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Animals killed since opening this page
- derision 6y agoWould be interesting to have the opposite, animals bred since opening this page
- soperj 6y agoOr plants killed since opening this page.
- ainiriand 6y agoOr thoughts dying in an empty brain. That would be something.
- ultimape 6y agoI"m assuming you're being sarcastic, but I would love a similar style page showing how many trees are burned and how many fish are harvested vs. how many fish are repopulated. Thinking about memes as living organisms (infomorphic beings?) would be an interesting way to frame cultural decay.
- soperj 6y agoI wasn't. Plants are clearly important to our well being, more so than animals.
- bpodgursky 6y agoPresumably the same, within a rounding error.
- PeterisP 6y agoWould it be any different? I mean, we breed as much food animals as we slaughter, the only difference is a time lag e.g. today's number of slaughtered chickens should match the the number of chickens bred in March; today's number of bred chickens will be a bit different than today's slaughtered chickens if farmers expect that in June people are going to eat more or less chicken due to Covid or something.
- nostromo 6y agoThat's shown on the left side of your browser.
- gjsman-1000 6y agoOne problem: This website doesn't adjust for time. For example, the turkeys killed per minute is much higher in Thanksgiving than outside of Thanksgiving (like right now).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- partiallypro 6y agoI'm sure they just take they daily average throughout a year, and don't account for cyclical events. So they are probably over-counting on a daily basis and under-counting on holidays.
- ebg13 6y agoThe page is a neat and useful visual exercise until the chickens section which just completely breaks all my browsers.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoIt's unfortunate the tally is below that because each time I try to scroll past the chickens I come out the other side with motion sickness.
- ken 6y agoInterestingly, no problem at all with an iPhone SE, a phone packed with 5-year-old technology.
- ComodoHacker 6y agoNumber of pixels rendered per second is much fewer on SE I suppose.
- elil17 6y agoWell become a vegetarian and maybe it will run better /s
- jonas21 6y agoOne could argue that proves its point.
- nradov 6y agoWhy don't they count the bacteria killed to make cheese?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThey're not cute. People don't connect with them.
- discordance 6y agoPeople who practice Jainism try their best to avoid consuming microorganisms[0]. Not sure how effective they are, but it’s the thought that counts I guess. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
- Starkus 6y agoA lot of humans to feed
- blahblahblah22 6y agoIt's pretty well-established that we (in the West) consume far more protein than we need. We don't need to go vegan but do need to reduce meat consumption.
- nradov 6y agoOn the contrary, most people would be healthier if they ate more high quality protein from a diverse range of plant and animal sources. The US RDA is enough to avoid nutritional deficiency but insufficient for optimal health and athletic performance.
- nikivi 6y agoJust wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings. Ideally each animal product comes with the imagery like one you get now on cigarette packs (but of an animal in a cage/slaughterhouse) + appropriate cost increases for welfare. Recent law introduction of putting 1, 2, 3 stars on animal product packages to signify how well animal was treated is great start but we can do so much better as species coexisting in this planet with every other animal. In my eyes it all starts with education and awareness of alternative plant based diet but government enforced help would be great too.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoMakes sense to me. At a minimum people should know how reality looks.
- eindiran 6y agoWould it work like the warning labels on cigarettes in Europe with diseased lungs on them? Show what a factory farm looks like on the package and if you still want it go for it.
- samatman 6y agoStrikes me as a great way to harden opposition. Meat eaters are going to want the nasty images taken off of packaging, and the cheaper option is to lobby to remove them, not pay substantially more for an idyllic, pasture-raised, humane future. Congratulations, you now have a pro-factory-farming lobbying group with actual grassroots support. Might also have more people on your side; might not. Worth considering the adversary in any move of this nature.
- eindiran 6y agoI don't think this is true. I think many people who eat meat do it because they enjoy it and in most cultures, eating meat is the default thing to do; most don't actually approve of factory farming conditions. If the pictures actually depicted animals in the conditions they were raised (humanely raised meat could depict something more humane than something factory-farmed on the packaging), many people would try to eat more humanely raised meats. There will of course be people who don't care, and people who revel in the pictures, and people that lobby to have them removed, but overall I think those groups would be in the minority. Many people would slowly (and unconsciously) improve their consumption habits, in the same way that people didn't really notice that the tides turned on issues like gay marriage and marijuana consumption. Part of the knee-jerk antagonism by people who eat meat to posts like this one is that most vocal vegetarians/animal activists are absolutists: eg there is no desirable path forward for most Animal Liberationists where a greater percentage of animals are raised humanely but people keep eating meat. As is often the case, everyone could benefit from agreeing to a compromise where we improve animal farming conditions but don't vilify people who choose to continue eating meat. Another element here is that eating meat is integral to many cuisines and is extremely culturally important to most people - stating that your goal is to remove it wholesale feels like a direct attack. Claiming that people who enjoy eating meat are your adversaries seems like exactly the wrong thing to do. It's as unhelpful as saying that everyone who owns a car is contributing to climate change is therefore the enemy of environmentalism.
- mydongle 6y agoUncomfortable thoughts: Let's say first world countries in the West get on board with not eating meat anymore. How do you exactly go about telling impoverished countries/peoples to stop eating meat? Would we ban meat and force them to eat some substitutes? But food is an important part of culture and we would be erasing their culture if we did that wouldn't we? Should we give some cultural groups the right to eat meat since they're less privileged? Of course I'm only speaking hypothetically, assuming that the goal is to reach 0 animals killed for human consumption.
- pmiller2 6y agoWell, "we", as in "first world countries" can't "ban" meat in other countries without stepping on their sovereignty. "We" have done it before, for worse reasons (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... and numerous other examples), but that doesn't mean "we" should do it again.
- tomglynch 6y agoMost of impoverished countries already eat mostly veg. We wouldn't need to ban them
- atlasunshrugged 6y agoBut is that because of price? I thought China had one of the greatest rates of increases in meat consumption as their income rate grew
- samatman 6y ago"Mostly" is a useless metric when they're eating as much meat as they can afford, and that just happens to be not much. The only exception I'm aware of is India and since that's religious it seems difficult to scale. Islam has animal slaughter as one of its few obligate rituals.
- lemmsjid 6y agoExporting cultural strictures rarely ends well (many historical examples, both distant and recent), so I'd say, if you can get a large number of people in the West to not eat meat, then you've reduced the suffering of animals by a tremendous amount. That alone is a perfectly fine goal. Let non-coercive cultural influence do the rest of the work, while never forcing a populace to do something against its interests or will. (After all, non-Western vegetarian cultures have influenced Western diets...)
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoNot too much different from animals that die in nature. Birds: 15 per second is about right.
- blahblahblah22 6y agoWell ducks at >90/second and chickens at >1500/sec doesn't quite compare with 15/second. How do you figure 15/second is about right anyway?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoAn estimate of 1/2 to 1B birds dying per annum. But that was only due to human interaction (freeways etc). Yeah but chickens - that given number corresponds to 50B per year. But there are more than 65B (though less than 20B at any one time exist).
- justicezyx 6y agoA lot of these compassionate posts about protecting previously-unknown or unconscious things/creatures/human groups etc, is that they systematically have no mentioning of what they want to achieve, and the roadmap towards that. Sure, if you want to raise awareness, but for what purpose? To provoke meat-eating people's conscience? Or make them angry? Edit: Comments did a great job of explaining the objectives, and rationale. Thanks!
- lainga 6y agoI think it'd look good on a portfolio.
- antidaily 6y agoThere’s a newsletter sign up at the bottom of the page. Sign up and tell us what they want.
- d1str0 6y agoThey want to achieve a decrease in pollution, animal cruelty, heart disease, etc. When I look at this I see 1.5 billion pigs producing insane amounts of by product that directly affects our climate and our watershed. Not to mention the impact on human health.
- blahblahblah22 6y agoOne is to just increase awareness that the autopilot act of going to a supermarket and buying meat has a lot of cruelty behind it and hoping that smart people realize that it's not sustainable or ethical. Eventually, no one can force a decision and a forced decision wouldn't practical in the long-term either.
- metiscus 6y agoWhere are the entries for deer and fish? Mmmm delicious.
- blahblahblah22 6y agoI know these kinds of comments are meant to shut down conversations about meat-eating. Even if you find something delicious, it's possible to reduce consumption to have a positive impact on both the animals and the climate. After all, many of us love sugar (or alcohol or salt or fried snacks) but we control our intake.
- jankyxenon 6y ago"Animal equality" is not a great brand. Sure, maybe you can get most people to agree that they should be treated more humanely. Equal is not the right word. If it came down to me or a chicken - I sincerely hope society would prioritize me.
- discordance 6y agoIt depends who you are. I would pick a chicken over the current President.
- cryptica 6y agoThis page doesn't count animals killed by other (non-human) animals. Mother nature is also cruel. I don't think that humans are the biggest animal killers. A single humpback whale likely kills millions of krill every day. One could even argue that eating whale meat is ethical because it saves millions of lives. Also it should be noted that most of these farm animals would never have been alive if humans did not breed them in the first place so we shouldn't see death as necessarily a bad thing. We give them life and then we take it away. Every creature dies eventually - So do we. I think the focus of animal protection movements should be based more on the ethical treatment of animals. It's important to make sure that all animals have the opportunity of a decent life before they are slaughtered; especially have room to move around in an open area with access to natural light.
- chc 6y agoI'd rate it as pretty likely that humans are the biggest animal killers. Most carnivores are supply-limited, whereas humans create billions of animals every year for the express purpose of killing them because there wouldn't be enough in the world otherwise.
- dntbnmpls 6y ago> This page doesn't count animals killed by other (non-human) animals. Because it's a silly vegan propaganda page by wealthy privileged virtue signaling crowd without any grasp on reality. Countless quadrillions of animals are killed every year in nature. Countless billions of animals are killed every year to clear land and protect vegetation from insects, worms, rodents, etc. Countless billions of animals are killed to build homes that these privileged people live in. Not to mention the countless billions of animals killed by pet cats and countless billions of animals killed to feed our pets ( cats, dogs, snakes, etc ).
- scott_paul 6y agoYes, humans eat animals. "Top of the food chain" means something. It means lunch. Delicious lunch. Oh man, now I want a chicken sandwich with bacon on it.
- lurker2823 6y agomaybe with a little bit of parmesan cheese in it also, yummmm
- blahblahblah22 6y agoHappy that both you and the parent got your frustration out that people are even discussing this topic? Go, brave tough souls, eat your sandwiches!
- moskie 6y ago"Might makes right!"
- uxcolumbo 6y agoYou might relate to this scene then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXrh8rQWDxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXrh8rQWDxg
- atlasunshrugged 6y agoMaybe I'm being a techno optimist but I really am rooting for Beyond Meat and all the plant based alternatives here. I've tried to go vegan a few times for both the ethical and environmental reasons but have never maintained and end up a 'reduceatarian.' I just think realistically the best chance for animal welfare is that plant based meats become cheaper, tastier, and healthier and just replace the majority of them, leaving only a high end segment of meat that was well treated; and then it doesn't seem morally wrong to eat since you're helping enable a net "good" life for an animal with your consumption rather than the horrible conditions most animals are raised in today.
- samatman 6y agoI'll take the other side of that bet. I think there's real pressure on nutrition science to overlook the utility of eating 'non-essential' animal nutrients such as carnitine, creatine, and cholesterol. I was a vegetarian for most of my life, and won't ever do it again. I will accept muscle tissue grown in culture, happily, but don't believe that plant-source nutrition can replace animal foods in (my) healthy diet. I'm sympathetic to animal welfare arguments: I refuse to eat factory-farmed pigs, and avoid factory chicken, and eggs which aren't pasture-raised. I'm firmly convinced of the necessity of meat to my good health, I've A/B tested vegetarian and vegan diets to my own satisfaction, and won't be changing my mind on this.
- J5892 6y agoWhile Beyond and Impossible meats are great alternatives, I don't think artificial meat will truly take off until "lab grown" actual meat becomes mass-produceable and sustainable. I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.
- jodrellblank 6y ago> Save the animals 50Bn chickens each taking 1 square foot of space in an endless battery farm makes an area about the size of Delaware. Per year. Save them, and then what?
- Ididntdothis 6y agoLet them live their lives and stop breeding more.
- delecti 6y agoThe rough lifespan for a factory farmed chicken, from hatching to slaughter, is under 2 months. There's no plausible scenario where the entirety of America and everyone we export chicken to stops eating chicken in the span of 2 months. As demand drops, factory farms will stop hatching and raising chickens they don't expect to be able to sell. Even if it slowed within the span of a year, there would only be about 1/6 that 50Bn unless there were 10 months of absurd over production. More likely it will be a shift over many years or decades.
- Mizza 6y agoThese types of pages and articles always draw out a bunch of weirdly sociopathic comments saying things like "mm, delicious" or "now I'm hungry", etc. Why is that? It's possible to materially enjoy the taste of meat while simultaneously being horrified by the scope of man's destruction and industrialized cruelty. It's entirely another thing to revel in your own ignorance and disinterest of the issue. Really revolting.
- samatman 6y agoThe normal reaction to being shamed is defiance. We don't even have to think what we're doing isn't bad. It's enough if we think it's not as bad as it's being made out to be. Also, just about everyone in the English-speaking world is sick of PETA's sanctimonious shenanigans. It's a bad look which rubs off on any group whose tactics rhyme with PETA's.
- enruwhuy 6y agoSome context for the scale of this: “[F]armed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
- kendallpark 6y agoReminds me of: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
- georgewsinger 6y agoFor philosophical issues surrounding this topic, I recommend Michael Huemer's Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism: https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Ethical-Vegetarianism-Michael-Huemer/dp/1138328294 https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Ethical-Vegetarianism-Micha...
- yters 6y agoIs there any upside to industrialized livestock farming? E.g. the enormous number of animals that get to live?
- uxcolumbo 6y agoDo you think quality of life matters? Or is mere existence enough? If so, do you think factory farmed animals have a good of quality life?
- samatman 6y agoMy conclusion from this argument is that it should lead one to eat: sustainable wild-caught fish, pasture-raised eggs, game meats, beef, sheep, and goat. Avoid chicken (other domestic fowl are generally ok) and pigs, which can be (and are) tortured their whole lives for profit. There is considerable room for improvement in how veal is raised as part of milk and meat production, but calves which avoid that process and end up as meat get: two good years, a couple not-great months, and one really terrifying and shitty day.
- uxcolumbo 6y agoWould this be scalable? Could we replace factory farming with your suggestion? Is our ecological footprint important as well when making food choices? If so, why not listen to the science and try to reduce meat & dairy as much as we can. "A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions." From: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
- yters 6y agoWell, at least most animals don't try killing themselves, regardless of how bad their quality of life is, so they seem to prefer existence to quality of life.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoWhy are human skulls shown next to the cows and chickens? When cows or chickens are killed they leave behind cow skulls and chicken skulls not human skulls.
- delecti 6y agoProbably because cow and chicken skulls are less immediately recognizable. Also there are likely not emojis for "chicken skull" or "cow skull", and it seems that's what this displays.
- tempestn 6y agoSo, here's what I wonder about this. I think most people who think about it can agree that a lot of factory farming conditions are terrible. Cramped quarters, lack of outdoor time, space, exercise, poor food, etc. So working toward eliminating those problems seems incontrovertibly good to me. However, let's say hypothetically we're only talking about farms run with a focus on animal welfare. (And not just giving animals 10 square feet of 'pasture' so they can say they're free range, but really.) So the issues of poor living conditions are removed, and we're just talking about killing animals for meat. If people stopped eating meat altogether, most farm animals simply wouldn't be born in the first place. Farmers aren't going to raise animals if they can't eventually earn money from them, obviously, and most of these animals wouldn't exist in large numbers in the wild. So what I'm wondering is, for a farm animal is it not possible that a decent life followed by being slaughtered for food might be superior to no life at all? Obviously if we think in terms of humans, that would be horrific; we consider killing humans unnecessarily an absolute moral wrong. If someone decided they would have a child, but only if they could murder them after some period of time, that's obviously monstrous. I'm just not sure that that analogy applies to farm animals who certainly are living creatures who feel pain, but don't have the same understanding of the world and their place in it that humans do. To me that's the rational reason why the the idea of killing humans could be considered differently from killing other animals. That said, I expect the real reason we instinctively feel that killing humans is wrong is more an evolutionary drive to protect our own species. I do grant that it's uncomfortable to think about when the analogy to humans is drawn. For some I'm sure it's uncomfortable even without consciously making that connection. I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.
- atlasunshrugged 6y agoYes, I think this is a totally valid point. Where I have come out on this (just a personal opinion) is that if the animal will have a "good" life (I know super subjective, I'll leave it to some ethicists and philosophers far smarter than me to figure out what that means) then it's logical to eat meat to create the demand so more of those animals are bred and can live "good" lives. All human lives result in death today too, I don't think we would consider parents monsters for having children because they will die someday, but we might if the children would be born into hellish conditions and the parents did it for selfish reasons and not for the child.
- hi41 6y agoI am not sure if veganism and vegetarianism as preached by some religions can be practiced everywhere on the earth. Places which are very cold during the winters cannot grow trees and vegetables, and the people there need to depend on meat from the animals for their survival. What are your thoughts on that.
- ChristianBundy 6y agoAbsolutely. Many humans throughout time and space have used animal agriculture to survive, and there's nobody arguing against that. The question is whether that's where we are right now. My heuristic: when given the option to choose between a vegan option and a non-vegan option, choose the vegan option. There aren't any ways to reduce our dependence on animal agriculture (or human suffering) to zero, but it's pretty easy to reduce it most of the time. I'd recommend giving it a shot. Happy to answer any questions.
- uxcolumbo 6y agoVeganism is defined as "Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." So the keyword here is 'practicable'. People living in places where there are no alternatives and where people need to eat meat to survive then that would be OK. People living in the western world don't need meat & dairy to survive.
- sdinsn 6y agoI'm aware of the realities of factory farming, but I'm also very aware that I like eating chicken.
- rukittenme 6y agoWhat level of animal genocide would be acceptable to my vegan peers?
- ainiriand 6y agoI think you are framing the problem incorrectly. I think that is this only about sheding some light to this problem, and beeing the intelligent humans that we are, take action. We are consuming much more meat than we need, as soon as you notice that, you can act and reduce some of you meat intake by replacing it with some good source of plant protein. When was the last time you had chickpeas, for example? Or any good source of legume protein?
- fooker 6y agoNow do: Animals which would have been killed if all forests were cut down to supply the agricultural needs of 7 billion vegetarians. The sort of one dimensional thought process presented here is somewhat dangerous.
- waterbadger 6y agoAnimals are lossy at converting plant calories into meat calories (varies for different kinds of livestock obviously). I don’t think it’s an obvious conclusion that more agricultural land would be required.
- fooker 6y agoMost agriculture is only feasible in fertile lands. A majority of modern agriculture happens in river valleys once occupied by rainforests. In comparison, animal rearing is feasible in pretty desolate places as long as you can transport feed and water. Just claiming it's a lossy energy conversion is pretty irrelevant. Not all the 'calories' here are created equal.
- jgwil2 6y agoWhere do you think the feed comes from?
- fooker 6y agoDid you get the impression that I am speaking for abolishing agriculture? To answer your question, almost anything will do as feed. Byproducts of agriculture, grasslands, processed/filtered organic waste. Animals will thrive on rotten meat too -- famously leading to the mad cow disease.
- jgwil2 6y agoFunny that you cite diseased animals as evidence of thriving.
- therealdrag0 6y agoWorth pointing out: The future is now. Just this week I bought Beyond Burgers from my grocery store (first time) and made them for my partner and me and they were really good.
- J5892 6y agoI bought Beyond ground meat for the first time because the grocery was out of all actual meats. (this was the first day of the CA stay at home order) It's now the main "meat" we use for tacos. I'm not a big fan of it for burgers, though. Impossible burgers, on the other hand, are great. It's a shame they only sell to restaurants.
- mavsman 6y agoDisclaimer: this is not my website. I'm not pro or anti vegan or vegetarianism (therefore clearly don't understand how loaded of a conversation this can become). I posted this because I thought it was interesting. Didn't realize this conversation would devolve. I'll try to post more consciously in the future.