World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#151

Post by mbil » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #134

difosfor wrote: post #59

I suppose it's slightly more animal friendly. On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. Working towards one final giant culling of all unnaturally engineered animals and just continuing on with a small numb…

> nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit You, as a consumer, directly dictate to companies what is profitable and what's not by what you choose to buy and what you choose not to buy. Dichotomy of profit and ethics doesn't make any sense: profit is a signal which among other things also includes information about what consumers think if ethical or unethical, and how important it is to them.

Everything profitable is ethical? I disagree. Supply chains are opaque and complex and there’s a diffusion of responsibility by the time you reach the level of decision-making consumers. I may give money to a company that is doing something unethical without my really knowing or thinking about it.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#152

Post by barkingcat » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #125

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News, where technology > empathy

I value ethics and empathy deeply but, I don't understand vegans and vegetarians. Their biggest line of defense is "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food". That's sadly right. And they implicitly say that "eating plants are OK because, plants are not animals and they're just happen to grow. They don't feel, they don't understand". On the contrary, there's a growing mountain of re…

to inject a bit of humour:

"When I share this research with vegans and vegetarians, their response is: crickets."

I'm suprised the vegetarians you're talking to would suggest crickets, even though that's one of the leading animal protein replacements in the form of insects.

Do vegetarians/vegans have similar ethical objections about eating crickets for food? I suspect so, but I don't know if crickets have the same type of cognition/emotions as vertebrate animals.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#153

Post by triangleman » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

kilian_a wrote: post #109

Orbem from Munich is creating an MRI based approach to determining chicks genders and egg fertility which may be more scalable. https://orbem.ai/

This is great! Probably the best long term solution, like the grape sorting machines we already depend on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AamACDnwRts

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#154

Post by kibwen » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #125

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News, where technology > empathy

I value ethics and empathy deeply but, I don't understand vegans and vegetarians. Their biggest line of defense is "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food". That's sadly right. And they implicitly say that "eating plants are OK because, plants are not animals and they're just happen to grow. They don't feel, they don't understand". On the contrary, there's a growing mountain of re…

I'm unsure what this comment is trying to say. If your objective is to have empathy for plants and thereby eat fewer of them, then you would also seek to eat less meat since raising livestock requires vast amounts of plant-based feed. In addition, any scientist who has ever taken an animal laboratory ethics course will understand that there exists a rough hierarchy of public empathy towards certain animals: first primates, then typical companion animals, then livestock animals, then fish, then vermin, then insects. There is no "gotcha" here; it is entirely reasonable for someone to have more empathy for, say, mammals than they have for grain. And I say all this as someone who eats meat.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#155

Post by golergka » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

mbil wrote: post #151

golergka wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit You, as a consumer, directly dictate to companies what is profitable and what's not by what you choose to buy and what you choose not to buy. Dichotomy of profit and ethics doesn't make any sense: profit is a signal which among other things also includes information about what consumers think if ethical or unethical, and how important it is to them.

Everything profitable is ethical? I disagree. Supply chains are opaque and complex and there’s a diffusion of responsibility by the time you reach the level of decision-making consumers. I may give money to a company that is doing something unethical without my really knowing or thinking about it.

> Everything profitable is ethical?

I never made this claim, as ethics in this case is subjective: some things are ethical in some eyes and unethical in others, and profitability is the mechanism of reaching consensus between these views.

Your point about transparency is valid, I have to admit. However, I don't think that it applies in the case of food production: most meat and animal products consumers are well-aware that in order to get meat, you need to kill someone, and if you want to keep milk and eggs as cheap as possible, you can't afford to treat the animals well.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#156

Post by Falling3 » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #73

KitDuncan wrote: post #48

It is stupid those are called "no-kill" eggs. Still plenty of killing/suffering involved. Just stop eating eggs people. It's not that hard.

Seems like an apt description to me. If you're referring to killing chickens for consumption, eggs have no bearing, it has its own demand.

There's no way to sell eggs and turn a profit without killing hens. Their production wanes as they get older and they are killed to make way for the new generation. This has nothing to do with demand for meat. Your parent comment is right; these are not "no-kill". At best, they're "less-kill".

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#157

Post by WhyNotHugo » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #60

difosfor wrote: post #59

I suppose it's slightly more animal friendly. On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. Working towards one final giant culling of all unnaturally engineered animals and just continuing on with a small numb…

Nothing's ever enough for vegans. > Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. There is increasingly more of that all the time. > On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Another step? They aren't getting any more optimized, if anything new availab…

> Nothing's ever enough for vegans.

Getting human slaves out of the food production process is a great first step, but I like to think that we'll eventually spot inflicting pain on _any_ animal to produce our food.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#158

Post by shalmanese » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

OscarCunningham wrote: post #24

dep_b wrote: post #10

It's very strange to kill male chicks, I'm eating capon instead of regular chicken nowadays because it has much more flavor and a better bite. If people would simply eat them more they also don't have to be killed. Castration is not super animal friendly though.

Egg laying hens are bred for different traits than the ones for meat. So the male chicks of egg laying hens would probably grow more slowly and to a smaller size than ones bred for meat. Thus their meat would be more expensive.

I've always wondered if you could market this as "vegetarian chicken" under the rationale that eating it doesn't cause an increase in net animal death. It may be more expensive but plenty of things are sold as more expensive for the ethical version.

At the end of the day, my suspicion is even most vegetarians don't like being confronted with the realities of egg production.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#159

Post by nromiun » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #125

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News, where technology > empathy

I value ethics and empathy deeply but, I don't understand vegans and vegetarians. Their biggest line of defense is "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food". That's sadly right. And they implicitly say that "eating plants are OK because, plants are not animals and they're just happen to grow. They don't feel, they don't understand". On the contrary, there's a growing mountain of re…

Maybe vegans do that but most vegetarians I know of don't eat meat for one simple reason: they are disgusted by it. Vegetarians don't really care about the ethics of it. In fact they are fine with animal based products, like milk.

Re: World's first no-kill eggs go on sale in Berlin (2018)

#160

Post by kaycebasques » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #125

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News, where technology > empathy

I value ethics and empathy deeply but, I don't understand vegans and vegetarians. Their biggest line of defense is "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food". That's sadly right. And they implicitly say that "eating plants are OK because, plants are not animals and they're just happen to grow. They don't feel, they don't understand". On the contrary, there's a growing mountain of re…

As a real vegan (not a meme about vegans that you saw from meat eaters) I can confidently tell you that "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food" is not my biggest line of defense.

My biggest lines of defense are:

* Dr. Kim Williams, former president of the American College of Cardiology, said "there are two kinds of cardiologists, vegans, and those who haven't read the data"

* Animal agriculture is responsible for 20-33% of all freshwater consumption globally

* Mass cultivation of animals increases the chances of pandemic

* 41% of mainland USA is used for grazing livestock, yet meat only provides 18% of our calories; feeding the world on a vegan diet could reduce farmland use by 75% or more

* Going plant-based for two-thirds of meals could reduce food-related carbon emissions by 60% (the way we produce, distribute, and refrigerate food is a huge contributor of global emissions)

* 70-75% of soybeans grown globally are for livestock, only 6% are used for human food products (meat eaters often try to claim that soy production is terrible for the environment; surprise, surprise, meat consumption is the main driver)