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World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

reuters.com

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Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#371

Post by ornornor »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #364
ornornor wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother tongue isn’t English and I indeed mixed up rennet and casein because they sound completely different in my language. Natural rennet cheese may be “artisanal” in your corner of the world, it’s 99% of cheese where I live —just in case, 99% might not be totally accurate, it’s an exaggeration to mean “the vast majority”

My mother tongue isn't English either and I live in a corner of the world that has many traditional cheesemakers and a proud cheesemaking culture that goes back centuries if not millenia. Most cheese where I live as in the rest of the world is made with microbial rennet simply because it's cheaper, more available and easier to store and handle. I'm sorry but I don't believe that 99% (or "the vast majority") of cheese…

> how you know this

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empr%C3%A9surage

“ En France, l'utilisation de présure d'origine animale est une des conditions des cahiers des charges pour prétendre aux dénominations de protections fromage fermier, appellation d'origine contrôlée et la marque de l'Union européenne, Label rouge.”

Loosely translated, it means that for a French to cheese to have one of the protected names (Roquefort, Brie de Meaux, Camembert de Normandie, etc) they must use animal rennet. Since farms making these want the protected names because they sell so much better, they use animal rennet.

In the supermarket you can also buy industrial cheese which doesn’t have to use animal rennet. But at the fromagerie they mostly (only?) sell artisanal cheeses, all using animal rennet.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#372

Post by cheese_goddess »

mlspector wrote: post #355
nefitty wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely open to discussing the possibility when it's with someone arguing in good faith. It seems like that's where you're coming from, so thank you. I won't bury the lede further. Plants can't experience pain, at least insofar as we conceive of it, because they don't have nociceptors that signal pain. Therefore, if they do have any sort of phenomenological experience, whether it would be recognizable to us or…

I'm writing the arguments and questions below in good faith. I'm legitimately conflicted over this, and I admit that I haven't engaged in any research on this subject. From what I can tell, the moral argument that you're presenting seems to boils down to the fact that we arbitrarily value animal life more than other kinds of life. I'm not saying that this is somehow "wrong" -- I'm bothered by the fact that the it's o…

(Not the OP). In summary I think you mean that animal rights activists anthropomorphize non-human animals and they want us to treat them like we treat humans. They don't anthropomorphize plants so they don't care what happens to plants. Is that right?

If that's your point, I agree and I think that goes a long way to explain why there are very fewer objections to eating insects, or why many vegetarians are fine eating fish, but not cows.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#373

Post by cheese_goddess »

kuhewa wrote: post #305
nefitty wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Allow" implies some sort of consent. I understand that you mean in an evolutionary sense, but it's clear that most living beings are averse to dying, even when possessing the most biologically primitive nervous systems. I prefer to head off any arguments in bad faith, "well, why don't all the cows just run away?" Some people are very comfortable resorting to satirical absurdity when discussing suffering, as evidence…

I understand what you are saying about implied agency, but it really must have worked like this on some level. Cow (physiology and behaviour) had to allow domestication. People tried to domesticate cheetahs, they didn't breed in captivity.

Jarred Diamond makes a point of this in "Guns, Germs and Steel". I don't have a copy at hand but, from memory, he argues that we domesticated horses but not, say, zebras or onagers because they don't have a disposition that is amenable to domestication. Cheetahs are another famous example, like you say (and I wish we could have domesticated them because then there would be more of them around).

It works the other way also. Humans have the kind of disposition that allows us to domesticate animals. We find it easy to care for other animals. By contrast, lions or wolves would never be able to domesticate sheep because their natural tendency is to kill prey animals on sight, basically. Human's aren't obligate carnivores and despite what some people in certain communities will claim, we are not a predator species and we have no instincts to kill everything that may be food. Check out how little kittens play for example, and how human children play, how many small animals kittens kill and how many small animals human children kill. We have an instinct to nurture and care for other animals and we used it to domesticate our farm animals.

We are not violent, bloodthirsty lions or wolves. We are curious and inquisitive apes and we like to learn new things and figure out how things work. We used this trait to understand how to breed farm animals and how to take care of them and how to use their natural tendencies to our own ends.

And just to be perfectly clear: I don't think that's morally wrong, not in any way, shape, or form and not to any degree at all. It is our compassion and intelligence that has made us farmers of other animals, not our cruelty and greed, like the meat-is-murder people claim. But it is cruelty and greed that is responsible for factory farming and its horrors are something that should rightfully concern us all.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#374

Post by cheese_goddess »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #237
handmodel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I don't quite get. Perhaps eating octopi seems gratuitous since they are expensive and not integrated into everyday customs/life. But hard to imagine an octopus is on a higher status than a pig or a cow which are fairly close to us evolutionarily.

Which is why it makes sense to simply not eat any of them. It seems to be the healthiest option too, as long as you have access to enough healthy calories from plants.

That's not right. You need much more than calories from food. You can take all the calories you need by eating sugar for example, or dietary fat. If you don't eat meat, or cut out any major food groups, you need to be vary careful to supplement your diet with the nutrients that are now missing from it and since we don't really understand nutrition and our needs for nutrients very well, there is a risk of messing up and making yourself unhealthy in the process.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#375

Post by cheese_goddess »

lisper wrote: post #100
silisili wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not joining in on the ethics of meat eating debate at all, but as someone who's lived around chickens a good chunk of life, calling them extremely intelligent would be...a stretch. Pigs though, definitely. Highly underrated animal.

That's surprising. I have no first hand experience, but I have been told by people who keep them as pets that chickens and cows are pretty much in the same league. Both can have distinct personalities.

I don't know about cows, but there's chickens in the farm where I live and they're the dumbest animal I've ever seen. They also don't seem to care when one of them is taken by a predator (something took one of our roosters two nights ago and the other chickens didn't make a sound, although he certainly did).

Pigs are intelligent and sensitive and they have compassion for their kind and other animals. A lady I know worked in a lab that made experiments with pigs and with dogs and she saw pigs taking food on their snouts and giving it to the dogs, who were intentionally left without food, through the bars of their cells. And pigs know when you come to take one of them for the slaughter and will raise hell and try to get in the way and defend their kin. It is a heartbreaking thing killing a pig. It is very unfortunate that pigs don't produce milk or eggs or wool and we just want them for their meat becaus there's no other reason to keep them around than to kill and eat them, unlike cows or goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, horses, donkeys, dogs, cats etc etc...

(I mean, we kill those other animals too, to eat them, but we also keep some of them alive for their other products or work)

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#376

Post by lisper »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #375
lisper wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's surprising. I have no first hand experience, but I have been told by people who keep them as pets that chickens and cows are pretty much in the same league. Both can have distinct personalities.

I don't know about cows, but there's chickens in the farm where I live and they're the dumbest animal I've ever seen. They also don't seem to care when one of them is taken by a predator (something took one of our roosters two nights ago and the other chickens didn't make a sound, although he certainly did). Pigs are intelligent and sensitive and they have compassion for their kind and other animals. A lady I know wo…

Thanks for that data point. It makes me feel quite a bit better about eating chickens, and makes me redouble my efforts to wean myself off bacon. I already don't eat pork in any other form, but it's really hard to pass on a strip of bacon at a breakfast buffet.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#377

Post by cheese_goddess »

sweetheart wrote: post #342
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they actually live 25 years in the wild on average? My understanding was that wild animals have dramatically shorter lives than the same animals in captivity, as a general rule. The exact difference varies from species to species but typically the lifespan would be around half.

Whether a wolf would kill a cow before its 25 years old doesn’t affect our moral duty to not kill animals unnecessarily and prematurely.

We generally don't kill animals "unnecessarily". We kill them to eat them. If we could eat them without killing them, we wouldn't kill them.

We also don't kill them "prematurely". We kill them when it's time to eat them, or else to relieve them of pain.

Also, since we're onto wolves, wolves will kill animals and not eat them (see "surplus killing" article on wikipedia). Conversely, wolves will often eat animals without killing them first. Humans at the very least kill our food before we eat it most of the time.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#378

Post by cheese_goddess »

gfody wrote: post #128
AngryData wrote: post #116

To me the most important questions are, does living a farm style life cause them undue distress and harm, and will they realize they are on a farm instead of just some weird octopus community. For example, the cows I own I can keep on my land and they are perfectly content to munch grass around the different pastures throughout the year as they are rotated, and have free clean shelter in the barn and free hay in the…

can you really compare cows to octopuses? are there even wild cows?

I think the gaur is a legitimately "wild cow" (wild bovine anyway):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaur

I don't think it's a feral breed, coming from once domesticated animals, but I may be wrong.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#379

Post by TaylorAlexander »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #374
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why it makes sense to simply not eat any of them. It seems to be the healthiest option too, as long as you have access to enough healthy calories from plants.

That's not right. You need much more than calories from food. You can take all the calories you need by eating sugar for example, or dietary fat. If you don't eat meat, or cut out any major food groups, you need to be vary careful to supplement your diet with the nutrients that are now missing from it and since we don't really understand nutrition and our needs for nutrients very well, there is a risk of messing up a…

That is why I specified “enough healthy calories”. What I meant was that as long as you have access to enough produce. Basically some people need to eat meat because it’s the only way to get enough nutrition. But if you live in California near a well stocked grocery store for example, then you just need to learn what a healthy vegan diet is and most people will do better on a vegan diet. At least according to NutritionFacts.org. A vegan diet has incredible health benefits including significantly reduced risk of heart disease and cancer.

I was not attempting to say all calories are the same. You definitely have to learn what foods are right to eat. But I think meat is only necessary for people that live in remote areas without enough access to healthy produce.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#380

Post by undersuit »

joe5150 wrote: post #53
undersuit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people who strive for some kind of vegetarian or vegan diet, but they aren't not eating animals unless they are inspecting every food item they consume for all the microscopic animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-animal

I think it's well understood that when vegans or vegetarians say they don't eat "animals" they are generally talking about, at minimum, macrobiota and not tardigrades, etc.

Well then they aren't not eating any animal. It's pretty simple. I'm not attacking them for the oversight just pointing it out. It should be forgivable for swallowing a fly but vegan and vegetarian food production still harms animals(example: insects are animals) and they still eat some animals accidentally. It's an improvement but it's not perfect.
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