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The current factory farm system and the nearly infinite levels of suffering we put animals through is a weird aberration we will look back on in hundreds of yea

The current factory farm system and the nearly infinite levels of suffering we put animals through is a weird aberration we will look back on in hundreds of years as completely insane. It's like a macabre torture machine most people just avoid ever learning about because the don't want to know how dark it really gets while eating their nuggets.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
For cows at least, I’m not sure where this infinite level of suffering you mention comes in. They grow on a ranch well taken care of and have all the food and medical care they could want (more than most Americans can say!). Then they are taken to a feedlot and given all the fattening grain they could ever want (if you’ve ever owned an animal you know that unlimited food is their nirvana) before being humanely slaughtered in an approved and as painless as possible way. Something else to think of is if not for being grown for food they wouldn’t have existed at all. Is not existing better than that life they get? It’s an interesting question. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ That study measured fecal cortisol (indicator for stress) upon arriving at a feedlot and after fattening and the animals seem to be within normal limits the whole time.
- tashoecraft 7y ago
  Uh, I think your making it quite a bit more glamorous than it is. Feedlots are like if you were placed in a bathroom and given a buffet of a single food source that is designed to be both as cheap as possible whilst fattening you as fast as possible. Than having antibiotics given to you in order to survive the bacteria filled area.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Antibiotics are not given to animals for health reasons (at least not primarily). The antibiotics somehow help the animals grow faster for reasons that are not well understood. As a not so fun fact the vast majority of all antibiotics in the US end up being given to animals.
    - dpark 7y ago
      They are given for health reasons. It’s no longer legal in the US to give cattle antibiotics to encourage faster growth. It is legal to give them antibiotics to prevent/treat the liver abscesses they frequently develop as a result of their diet in the feed lot.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        They are being given an extremely unsuitable diet so they need antibiotics to deal with this. It’s pretty bad.
      - rjf72 7y ago
        The FDA rules left a number of loopholes. Overall usage has declined and in some cases quite substantially, but they're still being misused. For instance animals can still be given antibiotics as a 'preventative measure.' In 2017, there were still 2.3 million kg of antibiotics sold for usage in cattle alone. [1] To try to give that number some context there are about 95 million head of cattle in the US, so that works out 24g per cow per year even at the current reduced rate. Actually creates quite a sick motivation system if the FDA does close the loopholes. Growers would have an incentive for their animals to develop conditions requiring antibiotics, so long as it did not significantly risk the animal's health. [1] - http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/12/fda-reports-major-drop-antibiotics-food-animals http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/12/fda-repor...
- codingvelocity 7y ago
  Cows out to pasture likely have a good life, but I wouldn't say feedlots are especially kind. They are fairly crowded with little to no green space. I do agree with the rest of your statements though. Beef farming is far kinder then any poultry farming
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Hm relatively similar? A chicken has the awareness of a bug. Conditions for a higher mammal vs a chicken might reasonably be very different for the same level of stress.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      >A chicken has the awareness of a bug. You must know some smart bugs. Birds tend to be surprisingly bright for their brain capacity. "Research has shown that chickens have some sense of numbers. Experiments with newly hatched domestic chicks showed they can discriminate between quantities. They also have an idea about ordinality, which refers to the ability to place quantities in a series. Five-day-old domestic chicks presented with two sets of objects of different quantities disappearing behind two screens were able to successfully track which one hid the larger number by apparently performing simple arithmetic in the form of addition and subtraction. Chickens are also able to remember the trajectory of a hidden ball for up to 180 seconds if they see the ball moving and up to one minute if the displacement of the ball is invisible to them. Their performance is similar to that of most primates under similar conditions. The birds possess self-control when it comes to holding out for a better food reward. They are able to self-assess their position in the pecking order. These two characteristics are indicative of self-awareness. Chicken communication is also quite complex, and consists of a large repertoire of different visual displays and at least 24 distinct vocalizations. The birds possess the complex ability of referential communication, which involves signals such as calls, displays and whistles to convey information. They may use this to sound the alarm when there is danger, for instance. This ability requires some level of self-awareness and being able to take the perspective of another animal, and is also possessed by highly intelligent and social species, including primates. Chickens perceive time intervals and can anticipate future events. Like many other animals, they demonstrate their cognitive complexity when placed in social situations requiring them to solve problems. The birds are able to experience a range of complex negative and positive emotions, including fear, anticipation and anxiety. They make decisions based on what is best for them. They also possess a simple form of empathy called emotional contagion. Not only do individual chickens have distinct personalities, but mother hens also show a range of individual maternal personality traits which appear to affect the behavior of their chicks. The birds can deceive one another, and they watch and learn from each other." https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/think-chicken---think-intelligent--caring-and-complex--/11952522 https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-ne...
- ForrestN 7y ago
  This is a very hot take—the feed lots you describe are horrific! Not only are they in tiny, cramped pens, these pens are filled with mud and shit! The food they're eating is not nirvana, it's the barest possible nutrition to fatten them up according to their warped genetic urgency to get bigger at an unnaturally fast pace that trashes their natural health. This isn't an all you can eat buffet and a spa—getting pumped full of antibiotics because their environment is so toxic is hardly what I'd guess they "want." This kind of argument relies on the idea that human beings and animals are fundamentally different, that somehow cow suffering is unrelated to human suffering. But most of what we feel and do every day is not actually dictated by consciousness. If you were put into a tiny, roasting summer pen so tiny you couldn't even walk in circles, filled with drugs, covered in your own excrement, ravaged by hunger even though all you do is eat dirty grey hard food, I don't think you'd respond with some kind of elegant, mathematical, civilized emotion. You'd be out of your mind with terror, sadness and grief. Cows can feel all those things, and they do in factory farms. It's common sense, and I agree with those who say we will look back on this era as a disgusting, ignominious chapter in human society.
  - wysifnwyg 7y ago
    >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ >That study measured fecal cortisol (indicator for stress) upon arriving at a feedlot and after fattening and the animals seem to be within normal limits the whole time. It seems like your opinion is not supported by the scientific evidence that reflects stress levels.
    - throw_away 7y ago
      I'm not going to buy the whole paper, but this seems to be studying whether there is additional stress in humid, tropical climates, not whether feedlots affect stress levels. Note that there is no non-feedlot control. The fact that it says that stress indicators were in the "normal ranges for cattle" could mean simply that they are not more stressed than feedlot animals in non-humid, non-tropical climates. The one paper that cites this one is also about how temperature and climate differences affect reproduction rates: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0191961 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- durpleDrank 7y ago
  OP's implications were in the context of a modern factory farm. You are describing the life of a cow on an old fashioned farm. Not existing is objectively better than being raised for veal. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with factory farming, I honestly don't recommend going down the animal lib rabbit hole it's incredibly depressing. It's a water slide of cognitive dissonance until you hit rock bottom and realize there needs to be reform.
- Franciscouzo 7y ago
  Might be the cynic in me, but that just sounds like p-hacking, they probably tested several "stress indicators" and chose the one that was below 0.05.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  “Something else to think of is if not for being grown for food they wouldn’t have existed at all. Is not existing better than that life they get? It’s an interesting question.” By that logic we could grow humans in concentration camps and make them perform slave labor for their whole life. Their lives are miserable but at least they have existed. You seem to have a very rose colored impression of how life is for most animals is on farms or feed lots. Their whole life is miserable and stressful.
matz1 7y ago
While i understand it sucks for you but for many people factory including me, factory farming is awesome and animal suffering is not important at all.
loceng 7y ago
Systems will develop for complete transparency of where their food comes from - for the whole supply chain - whether plant or animal.
jotm 7y ago
Well, that's what happens when people can't or won't keep their own animals but still want to eat meat. Lab grown should change that in the future.
theCodeStig 7y ago
You're absolutely right.
rlpb 7y ago
> a weird aberration we will look back on in hundreds of years as completely insane I am hopeful that by then the concept of us eating animals will also be gone by us synthesizing all our meat instead. At that point, everything to do with animal consumption and animal production for consumption will seem like a weird aberration; a mere blink of an eye that was part of the process of us transitioning from animals into a civilized intelligent species.
- markstos 7y ago
  "synthesizing meat" is transitional, coming from the mindset that meat is necessary. Once adaptation to eating plants happens, eating things which simulate animals can seem strange and cravings for animal meat and meat-like products may fade. If you don't enjoy the thought of a eating a slaughtered cow patty, eating a healthier, plant-based version of a slaughtered cow patty that looks and tastes roughly the same may still not be that appealing.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I would switch to a synthesized alternative tomorrow if we could figure out diet today. But it's still regularly promoted that the best way to see to a full diet is a natural diet along with any necessary supplementation because [from my limited memory] we don't have a full grasp on the complex interactions/delivery of nutrients. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-get-your-nutrients-from-food-or-from-supplements https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-ge... A predisposition to a B12 deficiency runs in my family. In other family members it's more severe than others (for instance a B12 shot has been not enough to bring my mother back from near physical collapse and has required emergency blood transfusions). I've often thought I had a handle on it—take a daily oral or sublingual tablet of 5000mcg (usually urinate most of it out pretty quickly) and added more red meat to my diet (per my doctor) but still I've noticed advancing effects occasionally. One more physically apparent one is slowly advancing Vitiligo—I'd had some spots for years but notice a new or expanding one every so often. It's a [physically] harmless symptom, mind. Worse are some of the others I experienced in my earlier years that persisted before I was diagnosed. I still have bouts where I thought I was looking after myself and those periods of sensation loss/global pins and needles, nausea. It can be frightening, and quality of life plummets. It's no joke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/vitamin-b12-deficiency-can-be-sneaky-harmful-201301105780 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/vitamin-b12-deficiency-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency So solve the diet thing and I'm on board. Until then, I think it's a bit of hubris. I'm sure there are other incremental improvements we can make until then, however.
agumonkey 7y ago
I looked at it this way too but right now I just understand it as "normal" distortion from techno-economical evolution. Everything modern is about putting things away to enjoy benefits and ignorance.
khawkins 7y ago
You should spend less time watching PETA videos and more time watching videos produced by experts in the field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsEbvwMipJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsEbvwMipJI

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

For cows at least, I’m not sure where this infinite level of suffering you mention comes in. They grow on a ranch well taken care of and have all the food and medical care they could want (more than most Americans can say!). Then they are taken to a feedlot and given all the fattening grain they could ever want (if you’ve ever owned an animal you know that unlimited food is their nirvana) before being humanely slaughtered in an approved and as painless as possible way. Something else to think of is if not for being grown for food they wouldn’t have existed at all. Is not existing better than that life they get? It’s an interesting question. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ That study measured fecal cortisol (indicator for stress) upon arriving at a feedlot and after fattening and the animals seem to be within normal limits the whole time.

tashoecraft 7y ago
Uh, I think your making it quite a bit more glamorous than it is. Feedlots are like if you were placed in a bathroom and given a buffet of a single food source that is designed to be both as cheap as possible whilst fattening you as fast as possible. Than having antibiotics given to you in order to survive the bacteria filled area.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Antibiotics are not given to animals for health reasons (at least not primarily). The antibiotics somehow help the animals grow faster for reasons that are not well understood. As a not so fun fact the vast majority of all antibiotics in the US end up being given to animals.
  - dpark 7y ago
    They are given for health reasons. It’s no longer legal in the US to give cattle antibiotics to encourage faster growth. It is legal to give them antibiotics to prevent/treat the liver abscesses they frequently develop as a result of their diet in the feed lot.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      They are being given an extremely unsuitable diet so they need antibiotics to deal with this. It’s pretty bad.
    - rjf72 7y ago
      The FDA rules left a number of loopholes. Overall usage has declined and in some cases quite substantially, but they're still being misused. For instance animals can still be given antibiotics as a 'preventative measure.' In 2017, there were still 2.3 million kg of antibiotics sold for usage in cattle alone. [1] To try to give that number some context there are about 95 million head of cattle in the US, so that works out 24g per cow per year even at the current reduced rate. Actually creates quite a sick motivation system if the FDA does close the loopholes. Growers would have an incentive for their animals to develop conditions requiring antibiotics, so long as it did not significantly risk the animal's health. [1] - http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/12/fda-reports-major-drop-antibiotics-food-animals http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/12/fda-repor...
codingvelocity 7y ago
Cows out to pasture likely have a good life, but I wouldn't say feedlots are especially kind. They are fairly crowded with little to no green space. I do agree with the rest of your statements though. Beef farming is far kinder then any poultry farming
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Hm relatively similar? A chicken has the awareness of a bug. Conditions for a higher mammal vs a chicken might reasonably be very different for the same level of stress.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    >A chicken has the awareness of a bug. You must know some smart bugs. Birds tend to be surprisingly bright for their brain capacity. "Research has shown that chickens have some sense of numbers. Experiments with newly hatched domestic chicks showed they can discriminate between quantities. They also have an idea about ordinality, which refers to the ability to place quantities in a series. Five-day-old domestic chicks presented with two sets of objects of different quantities disappearing behind two screens were able to successfully track which one hid the larger number by apparently performing simple arithmetic in the form of addition and subtraction. Chickens are also able to remember the trajectory of a hidden ball for up to 180 seconds if they see the ball moving and up to one minute if the displacement of the ball is invisible to them. Their performance is similar to that of most primates under similar conditions. The birds possess self-control when it comes to holding out for a better food reward. They are able to self-assess their position in the pecking order. These two characteristics are indicative of self-awareness. Chicken communication is also quite complex, and consists of a large repertoire of different visual displays and at least 24 distinct vocalizations. The birds possess the complex ability of referential communication, which involves signals such as calls, displays and whistles to convey information. They may use this to sound the alarm when there is danger, for instance. This ability requires some level of self-awareness and being able to take the perspective of another animal, and is also possessed by highly intelligent and social species, including primates. Chickens perceive time intervals and can anticipate future events. Like many other animals, they demonstrate their cognitive complexity when placed in social situations requiring them to solve problems. The birds are able to experience a range of complex negative and positive emotions, including fear, anticipation and anxiety. They make decisions based on what is best for them. They also possess a simple form of empathy called emotional contagion. Not only do individual chickens have distinct personalities, but mother hens also show a range of individual maternal personality traits which appear to affect the behavior of their chicks. The birds can deceive one another, and they watch and learn from each other." https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/think-chicken---think-intelligent--caring-and-complex--/11952522 https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-ne...
ForrestN 7y ago
This is a very hot take—the feed lots you describe are horrific! Not only are they in tiny, cramped pens, these pens are filled with mud and shit! The food they're eating is not nirvana, it's the barest possible nutrition to fatten them up according to their warped genetic urgency to get bigger at an unnaturally fast pace that trashes their natural health. This isn't an all you can eat buffet and a spa—getting pumped full of antibiotics because their environment is so toxic is hardly what I'd guess they "want." This kind of argument relies on the idea that human beings and animals are fundamentally different, that somehow cow suffering is unrelated to human suffering. But most of what we feel and do every day is not actually dictated by consciousness. If you were put into a tiny, roasting summer pen so tiny you couldn't even walk in circles, filled with drugs, covered in your own excrement, ravaged by hunger even though all you do is eat dirty grey hard food, I don't think you'd respond with some kind of elegant, mathematical, civilized emotion. You'd be out of your mind with terror, sadness and grief. Cows can feel all those things, and they do in factory farms. It's common sense, and I agree with those who say we will look back on this era as a disgusting, ignominious chapter in human society.
- wysifnwyg 7y ago
  >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26669595/ >That study measured fecal cortisol (indicator for stress) upon arriving at a feedlot and after fattening and the animals seem to be within normal limits the whole time. It seems like your opinion is not supported by the scientific evidence that reflects stress levels.
  - throw_away 7y ago
    I'm not going to buy the whole paper, but this seems to be studying whether there is additional stress in humid, tropical climates, not whether feedlots affect stress levels. Note that there is no non-feedlot control. The fact that it says that stress indicators were in the "normal ranges for cattle" could mean simply that they are not more stressed than feedlot animals in non-humid, non-tropical climates. The one paper that cites this one is also about how temperature and climate differences affect reproduction rates: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0191961 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
durpleDrank 7y ago
OP's implications were in the context of a modern factory farm. You are describing the life of a cow on an old fashioned farm. Not existing is objectively better than being raised for veal. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with factory farming, I honestly don't recommend going down the animal lib rabbit hole it's incredibly depressing. It's a water slide of cognitive dissonance until you hit rock bottom and realize there needs to be reform.
Franciscouzo 7y ago
Might be the cynic in me, but that just sounds like p-hacking, they probably tested several "stress indicators" and chose the one that was below 0.05.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
“Something else to think of is if not for being grown for food they wouldn’t have existed at all. Is not existing better than that life they get? It’s an interesting question.” By that logic we could grow humans in concentration camps and make them perform slave labor for their whole life. Their lives are miserable but at least they have existed. You seem to have a very rose colored impression of how life is for most animals is on farms or feed lots. Their whole life is miserable and stressful.

matz1 7y ago

While i understand it sucks for you but for many people factory including me, factory farming is awesome and animal suffering is not important at all.

loceng 7y ago

Systems will develop for complete transparency of where their food comes from - for the whole supply chain - whether plant or animal.

jotm 7y ago

Well, that's what happens when people can't or won't keep their own animals but still want to eat meat. Lab grown should change that in the future.

theCodeStig 7y ago

You're absolutely right.

rlpb 7y ago

> a weird aberration we will look back on in hundreds of years as completely insane I am hopeful that by then the concept of us eating animals will also be gone by us synthesizing all our meat instead. At that point, everything to do with animal consumption and animal production for consumption will seem like a weird aberration; a mere blink of an eye that was part of the process of us transitioning from animals into a civilized intelligent species.

markstos 7y ago
"synthesizing meat" is transitional, coming from the mindset that meat is necessary. Once adaptation to eating plants happens, eating things which simulate animals can seem strange and cravings for animal meat and meat-like products may fade. If you don't enjoy the thought of a eating a slaughtered cow patty, eating a healthier, plant-based version of a slaughtered cow patty that looks and tastes roughly the same may still not be that appealing.
52-6F-62 7y ago
I would switch to a synthesized alternative tomorrow if we could figure out diet today. But it's still regularly promoted that the best way to see to a full diet is a natural diet along with any necessary supplementation because [from my limited memory] we don't have a full grasp on the complex interactions/delivery of nutrients. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-get-your-nutrients-from-food-or-from-supplements https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-ge... A predisposition to a B12 deficiency runs in my family. In other family members it's more severe than others (for instance a B12 shot has been not enough to bring my mother back from near physical collapse and has required emergency blood transfusions). I've often thought I had a handle on it—take a daily oral or sublingual tablet of 5000mcg (usually urinate most of it out pretty quickly) and added more red meat to my diet (per my doctor) but still I've noticed advancing effects occasionally. One more physically apparent one is slowly advancing Vitiligo—I'd had some spots for years but notice a new or expanding one every so often. It's a [physically] harmless symptom, mind. Worse are some of the others I experienced in my earlier years that persisted before I was diagnosed. I still have bouts where I thought I was looking after myself and those periods of sensation loss/global pins and needles, nausea. It can be frightening, and quality of life plummets. It's no joke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/vitamin-b12-deficiency-can-be-sneaky-harmful-201301105780 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/vitamin-b12-deficiency-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency So solve the diet thing and I'm on board. Until then, I think it's a bit of hubris. I'm sure there are other incremental improvements we can make until then, however.

agumonkey 7y ago

I looked at it this way too but right now I just understand it as "normal" distortion from techno-economical evolution. Everything modern is about putting things away to enjoy benefits and ignorance.

khawkins 7y ago

You should spend less time watching PETA videos and more time watching videos produced by experts in the field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsEbvwMipJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsEbvwMipJI