United States | News &amp; Politics

[–] QuincyPeck@lemmy.world 53 points 3 years ago (28 children)

As always, the cruelty is the point.

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml [S] 25 points 3 years ago (23 children)

The fact is, most animals in our food system live under dismal conditions, and the pitifully low bar for their treatment was set in directives from the same industry’s leaders who today are so upset about being vilified. “Forget the pig is an animal—treat him just like a machine in a factory,” recommended Hog Farm Managementin 1976. Two years later, National Hog Farmer advised: “The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.”

And farmers, eager to squeeze every dollar from their crops, complied. Today, nearly 5 million of these smart, social animals (representing over 80 percent of all sows in pork production) are confined to tiny gestation crates—cages so narrow the animals can’t even turn around. They spend their lives lined up like cars in a parking lot, barely able to move an inch and driven insane from the extreme deprivation

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[–] QuincyPeck@lemmy.world 13 points 3 years ago (22 children)

I went vegetarian this year (vegan when it’s possible) mostly because of the horrors of factory farming. I could not continue to participate in such a horrific system anymore.

We don’t eat cats or dogs, so why is it okay to eat other animals? They all have thoughts and feelings.

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[–] SmokeInFog@midwest.social 9 points 3 years ago*

I'm also returning to a more plant based diet in part because of animal cruelty but also because creating demand for plant based meat alternatives could potentially reduce the need for agricultural land use by ~70%. But not all animal production has the same impact on climate change: just cutting out beef and eating more nuts will help.

Graph of carbon footprint for protein rich food industries. Beef is by far the worst, with chicken, eggs, and farmed fish being the best animal sources; and beans, peas, and nuts actually being the best, with some of these actually being carbon negative

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[–] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 2 points 3 years ago (12 children)

Ideally, pasture-raised and kosher or halal meats would be more (at all) prevalent. That's what ethical meat consumption looks like.

Alternately, lab grown.

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml [S] 9 points 3 years ago (6 children)

Grass-fed production doesn't really scale, so there's not much way around consumption changes here. It also comes with a side effect of raising methane emissions

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

[…]

If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf

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[–] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 4 points 3 years ago

To be fair, pasture raised is more expensive, so people would eat less beef. I don't think it's fair to talk about scaling current consumption.

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[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 years ago (4 children)

You say that, but it's not really just about grass-feeding. Cows are already fed almost 90% inedible crop materials that would be getting disposed of anyway. We could be doing better, but cattle's food source is sorta the wrong focus.

And as much methane is in manure, it's better for the environment (including GHG) than synthetic fertilizers.

The real answer is changing our meat/vegetable balance AND improve the process AND continue to improve humane regulations (and those 3 goals often synergize with each other).

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml [S] 1 point 3 years ago (3 children)

The % that's edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed

1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

Synthetic fertilizer usage is greatly reduced by eating plants directly even compared to the best-case use of animal manure

Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528

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[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

The % that’s edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed

Not really. Definitely not if you consider the nutritional quality of the meat. And that's beef, the worst example. (Feed to meat conversion from 6x to 25x, the higher number generally for free-range). Chickens are only x2 in ideal situations (closer to 5x when free-range since their calorie intake is not as well-managed). And from a health viewpoint, 100kcal of chicken is a better-balanced calorie than 200kcal of feed

But that is before accounting for the fact that about 165 of those feed kcals are inedible, meaning you're trading around 35 edible kcals of corn for 100 edible kcals of chicken. Would you agree from a purely health and efficiency point of view (leaving out ethics), that 35 edible calories of a "non-nutritional grain" for 100 edible calories of a protein superfood is a pretty fair trade?

Synthetic fertilizer usage is greatly reduced by eating plants directly even compared to the best-case use of animal manure

Missed this one, so jumping back. It's hard for me to respond because I don't have access to the whole paper. There seem to be fairly significant issues with it, however. For one, I can't find any corroboration that isn't merely citing this paper. For another, I can't find any critical responses either (the lack of them is worse than a half-decent one IMO). Nonetheless, there's a few things I find interesting from the summary the seem to make it hard to just accept an argument using it

The killer, to me. This paper actively presumes that all crop farms that produce crops that have inedible components that cows will eat (like corn) will pivot to 100% vegetable. But a vast majority of that crop's output is in explicit demand and corn farms are not just going to fold up. They will start destroying their excess waste instead of reselling it as feed. That ruins his math. But he also failed to take into account what a world horticulture setup would look like that actually sustains humanity, and merely counting IFE is just not enough.
This paper seems to claim a 65% reduction in fertilizer usage, but doesn't account for the fact it would HAVE to primarily be synthetic fertilizer if we stopped eating cows. This is a huge problem for me because I'm an outspoken advocate of collaborative farming, to reduce the disgusting use of synthetic fertilizer by regulating and enforcing better use of manure and localization of animal farms. There's far more than 3x as many cows in the world than can be maintained if they aren't being consumed. He does not cite or comment on how much worse synthetic fertilizer is than manure fertilizer. And if I'm reading right, that's his high end. It might only be more like 30%. I would rather 100 units of manure used than 70 units of synthetic fertilizer without a second thought.

And your second link... I'm not sure why you cited it. It appears to be arguing for my side, defending the figures I used. Thank you?

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https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml [S] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

Cropland usage is still lower when looking at the nutrition of it all

we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

Further, we can plant other crops on that land growing feed crops. The greatly lower cropland usage offers quite a bit of flexibility to shift around production

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[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 years ago

Cropland usage is still lower when looking at the nutrition of it all

I disagree with you and that paper's abstract. They're comparing worst-case current aggriculture with a hypothetical improved horticulture.

Also, I extended my previous post; you might have missed it.

Further, we can plant other crops on that land growing feed crops

How do you intend to kill off the demand for those crops? Or do you intend to forbid people and businesses from consuming crops with a lot of feed-waste like corn or soy?

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[–] Vegoon@feddit.de 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

Why is it ideal or even ethical to kill others "kosher or halal" when we don't have to kill in any way? How does this relate to them living in cages before?

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[–] itchy_lizard@feddit.it 3 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Nah, they really only care about $$. Money is the point. They literally care about nothing else.

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[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Unfortunately this just isn't always true. They also care deeply about the maintenance of existing hierarchies and will cheerfully vote against their own financial interests in order to maintain them.

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[–] bumblebrainbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 years ago

That's only poor Republicans who do that. Ultimately it will line the pockets of some rich piece of shit one way or another. I hate this place.

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[–] itchy_lizard@feddit.it 1 point 3 years ago

Example?

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml [S] 46 points 3 years ago*

This bill, if it passes, applies to much more than just what the just the title says here

The bill would also threaten other farmed animal welfare laws, like California’s and New York City’s prohibitions on the sale of foie gras, a product made by force-feeding ducks and geese.

[...]

The bill is written so broadly that it could threaten some 1,000 other state and local laws and regulations that govern agriculture, from timber to beef to crops, according to Kelley McGill, a regulatory policy fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program

[–] SmokeInFog@midwest.social 32 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

Who's the loser that's downvoted every comment on this post? Please actually argue why we should treat animals even more unconscionably than we already do. I'd like to see how pathetic it is

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 23 points 3 years ago

They're leaning hard into the cartoonishly evil caricature.

[–] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 18 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Of course they are, they want the vast majority of us in cages as well.

[–] muffedtrims@lemmy.world 4 points 3 years ago

They're called cubicles

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[–] Bipta@kbin.social 3 points 3 years ago

Also at their behest.

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[–] deviancy8157@lemmy.world 15 points 3 years ago (2 children)

States Rights! Amirite?

[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

They'll say anything in the moment to justify the decisions that the corporations paid for. Their positions don't need to be consistent for longer than a few minutes.

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 years ago

Pssh, a few minutes? Trumpy contradicts himself sentence to sentence, and the people cheer.

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[–] Toneswirly@lemmy.world 15 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Ya know it might be time to eat less meat

[–] AnotherPerson@lemmy.world 8 points 3 years ago

Can't wait for lab grown meat to become practical and affordable.

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[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

They found an issue that profits them that undecideds will get behind, is why.

Free Range laws are a complicated and touchy subject in a lot of Blue areas. Eggs more than doubled in price in my state in the last 6 months or so. I'm willing to pay for them because I think Free Range laws are humane, but I'm a couple towns over from a very depressed urban community that really feels the difference when eggs were one of the cheapest nutritional purchases they could buy.

THERE, there's been a lot of grumbling by traditionally blue voters about the Free Range laws. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, empathy ends when it affects their family.

IMO, we needed subsidy or purchase-subsidy of some sort to counteract the cost of Free Range laws, and this might not have happened because it might not have been popular enough. Nonetheless, hopefully they shoot themsleves in the foot with this. They're leaning on the same commerce clause that could eventually lead to a federal Free Range mandate.

[–] FlagonOfMe@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

If the prices doubled, are you sure that's not due to the bird flu going around? Some producers have had to cull entire barns of birds.

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[–] abraxas@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 years ago

I know chicken farmers and breakfast restaurant owners on a first name basis. It was absolutely, positively the free-range law. I'm not saying no other price influencers could exist, but the market, retail, and wholesale I've seen is all about the free range law.

And most of the ones I Know are torn because "business is business" but they know deep down inside that free-range requirements are reasonable and humane.

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[–] chaogomu@kbin.social 8 points 3 years ago (1 child)

It's a very old story, states rights unless the states do something conservatives don't like.

An example was banning slavery. Conservatives didn't like that, so they started a war over it. A war meant to deny the states the right to ban slavery.

Now they want to ban states from bettering the world. I say now, but it's actually always.

[–] Bipta@kbin.social 3 points 3 years ago

Conservatives in state government do the same things to local governments. It's authoritarianism all the way down.

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[–] eochaid@lemmy.world 2 points 3 years ago*

Me: Playing Fallout: New Vegas for the first time, thinking that Littlehorn & Associates is just a silly joke based on a biblical deep cut. No one would be that unnaturally petty and evil in the real world.

Republicans: Hold my beer.