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even if farm animals were slaughtered in the most humane and painless of ways, the way they’re treated while they’re alive is still horrifyingly atrocious
if farm animals were slaughtered in the most humane and painless of ways
This sounds like a juxtaposition to me. You cannot slaughter a healthy animal in a humane way. “Slaughter” excludes “humane”. I’m not a vegan/vegetarian but it seems to me like this idea that if we just raised happy healthy animals and found a way to kill it nicely then eating meat would be ethically ok. We don’t need to eat meat anymore. Any killing of an animal to make it into food is unnecessary and could be avoided. I think it is important that we meat eaters really internalize this. Every time we eat meat we caused absolutely unnecessary suffering for a quick moment of pleasure.
Culling is not cruel or even morally ambiguous. It is morally and ethically right to cull out of control populations of animals for the betterment of the whole. Culling isn’t even necessarily for the sick or weak. Sometimes healthy young animals have to be put down for the betterment of the environment. Look into native American hunting practice and land conservation methodology.
Modern farming is very much none of those things though.
And even if they were treated well during their lifetime, the way we’ve bred them to produce enormous quantities of eggs, milk and meat would still result in short, horrific lives. It’s atrocious any way you look at it.
We’ve lost so many heirloom breeds of plants and animals to industrial farming. Pigs used to be raised for their lard, but the anti-fat movement - which was caused by the food lobby - they bred them to be almost completely lean. Now they can’t live outside anymore because they don’t have fat or thick hair. And their meat is dry and flavorless. The pigs are less happy, and diners are less happy.
Same goes for grocery store vegetables, which aren’t bred for flavor or texture but for shipping durability. Grocery store tomatoes, for example. And this must contribute to the fact that lots of people don’t like vegetables.
Instead, she suggests pigs could be genetically bred to have a less violent reaction to CO2
there’s a lot of messed up shit in that article but this is so sinister
did anything ever happen after the videos were released?
No I don’t think they can; that’s how your body knows to breathe. CO2 is just the wrong gas to use to kill something if you want it done quietly. I honestly think I’d rather be strangled, there’s a chance I’d die of lack of blood flow to the brain before CO2 poisoning set in.
Is this another vegan circlejerk channel now?
What is wrong with vegan? Did you even read the article?
We can’t show how fucked it is? Sorry that you would rather stay ignorant on the issue.
You’re making quite a few assumptions.
Answer the questions
Don’t put words in my mouth
Wow, not liking animal cruelty = veganism
If you don’t like animal cruelty but aren’t vegan you are a hypocrite 🤷
Consuming animal products doesn’t inherently lead to animal cruelty. It’s the fact that the vast majority of these products are produced through factory farming, which has little regard for the animals, in the search for the most efficient manner of farming possible. This does lead to animal cruelty. On the other hand, it is definitely possible to consume animal products ethically, if they are raised on a small family farm which genuinely cares and takes time for their animals, and doesn’t take every shortcut possible to produce more.
So I could cut your throat without being cruel as long as we are on a small farm?
If you are humanely killing the animals, then yes. Eating meat is a part of human nature, one that I personally object from but still one that isn’t immoral to act on.
spreading your genes without consent is also part of human nature and just like killing animals, it can’t be done humanely.
I tend to focus more of their quality of life before their death day. Like, a swift needle to the brain seems pretty okay compared to being stacked nearly on top of each other in their own waste for much of their lives.
I’m recently diagnosed diabetic so this shit just angers me on multiple levels. Good job, body. Now we have to limit carbs, and all the meat is cruel, guess I’ll live on fucking greens and cheese.
Do beans have a lot of carbs? I genuinely don’t know.
Yeah, but also fiber, I know some diabetics avoid beans but I don’t mind them in chili or whatnot.
Who doesn’t want to leave a sparkly, effervescent corpse after dying of asphyxiation and painful organ failure due to excessive carbonic acid buildup?
I’ll have the brain bullet, thanks.
Co2 is the worst gad to suffocate in. Please just put me in a room full of nitrogen instead
Omfg I once took a hit of CO2 as I thought my CO2 capsules were my N2O capsules.
Fuckin’ 'orrible
Laughing gas is sweet and soft, taking a hit of CO2 is like choking on cactuses.
I had exposure to tear gas in the army and while it was a milder version (simulating mild-moderate exposure), I definitely preferred it to CO2.
Couldn’t care less about killing and eating animals, but it’s pretty fucked how we go about it.
It’s all fucked, from the way we’ve bred them, to how we treat them while they’re alive, to how we kill them. To me, perhaps the worst part is we do it almost exclusively for enjoyment.
What? The meat industry is for food. What are you actually talking about
It’s an inefficient form of food, requiring more nutrients than we get out of it. But we like eating meat (it’s delicious after all), so in theory it is purely for our enjoyment.
Though we also use it to feed our cats I suppose.
Most people eat animal products because they enjoy them more than the available plant-based alternatives.
Are you totally fine with the moral consequences of enforced veganism on the entire human population? I’m asking this because you must also understand that there are going to be seriously detrimental and inescapable outcomes associated with that as well. Life only comes from death. You can fundamentally dislike the arrangement, but as far as we are aware that is a necessary input-output relationship. Choosing which deaths you are okay with is simply trading one Faustian bargain for another.
This is the argument that I used when I was an adolescent who thought himself very wise and smart but in reality just wanted an excuse to not have to change the lifestyle that I was comfortable with.
Saying “life only comes from death” is a cowardly reductionism. It creates a false equivalence between plant and animal life that lets you ignore the fact that sustaining human life does not require the wanton suffering of animals. And it certainly doesn’t require animals to be suffering at such massive scales and in such cruel ways.
You’re probably someone who will cite studies which indicate that plants emit distress signals when they take physical damage, and you’ll argue that therefore plants suffer the same as animals. But that’s an intellectually dishonest argument. Suffering as we understand it is more than just a chemical reaction to stimulus; it emerges from an awareness of being alive and an instinctual desire to remain alive and unharmed. Plants do not have that kind of awareness.
There are predators in nature that only know how to hunt to survive. Their digestive systems are specialized to consume the bodies of other smaller animals. And their ecosystems depend on those predators to balance out the reproductive cycles of their prey, otherwise the prey animals would become overpopulated and wipe out life forms lower on the food chain.
The fact of the matter is that humans have not been a collaborative member of any ecosystem for tens of thousands of years. We cause massive harm to every ecosystem that we’re a part of, and the mass slaughter of farm animals is the worst thing we’ve done to this planet yet, even more harmful overall than CO2 emissions. We’re eroding the soil and using up the fresh water in ways we can’t sustain, and then to top it all off we’re inflicting the largest scale unnecessary suffering in the history of this planet. And all of it is being done so that humans can enjoy a pleasure that is both unnecessary and easily replaced with a small amount of agricultural and supply chain reform.
Humans are omnivores and the simple reality is that as an omnivore with options at your disposal you have a choice about whether the process of sustaining your life involves wanton suffering at a massive scale or not. If you think the suffering of animals is worth the pleasure you derive from eating their flesh then just be honest and say so. Don’t be a coward like I used to be by pretending that animals and plants are the same.
First, I just want to say that this isn’t personal to me. I am concerned with the overarching ramifications of dismantling the current industrial meat, animal, and agricultural industries without first having sufficiently scalable solutions to replace them. This will kill a lot of people, and they will die in horrible ways. If you want to stop the suffering of animals you better know how to do so in a way that won’t cause additional suffering to humanity, otherwise you are never going to reach the critical mass necessary to make the change. I’m also more than willing to admit that the greed and corruption in the governmental and economic systems of the world would need to be changed as well. Good luck with that, I fully support it.
Saying “life only comes from death” is a cowardly reductionism.
No, it is an objectively verifiable fact that is backed up by even the most basic level of scientific literacy. You are confusing the higher order ethical dilemmas of sentient consciousness with the fundamental realities of nature. You can dislike it, and I understand that. I don’t like it either, but I am also not naive enough to simply ignore reality because it makes me feel bad. You are using the same kind of blind dogmatism in your response that you are accusing me of using even though I did no such thing.
sustaining human life does not require the wanton suffering of animals.
That is entirely dependant upon your interpretation of “wanton”. There is currently no other way for us to sustain life on this planet with the same degree of convenience that is afforded to us by the industrialization of the food system. Can it be made better? Sure, and I am 1000% in favor of that. But suggesting that we are going to be able to eliminate the need for animals in the supply chain anytime soon is a complete fantasy. Even if we could, there will be other health considerations that come from that which need to be researched, and well understood before we bank our survival on them. That will take many decades at best.
Don’t be a coward like I used to be by pretending that animals and plants are the same.
I literally never said that. You’re projecting here, which is whatever honestly. I get people make this argument. I’m just not one of them.
The fact of the matter is that humans have not been a collaborative member of any ecosystem for tens of thousands of years.
I’m not sure it has been quite that long, but I agree with your general premise. Overall humanity is a destructive force if you consider the preservation of nature in its pre-industrial form to be optimal. I can appreciate that argument. I’m not entirely convinced that human life is more valuable than any other life. I’m also not entirely convinced that the proliferation of life more generally has any objectively quantifiable value. That is a philosophical argument that is beyond the scope of this conversation. Again, I’m only interested in logistically feasible goals that can be realistically implemented.
Humans are omnivores and the simple reality is that as an omnivore with options at your disposal you have a choice about whether the process of sustaining your life involves wanton suffering at a massive scale or not.
Not really. What I do personally is entirely inconsequential. Systems matter. People don’t. I don’t enjoy killing things. I don’t “derive pleasure” from the suffering of others in the way you are accusing me of. However, I am willing to accept the ethical realities of eating animal protein, and I understand that I would not be alive today if my ancestors had not done the same for billions of years. So no, I don’t enjoy it, but unlike you I do accept it. I am perfectly willing to facilitate moving the system in a more humane direction in whatever small ways I can make an impact, but I’m also not stressing about livestock having to die in order to feed people either. On some level it just is what it is.
Not that I particularly disagree with you, but I think that calling the eradication of the entire meat industry, “a small amount of agricultural and supply chain reform” is a little disingenuous.
Life only comes from death.
No? The recombination of genetic material results in complex life forms. That’s why we have multicellular organisms. Heck, in fact mitochondrial DNA proves that humans have a symbiotic relationship with microbes. So I guess I’d say the quoted text above is an unqualified statement.
Besides all that, humans are the only living organism that we know of capable of probing the nature of reality and existence. So simply put, it’s okay for us to hold ourselves to higher standard than the “reptile” or “monkey” brain.
Imagine if there was a life form stronger or smarter than humans, what would you want to say to it? “Life only comes from death so eat me or abuse me”. We can and should do better.
Imagine if there was a life form stronger or smarter than humans, what would you want to say to it? “Life only comes from death so eat me or abuse me”. We can and should do better.
As far as we know the propagation of life requires the consumption of other life as inputs, or in other words every single living thing on this planet must consume material from other organic life to subsist.
Therefore, in your hypothetical I would expect that any life form that required the domestication and industrial consumption of sentient life-forms or their byproducts as a matter of survival to absolutely do so regardless of the ethical implications. If it was a matter of survival, we would become an input. Absolutely zero question about it.
You can be the first input in such situation then, but I prefer that humans can show they’re capable of better discourse than “eat or be eaten”. That’s kinda limited and trite in light of our more developed cognitive abilities, honestly. Also, the universe is literally limitless, so we don’t need to think in terms of zero sum games or resource limitations 🤷♀️
Regarding inputs: Eating fruits and seeds doesn’t kill anything, in fact plants evolved tasty fruits so that they’d be eaten and propagate. Vegetables and fungi can be eaten without killing the organism. You can consume eggs and milk without abusing or killing the animal
Regarding your first paragraph: I was operating based on a very loose hypothetical question that you posed. So, I think you’re unintentionally strawmanning me here a little bit…
As far as the second paragraph is concerned I see your point. However, I specifically said life had to consume other organic material to survive, but not necessarily kill in the process. At some level of the food chain it does ultimately become a necessity though, and I do not see that as an ethical dilemma per se.
I think you’re reaching there a bit, because no one said anything about forced veganism. You can eat meat and be against the horrors of (the vast majority of) the meat industry.
(If I read your reply wrong, let me know and I will delete this)
I was using that as an extreme hypothetical. You can call that disingenuous if you like. I just don’t see how you can remove “animal suffering” from the equation without enforcing that measure. Otherwise all you are doing is drawing a subjective line around what suffering is acceptable and what isn’t. I’m personally fine with trying to make that determination in the least arbitrary way possible with the best technology possible so we can progress society forward, but let’s not act like there still won’t be people who see that cost as unacceptable.
Go vegan
No
You’re so brave
Bravest thing I’ve done today is engage with the trolls in this thread.
OP is a troll for saying go vegan on an animal cruelty thread huh?..ok…
Yeah, I figured before reading this would fly like the nitrogen gas executions that some state penal systems are trying. (As revealed on _Last Week Tonight.) Sure enough it’s awful.
Right now, my household is drastically reducing meat as we can (which is made easier by the rising prices of meat). Whether we have good tasty fake meat made out of vegetable matter or cultured meat that was never a full animal, I’ll be glad for when it’s affordable.
A somber thing about nitrogen gas executions:
People generally agree that nitrogen (or any inert) gas asphyxiation is a relatively painless and peaceful way to go. People have been using it for (animal and human) euthanasia for years without incident. Seems appropriate, right?
So how did it work in capital punishment scenario the first time around? The guards slapped the face mask on the condemned. Then they asked them for their last statement. Quote: “Mffmfmf, Mffafam fmfmfm mfffmfmf mf mfmf f mfmf mfffmfmmf. Mfffm mfm mfm mfmfffmfmf mf. Mfff mff mf mff.” (Transcribed as: “Tonight, Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. Thank you for supporting me. Love all of you.”) Then they opened the gas valves. It took too long. …OK, it’s time to pause now, let’s see how many problems you can spot with this procedure.
Problem: They’re continuing to use “medical” and “painless” and whatnot procedures, administered by unqualified staff, on unwilling participants. Look, I’m not an advocate of death penalty at all and I think it should be abolished everywhere, but even I know that the guillotine designers were up to something. You need to minimise the amount of fuck-ups at all levels.
I’ve read the article and damn, this is disturbing af. Isn’t this pig killing method basically the same as what nazi used on humans?
…I’ll try to reduce the amount of meat in my diet
It’s actually pretty easy to. you probably wont have a great time if you try eat meatsm based dishes without the meat because they’ll taste lacking and be unbalanced.
Almost all poverty food around the world historically is vegan or at least vegetarian though so there’s huge variety to choose from. In chinese food there’s Buddhist influenced food like: https://thewoksoflife.com/buddhas-delight-lo-han-jai/, lots of African food is vegetarian or vegan (Ethiopian is stand out here), much south Indian food is and a lot of the stuff with yogurt can be made with soy yoghurt (easy to diy if you like) or cashew cream and a sour note, mexican dishes are easily adaptable too.
Then there are some other hacks like black bean paste and breadcrumbs pressed into patties just works as something you can fry and chuck on a burger (add a few spices to taste), TVP will sub for mince in many saucy dishes where it can absorb the flavour.
You’ll have fun, it’s an adventure that will teach you so much about how food works around the world!
Also you can start immediately by just ordering a vegan option every time you eat out. You don’t have to worry about having the skills or ingredients to do that.
Good luck!
I don’t want to learn new things, I’m just going to eat human, thanks
Sorry if anyone you like goes missing
