6 ms·

This is an ignorant "wishful" thought/question on my part but, what would be the cost to "donate" this food instead of just killing. I think I understand that i

by ge96 6y ago

This is an ignorant "wishful" thought/question on my part but, what would be the cost to "donate" this food instead of just killing. I think I understand that it costs money to go through the full process, but if they're in an "adult" stage and are "edible" after processing. Is it really better to just kill/accept the loss than to get some use out of it? I think logistics is the main issue anyway, costs money to transport/refrigerate.

sieabahlpark 6y ago
They can't afford to do that.
microcolonel 6y ago
Because of the extent of regulations on processing, chances are every part of that transaction would be illegal; from transferring the animals, transporting them, processing them (the thing we're lacking the capacity for, that is causing this need). Even if you could competently process them, you almost certainly would not be able to legally process them. There's a lovely book called Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal that I think every American who eats food or votes should read.
- ge96 6y ago
  wow I didn't even consider the legal part, interesting and processing comes before transportation concerns right
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  So reading the blurb for that: "Drawing upon 40 years' experience as an ecological farmer and marketer, Joel Salatin explains with humor and passion why Americans do not have the freedom to choose the food they purchase and eat. From child labor regulations to food inspection, bureaucrats provide themselves sole discretion over what food is available in the local marketplace. Their system favors industrial, global corporate food systems and discourages community-based food commerce, resulting in homogenized selection, mediocre quality, and exposure to non-organic farming practices. Salatin's expert insight explains why local food is expensive and difficult to find and will illuminate for the reader a deeper understanding of the industrial food complex." from https://www.bookdepository.com/Everything-I-Want-Do-is-Illegal-Joel-Salatin/9780963810953 https://www.bookdepository.com/Everything-I-Want-Do-is-Illeg... makes me think, given the implied negatives of child labor regulations and food inspection, that anyone reading that book should follow up with a quick read of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the same way that I found Oliver Twist a useful tonic after my first exposure to Atlas Shrugged.
  - microcolonel 6y ago
    > makes me think, given the implied negatives of child labor regulations and food inspection, that anyone reading that book should follow up with a quick read of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the same way that I found Oliver Twist a useful tonic after my first exposure to Atlas Shrugged. It's amazing how quickly you assume that the way those laws apply to Joel's farm is reasonable, or that what Joel is doing is the sort of thing the public were interested in interfering with when they supported those laws. Your reflex to defend the application of laws by their title is why no matter how much stink is made by people who actually read the US PATRIOT or EARN IT act for example, or any number of other brilliantly-framed pieces of legislation, there is always a gallery of opinionated people who will gladly judge a book by its cover with no less certainty, and with even more smug self-importance, than they would by its content. If it has never occurred to you: not everyone impacted by the law is a crook.
    - carapace 6y ago
      Steady on my friend. OP just doesn't know who Joel Salatin is.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      I commend you on your reading in English despite your having a full command of the language as yet, just keep your nose to the grindstone because education is its own reward. As an example, allow me to clarify some matters that might not be apparent to someone approaching English as a second language. Firstly, child labor regulations and food inspection are not the titles of laws, they are classes of laws; this is why they are in lowercase instead of capitalized like the USA PATRIOT Act. So you see, it was not defending the application of laws by their title but instead by their category, an easy mistake to make and you shouldn't be embarrassed about it but I thought it should really be corrected. After all it is nice to be able to understand the difference, as subtle as it is. Also as you will note I slightly corrected the actual title of the USA PATRIOT Act because, while also a minor quibble there are all sorts of jerks out there who will take up any arguable point and make it cause for battle! Especially when combined with the "who actually read the" bit right before. Another thing that has probably escaped you, not having a first hand familiarity with American culture is the little nuances of the blurb talking about child labor regulations etc. Perhaps it is unintentional but there are political forces in the U.S that would like to get rid of these and other classes of laws that exist to restrict some things that businesses might otherwise like to do, like having children work in factories and selling food that has been made in unsanitary conditions, and so when I see marketing for something that seems to argue against these classes of law I worry that the book being marketed actually argues against them - I suppose you can see why that might be, right? Anyway, as I haven't read the book, which you pointed out, I can't really say if it is like I suppose when I read the marketing for it, but as I said the marketing "makes me think" it is, if it shouldn't make me think that then the marketing is bad marketing but if it should make me think that it means that the book hopes to get people who are predisposed to side with those political forces to buy the book. Perhaps the book might even be so written as to even more convince people that these classes of regulation are a bad thing and for this reason I suggested anyone reading the book should read another book called the Jungle which was an initial cause in getting at least the food inspection class of laws passed. So the upshot of that bit of nuance was I was not actually judging the book by it's cover, which seemed pleasant enough, but by it's marketing which perhaps only incidentally implies the book is harmful in some way. Of course I was only being facetious when I suggested anyone read The Jungle because I don't think it was actually that good but I just meant that the people who subscribe to the theories that those classes of law are bad things seem to labor under some sort of ahistoricity and as that is a lack of knowledge it would be nice if the lack could be rectified somehow. Finally when you say "there is always a gallery of opinionated people who will gladly judge a book by its cover with no less certainty, and with even more smug self-importance, than they would by its content." oh boy, don't I know it! It really does seem some days that even the most passing and light-hearted of comments will bring some pretentious little martinet out of the woodwork, taking personal affront, and wanting to start a battle over it all. This is really why I wrote this overly long reply to correct some of what you wrote, as admirable as it otherwise might have been, because I would hope to keep you from being drawn into a confrontation with one of these combative types, who, as I noted before, seem intent on getting the smallest mistake or deliberate misreading as a tool to spitefully attack your character. on edit: minor grammatical fixes.
thrower123 6y ago
I'm sure that you could work a deal under the table to buy a hog or a bullock, if you were willing to redneck it up and process it yourself, but there is so fucking much red tape in the way of doing this at scale.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  My local craigslist has people selling "butcher size" (~300lb) hogs at $100 and less; which is cheap. Processing a critter that size at home is a big task; unpleasant and exhausting and messy.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    > Processing a critter I think we should go even farther with our euphemisms and call it "harvesting a resource". I love meat, even though I consider killing animals unethical, which makes me a hypocrite. Still, I think the least we can do is call the process "killing an animal".
    - antisthenes 6y ago
      I mean if we're going to engage in silly pedantry, critter means animal. Also, ethics aside, the comment above was referring specifically to processing, not the act of killing. Killing is comparatively fast and far less messy. Butchering/processing a 300lb carcass is where the real effort lies.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        That's fair, it just sounded a bit too clinical.
    - jarito 6y ago
      I get the resistance to whitewashing, but the terminology of 'processing' seems more accurate. Killing the animal is only the beginning of the process and is generally the least time intensive. Properly butchering an animal while maintaining food safety, producing the proper cuts, etc. is a process that requires tooling and expertise. I would hope that everyone understands that creating a final meat product involves killing, but we shouldn't trivialize the process requirements just to drive an emotional point home.
globular-toast 6y ago
The cost would be non-zero, so it won't be done. In fact, it would be very much higher than non-zero. You can't just march these animals down the road to the market one morning and give them away. Just because there are sentient beings involved you shouldn't think that this is any different from any other huge industrial operation. A car manufacturer can't expect to be able to liquidise a bunch of parts. Without the correct tooling it's worthless to anyone. Meat is the finished product, not animals. And those animals have no more rights than a hunk of metal.
- danharaj 6y ago
  There are powerful people out there who feel the same about you.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    What a bizarre statement. Do you have a point?
    - danharaj 6y ago
      > The cost would be non-zero, so it won't be done. There is a also cost to not doing it but your analysis implies that we shouldn't care about it, because it's not a cost accounted for by industrial practice.
- BostonFern 6y ago
  People, this is a descriptive characterization, not a normative one. It's perfectly sound.
  - danharaj 6y ago
    All communication has a normative component. The normativity of a description is what it considers relevant and what it considers irrelevant.
    - deleted 6y ago
Analemma_ 6y ago
Who would take it? If you handed me a live adult pig or steer for free, I wouldn't know how to turn it into edible meat. The only people who can do this at the scale necessary to avoid a culling are the processing plants, and their being bottlenecked is the reason we're in this situation.
- ge96 6y ago
  Well my thought was poor people/food shelters/etc... I also realize it's even a larger joke to think "send it to "poor" countries". But I understand what you're saying, I wouldn't know how to cut apart meat and do it in a sanitized manner.
astura 6y ago
The logistics just aren't there. You'd have to find people willing to take them, transporting them, slaughter them, and distribute the meat. We are talking about slaughtering and butchering millions of animals in a non-factory setting, not practical. On top of that transporting animals and/meat at that scale is not cheap or easy. This sort of operation is very difficult to do on an ad hoc/emergency basis. If an organization would just pick up any unwanted animals on demand, I'm sure the farmers would be happy to hand them over.

by ge96 6y ago

sieabahlpark 6y ago

They can't afford to do that.

microcolonel 6y ago

Because of the extent of regulations on processing, chances are every part of that transaction would be illegal; from transferring the animals, transporting them, processing them (the thing we're lacking the capacity for, that is causing this need). Even if you could competently process them, you almost certainly would not be able to legally process them. There's a lovely book called Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal that I think every American who eats food or votes should read.

ge96 6y ago
wow I didn't even consider the legal part, interesting and processing comes before transportation concerns right
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
So reading the blurb for that: "Drawing upon 40 years' experience as an ecological farmer and marketer, Joel Salatin explains with humor and passion why Americans do not have the freedom to choose the food they purchase and eat. From child labor regulations to food inspection, bureaucrats provide themselves sole discretion over what food is available in the local marketplace. Their system favors industrial, global corporate food systems and discourages community-based food commerce, resulting in homogenized selection, mediocre quality, and exposure to non-organic farming practices. Salatin's expert insight explains why local food is expensive and difficult to find and will illuminate for the reader a deeper understanding of the industrial food complex." from https://www.bookdepository.com/Everything-I-Want-Do-is-Illegal-Joel-Salatin/9780963810953 https://www.bookdepository.com/Everything-I-Want-Do-is-Illeg... makes me think, given the implied negatives of child labor regulations and food inspection, that anyone reading that book should follow up with a quick read of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the same way that I found Oliver Twist a useful tonic after my first exposure to Atlas Shrugged.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  > makes me think, given the implied negatives of child labor regulations and food inspection, that anyone reading that book should follow up with a quick read of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the same way that I found Oliver Twist a useful tonic after my first exposure to Atlas Shrugged. It's amazing how quickly you assume that the way those laws apply to Joel's farm is reasonable, or that what Joel is doing is the sort of thing the public were interested in interfering with when they supported those laws. Your reflex to defend the application of laws by their title is why no matter how much stink is made by people who actually read the US PATRIOT or EARN IT act for example, or any number of other brilliantly-framed pieces of legislation, there is always a gallery of opinionated people who will gladly judge a book by its cover with no less certainty, and with even more smug self-importance, than they would by its content. If it has never occurred to you: not everyone impacted by the law is a crook.
  - carapace 6y ago
    Steady on my friend. OP just doesn't know who Joel Salatin is.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I commend you on your reading in English despite your having a full command of the language as yet, just keep your nose to the grindstone because education is its own reward. As an example, allow me to clarify some matters that might not be apparent to someone approaching English as a second language. Firstly, child labor regulations and food inspection are not the titles of laws, they are classes of laws; this is why they are in lowercase instead of capitalized like the USA PATRIOT Act. So you see, it was not defending the application of laws by their title but instead by their category, an easy mistake to make and you shouldn't be embarrassed about it but I thought it should really be corrected. After all it is nice to be able to understand the difference, as subtle as it is. Also as you will note I slightly corrected the actual title of the USA PATRIOT Act because, while also a minor quibble there are all sorts of jerks out there who will take up any arguable point and make it cause for battle! Especially when combined with the "who actually read the" bit right before. Another thing that has probably escaped you, not having a first hand familiarity with American culture is the little nuances of the blurb talking about child labor regulations etc. Perhaps it is unintentional but there are political forces in the U.S that would like to get rid of these and other classes of laws that exist to restrict some things that businesses might otherwise like to do, like having children work in factories and selling food that has been made in unsanitary conditions, and so when I see marketing for something that seems to argue against these classes of law I worry that the book being marketed actually argues against them - I suppose you can see why that might be, right? Anyway, as I haven't read the book, which you pointed out, I can't really say if it is like I suppose when I read the marketing for it, but as I said the marketing "makes me think" it is, if it shouldn't make me think that then the marketing is bad marketing but if it should make me think that it means that the book hopes to get people who are predisposed to side with those political forces to buy the book. Perhaps the book might even be so written as to even more convince people that these classes of regulation are a bad thing and for this reason I suggested anyone reading the book should read another book called the Jungle which was an initial cause in getting at least the food inspection class of laws passed. So the upshot of that bit of nuance was I was not actually judging the book by it's cover, which seemed pleasant enough, but by it's marketing which perhaps only incidentally implies the book is harmful in some way. Of course I was only being facetious when I suggested anyone read The Jungle because I don't think it was actually that good but I just meant that the people who subscribe to the theories that those classes of law are bad things seem to labor under some sort of ahistoricity and as that is a lack of knowledge it would be nice if the lack could be rectified somehow. Finally when you say "there is always a gallery of opinionated people who will gladly judge a book by its cover with no less certainty, and with even more smug self-importance, than they would by its content." oh boy, don't I know it! It really does seem some days that even the most passing and light-hearted of comments will bring some pretentious little martinet out of the woodwork, taking personal affront, and wanting to start a battle over it all. This is really why I wrote this overly long reply to correct some of what you wrote, as admirable as it otherwise might have been, because I would hope to keep you from being drawn into a confrontation with one of these combative types, who, as I noted before, seem intent on getting the smallest mistake or deliberate misreading as a tool to spitefully attack your character. on edit: minor grammatical fixes.

thrower123 6y ago

I'm sure that you could work a deal under the table to buy a hog or a bullock, if you were willing to redneck it up and process it yourself, but there is so fucking much red tape in the way of doing this at scale.

h2odragon 6y ago
My local craigslist has people selling "butcher size" (~300lb) hogs at $100 and less; which is cheap. Processing a critter that size at home is a big task; unpleasant and exhausting and messy.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > Processing a critter I think we should go even farther with our euphemisms and call it "harvesting a resource". I love meat, even though I consider killing animals unethical, which makes me a hypocrite. Still, I think the least we can do is call the process "killing an animal".
  - antisthenes 6y ago
    I mean if we're going to engage in silly pedantry, critter means animal. Also, ethics aside, the comment above was referring specifically to processing, not the act of killing. Killing is comparatively fast and far less messy. Butchering/processing a 300lb carcass is where the real effort lies.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      That's fair, it just sounded a bit too clinical.
  - jarito 6y ago
    I get the resistance to whitewashing, but the terminology of 'processing' seems more accurate. Killing the animal is only the beginning of the process and is generally the least time intensive. Properly butchering an animal while maintaining food safety, producing the proper cuts, etc. is a process that requires tooling and expertise. I would hope that everyone understands that creating a final meat product involves killing, but we shouldn't trivialize the process requirements just to drive an emotional point home.

globular-toast 6y ago

The cost would be non-zero, so it won't be done. In fact, it would be very much higher than non-zero. You can't just march these animals down the road to the market one morning and give them away. Just because there are sentient beings involved you shouldn't think that this is any different from any other huge industrial operation. A car manufacturer can't expect to be able to liquidise a bunch of parts. Without the correct tooling it's worthless to anyone. Meat is the finished product, not animals. And those animals have no more rights than a hunk of metal.

danharaj 6y ago
There are powerful people out there who feel the same about you.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  What a bizarre statement. Do you have a point?
  - danharaj 6y ago
    > The cost would be non-zero, so it won't be done. There is a also cost to not doing it but your analysis implies that we shouldn't care about it, because it's not a cost accounted for by industrial practice.
BostonFern 6y ago
People, this is a descriptive characterization, not a normative one. It's perfectly sound.
- danharaj 6y ago
  All communication has a normative component. The normativity of a description is what it considers relevant and what it considers irrelevant.
  - deleted 6y ago

Analemma_ 6y ago

Who would take it? If you handed me a live adult pig or steer for free, I wouldn't know how to turn it into edible meat. The only people who can do this at the scale necessary to avoid a culling are the processing plants, and their being bottlenecked is the reason we're in this situation.

ge96 6y ago
Well my thought was poor people/food shelters/etc... I also realize it's even a larger joke to think "send it to "poor" countries". But I understand what you're saying, I wouldn't know how to cut apart meat and do it in a sanitized manner.

astura 6y ago

The logistics just aren't there. You'd have to find people willing to take them, transporting them, slaughter them, and distribute the meat. We are talking about slaughtering and butchering millions of animals in a non-factory setting, not practical. On top of that transporting animals and/meat at that scale is not cheap or easy. This sort of operation is very difficult to do on an ad hoc/emergency basis. If an organization would just pick up any unwanted animals on demand, I'm sure the farmers would be happy to hand them over.