12 ms·

These practices should be completely exposed because they're dead-end businesses. There really should only be expensive meat from ethically treated animals rais

by cmurf 11y ago

These practices should be completely exposed because they're dead-end businesses. There really should only be expensive meat from ethically treated animals raised on small farms for sale. And instead of investing money in shutting people up, the money should be invested in growing meat without animals, as the competition with the small farms. These giant agribusinesses are terrible. It's dark comedy how "modern" agriculture insists upon the necessity of cruelty to animals as a business right, compared to how animals are raised and slaughtered in 3rd world countries today, and actually for most of human history. We're so completely stupid, and these companies just want to protect that stupidity and ignorance for profit.

blacksmith_tb 11y ago
I agree almost completely, but I think it's not adequate to simply point the finger at the producers, but also at the consumers, who demand prices so low that callous cruelty is essentially guaranteed. Of course, overall, we're mishandling resources massively to channel agricultural output into livestock, we need to actively reward eating less meat, rather than subsidizing ever more of it.
- tcfunk 11y ago
  Yes, definitely. It was unfortunate that the recent Dietary Guidelines issued by the USDA did not include more meat-related stipulations. Not that the USDA report is the end-all-be-all, but I do think it has substantial power over the decisions we (Americans in general) make at the grocery store.
- cmurf 11y ago
  Yes, consumers are stupid, but ignorance is bliss and they like it this way. Put all the pro capital punishment people into a room and ask them to vote on a law requiring public executions in the town square and oh, no we don't want that, we like state sponsored murder to be behind closed doors, the children after all! Etc. It's a defect in our culture. We're babies. We don't like the reality of some of our choices, it causes cognitive dissonance, so we just white wash reality, and bad mouth the people who try to point to reality, just to coddle the ignorant. And now they don't have to think about it, AND OH MY GOD IT'S ALL SO MUCH BETTER WITH BACON!
- Paul-ish 11y ago
  This appears to be similar to a Lemons market [1]. There is probably a better term for it in this case, but basically the consumer doesn't know what they are getting. They see a price point and maybe a fat %, but they don't know how the animal was treated, so they naturally will go for the lower price point items. This means producers will cut corners where it saves on cost, because they will not be held accountable. A solution would be some form of regulation controlling the way animals can be slaughtered. Whistle-blower laws should protect people who report violations, rather than the opposite we see here with ag-gag laws. It is the same thing with the unsanitary practices exposed in The Jungle. Consumers didn't know know that their food was being processed in unsanitary ways. The exposure provided by Sinclair's book eventually led to the formation of an organization that would become the FDA, which regulates sanitary conditions for food production in the United States. * [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Oh please. Don't try to blame the consumers for this one. Some person at a grocery store or a restaurant has no realistic way of knowing how the meat he's buying was raised and slaughtered. What's he going to do, arrange a farm tour every time he gets something to eat? The best you can get is places like Whole Foods which claim their meat is more ethically treated, but even here you're just relying on their word and their fancy marketing. Moreover, the middle class in this country is disappearing, so people on the bottom end have less and less money to spend on decent food, so of course they're going to get whatever's cheapest. It's not like the grocery store advertises, "buy this cheaper meat here where the cows have been tortured to death, rather than this more expensive meat where they haven't". You can only blame consumers when the consumers actually have sufficient information to make an informed choice, and make the wrong choice anyway. Laws like this aim precisely to prevent consumers from having this information. This is why we need decent government to make capitalism and "free markets" work as well as possible: it's the government's job to keep the playing field level and fair, and laws like this are counter to this goal because they tilt the field in favor of the most evil companies who want to hide how they make stuff so that consumers can't make an informed choice.
gerbilly 11y ago
Cruelty aside, does anyone else feel that 'proper' food has become a luxury item? They constantly replace things like cheese, beef, bread and so on with worse and worse imitations until people forget what they even used to be like. Related joke: Q: Do you know what they used to call organic grass fed beef? A: Beef.
- pixl97 11y ago
  >does anyone else feel that 'proper' food has become a luxury item? Your posit is kind of silly and lacking historical context. 120 years ago when your beef was grass fed beef you may easily find yourself starving to death in winter, or too poor to buy it. Good beef, for anyone who did not live on a farm has always been a luxury item. Now comes the green revolution (and the clean revolution before it) and nearly everybody in America can afford beef so the explosion of corn farms and CAFOs occurs around the country. But wait, that's not all, it's not just Americans that want beef, it's just about anybody out there. Oh, yea, there was only 1.7 billion of us in 1900, now there are 7.5 billion people out there and the vast majority of them in range of refrigerated shipping. So yea, you came from the richest nation in the world that produced a huge amount of a luxury item, and completely neglected that you were eating a luxury item the entire time.
  - gerbilly 11y ago
    >[you] neglected that you were eating a luxury item the whole time. Well I did include bread and cheese in the list as well. I could also have included eggs, and most vegetables.
loki49152 11y ago
"Should be"? "Ethically"? On what basis and under what code of ethics do you operate? You understand that your view of ethics is only one among many, and you have no right to impose yours on other people by force... Right?

by cmurf 11y ago

blacksmith_tb 11y ago

I agree almost completely, but I think it's not adequate to simply point the finger at the producers, but also at the consumers, who demand prices so low that callous cruelty is essentially guaranteed. Of course, overall, we're mishandling resources massively to channel agricultural output into livestock, we need to actively reward eating less meat, rather than subsidizing ever more of it.

tcfunk 11y ago
Yes, definitely. It was unfortunate that the recent Dietary Guidelines issued by the USDA did not include more meat-related stipulations. Not that the USDA report is the end-all-be-all, but I do think it has substantial power over the decisions we (Americans in general) make at the grocery store.
cmurf 11y ago
Yes, consumers are stupid, but ignorance is bliss and they like it this way. Put all the pro capital punishment people into a room and ask them to vote on a law requiring public executions in the town square and oh, no we don't want that, we like state sponsored murder to be behind closed doors, the children after all! Etc. It's a defect in our culture. We're babies. We don't like the reality of some of our choices, it causes cognitive dissonance, so we just white wash reality, and bad mouth the people who try to point to reality, just to coddle the ignorant. And now they don't have to think about it, AND OH MY GOD IT'S ALL SO MUCH BETTER WITH BACON!
Paul-ish 11y ago
This appears to be similar to a Lemons market [1]. There is probably a better term for it in this case, but basically the consumer doesn't know what they are getting. They see a price point and maybe a fat %, but they don't know how the animal was treated, so they naturally will go for the lower price point items. This means producers will cut corners where it saves on cost, because they will not be held accountable. A solution would be some form of regulation controlling the way animals can be slaughtered. Whistle-blower laws should protect people who report violations, rather than the opposite we see here with ag-gag laws. It is the same thing with the unsanitary practices exposed in The Jungle. Consumers didn't know know that their food was being processed in unsanitary ways. The exposure provided by Sinclair's book eventually led to the formation of an organization that would become the FDA, which regulates sanitary conditions for food production in the United States. * [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Grishnakh 11y ago
Oh please. Don't try to blame the consumers for this one. Some person at a grocery store or a restaurant has no realistic way of knowing how the meat he's buying was raised and slaughtered. What's he going to do, arrange a farm tour every time he gets something to eat? The best you can get is places like Whole Foods which claim their meat is more ethically treated, but even here you're just relying on their word and their fancy marketing. Moreover, the middle class in this country is disappearing, so people on the bottom end have less and less money to spend on decent food, so of course they're going to get whatever's cheapest. It's not like the grocery store advertises, "buy this cheaper meat here where the cows have been tortured to death, rather than this more expensive meat where they haven't". You can only blame consumers when the consumers actually have sufficient information to make an informed choice, and make the wrong choice anyway. Laws like this aim precisely to prevent consumers from having this information. This is why we need decent government to make capitalism and "free markets" work as well as possible: it's the government's job to keep the playing field level and fair, and laws like this are counter to this goal because they tilt the field in favor of the most evil companies who want to hide how they make stuff so that consumers can't make an informed choice.

gerbilly 11y ago

Cruelty aside, does anyone else feel that 'proper' food has become a luxury item? They constantly replace things like cheese, beef, bread and so on with worse and worse imitations until people forget what they even used to be like. Related joke: Q: Do you know what they used to call organic grass fed beef? A: Beef.

pixl97 11y ago
>does anyone else feel that 'proper' food has become a luxury item? Your posit is kind of silly and lacking historical context. 120 years ago when your beef was grass fed beef you may easily find yourself starving to death in winter, or too poor to buy it. Good beef, for anyone who did not live on a farm has always been a luxury item. Now comes the green revolution (and the clean revolution before it) and nearly everybody in America can afford beef so the explosion of corn farms and CAFOs occurs around the country. But wait, that's not all, it's not just Americans that want beef, it's just about anybody out there. Oh, yea, there was only 1.7 billion of us in 1900, now there are 7.5 billion people out there and the vast majority of them in range of refrigerated shipping. So yea, you came from the richest nation in the world that produced a huge amount of a luxury item, and completely neglected that you were eating a luxury item the entire time.
- gerbilly 11y ago
  >[you] neglected that you were eating a luxury item the whole time. Well I did include bread and cheese in the list as well. I could also have included eggs, and most vegetables.

loki49152 11y ago

"Should be"? "Ethically"? On what basis and under what code of ethics do you operate? You understand that your view of ethics is only one among many, and you have no right to impose yours on other people by force... Right?