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Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

bbc.co.uk

451–460 of 474 posts

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#451
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll think about that over my steak & eggs breakfast tomorrow. I thought about it over bacon this morning, but it seems almost too dumb an idea to give more than a passing thought. In the spirit of considering the opposing viewpoint, I will add a healthy amount of sausage gravy to my breakfast on the following day during contemplation, however I make no promises that my conclusions will skew in favor of seasoned inse…

Maybe actually try to think about it once, neutrally. If you spend any time around animals like dogs, cats, horses or even cattle, you’ll notice they exhibit signs of a character: they show affection, have bad mornings, nightmares, favourite foods and care for their offspring with what you’d call love in humans. This pretty clearly indicates some kind of sentience, meaning a feeling of subjectivity (all of this is so…

Years ago I worked on a farm raising cattle. We would take great care of the animals every day, often hand feeding cows, but especially the calfs with apples and such. A very enjoyable event was at spring time, when letting the cattle out to grass, they would go completely crazy and jump around.

When an animal had the right age and weight, it would be shot and slaughtered. The process would then start over. Both then and now, I eat meat with the greatest pleasure and will continue to do so. Sorry, your anthropomorphism issues don't affect me and most others.

> I don’t want to control your life. I believe this is a logical conclusion thinking will eventually get anyone to, given the effort - and moral integrity.

How nice it must feel to be so superior :) I hope this will be enough copeism for you, to handle that 90% of the world population will continue to eat meat. As people are lifted out of poverty, they want to eat meat no matter how much you preach.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#452
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I always forget that billions of animals suffering is somehow okay if it's about reputation or tasty food. My bad.

It's absolutely OK. Nobody really cares about some nebulous "suffering" of animals. We want to eat and eat well.

It's only nebulous if you close your eyes and go lalala because you can't handle reality. But whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep, I guess.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#453
post #67
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole insect flour debate is so braindead. We have billions of people to feed. Dried and shredded insects provide a great protein yield, can be produced incredibly efficient, and aren’t as destructive to the planet as lifestock. Many cultures have been consuming insects for ages. There is nothing unsafe, unnatural, or otherwise „bad“ about using insects for food - other than an embarrassing, unreflective revulsi…

My culture doesn’t consume insects and we don’t intend to start.

Then don't eat them.

But don't forbid other people (in Italy) to be able to eat them.

"I don't want to do X, so nobody should be allowed to do X". It drives me bonkers.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely OK. Nobody really cares about some nebulous "suffering" of animals. We want to eat and eat well.

It's only nebulous if you close your eyes and go lalala because you can't handle reality. But whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep, I guess.

I can handle it just fine, thanks.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking some decent ideas but I do not agree on the Heracleum mantegazzianum point (we use to call it borschevik). 1. Any invasive specie known today is about transporting an organism, evolutionally willing to live from one place to another. GMO organism aren't evolutionally willing to live, they just genetically willing to give us better tomatoes. 2. Absence of non-GMO is not a problem at all if I still have…

> Any invasive specie known today is about transporting an organism, evolutionally willing to live from one place to another. GMO organism aren't evolutionally willing to live Evolution doesn't have a concept of will. It does have the concept of survival. Survival of the fittest (yes, I know it's a simplification). Nearly every species is invasive given lack of external controls. For example, Sweden needs to kill 100…

How does pest-resistant and herb-resistant tomato might survive in the environments with neither herbicides nor pesticides? Especially if the primary goal for modifying the gene was to make the tomato just yummier. You are talking reasonable things but I'm talking from the position of farmer who knows how easy is to break a useful plant and how hard is to destroy any useless one with decentralized root system and easy-peasy flower which can produce thousands of seeds per one stick in few weeks and nothing more.

You are writing correct things but the experience which is in my hands tells me that you are not right about properties of invasive specie vs properties of typical crop.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only nebulous if you close your eyes and go lalala because you can't handle reality. But whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep, I guess.

I can handle it just fine, thanks.

Then either you're unaware or you're a sociopath.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings) So were the bodily functions of the wild bison, and a boatload of other species that have disappeared or shrunk togheter with their methane output in rough equivalence to the growth in livestock and it's methane output (at least in the US tho I assume such calculations would be similar elsewhere.) Additionally anything they put o…

Here are some objectively true facts: 1. Cows emit a lot of methane 2. Methane warms the planet 3. Warming the planet is bad for humans 4. We can easily replace cows with other animals and plants that warm the planet a lot less It doesn't matter that wild bison used to do the same thing, this is the situation we're in. Unlike with wild bison, we are in full control now and we can simply stop making more cattle withou…

>2. Methane warms the planet >3. Warming the planet is bad for humans

So does CO2 (to a much lesser extent per quantity yes) Yet the issue we have today is not due to countless forest fires for hundreds of thousands of years. Because that CO2 too is part of a carbon cycle. And if those trees rotted instead they'd still largely release that co2. It is still accurate to say the CO2 of those fires warms the planet. It is inaccurate to say it is part of the cause of global warming. It is thus inaccurate to claim that stopping those fires would have been a viable part of a solution to stopping global warming even if we could.

After all the co2 ppm has shot up insanely since the start of the industrial revolution. Those first engines on coal and oil contributed to our issue today and anything similar has done the same since. The large amount of cows and their farts back then did not.

So....If we stopped introducing new hydrocarbons, didn't set off feedback loops and kept the livestock and their farts and manure would temperatures go up due to the lifestock? We could reasonably assume no.

>Counterpoint: no we don't. Who is we? I challenge you to find a single person who both advocates for less cow consumption because of the climate impact and promotes more fossil fuel consumption. I don't think such a person exists.

I don't think they're advocating for more fossil fuel use. That's not what I said. The person you should challenge me to find is easily found in the majority of people. I've saw plenty of people at my previous workplace (recent job change) saying they tried to eat less meat. Few even stopped it. We were/are well off so no qualms about the price in that calculation i'd say. If you'd ask em a plain question like should we strive to stop using hydrocarbons altogether few might even answer yes without delving too deep into the implications They still drove to work every day and would continue to do so indefinitely. They still worked for a massively polluting corporation. Still traveled by plane and had a carbon footprint that's ridiculous in contrast to the situation or that of many people in less developed countries and they all patted themselves on the back for contributing their part in stopping climate change whilst contributing massively to it barreling onwards. The bit they did do not actually affecting long term results.

Now take the situation where we stop pumping up oil, gas and such and you get an even better sample because it's a lot more tactile of a matter when almost every damn industry heavily depends on fossil fuels in various ways leading to massive layoffs and degrowth, foodprices skyrocket, etc I dare say finding support for an actual solution among them given that case becomes difficult.

Is that me arguing for continued use of fossil fuels? No. Is that me giving up? No. But it does remind me of scenes in 'Don't look up' where they suggest trying alternative solutions first until it's too late ...and it's extremely frustrating.

>I mean, ok, if you want to give up I guess I can't stop you, but can you at least keep it to yourself and not try to bring everyone else down with you?

I don't want to give up in finding a solution but when a big part of the stuff put forward is not a solution at all it becomes discouraging.

In my country for example our greens championing climate change want to phase out nuclear powerplants which provide the majority of power and phase em out all together. Their proposed solution has been to build gas plants to provide variable output to encourage renewable investment however the plan requires it to be main output for a very very long time and even then cause a shortage. The massive subsidy contract to get companies to build these gas plants span decades with no scaledown.

Pointing out the likely fossil fuel use and/or land use implications that'll stem from what you champion is not me giving up. It's more like you don't want to address it.

>Yes, exactly, I'm glad we're on the same page. Quickly phasing out cattle would buy us a LOT of time, like decades.

The atmospheric halflife of methane is 9 years for one.

>Go back in time and keep all the hydrocarbons in the ground" is not an option, they've already been burned and they're already warming the planet and we're in a crisis now.

We are still doing it. We are still doing it on a massive. insane. scale. We are not stopping. Hell there's no clear indication we're slowing down nearly enough When we will it will probably be because we reached peak oil. In the meantime we do a lot of bs revolving around it.[1]

And this is why i brought up things like the sequestration projects and plastics recycling scam that you considered totally irrelevant. Because it feels to me like another non solution being popular because it is les opposed (because we don't want to touch actual ones too much and harm our standard of living drastically in the process, etc) making us all feel like we're doing something about the problem whilst long term it does little to nothing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/16/iraq.iraqtimel...

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#458
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is tasty and no amount of your religious preaching is going to change that.

Equally arguable: Rape feels good and no amount of preaching is changing that. Has similarly been part of human culture for time immemorial. I still consider it desirable to reduce the amount of rape to 0, regardless of how important it might feel to rapists.

This is incredibly counterintuitive as really what you mean is "rape feels good to a rapist". That's the important part. I feel like the majority of people, if held at gunpoint and forced to rape somebody, would not be comfortable, they would not enjoy it and it would be a scarring, traumatic experience.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#459
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. Because plants don't have a central nervous system. Animals do. Plants don't feel pain. Animals do. It's not hard.

So would you be okay with slaughtering animals painlessly and then eating them?

No: An animal is capable of having a subjective existence, emotions and sensations. Slaughtering them needlessly (ie., for luxury purposes) is not okay to me.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#460
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe actually try to think about it once, neutrally. If you spend any time around animals like dogs, cats, horses or even cattle, you’ll notice they exhibit signs of a character: they show affection, have bad mornings, nightmares, favourite foods and care for their offspring with what you’d call love in humans. This pretty clearly indicates some kind of sentience, meaning a feeling of subjectivity (all of this is so…

Years ago I worked on a farm raising cattle. We would take great care of the animals every day, often hand feeding cows, but especially the calfs with apples and such. A very enjoyable event was at spring time, when letting the cattle out to grass, they would go completely crazy and jump around. When an animal had the right age and weight, it would be shot and slaughtered. The process would then start over. Both then…

> Sorry, your anthropomorphism issues don't affect me and most others.

It's astonishing to me how the mere idea that beings other than humans do experience a subjective existence is so foreign, some people will instantly disregard it as antromorphism. Accepting that other species are not automatons doesn't automatically ascribe them human traits.

Even more astonishing to me is the observation that it seems to enrage people like you a lot to simply advocate (ie, "preach") for less cruelty towards animals; and how those people always drag the issue down to a meaningless personal level. This isn't about me, or you, or "winning" anything. I simply think less existences should have to end just so privileged people's taste buds can go nuts, so that's what I argue for.

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