6 ms·

Maybe don't impregnate them then. Cows don't magically produce milk, they are mammals and lactate because they had babies. They actually forcibly impregnate the

by uppe 6y ago

Maybe don't impregnate them then. Cows don't magically produce milk, they are mammals and lactate because they had babies. They actually forcibly impregnate them and kill their babies if it's a male (veal) and keeps the loop going until the mother can't produce more babies and thus becomes unprofitable. That's funny to you? Sounds like torture and slavery to me. edit: wow, what a surprise, downvoted to the bottom. I know it's deeply ingrained in our culture to participate in this and that makes it feel safe and normal. Scoffers and deniers, I dare you to go watch Cowspiracy or Dominion and then still stand by this practice.

COGlory 6y ago
Do you have any personal experience working with dairy cows?
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  My father worked with dairy cows as a side job during college. He said they were often very friendly (except for Holsteins, they can be mean). They get used to and expect the daily routine - milking in the morning, pasture for the day, milking in the evening, pasture for the night. When milking time came, they'd all be crowded up near the gate waiting for him to open it so they could walk to the milking building. They didn't need to be coaxed. He said the saddest thing was the practice of de-horning calves at a certain age. Prior to that, a group of calves would be friendly, unafraid, almost like pets. But afterwards (my dad wasn't personally there for the actual de-horning) they would all crowd together at the opposite end of the yard in fear when he approached. He said it was heartbreaking... As far as I know, not all farmers practice de-horning. Edit: I have no idea whether they used pain killers, but given the calves' response my guess is no.
  - frob 6y ago
    I raise goats and I get my kids disbudded every year when they're under a week old. They scream for about 5 seconds, and it breaks my heart, but then they almost immediately go back to their old selves like nothing happened and are back playing with us. In my case, I choose to do it to prevent the chance of future injuries for the goat, other goats, and humans.
  - Qworg 6y ago
    There are polled stock you can use - no need for dehorning.
ben_w 6y ago
> Sounds like torture and slavery to me. To me as well, and yet you and I are in a small minority. Also: farming involves actions up to a year in advance of consequences, so change is slow and rare.
- bobthechef 6y ago
  You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. Whether such farming practices are cruel is dependent on the particular practices. Obviously, one ought not be cruel to animals whether they lack free will and intellect or not. However, much of the woolly and sentimental "animal rights" polemic is grounded in gross misapprehension and anthropomorphization of animals other than us. It is terribly unsophisticated.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack. I have yet to hear a single definition which is all three at the same time, despite my A-level in philosophy — every testable definition I’ve encountered has either been something animals and humans both have, or both lack; and more commonly the attempted definition turns out to be internally incoherent. (Intellect is also notoriously difficult to define, but at least in this case humans and cows are obviously dissimilar).
    - africanboy 6y ago
      > I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack every animal, except humans, lack the neurological structures to process the concept of "free will" which is entirely a human construct. If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? But it's the same thing of saying that God exists because we can't disprove it. And if we assume that cows understand it, why exclude other animals, like fish, or some plant or fungi? We assume they don't have it because they never showed to care about it. Cattle can be incredibly aggressive too. it is proven that regardless of age and environmental conditions, some individuals remain more aggressive than others. Aggression in cattle can arise from both genetic and environmental factors. Aggression between cows is worse than that between bulls. Bulls with horns will bunt (push or strike with the horns) in which can cause more damage overall interesting read from Dennet https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.html https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...
TheButlerian 6y ago
You are downvoted because you are a fucking retard.
africanboy 6y ago
> Maybe don't impregnate them then > That's funny to you? It happens every year to wild cows too that are impregnated by males because that's what bovines do. they don't plan on parenting Also calf mortality is correlated with the body weight of the mother when they are born, domesticates cows have almost zero calf mortality rate, contrary to what happens to wild cows. They will also die due to predators, weaknesses, attacked by a bull or older males or for other natural causes, that they don't encounter when living in a farm It's perfectly natural for a cow to see her calves die, it's part of their biological destiny.
tsimionescu 6y ago
With the exception of industrial farming, everything that humans normally do to animals is much nicer than the way wild animals live and end their lives. So as long as you make sure to get your milk and meat from traditional farming, you're supporting practices that are much kinder to the animals then nature would be. Animals in nature inevitably die violent or painful deaths, often being eaten alive by other animals while they slowly starve. They often live lives of subsistence, with periodic times where they are near starvation or freezing and barely survive. They are often in ruthless competition for food and mates with their own species. They will sometimes eat their own young when conditions are especially bad, or eat the young of others to improve their own chance at reproduction. If we're talking in pre-industrial times, if I had to choose between the life of a Buffalo or a domestic cow, I would take my chances as the cow. Now, industrial practices like factory farming are truly horrifying and on that side I agree that they should be stopped, despite the increase in cost that will represent to animal products.
- simias 6y ago
  I don't think it's a good ethical argument. We decide to birth these animals for our own well being, ergo we are responsible for their suffering. If we only rescued lost cows from the wilderness, giving them shelter and a good life until we decided to quickly end their life to get their meat you might have a point (and even then, I still think it would be a bit shaky IMO) but that's not how it's done. If a cat is born in the wild and ends up dying of a curable disease then it sucks for it but that's life. If you have a cat as a pet and when it gets sick you decide to abandon it to fend for itself and die in the wild then you're a bad person. Same outcome, very different ethical implications. >So as long as you make sure to get your milk and meat from traditional farming That's another gotcha that I really dislike. Every time the problem of animal suffering comes up there's always this opposition between "those crazy vegoons" vs. "the pop and mom farm who love their animals and take good care of them". If that were the case, I agree that the situation would be very different. It's not though, you can't just ignore the woes of industrial farming when that's the vast majority of the meat products that surround us. These animals are for the most part born into horrible living conditions. In that sense I suppose that killing them early when they stop producing enough might be one of the least worse things that happens to them. It would be like responding to somebody lamenting the deforestation of the Amazonia by bringing up the story of a poor farmer tending to his two acres of land in order to sustain his family. That's a best missing the point, at worse a truly disingenuous argument.

by uppe 6y ago

COGlory 6y ago

Do you have any personal experience working with dairy cows?

TimTheTinker 6y ago
My father worked with dairy cows as a side job during college. He said they were often very friendly (except for Holsteins, they can be mean). They get used to and expect the daily routine - milking in the morning, pasture for the day, milking in the evening, pasture for the night. When milking time came, they'd all be crowded up near the gate waiting for him to open it so they could walk to the milking building. They didn't need to be coaxed. He said the saddest thing was the practice of de-horning calves at a certain age. Prior to that, a group of calves would be friendly, unafraid, almost like pets. But afterwards (my dad wasn't personally there for the actual de-horning) they would all crowd together at the opposite end of the yard in fear when he approached. He said it was heartbreaking... As far as I know, not all farmers practice de-horning. Edit: I have no idea whether they used pain killers, but given the calves' response my guess is no.
- frob 6y ago
  I raise goats and I get my kids disbudded every year when they're under a week old. They scream for about 5 seconds, and it breaks my heart, but then they almost immediately go back to their old selves like nothing happened and are back playing with us. In my case, I choose to do it to prevent the chance of future injuries for the goat, other goats, and humans.
- Qworg 6y ago
  There are polled stock you can use - no need for dehorning.

ben_w 6y ago

> Sounds like torture and slavery to me. To me as well, and yet you and I are in a small minority. Also: farming involves actions up to a year in advance of consequences, so change is slow and rare.

bobthechef 6y ago
You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. Whether such farming practices are cruel is dependent on the particular practices. Obviously, one ought not be cruel to animals whether they lack free will and intellect or not. However, much of the woolly and sentimental "animal rights" polemic is grounded in gross misapprehension and anthropomorphization of animals other than us. It is terribly unsophisticated.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack. I have yet to hear a single definition which is all three at the same time, despite my A-level in philosophy — every testable definition I’ve encountered has either been something animals and humans both have, or both lack; and more commonly the attempted definition turns out to be internally incoherent. (Intellect is also notoriously difficult to define, but at least in this case humans and cows are obviously dissimilar).
  - africanboy 6y ago
    > I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack every animal, except humans, lack the neurological structures to process the concept of "free will" which is entirely a human construct. If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? But it's the same thing of saying that God exists because we can't disprove it. And if we assume that cows understand it, why exclude other animals, like fish, or some plant or fungi? We assume they don't have it because they never showed to care about it. Cattle can be incredibly aggressive too. it is proven that regardless of age and environmental conditions, some individuals remain more aggressive than others. Aggression in cattle can arise from both genetic and environmental factors. Aggression between cows is worse than that between bulls. Bulls with horns will bunt (push or strike with the horns) in which can cause more damage overall interesting read from Dennet https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.html https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...

TheButlerian 6y ago

You are downvoted because you are a fucking retard.

africanboy 6y ago

> Maybe don't impregnate them then > That's funny to you? It happens every year to wild cows too that are impregnated by males because that's what bovines do. they don't plan on parenting Also calf mortality is correlated with the body weight of the mother when they are born, domesticates cows have almost zero calf mortality rate, contrary to what happens to wild cows. They will also die due to predators, weaknesses, attacked by a bull or older males or for other natural causes, that they don't encounter when living in a farm It's perfectly natural for a cow to see her calves die, it's part of their biological destiny.

tsimionescu 6y ago

With the exception of industrial farming, everything that humans normally do to animals is much nicer than the way wild animals live and end their lives. So as long as you make sure to get your milk and meat from traditional farming, you're supporting practices that are much kinder to the animals then nature would be. Animals in nature inevitably die violent or painful deaths, often being eaten alive by other animals while they slowly starve. They often live lives of subsistence, with periodic times where they are near starvation or freezing and barely survive. They are often in ruthless competition for food and mates with their own species. They will sometimes eat their own young when conditions are especially bad, or eat the young of others to improve their own chance at reproduction. If we're talking in pre-industrial times, if I had to choose between the life of a Buffalo or a domestic cow, I would take my chances as the cow. Now, industrial practices like factory farming are truly horrifying and on that side I agree that they should be stopped, despite the increase in cost that will represent to animal products.

simias 6y ago
I don't think it's a good ethical argument. We decide to birth these animals for our own well being, ergo we are responsible for their suffering. If we only rescued lost cows from the wilderness, giving them shelter and a good life until we decided to quickly end their life to get their meat you might have a point (and even then, I still think it would be a bit shaky IMO) but that's not how it's done. If a cat is born in the wild and ends up dying of a curable disease then it sucks for it but that's life. If you have a cat as a pet and when it gets sick you decide to abandon it to fend for itself and die in the wild then you're a bad person. Same outcome, very different ethical implications. >So as long as you make sure to get your milk and meat from traditional farming That's another gotcha that I really dislike. Every time the problem of animal suffering comes up there's always this opposition between "those crazy vegoons" vs. "the pop and mom farm who love their animals and take good care of them". If that were the case, I agree that the situation would be very different. It's not though, you can't just ignore the woes of industrial farming when that's the vast majority of the meat products that surround us. These animals are for the most part born into horrible living conditions. In that sense I suppose that killing them early when they stop producing enough might be one of the least worse things that happens to them. It would be like responding to somebody lamenting the deforestation of the Amazonia by bringing up the story of a poor farmer tending to his two acres of land in order to sustain his family. That's a best missing the point, at worse a truly disingenuous argument.