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

theguardian.com

261–270 of 427 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meat only provides 18% of our calories But what percentage of our protein?

I don't know but I think I can anticipate your concern. It's very viable to meet your protein needs on a vegan diet. That stuff about vegans not being able to get complete proteins is meat industry propaganda. Furthermore, the World Health Organization said that only 10 to 15% of daily calories need to come from protein. I believe I've also read that there's no proven benefit to all of the extra protein that American…

I disagree. I was vegetarian for 2 years for ethical reasons. Animal-based protein is much easier to digest. And your average person perhaps doesn't need much protein...because your average person has no concept of exercise or fitness except as something other people do. Then your average person falls victim to metabolic syndrome and other western lifestyle related diseases. Once you set fitness goals your nutrition perspective changes. There are very few vegan/vegetarian athletes.

I agree with the perspective on limiting animal suffering and I buy pastured meat. I agree with the vegan perspective on many things but I think its limited and fails to consider other aspects of the human condition. I oppose the widespread mockery and lack of respect that vegans get. The health issues associated with an ethical commitment to avoiding animal products makes it more worthy of respect.

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

#262
post #260

>Male chicks don’t grow fast enough to justify the cost of feeding them up for meat. Why is this? Logically that would mean that either 1) females grow faster than males, or 2) all chickens that are used for meat are first used for laying eggs, because that's the only economic way. I'm fairly sure that neither is the case.

Chickens raised for meat are different breeds from chickens raised for laying eggs. Male chicks of the egg-laying variety are good for neither meat nor eggs (being unable to lay them).

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

#263
post #260

>Male chicks don’t grow fast enough to justify the cost of feeding them up for meat. Why is this? Logically that would mean that either 1) females grow faster than males, or 2) all chickens that are used for meat are first used for laying eggs, because that's the only economic way. I'm fairly sure that neither is the case.

Neither is correct.

Actual answer is: commercially, meat chickens and egg chickens are completely different breeds.

In "broiler" chickens, they put on muscle at an astonishing rate; for laying chickens, they output eggs prodigiously.

The male laying chicks grow so slowly, with a small ultimate body size, as to be economically uncompetitive with broilers.

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

#264

The chickens we raise on our hobby farm are "dual purpose" birds in that they are good for both meat and eggs. That is traditionally how all poultry was raised, really, on family farms, etc. Roosters were raised and fattened until a few months in, and then slaughtered and eaten, while a portion of the hens were kept for laying. The meat from roosters isn't as good, but it's frankly fine overall. There's no reason the…

We found that the dual purpose breeds were pretty mediocre at both purposes. Not great at laying eggs, and scrawny birds when prepared. When we switched to egg layer breeds our egg harvest was substantially larger. I never did try to raise meat birds.

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

#265

This is cool, but doesn't seem like it would scale. When I say scale, I mean farms with a few hundred to a few thousand bird operation, good luck affording this machine. When the article says scale, they mean being able to do this with millions of eggs on an industrial feedlot. Trying to make industrial farming ethical is like trying to make fossil fuels not harmful to the environment.

Why would you conclude this?

This is a completely automated process, and the algorithm is "embarrassingly parallel". It's cheaper, of course, to merely sex the chicks and grind up the males, but there are a lot of ways to handle that, from charging extra to simply mandating a switch to this process.

Small-scale farms could pool the purchase of the egg processor, or buy their chicks instead of breeding them, and the price of any industrial process goes down fairly predictably over time. I'm just not seeing what you're seeing here.

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

#266

Every time I see how animals on factory farms are treated I want to take up hunting.

I continually struggle with the fact that, while I don't find eating animals morally wrong when treated and killed humanly, I don't think I could kill an animal myself.

There are many things we may not be able to stomach, which are morally acceptable. I would not be a good surgeon, content moderator examining gore and child abuse, crime scene cleaner, spider wrangler.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegans don't face any such dilemma. The animal kingdom is quite clearly defined and vegans are pretty consistently defined as not consuming animals or animal products. If you wish to take a more extreme position that considers other forms of life (and almost nobody appears to), that's no longer just veganism: it's something more extreme.

Vegans obviously consume animals. We are all inhabited by by and, through circumstance, kill and consume countless microscopic animals, such as mites.

I'm not sure that counts as "consumption." We also "cultivate" countless microscopic animals such as bacteria in the gut and on the skin but that doesn't really count as it is both unavoidable and requires no choice. Vegans choose not to consume animals to the greatest extent possible and that's what is being discussed.

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

#268
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote you : > There is a whole lot of citation needed on this reply

Gladly. I invite you to come to my country and see how farmers/maquila workers live, in what conditions do they work, who they work for and which populations most benefit from this farmers/workers living conditions. As I said before, empathy is a great quality to cultivate, and so does awareness.

I'm not sure you understand how citation works.

A first-hand account of farmers' living conditions in your local area isn't a reliable source that shows that there are "whole continents where people are treated as commodities". Nor do I see how this specifically relates to the underlying topic of veganism. Perhaps you can link the two topics so that I can see the point you are making?

> As I said before, empathy is a great quality to cultivate, and so does awareness.

I don't recall disagreeing with this.

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

#269
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there’s a binary switch at any single point from conception to birth to 1 year old where an organism switches from “not conscious to pain” to “conscious to pain”. The first few days / weeks after birth are certainly louder but otherwise not much different developmentally from the preceding days.

You certainly didn't have a brain or nervous system at the moment you were conceived. So there had to be some point in your development where you made the switch to being "conscious to pain".

It’s just a fun thought experiment.

If you decide that consciousness [of pain] can’t possibly be a binary switch, then perhaps that also means being conscious isn’t a binary property.

If it isn’t a binary property, then is it a property that varies in degree based on developmental age (e.g. counting day 0 as conception)? Is it a quantity that can be measured quantitatively?

If it can be measured, do some fully developed humans have more or less of it? Do some non-humans have more or less of it?

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

#270

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.

The most funny argument used by vegans is: "we are closer to nature". There's nothing more natural than animals eating each other.

And no, humans are not herbivores. Some primates might be, but human evolution started the moment our monkey ancestors decided to get off the tree and eat meat. By promoting veganism you're trying to undo the last 3-5 millions of years of human evolution. Talk about Catholic Church pushing us back to Middle ages... /s

Another argument that I hate: by not eating animals you reduce suffering. If we take that to it's logical conclusion, the only way for you to not cause any sufferning is to die. That's why Buddhists (for whom "reducing suffering" is a religious imperative) came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu

Life is an infininte circle of joy, pleasure, sadness, suffering, death... If you try to eliminate one of them you are against the life itself.

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