Mass Culls and Incomprehensible Waste

[Sour Masher]

I was a vegetarian for about two decades and now I'm a flexitarian, as I eat bivalves and don't ask questions about menu items that don't have obvious chunks of meat in them, especially if I'm a guest to someone else--my diligence has just petered out over the years and the brainless bivalves like oysters, claims, mussels, and scallops, give me needed B12, iron, and protein.

Anywho, I don't talk about it here or anywhere, because the last thing I want to be is a judgy, sanctimonious vegetarian stereotype. But man, are these stories of mass slaughters of animals to just rot pissing me off. Factory farming is appalling to me in any time, but this shows yet another horrible inefficiency and immorality in our meat industry. We are now killing 160k pigs a day that will just go to waste, while at the same time, millions face food insecurity. My beef (pardon the pun) with the industry has always been with how inhumane and profane it is. People gotta eat, and if people feel the gotta eat meat, I just wish it was done with a respect for creatures with brains and emotions. Hunting animals living their best life, or treating animals well on smaller farms until it is time to slaughter them isn't much to ask, but it isn't how we do things. And now we are just killing them to kill them, because of the idiotic systems we have in place that make it impractical to find a better solution, like somehow getting this meat to those that need it. It is appalling all the way around, to say nothing of the fact that our meat handling practices globally may very well be what started this current pandemic.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...hnw?li=BBnbfcL

[Teenwolf]

I was a vegetarian for about two decades and now I'm a flexitarian, as I eat bivalves and don't ask questions about menu items that don't have obvious chunks of meat in them, especially if I'm a guest to someone else--my diligence has just petered out over the years and the brainless bivalves like oysters, claims, mussels, and scallops, give me needed B12, iron, and protein.

Anywho, I don't talk about it here or anywhere, because the last thing I want to be is a judgy, sanctimonious vegetarian stereotype. But man, are these stories of mass slaughters of animals to just rot pissing me off. Factory farming is appalling to me in any time, but this shows yet another horrible inefficiency and immorality in our meat industry. We are now killing 160k pigs a day that will just go to waste, while at the same time, millions face food insecurity. My beef (pardon the pun) with the industry has always been with how inhumane and profane it is. People gotta eat, and if people feel the gotta eat meat, I just wish it was done with a respect for creatures with brains and emotions. Hunting animals living their best life, or treating animals well on smaller farms until it is time to slaughter them isn't much to ask, but it isn't how we do things. And now we are just killing them to kill them, because of the idiotic systems we have in place that make it impractical to find a better solution, like somehow getting this meat to those that need it. It is appalling all the way around, to say nothing of the fact that our meat handling practices globally may very well be what started this current pandemic.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...hnw?li=BBnbfcL

Everybody wants to talk about animal cruelty, nobody wants to talk about factory farming! It's like meat just appears like magic, and if you pet your cat before you eat it, you don't need to feel guilt for the animals suffering. They were just a meat animal, after all.

The reason animals NEED to be treated inhumanely is to maximize output to fulfill the global demand. Small farms are not capable, nor is hunting. You need to torture animals to eat meat. It's part of the process. Deal with it.

Or, live your stated values and go vegan. I've been vegan close to 9 years now. I've been generally slimmer and healthier, definitely eating better and tastier food. I'm going to live extra years, if this shithole world of ours allows it.

Swine flu, foot and mouth disease, bird flu, Covid... demand for meat is the reason for these goddamn pandemics. You realize the more meat gets pumped with antibiotics, which is highly needed in factory farm settings, the closer we get to our antibiotics being useless to the mercy of superbugs? More meat, more pandemics, more public health emergencies.

GITH had a similar rant recently about sustainability... go eat a burger and do nothing about it! What are you proposing, in between giving instructions on dry ribs? Be honest!

I see far too many non-vegans talking about sustainability. This goes for celebrity environmentalists as well, like David Suzuki and Naomi Klein. Privileged to their blindness.

Once you know a vegan diet cuts your carbon footprint more than 50%, how can anybody call themselves animal advocates OR environmentalists if they continue to eat meat? Makes no sense to me. You could literally change every other thing in your life, including biking instead of driving, and still cut your footprint less than going vegan.

I've never heard of a "bi-valve vegetarian"... I would honestly eat meat if it helped the environment, but knowing it dooms our race, I think it's pretty important to move to vegan diets as quickly as possible. But ultimately, humans are self-serving creatures. We will never get off these roads that we've built, fossil fuels and factory farming. Too much profit, too much personal pleasure. We will consume until nature ends us.

[Sour Masher]

Look up the longstanding debate on bivalves in the vegan community. Many prominent vegan advocates, such as Peter Singer, have advocated treating oysters like plants, as they are sustainable, good for the environment, and there is no evidence of them feeling or thinking. They also have insanely high B12 vitamins, which is a big problem for vegans, are a great protein source, and in general fill every deficit and challenge vegans have with their diets. They are basically plants, and with a far smaller carbon footprint than many plants. Some plants do more harm for the environment than some meat, and still involve lots of insect and animal death in the farming, harvesting, and transport of them.

Here is an article from the guardian on the longstanding debate: https://www.theguardian.com/food/201...n-kitchen-aide

[GwynnInTheHall]

Everybody wants to talk about animal cruelty, nobody wants to talk about factory farming! It's like meat just appears like magic, and if you pet your cat before you eat it, you don't need to feel guilt for the animals suffering. They were just a meat animal, after all.

The reason animals NEED to be treated inhumanely is to maximize output to fulfill the global demand. Small farms are not capable, nor is hunting. You need to torture animals to eat meat. It's part of the process. Deal with it.

Or, live your stated values and go vegan. I've been vegan close to 9 years now. I've been generally slimmer and healthier, definitely eating better and tastier food. I'm going to live extra years, if this shithole world of ours allows it.

Swine flu, foot and mouth disease, bird flu, Covid... demand for meat is the reason for these goddamn pandemics. You realize the more meat gets pumped with antibiotics, which is highly needed in factory farm settings, the closer we get to our antibiotics being useless to the mercy of superbugs? More meat, more pandemics, more public health emergencies.

GITH had a similar rant recently about sustainability... go eat a burger and do nothing about it! What are you proposing, in between giving instructions on dry ribs? Be honest!

I see far too many non-vegans talking about sustainability. This goes for celebrity environmentalists as well, like David Suzuki and Naomi Klein. Privileged to their blindness.

Once you know a vegan diet cuts your carbon footprint more than 50%, how can anybody call themselves animal advocates OR environmentalists if they continue to eat meat? Makes no sense to me. You could literally change every other thing in your life, including biking instead of driving, and still cut your footprint less than going vegan.

I've never heard of a "bi-valve vegetarian"... I would honestly eat meat if it helped the environment, but knowing it dooms our race, I think it's pretty important to move to vegan diets as quickly as possible. But ultimately, humans are self-serving creatures. We will never get off these roads that we've built, fossil fuels and factory farming. Too much profit, too much personal pleasure. We will consume until nature ends us.

My wife and I have had this discussion, but It's difficult for us or should I say--Me to give it up. We do try to shop for cage free/humanely raised proteins, but you're right--The Big meat farm industry is a large party of our climate change issues and as long as we consume it, there is will be.

I of course have thoughts on helpful solutions, but it calls for things that will never happen. Things like a Global economy, Universal population control and mitigating profit on foodstuffs. Again, never gonna happen.

[Gregg]

Everybody wants to talk about animal cruelty, nobody wants to talk about factory farming! It's like meat just appears like magic, and if you pet your cat before you eat it, you don't need to feel guilt for the animals suffering. They were just a meat animal, after all.

The reason animals NEED to be treated inhumanely is to maximize output to fulfill the global demand. Small farms are not capable, nor is hunting. You need to torture animals to eat meat. It's part of the process. Deal with it.

Or, live your stated values and go vegan. I've been vegan close to 9 years now. I've been generally slimmer and healthier, definitely eating better and tastier food. I'm going to live extra years, if this shithole world of ours allows it.

Swine flu, foot and mouth disease, bird flu, Covid... demand for meat is the reason for these goddamn pandemics. You realize the more meat gets pumped with antibiotics, which is highly needed in factory farm settings, the closer we get to our antibiotics being useless to the mercy of superbugs? More meat, more pandemics, more public health emergencies.

GITH had a similar rant recently about sustainability... go eat a burger and do nothing about it! What are you proposing, in between giving instructions on dry ribs? Be honest!

I see far too many non-vegans talking about sustainability. This goes for celebrity environmentalists as well, like David Suzuki and Naomi Klein. Privileged to their blindness.

Once you know a vegan diet cuts your carbon footprint more than 50%, how can anybody call themselves animal advocates OR environmentalists if they continue to eat meat? Makes no sense to me. You could literally change every other thing in your life, including biking instead of driving, and still cut your footprint less than going vegan.

I've never heard of a "bi-valve vegetarian"... I would honestly eat meat if it helped the environment, but knowing it dooms our race, I think it's pretty important to move to vegan diets as quickly as possible. But ultimately, humans are self-serving creatures. We will never get off these roads that we've built, fossil fuels and factory farming. Too much profit, too much personal pleasure. We will consume until nature ends us.

Would you be mad at me if I ate free range chicken?

How about fish that I catch?

I realize you were making a point, but humans do not eat cats. Reptiles, snakes, birds of prey, big cats, and coyotes eat cats.

If mankind were meant to be strictly herbivores would we have a problem with vitamin B12 or lack of it? Wouldn't we have evolved to take care of that little quirk? Humans absorb heme iron. Herbivores do not.

I am meant to be an omnivore.

[Sour Masher]

Would you be mad at me if I ate free range chicken?

How about fish that I catch?

I realize you were making a point, but humans do not eat cats. Reptiles, snakes, birds of prey, big cats, and coyotes eat cats.

If mankind were meant to be strictly herbivores would we have a problem with vitamin B12 or lack of it? Wouldn't we have evolved to take care of that little quirk? Humans absorb heme iron. Herbivores do not.

I am meant to be an omnivore.

We are many things biologically that intellectually we have decided to change about ourselves. The Bible is filled with such choices, choices to be more or different things than what you were born to be. There are pretty easy and healthy ways to get all the nutrients to live a very healthy life (more healthy than the lifestyle most live eating highly processed meats) with little to no meat consumption.

As for your questions, clearly TW and I feel very differently on this and have different approaches. I'm not mad at people for doing what society as a whole deems normal, but I'm mad at the inhumane, destructive systems we have put in place and accept. I do appreciate those who have looked at how broken, corrupt, and immoral our factory farming practices are for animals and workers and make choices to not eat meat at all, or at least meats produced in such environments, or who go hunt and fish for themselves, but I recognize not everyone is privileged to be in an environment to do that. Some of the best, most effective environmentalists are those that go out and hunt and fish in those environments. They understand nature sometimes more than many vegans, and understand when natural culling is required. What is happening now in our factory farms is wasteful and barbaric, even if it is just a more extreme and egregious form of what happens every day in those environments.

Bring up the cat thing is pretty funny and a potential counterpoint to make to a cat owning hardcore vegan. Cats kill billions of small creatures a year. Pet cats have a massive environmental impact folks often don't consider. They are natural born killers without our intellectual capacities to change their nature.

[Sour Masher]

As an example of how we choose to be different than we are wired, the overwhelming evidence tells us males are not naturally monogamous beings. Our biology tells us to spread our seed, to be crass about it. But many of us choose to get married and stay monogamous. We can also safely choose to be vegetarians, or at least radically alter/cut back on our meat consumption and the type of meats we process, and the way we treat the animals. We very clearly will need to sooner or later.

So many major diseases have come from animal husbandry, including small pox, chicken pox, and several other pandemics. It takes up so man resources for our unprecedented population, it simply is not sustainable in the ways we are doing it now. And factory farming is so obviously profane and immoral, if you look at it. It is a relatively recent way of doing things, and it is pretty appalling, if you look at it, for many angles. There is nothing natural about it, or healthy, physically or morally, for sure.

[Teenwolf]

Would you be mad at me if I ate free range chicken?

How about fish that I catch?

I realize you were making a point, but humans do not eat cats. Reptiles, snakes, birds of prey, big cats, and coyotes eat cats.

If mankind were meant to be strictly herbivores would we have a problem with vitamin B12 or lack of it? Wouldn't we have evolved to take care of that little quirk? Humans absorb heme iron. Herbivores do not.

I am meant to be an omnivore.

Thanks for asking such specific questions. I don't judge any meat eaters personally. My dad ran a bait and tackle shop for years, and I just grabbed meat, milk, and cheese for him this week. I'm primarily concerned with environmental sustainability moreso than animal welfare. I recognize many people like my dad are stubborn and unwilling to change even in the face of death. This is why I remain skeptical humanity can overcome the death spiral we are in.

Fishing and hunting are better for animal welfare but potentially worse for sustainability. We've seen many fish and animal species hunted to extinction. Cod fishing in BC is finished. It isn't scalable to replace meat from factory farms. So you catching a fish or shooting a deer might make a positive impact for you to avoid supporting these industries, but hunting accounts for 3% of meat consumption in the US. So it isn't scalable.

Likewise, "humane meat" is a myth. Free range chickens are simply in cages with space enough to move their wings, since all the hormone heavyweight chickens were breaking their legs being too fat to support their bodies. The actual treatment is slightly better up to premature death, but not much. But I'm concerned with resources. We don't have the resources to scale up smaller farming to replace factory farming. There's not enough land mass to produce enough grazing space or animal feed. Humane meat is an illusion to make you feel better about not changing, but actually takes up more natural resources than factory farmed meat. Which is more or less ethical? One is more environmentally efficient but both are unsustainable.

On the other hand, there will never be new animal meats for you to eat, unless you're an adventurous type. Try the pangolin, I hear it's great! Vegans get new meat and cheese and other substitute products introduced all the time, constantly getting better and more authentic tasting. I also learn new tricks all the time, like black salt having a super eggy odour, which I mix in with blended cashews and crumbled tofu for scrambled eggs. Love my vegan eating, always something new.

Finally, Gregg, vegan diets are better for longevity than meat eating diets. If you need proof, guess which one of the Golden Girls has been a vegan for about 50 years. Hint: it's not any of the dead ones. She turned 98 this past January. Small sample size, but larger studies show the average vegan lifespan somewhere in the 7-10 extra years range.

[Gregg]

Bring up the cat thing is pretty funny and a potential counterpoint to make to a cat owning hardcore vegan. Cats kill billions of small creatures a year. Pet cats have a massive environmental impact folks often don't consider. They are natural born killers without our intellectual capacities to change their nature.

I am sure that is true on a global scale. I know of no one in my circle of acquaintances that have cats as pets that let them roam in and out of their houses.

Do you feed your cat meat? I would include in that question dried food made from meat.

There is a lot of dog and cat food out there that is made with corn and or different grains. This is not the best diet for them. The ones that have more meat or are all meat are the best for them.

We do like our pets. I just spent $250 for a check up and a couple of shots on our dog last week.