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What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

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Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#71

Post by pvaldes »

This is not a problem caused by antibiotics. Is a problem of genetic nature that happens because broilers are inbreed for growing big and fast. The same birds in true range with plenty of food would face exactly the same problem, with or without antibiotics. They are too heavy and often tend to have cardiac diseases, but they live short lives and are delicious so they are the most sucessful bird in the planet.

On the other hand, we are a paradoxal species. Able to feel horrified by this, whereas happily petting our distorted-faced bulldogs, persian cats, caesarean born bullterriers, extra-dwarfed toy Yorkshires, ponies and toy mini pigs, without any trace of moral conflict...

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#72

Post by mirimir »

Luc wrote: post #59
np422 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us here on hacker news can afford to buy real food such as grass feed beef/lamb, forage egg/chicken, etc Seems like a more natural evolutionary correct way to get our food rather than some kind of franken-meat grown i lab. Every autumn I buy a lamb from the farmer living next to my father, I kind of like it when I can watch my food being happy before I eat it.

> I kind of like it when I can watch my food being happy before I eat it. There's an inkling of empathy there, I suppose. It's a start.

Happy food is healthier. Bad vibes have physical correlates. That's part of kosher/halal standards.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#73

Post by Swizec »

bananicorn wrote: post #57
np422 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us here on hacker news can afford to buy real food such as grass feed beef/lamb, forage egg/chicken, etc Seems like a more natural evolutionary correct way to get our food rather than some kind of franken-meat grown i lab. Every autumn I buy a lamb from the farmer living next to my father, I kind of like it when I can watch my food being happy before I eat it.

I'd really like to understand these statements - You seem to care about the well-being of the animal while it is alive, but then decide to kill it (or let it be killed) for its meat. What's the point? You understand that this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed, but you value it being happy. Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself.

Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ...

I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die.

The more important question is how self-aware is the chicken? Does this self-awareness give it rights? Do rights stem from self-awareness, or from humanness, or is it arbitrary based on a wishy washy feeling of "Hm, that looks too severe. Oh but that other thing, that's okay". Or is how we treat them based purely on how much they can take before the taste becomes too poor for us to bear?

Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#74

Post by jmngomes »

ncr100 wrote: post #15

Fake meat cannot come soon enough - poor bird was encouraged to grow in an unhealthy manner resulting in dead tissue inside it while it was still alive. I wonder if it was painful for the bird having this tough dead tissue at the core of its breasts.

>> poor bird was encouraged to grow in an unhealthy manner

The bird was not "encouraged to grow", it was forcefully bred by a corporation that treated it like trash to increase their financial gains...

>> I wonder if it was painful for the bird

I seems very safe to assume that it didn't have a remotely pleasant or normal life...

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#75

Post by andrelaszlo »

mirimir wrote: post #69
doc_holliday wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that in anyway comparable to the suffering of an actual animal?

Well, there's Tool's "Disgustipated", about the carrot harvest. And some people do think that plants can suffer. Indeed, some Buddhists only eat food that would otherwise be thrown away. But yes, the relevance of suffering seems proportional to relatedness with the sufferer. Or maybe the ability to identify with the sufferer, based on perceived intelligence and self-awareness.

But we do have a lot of reasons to believe that animals can and do suffer, but no, or very few, reasons to believe that carrots can.

It's also not so black or white. Does a cow have greater "capacity for suffering" than an oyster? Does this have ethical consequences? I think it does.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#76

Post by corin_ »

jsz0 wrote: post #52
pavlov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in how animals are treated. Industrial meat production practically runs its margins on increasing the suffering of animals in a manner that narrowly avoids this kind of visible anomalies in the product. As many others have noted in the past, slave labor and concentration camps operated on a similar industrial calculus of forcibly squeezing out value from living beings before puttin…

> "I can't wait until we can grow zombies to pick cotton, then all the slaves can finally go free." Forcing (?) billions of people to change their eating habits is a far more difficult task than a quaint little Civil War to settle slavery.

America isn't the only country where slavery existed, and both slavery and animal welfare can be tackled in a region without having to change the entire world at the exact same moment.

If enough people in, for example, the US felt as strongly about not eating animals as they do/did about not having human slaves, they could have another "quaint" civil war (or maybe a political argument that could achieve the same thing without bloodshed) and get to a point where it would be illegal to eat animals just as it's illegal to have slaves.

(I'm neither American, nor a vegetarian, FWIW.)

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#77

Post by jmngomes »

jsz0 wrote: post #52
pavlov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in how animals are treated. Industrial meat production practically runs its margins on increasing the suffering of animals in a manner that narrowly avoids this kind of visible anomalies in the product. As many others have noted in the past, slave labor and concentration camps operated on a similar industrial calculus of forcibly squeezing out value from living beings before puttin…

> "I can't wait until we can grow zombies to pick cotton, then all the slaves can finally go free." Forcing (?) billions of people to change their eating habits is a far more difficult task than a quaint little Civil War to settle slavery.

Maybe that problem gets substantially easier to solve if we start educating people (and children) about what they're actually being fed, as well as imposing basic decency rules on how slaughterhouses and aviaries operate.

I don't buy or eat cheap chicken because I know how it is bred/produced and it's both miserable for the animal as well as for anyone who eats it. I prefer paying twice as much for chicken and having it less often, which is what I do.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#78

Post by codr4life »

I don't even want to imagine the kind of emotional baggage that comes with eating tortured, genetically modified and drugged animals. Why can't anyone see that this is just a step in the race to condition the masses to accept treating any living being the same way? Corporations don't give a shit about living beings except as means to make a profit, human or otherwise makes no difference.

And I don't get the excitement over fake meat, or how they managed to get the masses so convinced that they "need" meat to live a fulfilling life that the only choices left are animal concentration camps or synthetic bullshit.

Millions of people are just fine eating organic veggies, fruits and grains with maybe a bit of organic dairy thrown in. What makes you special?

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#79

Post by bananicorn »

Swizec wrote: post #73
bananicorn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to understand these statements - You seem to care about the well-being of the animal while it is alive, but then decide to kill it (or let it be killed) for its meat. What's the point? You understand that this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed, but you value it being happy. Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself. Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ... I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drop…

Personally, I follow the "rule" of: What you don't want done to yourself, don't do to others.

Would you mind dying right now? Or would you prefer to stay alive? Sure, one might argue that once you're dead you don't mind anymore, but while being alive, you usually strongly prefer staying that way.

It's that simple.

It certainly is difficult to determine wheter or not something wants to live, but in the case of chickens we can be fairly sure, as they display somewhat intelligent behaviour, and actively avoid harm.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#80

Post by algesten »

Swizec wrote: post #73
bananicorn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to understand these statements - You seem to care about the well-being of the animal while it is alive, but then decide to kill it (or let it be killed) for its meat. What's the point? You understand that this animal is happy and thus does not want to be killed, but you value it being happy. Don't these two sentiments exclude each other?

It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself. Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ... I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drop…

> Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty.

If it was only about avoiding suffering/pain and not the dying, would you be okay with farming children for eating?

They will live happy lives pampered and cared for, running around in the backyard until you press a button and child drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die.

It's obviously absurd, but you're making that decision with the animals you eat all the time. A chicken (probably) is less self aware than a cow, but we do eat cows.

But how do you decide that another being is un-self-aware enough to be eaten?

Which takes me back to the absurd. If human meat was tasty (I read it isn't), would someone with downs syndrome be morally ok to eat? How about someone in a vegetative state?

If the sliding scale of self awareness is the deciding factor, we might as well eat less aware humans.

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