms, so pointing out a handle of farms that are NOT factory farms doesn't really do much. That's not true. The majority of farms around the world are small-scale farms with no more than a few dozen animals or so. Factory farms are not the norm. > Besides, even those small farms are deeply unethical. They kill animals a mere fraction into their lifespans, and do…

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima... Proof that I wasn't lying about the percentage of animals killed in factory farms. Thats USDA data, not some vegan propaganda. Good luck, and reach out if you ever come around to considering a world with less suffering.

[deleted]

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#312

Post by cheese_goddess » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #310

cheese_goddess wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over 99% of all animals killed are killed on factory farms, so pointing out a handle of farms that are NOT factory farms doesn't really do much. That's not true. The majority of farms around the world are small-scale farms with no more than a few dozen animals or so. Factory farms are not the norm. > Besides, even those small farms are deeply unethical. They kill animals a mere fraction into their lifespans, and do…

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima... Proof that I wasn't lying about the percentage of animals killed in factory farms. Thats USDA data, not some vegan propaganda. Good luck, and reach out if you ever come around to considering a world with less suffering.

The link you posted is not USDA data. It's estimates, based on USDA data, by the owners of the website. For example, the opening paragraph in the article says:

> We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present.

The owners of the website are the Sentience Institute, a nonprofit promoting various Effective Altruism goals. One of those goals seems to be the elimination of animal farming. One of the founders of the Institute is the author of a book called "The End of Animal Farming" that "argues animal farming will end by the year 2100 based on effective altruism reasoning and social movement strategy" (see Wikipedia on the book).

So it's vegan propaganda. From the point of view of Effective Altruism, but still, vegan propaganda.

Let's see that quote again:

> We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present.

It says US farmed animals. The whole link talks about the situation in the US. In our discussion, I made the point that factory farms are the norm in the Americas, but not in the rest of the world. I agreed with you that factory farms are an atrocity that must be eliminated. But that atrocity is an American atrocity, and the rest of the world, by and large, is not yet responsible of it although this situation is changing rapidly, because of course where America leads the way in atrocities, everyone else soon follows because that way lie dollars and everyone wants dollars.

In general, my complaint about your comments is that they seem to ignore that there is a world outside the Americas, or even the US, and that this world is not the US and doesn't do things, particularly farming, like the US does them. I seem to be justified to complain so, given the continued American focus of your discussion of farming and animal rights.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#313

Post by indymike » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

irtigor wrote: post #285

cheese_goddess wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, "don't eat meat, eat supplements"? How does that make any sense?

You don't need to necessarily eat meat (a glass of milk has half the recommended daily intake of vitamin b12), but if you are not willing to eat any animal product, the only viable alternative is something like fortified plant based beverages or over-the-counter supplements, so that's my take, otherwise they would be suggesting a really poor diet for humans.

Milk is high in carbohydrate. So are most plant based beverages. Back to diabetics... Can't or should not eat it (or should have tiny, tiny portions which reduce the amount of nutrition anyway). Problem is for people who should not consume carbohydrate, especially sugars, a plant-based diet is not sustainable. Yes supplements can supply nutrition, but they are the epitome of highly processed products.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#314

Post by sweetheart » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 11:31 PM UTC

cheese_goddess wrote: post #312

sweetheart wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima... Proof that I wasn't lying about the percentage of animals killed in factory farms. Thats USDA data, not some vegan propaganda. Good luck, and reach out if you ever come around to considering a world with less suffering.

The link you posted is not USDA data. It's estimates , based on USDA data, by the owners of the website. For example, the opening paragraph in the article says: > We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present. The owners of the website are the Sentience Institute, a nonprofit promoting various Effective Altruism goals. One of those goals seems to be the elimination of animal farming…

I'm sorry, but what would someone need to hand you for you to at least admit there _might_ be a worldwide problem.

You complain this doesn't prove anything outside of the US, but I've already linked to material which covers similar issues in Australia, the UK, and Peter Singer's book which talks about this for all of Europe!

Does someone need to literally drag you to each and every factory farm? Seriously asking, what would it take? Just to consider, on your own, seriously, that perhaps the way we kill these _billions_ of animals every years (100s of billions if you include fish!) might be pretty fucked up.

You say you're interested in exchanging views, but that doesn't seem to be the case. What would it take for you to actually be convinced that there is actually a problem?

Also, it _is_ USDA data. They are using it to draw a conclusion based on things like # of animals that farms own, etc. But it is USDA data they are using.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#315

Post by cheese_goddess » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

sweetheart wrote: post #314

cheese_goddess wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link you posted is not USDA data. It's estimates , based on USDA data, by the owners of the website. For example, the opening paragraph in the article says: > We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present. The owners of the website are the Sentience Institute, a nonprofit promoting various Effective Altruism goals. One of those goals seems to be the elimination of animal farming…

I'm sorry, but what would someone need to hand you for you to at least admit there _might_ be a worldwide problem. You complain this doesn't prove anything outside of the US, but I've already linked to material which covers similar issues in Australia, the UK, and Peter Singer's book which talks about this for all of Europe! Does someone need to literally drag you to each and every factory farm? Seriously asking, wha…

> Does someone need to literally drag you to each and every factory farm?

This is a threat of physical violence and it is very disturbing, especially as it comes after your offering to buy me a book and asking me to contact you by email. You've crossed from creepy stalker to online bully behaviour.

The most disturbing thing is that you seem to not even understand what we are disagreeing about.

What I keep saying is that factory farming is typical only in the Americas. Yes, there are factory farms outside the Americas. No, they are not the norm outside America. Outside America, most farms are small-scale farms with a few dozen animals.

The typical farm in most of the world is a small-scale farm, run by a family, often not even commercially.

Despite your threats to drag me to factofy farms and your insistence that I don't know they exist (clearly, I do, I have repeated several times that "factory farms are an atrocity that must be eliminated"), it is you who hasn't seen the world with your own eyes. It is you who relies, for your knowledge of farming, on books and youtube videos. Books and youtube videos that are specifically created to spread vegan propaganda: they show you the horrors of factory farming, that should rightly outrage everyone, and pretend that there is no other way to farm animals, and that all farming is an atrocity, that all farmers are Freddy Krueger, monsters who torture animals and kill them in "horrific ways".

Instead of trying to coerce me into agreeing with your misinformed beliefs, you're the one who should go and look at the things that the brainwashing rhetoric you try to spread hasn't shown you. Go to the rural communities that subsist on farming, in Europe, in Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in South-East Asia. Go and see the farms, see the animals, talk to the farmers. If you really care about animal welfare, go help the farmers to care for the animals.

But do you really care about animals? Do you really want to know what's going on in the world, or are you more interested in fighting a pointless culture war on the internet?

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#316

Post by cheese_goddess » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

irtigor wrote: post #285

cheese_goddess wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, "don't eat meat, eat supplements"? How does that make any sense?

You don't need to necessarily eat meat (a glass of milk has half the recommended daily intake of vitamin b12), but if you are not willing to eat any animal product, the only viable alternative is something like fortified plant based beverages or over-the-counter supplements, so that's my take, otherwise they would be suggesting a really poor diet for humans.

Yes, that's what I understand from your previous comment. You say:

> "don't eat animal products, eat plants + enriched foods + injections/pills/tablet"

So that would be replacing meat with supplements. I don't think we disagree.

What I disagree with is that it makes any sense to replace real food, meat from animals, with supplements. First because this kind of replacement makes us even more reliant on the food industry, which is the entity that is responsible for the atrocities committed against farm animals in factory farms, and also the damage to the environment caused by such farms. We cannot and should not trust that same industry to provide us with essential nutrients in the form of supplements, because if we do, who knows what new ways they will find to harm us, animals and the environment - the industry is only driven by profit and it will maximise its profit come hell or high water, whether it's selling us sides of beef or B12 pills.

There's a much better alternative: eliminating factory farming, dismantling the meat and dairy megacorps and going back to producing the meat we really need in a way that doesn't cause unnecessary suffering to our domesticated animals and does not destroy the mutualism relation that we've had with them for a few thousand years.

And btw, by "the meat we really need" I mean that most of the world consumes way too much meat, much more than anyone needs. This is the result of the over-supply created by the food industry, for the purpose of maximising its profits as I've said before.

We cannot trust the food industry to feed us, because it will only feed us shit that makes us sick, destroy the environment and harm animals, and it will continue to do so whether we eat meat, plants, or little pills from a bottle.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#317

Post by kj98uo » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #90

bambax wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am willing to sacrifice an insane amount of animal lives in order to save anyone human. That is insane, and psychopathic. But it is shared by many (most?) humans. The result will be that there will be no animals left, and soon afterwards, no humans left either. Another question is, how many humans are you willing to sacrifice to save your wife? Your child? Is your child worth a specific number of human lives, in…

> The result will be that there will be no animals left, and soon afterwards, no humans left either. This is illogical. Humans have been eating animals since the dawn of civilization. We've been using animals in experiments for centuries. There are still animals to eat and use in experiments. Why? because animals reproduce. There aren't a fixed number of animals. We only lose species when we kill faster then they rep…

That's like saying humans have been enslaving (among other things. this is just one example) other humans since the dawn of civilization and on a large scale, that didn't stop the growth of art, culture, science etc.

But our ethics progress and evolve. Similarly, treating other species as commodities for our consumption has been done for millennia but it doesn't mean we should keep doing it.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#318

Post by kj98uo » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #100

bambax wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am willing to sacrifice an insane amount of animal lives in order to save anyone human. That is insane, and psychopathic. But it is shared by many (most?) humans. The result will be that there will be no animals left, and soon afterwards, no humans left either. Another question is, how many humans are you willing to sacrifice to save your wife? Your child? Is your child worth a specific number of human lives, in…

> That is insane, and psychopathic. But it is shared by many (most?) humans. Is that not a contradiction? When you find yourself thinking that the majority of humans are the abnormal ones...

Your argument is that the majority opinion is never psychopathic? Technically, if you were referring only to insanity, I might agree that an operational definition of insanity is anything that a majority of the population doesn't believe. But that doesn't mean the view is not psychopathic.

This definition of insanity might also not be correct. After all, was Galileo insane because most people (assuming they followed the church) didn't agree with his views?

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#319

Post by filoeleven » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

cheese_goddess wrote: post #309

filoeleven wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a 2017 article: “According to the UN, globally [concentrated animal feeding operations] account for 72% of poultry, 42% of egg, and 55% of pork production.” It’s entirely plausible that most animals live under those conditions by now, or will quite soon without intervention. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/18/rise-of-...

Those are not the numbers quoted by the OP, though. Anyway, yes, it seems like I'm wrong and the majority of chickens are grown in intensive farms. For pigs though, 55% is about half of all animals. But I don't want to argue over margins. The point I'm making in my comments above and elsewhere in this thread is that in most of the world most farms are not factory farms. This is still the case. Note also the title of…

Late reply, thanks for responding.

> in most of the world most farms are not factory farms

From the perspective of animal welfare, the number of farms matters less than the number of animals raised in horrible conditions. So if factory farms raise 50% of the animals, or even 30% or 20%, this is still a huge problem to me.

I mostly agree with your last paragraph. I have friends who are farmers, who raised and loved and posted Instagram pics of their delightful pair of goats, knowing that they were raised to be food. They slaughtered them eventually, and cooked and ate them for the meal at their wedding ceremony. I do not understand this mentality, but I do know that for the years they raised them, the goats lived a great life.

To me, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” applies here. Arguments (which I don’t think you have made) about “more cows born is better than fewer cows born” don’t hold water. Quality of life for farmed animals is important. Small-scale farms on the whole do a much better job of making that happen.