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So, don't buy industry. Buy local, humanely raised and killed animals. e.g., our turkey for thursday was processed today, at a family's small farm here. Our eg

So, don't buy industry. Buy local, humanely raised and killed animals. e.g., our turkey for thursday was processed today, at a family's small farm here. Our eggs come from the back yard. We've gotten pork from another local person who raises a few pigs on the side. FWIW, poultry seems to be the hardest to source for us, and maybe that's because the margins are so damn slim for the factory birds.

gcheong 16y ago
Humanely killed from whose perspective, ours or the animals'? I'm guessing if we could ask, most animals would prefer to live regardless of how painless their death would be or how enjoyable their lives were up until that point. I eat meat so I don't have a problem with killing animals for consumption, I'm just trying to understand the whole "humane killing" idea.
- rbranson 16y ago
  This gets into deeply philosophical, unanswerable questions. If we didn't bring them into the world as food, would they have existed in the first place? Is is it better that they existed for a shorter period of time than not at all? Do the animals we eat for food have the capacity of preferences? Due to their brain capacities, is it more humane to eat fish and birds versus pigs and cattle?
- wiredfool 16y ago
  Both, really. Ideally, the animal would be having a happy life until it suddenly wasn't, and didn't exist anymore. Practically, that can mean that they're kept in their normal surroundings until the last moment, and then they're killed as quickly and painlessly as possible. For example, the farm around the corner has a mobile slaughterhouse come to their pasture. The cows to be killed are put in one pasture, separate from the others. They're killed with a gunshot to the head, then taken away. There's no chance for the cows to stress in transport and know that the day is any different from any other, until the very last second. I'd call that humane.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
Does that scale? If everyone did it, would it work?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- wiredfool 16y ago
  Probably not, at least in the quantities that people eat meat in the US. Doesn't mean that it's not worth doing.

gcheong 16y ago

Humanely killed from whose perspective, ours or the animals'? I'm guessing if we could ask, most animals would prefer to live regardless of how painless their death would be or how enjoyable their lives were up until that point. I eat meat so I don't have a problem with killing animals for consumption, I'm just trying to understand the whole "humane killing" idea.

rbranson 16y ago
This gets into deeply philosophical, unanswerable questions. If we didn't bring them into the world as food, would they have existed in the first place? Is is it better that they existed for a shorter period of time than not at all? Do the animals we eat for food have the capacity of preferences? Due to their brain capacities, is it more humane to eat fish and birds versus pigs and cattle?
wiredfool 16y ago
Both, really. Ideally, the animal would be having a happy life until it suddenly wasn't, and didn't exist anymore. Practically, that can mean that they're kept in their normal surroundings until the last moment, and then they're killed as quickly and painlessly as possible. For example, the farm around the corner has a mobile slaughterhouse come to their pasture. The cows to be killed are put in one pasture, separate from the others. They're killed with a gunshot to the head, then taken away. There's no chance for the cows to stress in transport and know that the day is any different from any other, until the very last second. I'd call that humane.

mike-cardwell 16y ago

Does that scale? If everyone did it, would it work?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
wiredfool 16y ago
Probably not, at least in the quantities that people eat meat in the US. Doesn't mean that it's not worth doing.