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

theguardian.com

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

#331

Post by cies »

mkolodny wrote: post #327
bayindirh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From your line of reasoning, I'd guess that you have no moral issues with eating humans. If eating animals and plants is the same, then isn't eating non-human and human animals the same? If you do have a moral problem with eating humans, then you probably have moral hierarchy - humans' lives are the most important, and every other life is less important. Some vegetarians have a different moral hierarchy - animals' li…

Animals we eat, eat plants. So eating plants directly is being more sparing with plant lives.

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

#332

Post by belorn »

kaycebasques wrote: post #160
bayindirh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" * Ani…

Animal agriculture has its list of problem but so does crop agriculture. There are no free lunches here. One can argue about which problems are more harmful than the other, and its pretty clear that there exist some horrible practices in Animal agriculture. However when faced with a list of only the harms from the animal agriculture, I feel forced to mention a bit more facts about the whole picture.

For example, freshwater consumption is important in regions which lacks freshwater. Crop agriculture is however the most common source for water pollution, occurs in all regions, and is not only a major environmental problem but also harms the supply of fresh water even if its not responsible for the primary consumption. Fertilizers and pesticides being the main culprits here. Sadly there is very little food in stores that do not have a direct link to fertilizers and pesticides except for wild fish, shellfish and seaweed.

In quite a few times I have seen studies showing that the lowest carbon emission in any food group would be either shellfish, seaweed, or insects. No fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, minimal land usage and sustainable. Vegan would exclude two of those, and seaweed is pretty rare in non-asian diets.

In general I try to look for marks of sustainability when buying food. Small producers, non-factory farm operations, local, crops that are in season, and so on. The article here focus on the issue of sex determining the eggs, but my primary priority is the area that the hen has. In EU you can have 16 hens located in a small box the size of 0.2m². That is plain cruelty and so I choose eggs under the mark that require 4m², a requirement for outside area, always access to natural lighting, and given crops grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides.

Is it perfect? No. Not using fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides is still being debated and researched if they are better for the environment or worse since land usage increases from it, but since I regularly dive in the Baltic sea I am constantly reminded by the harm done already by the revolution of chemical fertilizers produced primarily by natural gas.

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

#333

Post by Retric »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #279
kaycebasques wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No disrespect but I see this "I'm an athlete, I need more protein" thing all the time. It's yet another meme that has spread that has the convenient side effect (or main effect) of shutting people off from considering the effects of their food choices. There are an abundance of plant-based protein supplements for hitting your nutrition targets. I don't know if you're talking about the broader community of people who…

I wasn't sure about this because it contradicts my priors so I did some quick searching: Venus Williams is a "chegan" and uses milk-based protein. Lewis Hamilton is a driver and is unlikely to have protein demands related to his sport that are different than the average person. Colin Kaepernick became a vegan at approximately the same time he stopped playing professionally. Kyrie Irving: I can't find what he does for…

While it’s hard to rule out genetic abnormalities, there is a huge difference between being fit and the kind of physical trauma associated with absolute peak human performance.

Plant based protean is often used for pure muscle building simply due to cost. With actual vegan examples being Barny du Plessis a bodybuilder, and Kendrick Yahcob Farris a weightlifter.

In terms of endurance Jack Lindquist a track cyclist shows that’s likely viable for the overwhelming majority of people. So while I think it likely takes more effort that’s in part due to market forces and economy of scale not inherent physical differences. If anything the higher amount of calories burned by top athletes often mean they need a larger quantity but lower percentage of protein in their diets.

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

#334

Post by notatoad »

aazaa wrote: post #292
majewsky wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume the external pressure causes the shell to elastically deform so that it contains less volume, hence a drop of fluid is squeezed out.

Isn't that drop experiencing the same pressure as well? If so, what causes the fluid to escape?

that droplet would be experiencing the same pressure from the air pushing inward, but also a pressure pushing outward proportional to the amount the egg has contracted. more pressure pushing out than in means fluid comes out.

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

#335

Post by tehjoker »

kgwgk wrote: post #143
tehjoker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit less horrific... the line between egg and birth is a clear line between brutalizing an organism capable of feeling pain and one that might not have reached that point (depending on how close to hatching it is).

> the line between egg and birth is a clear line > (depending on how close to hatching it is) Not so clear a line then.

Yea, it's not completely clear where the actual line is, but it's absolutely clear where it is not. So the claims of this company should be inspected to see if they are closer or further from the real line.

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

#336

Post by bitwize »

slothtrop wrote: post #100
KevinAiken wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mollusks include Cephalopods like octopus and cuttlefish, which are on the higher side of the consciousness gradient.

Octopus have a pop culture reputation for being intelligent owing to lab maze experiments, but their intelligence isn't well known or defined. They have an average lifespan between 3-6 months to a few years depending on the species. "Until the 1970s, researchers tried to classify the intellectual abilities of different animals and rank them within a universal intelligence scale with humans at the top. That view crumb…

Octopuses have been known to:

* unscrew the lid of a peanut butter jar to get a treat without training

* hop from one tank to another to prey on the fish in the tank. This was observed quite by accident and not part of an experiment at first. In fact the octopus waited for its human handlers to leave the room before going in for the kill; the incident was caught on camera.

* gently grasp the hand of a friendly human with their tentacles, and squirt water through their siphon at a disliked human

All spontaneously, without training or prompting.

That last bit is particularly interesting to me, because they are recognizable signs of affection and dislike. Octopuses show some semblance of an ability to bond with us, despite having vastly different brains from us.

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

#337

Post by mohn »

aazaa wrote: post #281

> Instead, a laser beam burns a 0.3mm-wide hole in the shell. Then, air pressure is applied to the shell exterior, pushing a drop of fluid out of the hole. The process takes one second per egg and enables fluid to be collected from eggs without touching them. This seems counterintuitive. If the external pressure is equally applied around the egg, what forces the fluid to escape?

That's a good question! I think you're correct that if the increase in external pressure were uniform around the whole egg, it would not push fluid out of the pinhole.

Looking at this 2020 video[0], it seems like the procedure might be:

1) Laser burns pinhole through shell.

2) Robotic pipette applies the marker chemical onto pinhole.

3) Pneumatic grabber picks up egg by its pinhole end (so the atmospheric pressure, relatively higher than the pressure inside the grabber, is pushing a little fluid out).

4) Egg is stored so marker chemical can be read later after it has undergone its reaction.

I found a 2018 video as well[1], but the machine looks a lot different and it's harder to tell how it works.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeAWcF1MxNo&t=26s

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEtauP71oLU

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

#338

Post by everybodyknows »

gadders wrote: post #34
La1n wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the males grow large enough to be edible, It would seem to me these are still killed. Lacto-ovo vegetarians might still prefer no-kill egg as shown in the article.

Unless the chickens are kept after they finish laying eggs, no commercial egg laying is no kill. Most battery or free range hens are killed (or if they're lucky, rescued for home use) at a year old as they approach their first moult.

A farmer friend told me that as egg production declines due to aging, feed consumption actually increases. This was among the factors that drove a soft-hearted novice chicken rancher of his acquaintance out of the business.

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

#339

Post by kelnos »

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…

I think this just depends on your values and moral code, and there's no clear right or wrong here.

I personally do not see a problem with using animals as food. If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans. There are certainly a lot of problems with the sustainability and humane-ness of our livestock farming, but I don't see "become vegetarian/vegan" as the only solution, or even necessarily a desirable one. But getting into a meat vs. no meat debate here isn't ever going to be productive, so that's all I'll say.

I had not known that male chicks are killed after birth in such numbers, and the practice does make me sad. But I also recognize that a lot of people just don't have any kind of emotional response to this sort of thing, and that's ok too. It's great that people are building new technologies to allow us to keep doing what we're doing, but with better treatment of the animals involved, and less waste.

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

#340

Post by soperj »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #287
soperj wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But that doesn't keep me from recognizing the ethical issues with killing and controlling other beings to survive. Does that include plants?

Have you ever raised a garden or slaughtered an animal? I would never hold it against you if you had not, I didn't for the first decades of my life, but anyone who has done both of those things and tries to equate them is not being intellectually honest. Or has the emotional capacity of a potato, which I posit is strictly less than the emotional capacity of a chicken. Again, if you haven't done either of those things…

Both actually. I worked at a slaughterhouse during my summers while at University.

Plants aren't strictly for eating. You use them in everything from building houses to all of the furniture in your house.

Just curious, but what would you rank the emotional capacity of a chicken? Because honestly it's basically non-existent from what I can tell.

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