Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

wcvb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 161 posts

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#91

Post by drevil-v2 »

naruvimama wrote: post #58

It is our collective karma, to outsource cruelty to industrial animal farming. Even though I have become mostly vegetarian, it is quite tempting to buy meat for the convenience and the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west). Human progress and social evolution has somehow come with greater compassion for fellow beings. Will our coming generations value compassion in itself…

> Will an advanced alien visitor be shocked by our animal farming or will will they hunt us down for meat. I guess we should expect either based on our own behaviour.

What are your thoughts on where they will judge us for our pro-choice stance? Do you think that will shock them too?

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#92

Post by notechback »

naruvimama wrote: post #58

It is our collective karma, to outsource cruelty to industrial animal farming. Even though I have become mostly vegetarian, it is quite tempting to buy meat for the convenience and the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west). Human progress and social evolution has somehow come with greater compassion for fellow beings. Will our coming generations value compassion in itself…

For me the following is quite a convincing perspective:

Slavery has existed for most of human history. The inherent cruelty has only in recent times become something understood widely as morally wrong and unacceptable. We have abolished slavery and while it exists in some forms and niche cases, the majority of mankind looks with disdain and hate at those still practicing it, and with shame at their ancestors for accepting and tolerating it.

(Factory) farming/slaughter of animals has existed for most of human history. The inherent cruelty has only in recent times become something understood widely as morally wrong and unacceptable. We will abolish farming/slaughter of animals and while it will still exist in some forms and niche cases (eg pharmaceuticals?), the majority of mankind will look with disdain and hate at those still practicing it, and with shame at their ancestors for accepting and tolerating it.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#93

Post by d0100 »

triyambakam wrote: post #39
superpermutat0r wrote: post #29

I think chickens are ground up with their feathers and ugly bits by falling from a treadmill. I guess one can't sell that as food but I'm pretty sure they can do something with it. Although, it's fine by me, meat is in its nature pretty wasteful, in addition to those 2M chickens there's probably more tons of soy protein wasted on chicken feed. Good thing that protein rich legumes do not need much processing.

My family and I are on day number 1153 of eating beans every day (and no animal products)

I've had vegetarian rice and beans many times, forced to by lack of money for protein. It's just a bland mixture of sadness and despair

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#94

Post by mmsimanga »

downerending wrote: post #34
roebk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not waste this amount of life

If it makes you feel any better, you may regard yourself complicit every time you leave a scrap of meat on your plate.

I struggle with leaving plate on my food and I also struggle with my weight. Growing up we weren't allowed to leave food on the plate. To this day I still feel guilty for leaving food on a plate and yet I am overweight.

I know the answer is to dish out a little and get seconds if need be. Problem is I live with people who do more cooking than I do and because I am a fairly big guy they can't help but dish out massive quantities of food.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#95

Post by sfj »

ramrunner0xff wrote: post #80
sfj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the assumptions embedded in this argument very strange. It brings up a huge number of questions. Only a conscious being would feel pain, so what is consciousness? Does it come down and embed itself into creatures that are born? If so, if they weren't born, would that be necessarily better? What if consciousness, if it didn't have a body to enter into, appeared in a different universe from ours with its own, po…

so by extension everything is just great, right? What if a person perishes from torture and war crimes? it at least lived part of its life happily before that. Who knows what would happen if the person was born in the sucks-to-be-there (TM) "dimension" (!?). what is consciousness? is the person who is reading this now conscious? who knows. let's all eat each other while we ponder these great questions. could be total…

> so by extension everything is just great, right?

I never said this.

> let's all eat each other while we ponder these great questions.

Let's make sure no being is ever born again who might suffer. Seems totally good and just, therefore it must be true, right?

What arrogance...

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#96

Post by sfj »

arnoooooo wrote: post #70
sfj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the assumptions embedded in this argument very strange. It brings up a huge number of questions. Only a conscious being would feel pain, so what is consciousness? Does it come down and embed itself into creatures that are born? If so, if they weren't born, would that be necessarily better? What if consciousness, if it didn't have a body to enter into, appeared in a different universe from ours with its own, po…

"a full, relatively pain free life" is not at all an accurate description of anything related to factory farming. Also, karma is not about judgment. It's about each individual's own state of consciousness.

> "a full, relatively pain free life" is not at all an accurate description of anything related to factory farming.

You understand that I'm not saying relative to your life, right, but to some other life in some other universe?

> Also, karma is not about judgment. It's about each individual's own state of consciousness.

It seems to be about your individual biases and judgement, actually.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#97

Post by sfj »

LaEc wrote: post #88
sfj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the assumptions embedded in this argument very strange. It brings up a huge number of questions. Only a conscious being would feel pain, so what is consciousness? Does it come down and embed itself into creatures that are born? If so, if they weren't born, would that be necessarily better? What if consciousness, if it didn't have a body to enter into, appeared in a different universe from ours with its own, po…

So much metaphysical blabbery to justify cruelty.

The metaphysical blabbery is the justification for this idea to judge raising animals for slaughter as cruel. It's not blabbery to question it.

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#98

Post by sfj »

LaEc wrote: post #87
sfj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if the plants we like to eat are more conscious than the plants that animals like to eat? Or even more conscious than the animals themselves? How do we really know? What if there is a God in every peanut?

How much of your consciousness is grounded in sight, sound, taste, touch and smells? How many plants have eyes or ears or any kind of vivid sensory organ? Your argument lacks any kind of credulity.

Do you have a way to measure consciousness? Would you object to killing a process with a sighup, that outputted “Ouch“ to the terminal?

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#99

Post by sfj »

jamil7 wrote: post #76
sfj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if the plants we like to eat are more conscious than the plants that animals like to eat? Or even more conscious than the animals themselves? How do we really know? What if there is a God in every peanut?

Well why base your actions on anything at all given that line of thinking? Although I do like the idea of a God in a peanut.

I don't know, (and the whole reason I'm in this conversation was because I thought it was such an amusing concept I couldn't resist...)

Re: 2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees

#100

Post by Infinitesimus »

neotek wrote: post #65
sfj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> raised and massacred living beings Plants are also living beings...

What an insipid observation.

It does highlight the the problem most people have isn't that the beings we consume are living but rather that we have reliable indicators of their suffering before being killed.

Most of the moral objection seems to be from the suffering and conscious death

Post reply on HN