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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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

> which is why I keep to a vegan diet

Animals are killed to provide for your vegan diet too, though you can argue they are indirectly killed. And then there is the moral issue of murdering plants and consuming them.

> Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together

The same goes for plants/vegetation used to feed vegans. Unless you are grazing the great plains like wild buffalo.

> just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil.

What about clearing the land for avocado, almond, etc? Also, do you know what helps replenish the soil? Animals...

> the evidence is all around us that industrial-style

Except that the only way vegan diet works is through industrialized farming/transporting/etc. There are no such things as a vegan homestead. You cannot live harmoniously in nature via a vegan diet. Whereas an omnivore diet can be supported by a homestead.

You can argue industrialized farming is bad. But that's the only kind of farming that can support vegans. An inuit in alaska or a homesteader in vermont cannot survive on locally produced vegan diet.

As a matter of fact, no human can survive in nature on a vegan diet. All humans on a vegan diet would die of starvation/disease in nature. It's why no vegan human society has ever existed.

You can't be against industrialized farming and be for veganism. You have to be one or the other because they are necessarily contradictory of each other. Omnivore can be against industrialized farming because we can survive without it, unlike vegans.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#142

As a dane I'm not really proud that these things were here to being with

And as another Dane, I am digusted and have beeen for many years. Would that vis-a-vis mink farmers as a group this virus had a sense of poetic justice.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#143
post #18

This is one of the serious dangers with the idea of letting the virus run wild to achieve herd immunity: you create a lot of animal reservoirs. Though minks do seek way riskier than average.

I would consider it the danger of lockdown. We guarantee that the virus is still festering somewhere on the planet, and that vulnerable populations remain around the world, risking flareups. With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over. In any case, even if this mink-mutant variant is slightly deadlier, the data from Sw…

You mention the IFR but what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage?

Can we please address this fact that scares a lot of us? We already know the death rate is low for groups that are not at risk but it seems even healthy people are suffering from "long COVID" with serious long term implications.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 veg…

Well, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To speak of "anthropomorphizing" animals is a bit outdated... as the primatologist Franz de Waal puts it, people who use that term are in "anthropodenial". Today's biologists and ethologists largely acknowledge that at least higher animals are sentient beings, with consciousness and a full complement of complex emotions and reasoning ability. You can argue that humans are on top in overall cognitive abilities, but it's really only by degree, not by fundamental kind... our cognitive machinery is only bigger than most other animals', not really different.

As for your statement that animals' feelings "don't matter", well, why not? Not too long ago humans of one skin color said that the feelings of other humans of another skin color don't matter. Then we made some progress, and now to say that is considered barbaric. And many humans today are beginning to think it's time to make some more progress and realize that non-human animals' feelings also do matter.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 veg…

> stop anthropomorphizing animals

They aren't. No-one is saying that a pig has the same moral standing as a human.

> They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter

So you believe that animals are just automata with no consciousness? That animal cruelty cannot exist even in principle, any more than cruelty to sand?

Descartes believed this. Today, we know better.

> to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry

This doesn't address the matter of whether or not it's cruel.

> 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.

Do you believe animals are conscious and capable of suffering, or not? Either way, it doesn't matter that they die in the end. If animals are conscious, it doesn't inform our morality that they are destined to die. People are also destined to die, but this doesn't impact our moral obligation to care about their suffering. If animals are not conscious, it doesn't matter whether they are destined to die.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#146
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more people would give plant based "meat" a try. Some of the sausages and burgers available are mind blowing.

If I don't eat meat for the taste (which is a gross notion to me) but for the nutritional value does plant based substitute provide at least comparable nutrition? Does it have the aminoacids I would get from meat?

The bioavailability is much lower and it’s usually filled with factory oils like soybean oil which is not very healthy.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#147
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barely anyone cares about fur products, but people are too stuburn to stop general meat consumption - even if not totally - not matter the cost. Eating more vegan meals is probably the best personal action one can make for the environment. Most other significant actions can only be made on a corporate level.

I wish more people would give plant based "meat" a try. Some of the sausages and burgers available are mind blowing.

If I want meat I will eat meat. Plants aren't meat. If you want people to eat plants then promote some vegan dishes that are good on their own without relying on comparisons to something else. "It tastes like meat" is not a compelling pitch.

Bacon isn't advertised as "better than plants" or "tastes like plants". It doesn't need to.

BMW doesn't run commercials during NFL games where members of the public think their cars are Chevys.

When you pitch "plant meat" you are implying plants are inferior to meat in some way.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#148

That's horrible, and how can anyone find that ok. Per "Guns, Germs, and Steel", it's not even strategic, because diversification of existing strains should naturally select the least deadly, as well as spread antibodies across species boundaries.

> should naturally select the least deadly This only works for diseases where symptoms and being contagious are concurrent. In the case of Covid-19 we know that humans can be contagious without experiencing negative symptoms. The potentially fatal symptoms appear later on. The danger with that is that there is no reason for evolutionary processes to favor a less deadly strain as the disease has a window to spread bef…

It would be able to spread further in 4 weeks, or even further still in 52 years...

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#149
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I don't eat meat for the taste (which is a gross notion to me) but for the nutritional value does plant based substitute provide at least comparable nutrition? Does it have the aminoacids I would get from meat?

The bioavailability is much lower and it’s usually filled with factory oils like soybean oil which is not very healthy.

In the documentary "Game Changer" they said this is FUD by the meat industry.

Re: Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

#150

This is fucking dystopian and despicable. Reminds me of "2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993157 Just reading these headlines puts a damper on my ability to find joy in anything for a while. The words "cull millions" should not be happening to anything, in any sane world. How are people so fucking desensitized to the grim practices of fa…

I don't disagree with you that this is horrible... but you do know what the "happy path" for animals on farms is - right?
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