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> Stuff like this is why I don't eat meat. Combined with the ag-gag laws that prevent this from being more exposed, it's wild how inhumane our treatment of ani

> Stuff like this is why I don't eat meat. Combined with the ag-gag laws that prevent this from being more exposed, it's wild how inhumane our treatment of animals has become. I understand these concerns, but please consider that this would never happen under Organic/Permaculture and sure as hell not under Biodynamic farms. They'd all lose their certification, and most are adamant on using the most humane ways in livestock raising. The first cow herd, for meat, I ever took care of in Germany ate better than I did. They could only eat a diet of silage (fermented grass) and fruit from the farm in addition to hay. Gassing them would not only be cruel, but its also a quick way to end being able to get your beef sold at 22 Eur/Kg faster than anything. I'm not going to lie and say its perfect, their are things that I think are inefficient in all of those, but its the cost of having an actual healthy relationship with the Earth that provides the food we eat. In fact one cow we had got an utter infection because we couldn't bottle feed the calf, it just wouldn't eat and was showing signs of anemia, so we had to isolate the mother and child and get a vet to apply local antiseptics and herbal remedies to cure the infection. This required like 5 separate visits from the vet, which was the child of a local farmer and family friend. The calf was just fed from another cow that didn't let it bite it, so it quickly learned to not do that and eventually got weened to grass by Spring when they went to pasture. But that gassing is just one horrible example of many in what it entails to do a race to the bottom pricing model based on State Subsidized Ag/livestock models. It's horrible for everyone involved and should be a bigger issue than it is. Especially now that we see how ineffective they are under a severe stress test like COVID. Consumers can vote with their money, waiting for regulatory changes and practices to be enforced are simply not teneble, monetarily incentivizing farmers to move away from this model is the only real way to make this work.

jacobush 6y ago
Not trying to equate pigs to humans people at all - however, see this as a parable: If these were people being tortured to death, would you say that monetarily incentivizing torturers to move away from this model is the only real way? It makes no sense to me. If it's not illegal, it should be. Soon.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > It makes no sense to me. If it's not illegal, it should be. Soon. It won't be though, most of my activism has been for farmer's rights and if you think petitioning government to go against its corporate lobbyists is not just realistic but not a total waste of time you don't understand the paradigm you're talking about. That effort is better spent to more productive ends: Food Education is key, as is story telling; just look at the explosion of foodies and Influencers on Social Media in the last 10 years, specifically because of programs from Anthony Bouradain and Chef's table. And my personal favorite Dotchi no Ryouri from Japan, which is an awesome model that I hope gets resurrected. Hell, many of my fellow cooks, be it in Europe or the US were drawn to culinary because the original Iron Chef from Japan which had more reverence for the ingredients and story telling than anything that came before it. We all wanted to do something that lived up to that narrative. The adage: 'you only win by creating a better paradigm' best sums up this situation. Not waiting for regulators and legislation to innovate should resonate deeply amongst fellow tech workers destined to want to disrupt the monoliths. The Truth is, Agriculture, and the Food Industry as a whole, is the proverbial Goliath and the organic/permaculture/Biodynamic farmers are the David. Its time more people realized that and acted accordingly: don't like a Law? Use your only real vote you have in the West (money) to negate it, eventually this will lead to things like Marijuana being decriminalized and regulated by individual States in defiance to the Federal Government, and Hemp going from a schedule 1 drug to being 50 state legal and having CBD products found at your local Safeway and on Amazon right now. I should know, I was there and active in that space for both of those things in the US. Lastly, livestock are not Humans; we are doing an unnatural (all Agriculture is) process, the best we can do is follow cruel-free models that enhance the animal's life that results in an amazing end product. Asking for anything more is literately impossible. And making that analogy to Humans takes us into murky waters I'd rather not venture, as its more philosophical, perhaps even bordering on sophism.
Pfhreak 6y ago
I have, in the past, purchased from a local farmer whose cows lived well. I'm not opposed to the idea of eating meat, but here in the states of you get meat somewhere you haven't vetted, the provenance probably includes animal cruelty.
O_H_E 6y ago
I would also like to add halal farms as well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xenonite 6y ago
  Could you elaborate on that please?
  - encom 6y ago
    Halal slaughter is unspeakably cruel. The throat of the animal is cut and it's left to bleed out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Islamic_slaughtering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Islamic_slaughtering
    - jacobush 6y ago
      It may be cruel compared to some ways, but not in comparison to torture for hours. I have read other accounts of "Halal" slaughter in industrial settings. Basically a big machine built to cut the throat, but in practice it's much much worse than either traditional practices with a knife and "normal" industrial practices.
neilparikh 6y ago
It might be the case that organic farms treat animals better than factory farms. But the reason factory farms exist is because the demand for meat is so high that non-factory farms simply wouldn't be able to meet it without using vastly more land and resources than we have available. So we can talk about customers should buy from "humane" farms and what not, but that has to be paired with a massive reduction in meat consumption for it to be possible. Society can't just keep eating the amount of meat they do, and at the same time only buy from "humane" farms.
- mint2 6y ago
  The demand would not be too high if it were not priced at that virtually requires extreme cruelty to both animals and workers. Americans also eat far more protein than reasonable. There is no reason the inhumane farms can’t be drastically reduced, except that people are accustomed to dirt cheap excess meat.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > It might be the case that organic farms treat animals better than factory farms. But the reason factory farms exist is because the demand for meat is so high that non-factory farms simply wouldn't be able to meet it without using vastly more land and resources than we have available. I understand this question, but its made from the premise that it could deliver the goods during the pandemic; where in reality, it didn't. So mamy stores had shortages, and processing plants were shut down due to COVID related deaths and those that did deliver were in such short supply that stores had restrictions on how many a person could buy in one visit, further driving the argument that it didn't work. It also negates why Farmers are seeing all time high sales for their products [1]. > So we can talk about customers should buy from "humane" farms and what not, but that has to be paired with a massive reduction in meat consumption for it to be possible. Society can't just keep eating the amount of meat they do, and at the same time only buy from "humane" farms. I'll agree, N and S America consumes way too much meat than the rest of the World by a large margin, its unfathomable to me now, but when I first moved to Europe I was the same way. I was farming, so 12+ hours of labour a day, and by the end of the day my body was crying out for animal fat and protein and would suffer if it didn't as that was how I was raised most of my Life to eat: 2:1 protein to carb ratio, 1:1 meat to vegetable. It took a lot of work, but that is no longer the case and my health is way better for it; I now rely on a more plant fat based diet (olive oil, coconut) with animals based proteins being only eaten 2-3 times a week and carbs (rice, bread, potatoes) and vegetables to fill the gaps. I eat a lot more eggs and hemp based protein, but those are sustainable and renewable sources. I also mainly made my meals from the 'scraps' from working in restaurants as a chef over the years and I really only eat once a day, so in total it was a net negative footprint. I also fed a lot of younger people in FOH that way, too. I still have a freezer full of salmon and tuna in my freezer as there was so much of it. There is also this analysis on Tyson that I thought was a really good read [2]. 1: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/farmers-are-selling-more-csa-shares-than-ever%E2%80%94heres-why/ar-BB153fLn https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/farmers-are-selli... 2: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/analysis-tyson-foods-helped-create-the-meat-crisis-it-now-warns-against/ar-BB13mdpL https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/analysis-tyson-foo...

jacobush 6y ago

Not trying to equate pigs to humans people at all - however, see this as a parable: If these were people being tortured to death, would you say that monetarily incentivizing torturers to move away from this model is the only real way? It makes no sense to me. If it's not illegal, it should be. Soon.

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> It makes no sense to me. If it's not illegal, it should be. Soon. It won't be though, most of my activism has been for farmer's rights and if you think petitioning government to go against its corporate lobbyists is not just realistic but not a total waste of time you don't understand the paradigm you're talking about. That effort is better spent to more productive ends: Food Education is key, as is story telling; just look at the explosion of foodies and Influencers on Social Media in the last 10 years, specifically because of programs from Anthony Bouradain and Chef's table. And my personal favorite Dotchi no Ryouri from Japan, which is an awesome model that I hope gets resurrected. Hell, many of my fellow cooks, be it in Europe or the US were drawn to culinary because the original Iron Chef from Japan which had more reverence for the ingredients and story telling than anything that came before it. We all wanted to do something that lived up to that narrative. The adage: 'you only win by creating a better paradigm' best sums up this situation. Not waiting for regulators and legislation to innovate should resonate deeply amongst fellow tech workers destined to want to disrupt the monoliths. The Truth is, Agriculture, and the Food Industry as a whole, is the proverbial Goliath and the organic/permaculture/Biodynamic farmers are the David. Its time more people realized that and acted accordingly: don't like a Law? Use your only real vote you have in the West (money) to negate it, eventually this will lead to things like Marijuana being decriminalized and regulated by individual States in defiance to the Federal Government, and Hemp going from a schedule 1 drug to being 50 state legal and having CBD products found at your local Safeway and on Amazon right now. I should know, I was there and active in that space for both of those things in the US. Lastly, livestock are not Humans; we are doing an unnatural (all Agriculture is) process, the best we can do is follow cruel-free models that enhance the animal's life that results in an amazing end product. Asking for anything more is literately impossible. And making that analogy to Humans takes us into murky waters I'd rather not venture, as its more philosophical, perhaps even bordering on sophism.

Pfhreak 6y ago

I have, in the past, purchased from a local farmer whose cows lived well. I'm not opposed to the idea of eating meat, but here in the states of you get meat somewhere you haven't vetted, the provenance probably includes animal cruelty.

O_H_E 6y ago

I would also like to add halal farms as well.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xenonite 6y ago
Could you elaborate on that please?
- encom 6y ago
  Halal slaughter is unspeakably cruel. The throat of the animal is cut and it's left to bleed out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Islamic_slaughtering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhabihah#Islamic_slaughtering
  - jacobush 6y ago
    It may be cruel compared to some ways, but not in comparison to torture for hours. I have read other accounts of "Halal" slaughter in industrial settings. Basically a big machine built to cut the throat, but in practice it's much much worse than either traditional practices with a knife and "normal" industrial practices.

neilparikh 6y ago

It might be the case that organic farms treat animals better than factory farms. But the reason factory farms exist is because the demand for meat is so high that non-factory farms simply wouldn't be able to meet it without using vastly more land and resources than we have available. So we can talk about customers should buy from "humane" farms and what not, but that has to be paired with a massive reduction in meat consumption for it to be possible. Society can't just keep eating the amount of meat they do, and at the same time only buy from "humane" farms.

mint2 6y ago
The demand would not be too high if it were not priced at that virtually requires extreme cruelty to both animals and workers. Americans also eat far more protein than reasonable. There is no reason the inhumane farms can’t be drastically reduced, except that people are accustomed to dirt cheap excess meat.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> It might be the case that organic farms treat animals better than factory farms. But the reason factory farms exist is because the demand for meat is so high that non-factory farms simply wouldn't be able to meet it without using vastly more land and resources than we have available. I understand this question, but its made from the premise that it could deliver the goods during the pandemic; where in reality, it didn't. So mamy stores had shortages, and processing plants were shut down due to COVID related deaths and those that did deliver were in such short supply that stores had restrictions on how many a person could buy in one visit, further driving the argument that it didn't work. It also negates why Farmers are seeing all time high sales for their products [1]. > So we can talk about customers should buy from "humane" farms and what not, but that has to be paired with a massive reduction in meat consumption for it to be possible. Society can't just keep eating the amount of meat they do, and at the same time only buy from "humane" farms. I'll agree, N and S America consumes way too much meat than the rest of the World by a large margin, its unfathomable to me now, but when I first moved to Europe I was the same way. I was farming, so 12+ hours of labour a day, and by the end of the day my body was crying out for animal fat and protein and would suffer if it didn't as that was how I was raised most of my Life to eat: 2:1 protein to carb ratio, 1:1 meat to vegetable. It took a lot of work, but that is no longer the case and my health is way better for it; I now rely on a more plant fat based diet (olive oil, coconut) with animals based proteins being only eaten 2-3 times a week and carbs (rice, bread, potatoes) and vegetables to fill the gaps. I eat a lot more eggs and hemp based protein, but those are sustainable and renewable sources. I also mainly made my meals from the 'scraps' from working in restaurants as a chef over the years and I really only eat once a day, so in total it was a net negative footprint. I also fed a lot of younger people in FOH that way, too. I still have a freezer full of salmon and tuna in my freezer as there was so much of it. There is also this analysis on Tyson that I thought was a really good read [2]. 1: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/farmers-are-selling-more-csa-shares-than-ever%E2%80%94heres-why/ar-BB153fLn https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/farmers-are-selli... 2: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/analysis-tyson-foods-helped-create-the-meat-crisis-it-now-warns-against/ar-BB13mdpL https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/analysis-tyson-foo...