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The fight over transparency in the meat industry
- triplesec 10y agorelated: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama-administration-big-food-policy.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama...
- wmil 10y agoWhat's really interesting is that slaughterhouses are major users of H1B visas.
- happyslobro 10y agoOh man, this sounds like a plot device in a horror movie.
- JoBrad 10y agoOr an Upton Sinclair novel.
- 1457389 10y agoTrust HN to find a way to make animal suffering all about their career prospects...
- Zigurd 10y agoOne of the negative effects of visa holders that are completely dependent on their employers is that working conditions don't matter as much. That's probably true in abattoirs as it is in coding shops.
- 1457389 10y agoWhat isn't as true in coding shops is the torture and killing of sentient creatures, which was the whole point of this article. I think my point about the fixation of certain elements of this forum on inappropriately narrow and pecuniary perspectives still stands given that the comment I responded to was one of the first posted.
- Zigurd 10y agoWell, yes, that's the point. Bad working conditions, and H1-Bs that have to tolerate them or go home empty-handed, have worse consequences, at least morally, when making meat.
- rch 10y agoInteresting! Do you know of an open data source for that information?
- wmil 10y agoh1bdata.info has everything searchable by city, employer or title. eg: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=MANAGER+TRAINEE&city=&year=All+Years http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=MANAGER+TRAINEE&city=&... http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Murphy-brown+Llc&job=&city=&year=All+Years http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Murphy-brown+Llc&job=&city=...
- rch 10y agoPerfect. Thank you.
- devsatish 10y agoInteresting. Just searched on dolstats for that employer (Murphy Brown) and found more details. Looks like most of the h1bs in this industry are from South American countries (Honduras etc) http://dolstats.com/search http://dolstats.com/search
- titanomachy 10y agoI guess there aren't enough Americans who are willing to do soul-crushing unskilled labour for minimum wage.
- WalterSear 10y agoSlaughterhouse jobs correlate with increases in PTSD, domestic violence and violent crime. "Contracting out" the cognitive dissonance of causing suffering and misery has consequences to all involved. https://www.google.com/search?q=slaughterhouse+workers+domestic+violence&oq=slaughterhouse+domes&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l2.6644j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=slaughterhouse+workers+domes...
- jonah 10y agoAnd RSI. In the chicken processing plants near where I grew up, the workers were expendable. You're worked hard until you get injured and then discarded/fired/pushed out and replaced.
- h4nkoslo 10y agoThe "minimum wage" aspect is an artifact of the imported labor (and mostly the "soul crushing"; you can lower labor costs by cutting wages, or working conditions). There is a reason they decided to be called the Green Bay Packers, and it's not because the jobs were associated with poverty & soul-crushing.
- kbenson 10y agoWith uBlock enabled some script that removed the semi-transparent white overlay doesn't get loaded, so the article presents as faded and hard to read. I mention this to help people figure out what's going on, and let people that see it make an informed decision whether to visit, not to start a discussion on the merits of this practice. Please, that discussion has been done to death. People have very strong convictions, strongly held, which is not a recipe for a useful discussion.
- e40 10y agoRe: uBlock problem: you need to allow the nyt.com domain, then it works fine.
- happyslobro 10y agoOr inspect element and delete the overlay. Same effort, less surrender.
- gorhill 10y agoI do not see this issue with default filter lists.
- kbenson 10y agoWell, I'm using uBlock Origin, but I haven't futzed with the default block lists from what I can remember. I'm not really sure the difference between the origin and non-origin versions, so maybe it's related to that? You're probably uniquely suited to answer that... ;)
- gorhill 10y agoI could finally reproduce, once in a while when I open the dev console, so there appear to be a timing issue. I added a filter in uBO's filters to deal with this.
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- tjic 10y agoAs I mentioned in another thread, I live on a farm. (I hack Ruby and C++ as a day job, the farm is just a hobby). One major reason for doing so is animal welfare. I'm a meat eater and will staunchly defend it...but factory farming is terrible. At this point we get most of our meat from our own pastures: chicken, goat, lamb, pork. It's much more expensive than buying factory farmed meat, and even more expensive (in labor, if not dollars) than shopping at Whole Foods. It is wonderful, however, to not merely know that the animals are being treated well, but to watch them every day, enjoying their animal lives: chickens pecking at the pumpkins and squash we grow and feed them, pigs rolling around and enjoying themselves in the mud, sheep chewing contentedly in the pasture. And, of course, at the end of the season, when it's time to turn living creatures into meat, doing it yourself ensures that it's done well, and with minimal stress and pain. This lifestyle isn't for everyone, but for those who are interested in it, it's becoming more and more possible because of remote work (and soon, driverless cars). Pictures of processing one of three 500+ lb pork carcasses below: https://goo.gl/photos/6rzXQXL23esitdh76 https://goo.gl/photos/6rzXQXL23esitdh76 https://goo.gl/photos/gZqXZ2ENXfNZv9xL9 https://goo.gl/photos/gZqXZ2ENXfNZv9xL9 (Btw, I'm in civilization, on a client site, today. I packed my lunch, as I always do. It was pulled pork and home-made cole slaw. The pork came from that very critter in the above photos.) If anyone has any questions about the farm life, feel free to email me. My user name @ my user name . com
- Synaesthesia 10y agoI don't see why, for example, chickens couldn't be humanely farmed for not much more expense. If you let them wander about freely in a field, they will voluntarily go back to the coop at night. The current battery system, besides being awful for the animals, is very unhygienic with the chickens cramped together, pooping on each other. Consequently the chickens are given large amounts of antibiotic which encourages superbugs to develop. It's not good for public health, surely!
- tjic 10y agoI'm not defending factory farming of chickens (I actually just adjusted our fencing to double the size of the chicken run), but the answer is: cost. Chickens in modern factory farms are stacked deep. Each has < 1 ft^2, and their cages are stacked vertically perhaps 10 deep, so they get around 0.1 ft^2 of farm land each. We have around 15 chickens in our flock. They share a 144 ft^2 coop and have a little chicken door that gives out onto a 400 ft^2 outdoor run. That's ~550 ft^2 for 15 chickens, or 45 ft^2 per chicken. That's 450 times as much space as a factory farmed chicken gets. That costs money.
- adamnemecek 10y agoI think that fundamentally this is just a sign of people realizing that the meat industry can't ever be ethical. I'm expecting society to become maybe 50% vegetarian/vegan in the next couple of decades.
- tjic 10y agoI disagree. Meat CAN be ethical, and often is.
- adamnemecek 10y agoFor some definition of ethical, maybe. I guess fundamentally my question to you is, why do you think that human life is worth more than animal life, because that is the foundation of our differences.
- nathanaldensr 10y agotjic didn't say that human life is worth more than animal life. Are you projecting? All life is precious, but we are all still animals. We need food to survive. Almost all life consumes other life for survival. There is nothing more natural than eating.
- 1457389 10y ago>We need food to survive. Non sequitur, food isn't synonymous with killing animals >Almost all life consumes other life for survival Appeal to popularity, almost all life does all sorts of things that we don't condone or have decided is suboptimal. >There is nothing more natural than eating. Non sequitur and naturalistic fallacy. Eating is natural but that doesn't imply killing and eating animals is natural. Even if both are, that isn't in and of itself a valid justification for that behaviour.
- kbenson 10y agoThose arguments could be applied to just about any behavior, including not eating meat. You're presupposing the need to justify eating meat, and then using generic arguments to dismantle specific statements without point. If you want to have a useful discussion, please provide an argument..
- grandalf 10y agoIt would be one thing if someone sneaking into a factory farm and filming the operation were subject to the same penalties as someone sneaking into any other business, but due to the horrific nature of what goes on, laws have been passed that result in significantly harsher penalties for secretly obtaining footage of the farms. We should all be able to see what goes on in our prisons, in our concentration camps (Gitmo, etc.), in our Zoos, schools, and factory farms... anywhere there are basic concerns about abuse of power and suffering. The various industries that support secrecy in these systems (government, entrenched businesses, etc.) will fight to claim that secrecy is needed, mainly so that their practices will not be deemed atrocities.
- exolymph 10y ago> We should all be able to see what goes on in our prisons, in our concentration camps (Gitmo, etc.), in our Zoos, schools, and factory farms... anywhere there are basic concerns about abuse of power and suffering. 100% agreed. Of course, this is precisely why we aren't able to see what goes on in prisons and factory farms — the people in power know it would curtail what they're able to do. That said, it's not like the conditions in prisons and factory farms (and Gitmo, and so on) are a mystery. We know they're horrible. I am legitimately not sure whether greater visibility would actually prompt the average consumer to care.
- Zigurd 10y agoThe intent isn't even close to being the same. The intent in industrial espionage is personal and/or corporate gain. The intent in exposing conditions in factory farms is to expose suffering and unsanitary conditions. Nobody taking videos in a farm are interested in stealing industrial secrets to build a competing farm.
- josho 10y agoI couldn't believe that there would be special laws for filming agriculture.. It seems I'm wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag Of note: - prohibits "entering an animal or research facility to take pictures - crates a "terrorist registry" for those convicted under the law Fortunately it seems primarily only in the US and in a minority of states.
- marcoperaza 10y agoMy concern for animal welfare ends when it imposes any significant burden on human interests. Billions of people want cheap meat, so let's make sure they keep getting it.
- teach 10y agoHow about climate change? Producing staggering quantities of meat is responsible for an awful lot of greenhouse gas emissions and uses a ton of fossil fuels.
- marcoperaza 10y agoThat is certainly a human interest.
- kbart 10y agoWe could suck Earth dry with such attitude.
- marcoperaza 10y agoThat has nothing to do with animal welfare, but is indeed a core human interest.
- dbg31415 10y agoI grew up on a ranch. Watched my dad slaughter cows, chickens, rabbits, goats... watched him put down old / injured horses, dogs, and cats. When I got old enough I helped. Hardest time was killing and butchering a steer I had trained, and showed in 4H. I think I was like 12 at the time, but you work with an animal all summer... get it trained to follow you around and not pull on the halter... and then the reward is someone buys it to kill it. I ended up being vegetarian for a few years in high school after that. Anyway my only point here was... nobody, and I mean nobody including the PETA activists, cares more about the animals than the ranchers who raised them. One time we were slaughtering a steer and the guy shooting the animal was a dumbass who shot the animal 3 times in the wrong places. Animal was angry, scared, hurt. Dad saw what was going on, jumped the fence as fast as he could, grabbed the gun from the guy, smacked him hard in the face with the gun handle, and then put the animal down as quickly as he could. Dad then yelled at the hired man, using the harshest words I had ever heard at the time, and told him to get lost and never come back. Dad pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the ground to settled up with the man, then just turned his back on him. I'm pretty sure Dad broke the guy's nose, the amount of blood coming off his face was a pretty good indicator of how mad Dad was that he wouldn't show respect to the animal. Similar time, we had been invited over to help a neighbor, and the neighbor's grown son was trying to put a steer down and mistakenly put bird shot in the shotgun instead of a slug -- Dad took the shotgun away from the man. Put the animal down quickly, and then Dad yelled at his neighbor (a man he had known for 20+ years) about what a dipshit his son was. We left and never talked to that neighbor again -- pretty harsh considering we only had about 5 neighbors within 20 miles of us. Factory slaughter houses are different, but if you can buy meat from a local rancher who slaughtered the animal himself you can be fairly sure he did the job humanely.
- adamnemecek 10y agoIf only all of this were unnecessary. Oh wait...
- finid 10y agoBeef commands a premium if it is labeled “grass-fed” or “naturally raised,” but the Department of Agriculture withdrew oversight of those terms in January and no longer verifies such claims. Even in cases where the U.S.D.A. does certify labels, the rules can be slippery. The term “humanely raised,” for example, has no standard definition, and the U.S.D.A. does not conduct site visits to confirm enforcement for those approved to use the label. In other words, the industry has been given the power to police itself. What could possible be wrong with that? The USDA is supposed to be monitoring these guys, but is now working with them to make sure that no monitoring takes place.
- sedachv 10y agoA good place to start with transparency in the meat industry would be mandatory cancer warnings, like tobacco products are required to display: http://who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ http://who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
- totony 10y agoMaybe I'm a psycho, but it's interesting how pity and empathy extend to all living beings for some (most?) people
- newscracker 10y agoThis can be put quite simply - ethics has several monetary costs that being unethical skips. That gets reflected in the prices consumers see. People are used to opting for cheaper things and don't get to know the hidden costs to others involved (human and non-human). As long as more people aren't willing to vote with their wallets (at the minimum) and also consider changing their habits and lifestyle (even gradually, if not overnight), there's not much hope for improvement. Talking only about humans, without changes in habits, there's a lot more human suffering waiting in the future due to environmental issues, health issues, lack of food, lack of fresh water, etc. (many caused by or made worse by animal agriculture). As always, those will affect the poorer people disproportionately. Those who care about humans and are privileged enough to choose things in life could do a lot more, even if it's one habit a day that builds up over time.