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New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

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Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#171

Post by Ancapistani »

hangonhn wrote: post #88
Ancapistani wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their current implementation, yeah, they’re pretty bad. There is a need for something like it, though. A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them.

> A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them. This makes me really curious because that behavior seems very maladaptive for a species. That leads me to wonder if something else, ie. the environment or domestication, is leading to this behavior rather than pigs being really, really prone to wiping out their own species. Does anyone know why they do this in a farm environment?

They definitely do it in the wild as well, though likely at lower rates.

They reproduce very quickly - evolution is a numbers game, and yield isn’t part of the equation.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#172

Post by Ancapistani »

barbazoo wrote: post #165
hangonhn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them. This makes me really curious because that behavior seems very maladaptive for a species. That leads me to wonder if something else, ie. the environment or domestication, is leading to this behavior rather than pigs being really, really prone to wiping out their own species. Does anyone know why they do this in a farm environment?

We're also genetically engineered them to be much heavier than they would be naturally.

That depends on the breed, but sure. I’ve not seen it happen at noticeably lower rates for less sturdy breeds for whatever it’s worth.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#173

Post by whycome »

Havoc wrote: post #22

The sooner we get to true lab grown meat the better Meat is nice but would be better if we can skip the whole suffering thing

Sometimes people look back on slavery as an institution and wonder "how did they ever do that?" But the thing is, it was so ingrained economically and culturally.

In a hundred years (or less?) we will look back on meat from tortured animals with similar incredulity.

The abolitionist movement coincided with the industrial revolution. Maybe accessible meat replacements will have the same result.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#174

Post by Insanity »

ffsm8 wrote: post #149
Insanity wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way. Breeding animals _specifically for killing them_, no matter how they are killed, is not what I'd consider humane. If we take 'humane' literally, it means to be treated as you would treat a human. I doubt we'd do this to humans. So the only way to be okay with this is adhering to a form of specieism.

> I doubt we'd do this to humans. So the only way to be okay with this is adhering to a form of specieism. The obvious historical pointer to the Holocaust as a well covered example of people being treated like that - and a fact often swept under the rug: people are being treated essentially like that in North Korea, today. An older interview but still good to watch https://youtu.be/ZGJm4bjRaaE?is=E2hFWYi-ynPnWGfm

Ok, I should maybe have said “I doubt we’d think it’s Okay to do this to humans”.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#175

Post by SequoiaHope »

sosodev wrote: post #58
Havoc wrote: post #22

The sooner we get to true lab grown meat the better Meat is nice but would be better if we can skip the whole suffering thing

This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not lab grown or suffering. Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way. The problem is that it costs slightly more and our society is more concerned with cost than animal suffering.

Strong disagree. There absolutely are “more humane” methods but they are still not humane. Forced separation of mothers from their children (standard practice) and killing the animals before their natural death are two inhumane features of even “free range” practices.

There is no humane way to kill a creature against its will.

To be clear, free range represents a major improvement over the unconscionable horrors of factory farms, but it is not flatly “humane” without qualification.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#176

Post by doublerabbit »

ryandrake wrote: post #61

If the billionaires in power thought that they could grow their wealth 1% more by forcing the rest of us humans into gestation crates, they would do it in a heartbeat.

Don't they already do that? The same as the office cubicle.

Work, Sleep, Eat. Your limited freedom is controlled by money which is earned by being forced to work in an office. The difference is your allowed to go home at X but must return at Y.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#177

Post by diacritical »

hypeatei wrote: post #52
SoftTalker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the suffering is the point?

It is, because you can't have pleasure without suffering but I think these conversations should focus on the amount (maybe as a percentage) of suffering that someone/something experiences. If you were locked in a room and being tortured, would you think it'd be appropriate for me to go: "they feed you at the end of each torture session, isn't it worth it to keep going for that?"

> you can't have pleasure without suffering

That's not true, though. There's no physical law that states that an X amount of suffering is required for an Y amount of pleasure. Nothing prevents you from taking a brain that's feeling pleasure and keeping it in that state. We don't have the technology, but it's not impossible theoretically. It's a configuration of neurons that somehow gives rise to qualia. Maybe in the evolutionary or day-to-day psychological sense we "need" suffering to overcome adversity and get stronger or not to become too content with what we have and lose it, but that's very far from a law of nature or a necessity in the real sense. And obviously some animals live their whole lives in bliss, others in agony. So it's not like there aren't any real life counterexamples.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#178

Post by nebula8804 »

Havoc wrote: post #22

The sooner we get to true lab grown meat the better Meat is nice but would be better if we can skip the whole suffering thing

The ship may have sailed for a lot of consumers. This along with EVs are one of those things that people try once and if they don't like it they won't try again. Probably helps to explain why all the stocks of these companies were riding high for quite a while but then collapsed.

How do you rebrand after people have already associated your product with past failed incumbents?

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#179

Post by diacritical »

abound wrote: post #4
bayarearefugee wrote: post #3

Humanity is almost definitely going to wipe itself out in the not too distant future through an avoidable (if not for the selfish greed of many of us) climate change resource war Great Filter event. This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.

One of my favorite questions to ask people is something like: "Imagine a button appears in front of you. Pressing it will snap all human beings painlessly out of existence. Do you push the button?" Some people get caught in minutiae about downstream effects, I tell them it can go however they want (house pets are free or gone too, planes land harmlessly, etc) In my circles, I've found it's about 50/50 button pushers…

Look up on negative utilitarianism and the Benevolent World Exploder if you want to find more info on the button idea.

Basically the idea is that if minimizing suffering is more important than maximizing pleasure, a world with no life would have no suffering whatsoever.

Regardless of whether you believe that, removing humans only would still leave the unfathomably huge amount of suffering of wild animals and after a while someone else will evolve and take the role of humans. However, if we leave humans exist, they could either destroy everything anyway (like with nukes or AI) or eliminate suffering like David Pearce and others imagine.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#180

Post by dehrmann »

delecti wrote: post #106
dehrmann wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had some this weekend. If you support this, visit one of the handful of restaurants selling it to show interest and support the companies. The salmon I had was ready for prime time in the right context, and if you didn't know, you probably wouldn't have noticed.

I'm surprised to hear that it works with fish in particular. I wouldn't have thought it could replicate the flakiness of real fish. That's great to hear honestly. I'd assumed it would mostly be limited to cultured ground beef and chicken nuggets.

> flakiness of real fish

It was in sushi. They're halfway cheating because it's not cooked, but getting the look right is very impressive compared to ground meat.

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