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Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrifi
by autosharp 6y ago
Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrific.
- Griffinsauce 6y agoWhy do we have to compare it? Multiple things can be terrible and require changes.
- autosharp 6y agoThe issue is very much analogous. Lots of pigs getting culled (in many cases burned and/or buried alive on a grand scale) because they are infected with diseases that are dangerous to humans. Corona included. I just keep being surprised that there is consensus forming around mink but the hog issue, which is very similar and actually a bigger problem by numbers, is not really part of the mainstream debate. For some reason being against mink farming is much more acceptable than being against hog farming and this is reflected in policy. It could be because the interests of hog farmers and consumers of hog are a much bigger part of society. But the harm is also that much bigger.
- mainstreem 6y agoIncreasing the cost of food is anti-poor. Increasing the cost of luxury fabric, not so much. Until poverty and hunger are eliminated worldwide, it's going to be hard to make me care more about how animals are farmed in order that the most possible people can afford enough to eat. It's easy to not care about people not getting mink coats. Much harder to care about people having food taken out of their mouths by people who think they have a right to dictate that sort of thing. If you think eating pork should be forbidden, I've got a part of the world to introduce you to.
- autosharp 6y agoIt is funny that you mention human need for food. Hog is actually an inefficient food production method because they need to be fed more corn/soy etc than the food they produce. If your goal was to make food more accessible to the poor then one way to go would be to stop this inefficient food production method and just consume the corn/soy protein directly. That would be healthier also. Consuming corn/soy directly would drive down the price of food because we would need less of it.
- salawat 6y agoConsuming excessive amounts of corn is associated with other issues, up to and including cannibalism, mind. https://phys.org/news/2017-01-corn-french-hamsters-deranged-cannibals.html https://phys.org/news/2017-01-corn-french-hamsters-deranged-... Do not discount the value add of multiple digestive and organ systems worth of energy work, even if the numbers otherwise look attractive. The entire planet is interrelated.
- autosharp 6y agoFrom the article: "A diet of corn is turning wild hamsters in northeastern France into deranged cannibals that devour their offspring, alarmed researchers have reported." Are you saying I might be a wild hamster from northeastern France? And I should not just be eating corn?
- salawat 6y agoI am saying that mammalian research models have predictive power, and that shifting to a fully corn based diet without any of the livestock based foods we'd raise on corn could have unintended side effects. Not everything happens as a first order outcome. Every creature in the logistical food chain is performing different nutrient accumulations for the next one in the chain. If you think about bioaccumulation as a mechanism, that research should have you realizimg that "You are what you eat" has a terrifyingly poignant meaning, in the sense that if we end up seeing a smaller creature fed on a single having potential in the wild population management problems, the same thing could happen to us. By the time we realized what was going on, the damage to the ecosystem could realistically already be done. I mean, scoff if you like. Me? I'm trying to figure out how to companion farm. Better for the ecosystem as a whole, and I like the plethora of wildlife that end up benefitting as result too. On another note, I don't remember making this posting twice? Did I pocket post somehow? Hrrm.
- j_4 6y agoA single hog being killed for 150000 kcal of sustenance is a lot more morally acceptable than 50 minks being killed for a single luxury coat. It's not cognitive dissonance to think this. (numbers from quick, non-exhaustive googling)
- flavor8 6y agoDoes the cognitive sophistication of the animals (their ability to feel emotions, form long term memories, etc) factor into that? Pigs are highly sophisticated. Minks probably less so.
- xcambar 6y agoI’d suggest you’d have to factor the perceived sophistication of the species as much as the direct benefits for the homo sapiens facing the moral dilemma (you). Dogs, pigs, cows, are good examples with varying cultural responses. So... “depends on who you ask”.
- user5994461 6y agoGoogle Snippet: To make one fur coat, it takes 150-300 chinchillas, 200-250 squirrels, 50-60 minks, or 15-40 foxes, depending on the animals' subspecies.
- ornornor 6y agoI don’t agree. Pigs are on the same cognitive level as dogs. Would it be morally acceptable to kill and eat a (big) dog for its 150000 calories after raising in terrible conditions for a few years?
- ljf 6y agoI agree btw - but most pigs are killed after just 20 to 24 weeks - though yes breeding mothers are kept in terrible conditions for years.
- logifail 6y ago> raising in terrible conditions ...source? Farming doesn't have to be intensive. We get milk from a nearby farm. Given we mostly walk there the "food miles" would be precisely zero.
- spacemark 6y agoEveryone eats pork. Only the rich wear mink coats.
- MrQuincle 6y agoReal fur is regretfully not always the most expensive option. Hopefully, it's a side effect of diseases that we will be starting to think this all over though. Technologically, I don't think there's much to be done here. Fake fur is pretty good.
- aaisola 6y agoThis is factually incorrect given that ~25% of the world literally does not eat pork
- mohaine 6y agoIncluding Pigs. Never forget that when Fred dies early of natural causes, his life long friends will be munching on him soon. Note that this is while on full food and not at modern feed lot densities, just on a low rate family farm.
- eitland 6y agoPig farming is vastly different than fur farming around here. Besides, pigs have been domesticat for a lot longer than foxes and minks.
- winter_blue 6y agoThey're both bad. Meat is a disaster for the environment, in terms of the resources that grazing animals take, and the total energy needed for the same caloric amount of food from animals. Meat needs to slowly be eventually banned. Plant-based meat is getting better and better. Initially, we should start with a limit on meat sales, and then gradually reduce the limit until it reaches zero. And then impose sanctions, tariffs or embargoes on countries that refuse to reduce/stop meat consumption.
- ornornor 6y agoIt’s not really a competition. No animal farming is humane, maybe one day we won’t be so self centered anymore and stop these atrocious practices.
- setgree 6y agoThis question is easy for me — hog farming is, overall, a greater harm because we are talking about more pigs and more horrendous conditions. Both are morally impermissible, in my opinion, which is why I keep to a vegan diet and don’t wear fur. Putting aside the harms to animals for a moment, we might consider both mink farms and hog farms to be part of a larger problem, which is monoculture agriculture. Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together, and neither were hogs, and weird ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (life out of balance) things are going to happen when we do that — just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil. This isn’t some subtle act of interpretation; the evidence is all around us that industrial-style practices applied to living things have negative externalities that plausibly outweigh their benefits.
- toper-centage 6y agoBarely anyone cares about fur products, but people are too stuburn to stop general meat consumption - even if not totally - not matter the cost. Eating more vegan meals is probably the best personal action one can make for the environment. Most other significant actions can only be made on a corporate level.
- uhtred 6y agoI wish more people would give plant based "meat" a try. Some of the sausages and burgers available are mind blowing.
- loa_in_ 6y agoIf I don't eat meat for the taste (which is a gross notion to me) but for the nutritional value does plant based substitute provide at least comparable nutrition? Does it have the aminoacids I would get from meat?
- hkeide 6y agoThe bioavailability is much lower and it’s usually filled with factory oils like soybean oil which is not very healthy.
- core-questions 6y agoContrasting opinion here (and that of the majority): stop anthropomorphizing animals. They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter - what matters is ensuring that we have reliable, self-reproducing, adaptable sources of protein for the population. Your lab-grown burgers that depend on thousands of years of technological development and piles of infrastructure are not the solution. Forcing everyone to become vegetarians is not even an option at all; the market demands meat and factory farms have stepped up to fill that niche at scale, reliably delivering meat to everyone in the first world even in extenuating circumstances. It's quite phenomenal, what we have accomplished in terms of livestock agriculture, and to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry keeping humans fed while keeping costs to a minimum. I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Accepting that is simply part of being the omnivorous animal that millions of years of evolution has produced.
- jbotz 6y agoWell, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To speak of "anthropomorphizing" animals is a bit outdated... as the primatologist Franz de Waal puts it, people who use that term are in "anthropodenial". Today's biologists and ethologists largely acknowledge that at least higher animals are sentient beings, with consciousness and a full complement of complex emotions and reasoning ability. You can argue that humans are on top in overall cognitive abilities, but it's really only by degree, not by fundamental kind... our cognitive machinery is only bigger than most other animals', not really different. As for your statement that animals' feelings "don't matter", well, why not? Not too long ago humans of one skin color said that the feelings of other humans of another skin color don't matter. Then we made some progress, and now to say that is considered barbaric. And many humans today are beginning to think it's time to make some more progress and realize that non-human animals' feelings also do matter.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> stop anthropomorphizing animals They aren't. No-one is saying that a pig has the same moral standing as a human. > They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter So you believe that animals are just automata with no consciousness? That animal cruelty cannot exist even in principle, any more than cruelty to sand? Descartes believed this. Today, we know better. > to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry This doesn't address the matter of whether or not it's cruel. > I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Do you believe animals are conscious and capable of suffering, or not? Either way, it doesn't matter that they die in the end. If animals are conscious, it doesn't inform our morality that they are destined to die. People are also destined to die, but this doesn't impact our moral obligation to care about their suffering. If animals are not conscious, it doesn't matter whether they are destined to die.