I remember when "free range" chicken/eggs came around. The definition of that is wild. Opened my eyes to how bullshit all of the US food labeling stuff is. It means something like they have access to 2 square feet of outdoor space access. But theres like no rules on how often they need to be able to use it. So you can just have thousands of chickens you lets cycle through a tiny outdoor area once in their lives and it meets the requirement. It's a joke.
Supersize Me 2: Holy Chicken! covers this and is definitely worth a watch. He sets up a fried chicken restaurant and establishes all the minimum criteria to promote your food as free range/organic/healthy etc when it really isn't.
There is a thing now in Germany called "outdoor climate" for beef etc. It's supposed to be the second best form of farming and literally means: There needs to be a window somewhere.
The best part is that chicken naturally live in forests. They are afraid of open spaces because those come with the threat of birds of prey.
I believe organic chicken requires them not to be pumped with antibiotics; at least in my county.
This means farms literally cannot keep them in as horrible and cramped conditions because the risk of disease could wipe them out.
I'm not an organic nut, but I do buy organic chicken/eggs or go without.
In most countries, organic mostly just means that the feed they use is organic with maybe a few minor other additions, but regardless I wouldn't trust any claims of anything actually being antibiotic-free.
Sadly, what it means in practice is that access to outdoors is strictly controlled or forbidden, and the factory will probably kill all the chickens and throw them in the trash if a disease outbreaks. There's a bunch of talk now in big ag about biosecurity, and how small farms are a risk because they can introduce disease. How about actually have a natural farm instead of a micromanaged industrial operation, and then maybe the animals will be robust to illness.
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However, it does help if you want to minimise your personal contribution towards animal suffering.
You realize we don't want to do that, and aren't going to, right?
Unless both you and I agree on regulation, animal abuse will continue uncontested.
I think we need better regulation, do you? Are you willing to accept that I won't become vegan, and take the compromise of continued meat production with strict punishment for animal abuse?
I advocate for widespread prolonged de-use and eventually abolition of animals as objects in societies that don't need to.
What you've amounted to saying is "if the world can't be 100% vegan, why try?"
Let's try this then-
Me: "respect women"
Misogynist: "You realize we don't want to do that, and aren't going to, right?
Unless both you and I agree on regulation, misogyny will continue uncontested.
I think we need better regulation, do you? Are you willing to accept that I won't become a feminist, and take the compromise of continued sexism with strict punishment for female abuse?"
Or this one's good-
Me: "don't be racist"
Racist: "You realize we don't want to do that, and aren't going to, right?
Unless both you and I agree on regulation, racist will continue uncontested.
I think we need better regulation, do you? Are you willing to accept that I won't become a non-racist, and take the compromise of continued racism with strict punishment for lynching?"
If the feminist movement met up against people saying what you're saying, what do you think their response would be?
And similarly, what would MLK say to you?
No, before you call out my comparison, I'm not comparing racism to sexism to animal abuse. I'm comparing the rhetoric used to defend the acts themselves. And it's awfully similar.
In summation; I choose consistency in my morality, based on this: if the topic is different, but my rhetoric to justify is the same, check my biases.
People are just simply inconsistent with their justifications, mainly due to detachment from the reality.
I do not care to even read the main body of your argument.
Animals will continue to be eaten, and because of your distracting efforts it will continue to be in the most painful and depressing ways. Because you don't support regulations.
It's OK. Your veiled attempt at good faith discussion is textbook, so was expected.
It's not my goal to make YOU individually vegan. Others can read and evaluate my reasoning, and by extension, the lack of yours.
And you still support animal abuse when you don't have to.
Take care, and try and lead a better life mate.
But there's a difference between animals and capital goods producing meat.
The only goal for a farmer is in the end how much money you can make. And yes healthy and happy animals taste better but people buy cheap shit so usually the welfare isn't paid by people.
The history of food labels is really interesting and sad. It's a classic example of regulatory capture. Even the term "organic" doesn't come close to what many people think it does. The best most of us can do is find a local farmer or coop you trust, ideally one that practices permaculture, that sells to the public. Unfortunately, that can be a challenge to find and can be prohibitive for those with lower incomes or lack of transportation.
It's incredibly frustrating. Free-range eggs vs cage-free eggs... companies waging war on soy/almond milk, "cheese products".
Who invited the weepy fucking vegan crowd? Fuck off, humans are omnivores and animals eat other animals. Stop going against nature itself. We aren't special or above anything. We are animals with a mass of problem solving meat other animals probably find delicious. Besides, we kill more animals coming after your precious growing plants than we do deliberately for food.
Back to reddit with you.
Besides, we kill more animals coming after your precious growing plants than we do deliberately for food
That's just not true. It takes far more crops to produce animal products than just eating plants for food. Feeding another being is a process that is very lossy for energy (they move around, have body functions, etc. that use up that energy)
"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
"If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops."
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
"Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9]."
Read up on growing crops. TONS OF ANIMALS THAT FEED ON GROWING PLANTS have to be exterminated to keep your precious plant stocks safe. Way to shift the argument.
I swear, it's all 100% misinformation in this thread, on par with the alt-right authoritarian right movement, and I'm the one who is demonized and downvoted. It's pathetic. Veganism is a cult.
You know, this argument would have better legs if our current approach to food production wasn't one of the biggest contributing factors to environmental destruction and climate change.
Yes, humans are omnivores, yes, animals eat other animals.
But we're not just eating other animals, we're selectively breeding animals en masse to be bigger and beefier than their own legs and heart muscles can handle. We take over vast swathes of arable land to grow introduced soy and corn crop, creating a destructive mono culture, then we don't even eat the nutritious crop, we pump it through feed pipes to barns and stock yards filled to the brim with thousands of animals.
Humans eating meat is natural.
But the way humans currently produce meat is far from natural.
While being vegan myself, I don't agree that every human on earth should also be vegan, I just think we collectively need to accept that meat is a luxury, and treat it as such.
Our hunter gatherer ancestors did not eat meat every day.
Our dawn of agriculture ancestors did not eat meat every day.
Our forebearers of the industrial revolution did not eat meat every day.
Our own grandparents, prior to the 1950s, did not eat meat every day.
We should eat meat as nature intended....not the way our current battery farming practices allow
The post had nothing to do with veganism, you interpreted that yourself.
You seem like such an unhappy person if a post about animal cruelty fuels you with this much hate and anger.
Probably lots of childhood trauma, hope you can find help managing all that pent up anger and grow as a person.
The only "childhood trauma" here is a bunch of weak vegan people dying from malnutrition brought on by seeing an animal as a child and learning it was used to make their dinner. Grow the hell up and accept that we need to eat meat.
You can still eat meat and treat them with respect. We know that animals that have less stress, produce better quality products. By cramming them into tight spaces and feeding them antibiotics, we are risking diseases and low yields.
Have you seen most places? There are tons of videos on the internet about raising cattle where they keep them in a barn instead of letting them roam outside and the animals are infinitely happier, plus no antibiotics are used unless they actually need them.
It's misinformation like this that creates more ignorant vegans.
People who advocate against animal cruelty are a special kind of stupid. Totally destructive of any (fundamentally not so bad) businesses that give time the time of day, and utterly ineffective at actually meaningfully changing the mass cruelty of the meat industry. Absolutely catastrophic virtue signaling. PETA “shelters” have a higher kill (euthanasia) rate than any other organization.
What the fuck are you try to say? Because one bad organization does bad things, no one can say we should move away from torturing animals for extra profit?
utterly ineffective at actually meaningfully changing the mass cruelty of the meat industry.
There should be no "meat industry" at all you despicable fucking ghoul
"fundamentally not so bad" ? you morally bankrupt imbecile, go watch Dominion
Stop murdering and eating sentient beings
PETA “shelters” have a higher kill (euthanasia) rate than any other organization.
Close to a million cows are murdered daily (not to mention pigs, ducks, etc.) - almost universally after a life of torture or soon after birth - but yeah, sure, shelters kill more, makes total sense
Since you obviously feel guilty (consciously or not) but do not seem to have the basic morality to stop profiting from the mass torture and killing of sentient beings for your personal pleasure, at least have the decency to keep quiet about it instead of trying to jump through logical hoops justifying yourself
Stop murdering and eating sentient beings
do you actually mean sentient or do you mean sapient and if the latter... i'm tired and mad at SF writers
It’s more the fact that this movement spends all its energy shutting down Fois Gras and Angora and has had ZERO impact on the wholesale slaughter of sentient beings across the meat industry except to shift a growing portion from farms in the US and Europe where there are some meager standards to farms in asia that have zero scruples and will torture without reserve to make an extra juan.
Fucking useless caricature of activism. All your outrage would be more effectively spent on literally anything else.
"Animal cruelty is fundamentally not so bad, and we shouldn't shut down animal abuse farms because someone else would abuse the animals anyway"
Literally the same argument as "we shouldn't pollute less cuz India and China"
Jesus fucking you ARE THE PROBLEM.
It’s not “no point in opposing polution because china would”
It’s literally the same people and they are providing a service that YOU consume (whatever form lf food you eat, any shit you buy off amazon, the car you drive, the phone you use, etc…) all you have said is “it’s fine if you pollute as long as you do not do it in front of me” “it’s fine if you torture animals if it’s not in front of me”
The incoherent ramblings of the ill informed.
I think most of the people you're yelling at don't actually eat animals. It's not "don't do it in front of me", it's "don't do it".
Totally destructive of any (fundamentally not so bad) businesses that give time the time of day, and utterly ineffective at actually meaningfully changing the mass cruelty of the meat industry
This is an interesting collection of words. It's not clear what you're trying to say, but I'm left with the sense that I probably disagree.
Maybe collect your thoughts, work out what you want to say and try again?
How is it virtue signalling? That's when someone brags verbally about their position or perspective based on social expectations.
Based on your use of the word "destructive" I assume you're talking about radical animal activists like the ones who sabotage industrial meat factories, often secretly and anonymously for their own safety.
So, do you really think these really are people who are ineffectual and desiring social reaffirmation of their views? If anything, this group of individuals are exactly those I would call to mind as ones who are not afraid to make actual change in the world they want to see, whatever it takes. Forget if you agree with them or not. It seems absurd to call them ineffective virtue-signallers.
who are not afraid to make actual change in the world they want to see, whatever it takes
Your concern is for the meat treat distributors and their means of cruelty production, because of course it is, you treatbrained ghoul.
If you actually care about animals dying in kill shelters the solutions are to open more shelters, do more to stop abusive conditions for animals before they get out of hand, and most importantly stop breeding animals. Animals are killed either because shelters don't want to take them in do to their condition or they are too full. You can blame the no kill shelters as well, because they don't take in every animal. But they aren't really to blame either, people who support the industries that breed pets are.