4 ms·

>Largely because of post-World War II intensive chicken farming and accompanying price reductions, chicken, once internationally synonymous with luxury, became

by J-dawg 9y ago

>Largely because of post-World War II intensive chicken farming and accompanying price reductions, chicken, once internationally synonymous with luxury, became a staple food in the U.S. These intensive farming methods basically involve treating chickens as protein factories with no regard for their welfare. Packing as many of them as possible into a small space and breeding them to put on weight so quickly that their legs often can't support their bodies. I wish more people would face up to the reality that cheap meat is only possible by mistreating animals in quite horrific ways. If we treated chickens properly, their meat would still be considered an expensive delicacy. Then again, if you treat animals well it's likely worse for the environment (more land required for agriculture etc) so there's really no escaping the fact that humanity needs to eat less meat.

blackguardx 9y ago
I think humane meat production would be better for the environment. Less concentrated animal waste means less runoff pollution directly. And there are additional indirect benefits as well. Less concentration also leads to less use of antibiotics, which isn't a traditionally environmental concern. But an unwanted side effect (like pollution) of mass antibiotic use is reduction in antibiotic efficacy.
sleavey 9y ago
I agree with most of your points, but saying that treating animals well is worse for the environment is pretty misleading. "Treating animals better" should include not feeding them growth hormones or pumping them full of antibiotics which enter the food chain via the meat and ground water. Treating animals well is good for the environment, and drastically reducing consumption or not eating them at all is especially good (think of Amazon deforestation to make way for cattle ranches).
- derefr 9y ago
  The effects of antibiotics entering the water table pale in comparison to 1. the extra pesticides that enter the water table from growing the extra plant matter that must be used to feed free-range animals, and 2. the pollution from the processes required to create the fertilizer to grow said plant matter. You can think of an animal as a way to convert a whole lot of plant matter into a little meat. Growing plant matter for feed, itself, pollutes in various ways. A given animal might be less healthy eating corn than eating grass, but if it needs to eat 10x the weight in grass in its lifetime... that animal, raised that way, is now likely responsible for 10x the pollution.
  - undersuit 9y ago
    >the extra pesticides that enter the water table from growing the extra plant matter that must be used to feed free-range animals 1) Why must it be grown? Shouldn't there just be less animals in places that can't support their grazing? 2) Why are you applying pesticides and fertilizer?
    - derefr 9y ago
      You misunderstand the entire concept of modern agriculture, I think: agriculture is demand-driven. People want food, and have money to spend on food, and so companies (farms) come into existence to turn natural resources into food, so that they can take that money. You can't just have there be "less animals", without feeding less people than have the money to pay to be fed—which is effectively impossible without abandoning capitalism: a new company would always come into existence to capture that surplus. Looking at things through a demand-driven lens, #1 and #2 are one-another's answers: if all the existing companies restrict themselves to non-"enriched" agriculture, then the market can only support a certain number of those companies—but there is still demand, so a new company will come into existence that uses (or one of the existing companies "innovate" to use) pesticides and fertilizer, to squeeze more feedstock out of the same land, to produce more meat from a given agricultural base, to answer the unmet demand. (The real "problem" with this system is that demand isn't fixed; the more food there is available in an area, the more new people the people in that area tend to make, creating a positive feedback loop where demand will never be fully satisfied, necessitating a "race to the bottom" of who can squeeze their natural resources the hardest. Fix that, rather than abandoning an allocation system for operating too well.)
  - sleavey 9y ago
    Let's not forget that grass is what they have evolved to eat. The fact that we can get away with feeding them food that is 10x more calorie dense does not make that approach correct. As others have said, the most environmentally friendly solution is to drastically reduce consumption of animals, regardless of what we feed them.
derefr 9y ago
Humanity doesn't need to eat less meat; humanity just needs to finish disconnecting meat production from animals. :)
- killedbydeath 9y ago
  But why? Animals eat animals, and death is just part of life. Should humans really need to transcend what has been part of our nature for so long because we developed empathy for animals or should we stay close to what we have been all this time. I think that's very much open for arguing. Should we start preventing cats from eating birds? Should we replace every animals diet with vegetarian alternatives?
  - derefr 9y ago
    Because—as half the threads above say, if you'd care to read them—animal farming is very bad for the environment. It's not about the ethics; it's about how much pollution it generates to create the fertilizer and the pesticide to grow the grass or grain that we feed the animals, and about the methane the animals release during their lives—beef-cattle methane, by itself, is 16% of (indirectly-)anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Lab-grown meat isn't important because it's "cruelty-free"; it's important because it's possible to make it far, far cheaper in externalities (and, hopefully, in real dollar-value costs as well) than the alternative. That means more people fed balanced diets per carbon-dollar.
  - 373747391 9y ago
    Responsible pet owners already prevent cats from eating birds. Dozens of songbird species have gone extinct because of people who let their housecats go outside without supervision... it's not "natural" in any sense to artificially sustain a predator animal so that it can periodically go out and eat songbirds. If housecats had to sustain themselves on what they could catch, there would be much fewer of them and the sustained effect on bird populations would be much smaller.
webninja 9y ago
So are you advocating for Artisan Chickens? Also yes America eats too much meat.
hobarrera 9y ago
The documentary "Farm to Fridge" pretty much covers the horrible, immoral practices these industries follows. Sadly, the majority of the population doesn't care about immorality.

by J-dawg 9y ago

blackguardx 9y ago

I think humane meat production would be better for the environment. Less concentrated animal waste means less runoff pollution directly. And there are additional indirect benefits as well. Less concentration also leads to less use of antibiotics, which isn't a traditionally environmental concern. But an unwanted side effect (like pollution) of mass antibiotic use is reduction in antibiotic efficacy.

sleavey 9y ago

I agree with most of your points, but saying that treating animals well is worse for the environment is pretty misleading. "Treating animals better" should include not feeding them growth hormones or pumping them full of antibiotics which enter the food chain via the meat and ground water. Treating animals well is good for the environment, and drastically reducing consumption or not eating them at all is especially good (think of Amazon deforestation to make way for cattle ranches).

derefr 9y ago
The effects of antibiotics entering the water table pale in comparison to 1. the extra pesticides that enter the water table from growing the extra plant matter that must be used to feed free-range animals, and 2. the pollution from the processes required to create the fertilizer to grow said plant matter. You can think of an animal as a way to convert a whole lot of plant matter into a little meat. Growing plant matter for feed, itself, pollutes in various ways. A given animal might be less healthy eating corn than eating grass, but if it needs to eat 10x the weight in grass in its lifetime... that animal, raised that way, is now likely responsible for 10x the pollution.
- undersuit 9y ago
  >the extra pesticides that enter the water table from growing the extra plant matter that must be used to feed free-range animals 1) Why must it be grown? Shouldn't there just be less animals in places that can't support their grazing? 2) Why are you applying pesticides and fertilizer?
  - derefr 9y ago
    You misunderstand the entire concept of modern agriculture, I think: agriculture is demand-driven. People want food, and have money to spend on food, and so companies (farms) come into existence to turn natural resources into food, so that they can take that money. You can't just have there be "less animals", without feeding less people than have the money to pay to be fed—which is effectively impossible without abandoning capitalism: a new company would always come into existence to capture that surplus. Looking at things through a demand-driven lens, #1 and #2 are one-another's answers: if all the existing companies restrict themselves to non-"enriched" agriculture, then the market can only support a certain number of those companies—but there is still demand, so a new company will come into existence that uses (or one of the existing companies "innovate" to use) pesticides and fertilizer, to squeeze more feedstock out of the same land, to produce more meat from a given agricultural base, to answer the unmet demand. (The real "problem" with this system is that demand isn't fixed; the more food there is available in an area, the more new people the people in that area tend to make, creating a positive feedback loop where demand will never be fully satisfied, necessitating a "race to the bottom" of who can squeeze their natural resources the hardest. Fix that, rather than abandoning an allocation system for operating too well.)
- sleavey 9y ago
  Let's not forget that grass is what they have evolved to eat. The fact that we can get away with feeding them food that is 10x more calorie dense does not make that approach correct. As others have said, the most environmentally friendly solution is to drastically reduce consumption of animals, regardless of what we feed them.

derefr 9y ago

Humanity doesn't need to eat less meat; humanity just needs to finish disconnecting meat production from animals. :)

killedbydeath 9y ago
But why? Animals eat animals, and death is just part of life. Should humans really need to transcend what has been part of our nature for so long because we developed empathy for animals or should we stay close to what we have been all this time. I think that's very much open for arguing. Should we start preventing cats from eating birds? Should we replace every animals diet with vegetarian alternatives?
- derefr 9y ago
  Because—as half the threads above say, if you'd care to read them—animal farming is very bad for the environment. It's not about the ethics; it's about how much pollution it generates to create the fertilizer and the pesticide to grow the grass or grain that we feed the animals, and about the methane the animals release during their lives—beef-cattle methane, by itself, is 16% of (indirectly-)anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Lab-grown meat isn't important because it's "cruelty-free"; it's important because it's possible to make it far, far cheaper in externalities (and, hopefully, in real dollar-value costs as well) than the alternative. That means more people fed balanced diets per carbon-dollar.
- 373747391 9y ago
  Responsible pet owners already prevent cats from eating birds. Dozens of songbird species have gone extinct because of people who let their housecats go outside without supervision... it's not "natural" in any sense to artificially sustain a predator animal so that it can periodically go out and eat songbirds. If housecats had to sustain themselves on what they could catch, there would be much fewer of them and the sustained effect on bird populations would be much smaller.

webninja 9y ago

So are you advocating for Artisan Chickens? Also yes America eats too much meat.

hobarrera 9y ago

The documentary "Farm to Fridge" pretty much covers the horrible, immoral practices these industries follows. Sadly, the majority of the population doesn't care about immorality.