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As an academic who isn't directly involved in anything close to animal testing (I'm a physicist) I always find it strange that people working in biology have to
by eigenket 5y ago
As an academic who isn't directly involved in anything close to animal testing (I'm a physicist) I always find it strange that people working in biology have to jump through incredible hoops relating to how the animals they work with are treated, but then the lunch place in the biology department sells sandwiches with chicken, ham etc in with incredibly minimal oversight for how the animals are treated.
The difference in standards between "science animals" and "food animals" is quite stark. It is very similar to the difference in treatment people require between dogs and pigs. No one really cares if pigs suffer, even though they would be furious if dogs experienced the same treatment.
- wallscratch 5y agoYeah, but maybe this is an argument for treating the food animals, rather than ridiculousness of standards for science animals.
- eigenket 5y agoOf course, I agree. I hope my comment didn't imply otherwise. Actually I would argue for the wholesale reduction of the category "food animal". Its largely unnecessary, there are very few people (e.g. with unusual medical needs or living in unusual situations) for whom eating other animals is necessary.
- ummonk 5y agoImagine the two following hypothetical societies (we clearly live in neither society): A) humane open pastures where animals grow to middle age before being killed for food, resulting in expensive meat B) pure agriculture where land is cleared and irrigated for agricultural produce, completely devoid of animal life I would argue that society A would be better for animals than society B.
- eigenket 5y agoThe two situations aren't really comparable without more information. Clearly the people in A are still eating a craptonne of plants, and also have access to much more land per person than B, since they can afford to have a lot dedicated to very unproductive pasture.
- ummonk 5y agoYeah, it's hard to compare and the greater yields of crops certainly bodes well for A. Though the productivity differences aren't as large as one would think - protein conversion ratios for smaller animals tend to be 2-3. It's worse for beef (~10) but you have to consider that half the cows are creating milk which has a high protein conversion ratio. And it's potentially even better for animals when you consider the quality of protein - e.g. see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.8362 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.8362
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> It's worse for beef (~10) but you have to consider that half the cows are creating milk which has a high protein conversion ratio. Half?
- JosephK 5y agoFalse dichotomy. Animal farming takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land. Switching away from livestock would reduce the need for land clearing, not increase it.
- whiddershins 5y agoWe don’t know this. Our understanding of nutrition is closer to none than to complete. The more deeply you research this, the more true my statement will seem.
- runawaybottle 5y agoDeath is not the same as torture. Kill me before you ever torture me.
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- nerdponx 5y agoToo bad most food animals are tortured, sometimes for their entire life, before being killed. The unluckiest ones are the females kept alive for breeding.
- cheese_goddess 5y agoThat is true of battery chickens and of meat and dairy cattle in factory farms, but not for "most animals", like you say, and certainly not the world over. On the contrary, around most of the world, farm animals are among the happiest, healthiest, best-fed and best-cared for animals on the planet. Of course you will not know that if you selectively look at the factory farms with feedlots that are the norm in the US, Argentina, etc. These are indeed atrocities. But, for the time being, they are not representative of the majority of farms in most of the world. You can see that if you take a slow train ride through the French countryside, for example. You'll see houses, barns, trees, grass and small herds of cows busking in the sun, peacefully chewing cud, just like large beef and dairy industries want you to think their animals are kept (which obviously they're not). Or, if you take a walk around the countryside where I live, you'll see that every meadow and plot of land has a few sheep or goats browsing serenely, often next to the road, typically without even a fence to keep them in, because it's unnecessary. I know one particular dairy farm on a Mediterranean island, with a fully modern barn and automatic milking machine, where, if you visit during the day, you'll see maybe a dozen goats in the barn that can house a couple hundred. The rest are out in the mountains, browsing, and will return on their own in the evening. That's how terrified those allegedly mistreated animals are. The barn is their home.
- tsbischof 5y agoIn practice it generally comes down to demonstratable utility more than direct concerns about animal well-being. At the most basic level, if you can learn a useful lesson from subjecting an animal to whatever conditions, then the work is generally approvable. But if the researcher has not done their due diligence in experimental design then the whole operation is pointless, or worse than pointless if they then go and p-hack their way through a publication. For a physics analogue, think of animal experiments like a beamline proposal. In order to get time on the beamline you need to explain what you are doing, what your experiment is intended to accomplish, and why the experiment achieves those goals. With these basic checks you can hopefully ensure that the allocated time is not obviously going to be wasted. Animal experiments can easily be about as expensive in terms of money and time as a beamline-based project, including the cost for the beamline operation itself.
- xwolfi 5y agoYet I think both these concerns come from very wealthy people who have time thinking those thoughts. Most people, when they have enough money to buy a bit of meat, are relieved to have such a good intake of protein. And most life, in the broader context, doesn't even have the ability to compute this question. I wonder if we're not overthinking it a bit. Sadistic pleasure in torturing animal should be prevented but also because it can derive to human treatment, and we should accept that animals that would never have been born if not for food or experimental purpose are just necessary for our greater good until we find something that really works better.
- sweetheart 5y agoAssuming you are not living in a good desert, you can eat a delicious healthy plant based diet for very little. Plant based diets are not something that need to be left to the very wealthy at all. To those who literally cannot access those foods, I don’t think anyone holds them accountable.
- eigenket 5y agoI mean pretty much everything that has ever been written, and will ever be written on hackernews counts as come(ing) from very wealthy people who have time thinking those thoughts. I'm not sure why you wrote that here rather than on some discussion on programming or whatever else.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoIt appears that universities are held to different standards of reputation than are poultry farms and slaughterhouses.
- rtkwe 5y agoI don't think that's that weird, they're setting standards for their own behavior and the food source is largely beyond their control. That space probably isn't even directly controlled by them but by the larger university.
- nerdponx 5y agoAn able-bodied person with decent income should have no trouble being at least mostly vegetarian, if not most vegan, in North America.
- sqqqqrly 5y agoI don't want to be.
- eigenket 5y agoMany people don't want to avoid things that have massive negative externalities but at some point we have to take responsibility for the harm we cause.
- EvilEy3 5y agoSpeak for yourself bud. We only have one life, and it is not for you to decide what other person should eat based on your moralist principles.
- boston_clone 5y agofrom an ethical perspective, why wouldn’t you want to live in such a way that minimizes suffering?
- tengbretson 5y agoAnimals in the wild die in ways that are orders of magnitude more gruesome than what occurs in a slaughterhouse.
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- TeeMassive 5y agoLast year of college we could submit our own experiment. I did a physics one so it didn't apply but my peers at the time mostly did biology related experiments. As a rule of thumb, as our biology professor put it, just make sure the animal you're experimenting on do not look like a baby (big head, big eyes, small mouth, makes squeaking sounds). This is why experiments on fish were ok but "fish embryo" would get much more scrutiny.
- wumpus 5y ago> No one really cares if pigs suffer It's surprising that you don't have any family, friends, or co-workers who do care about that kind of thing. My academic astronomy group has a bunch of vegetarians and vegans. While I have no idea why (it's none of my business), it's my life experience is that a large fraction of them do care if pigs suffer.
- eigenket 5y agoYeah I'm a vegan and know a few vegetarians, but still caring about this stuff is still incredibly niche. I was generalising (probably too much) in my comment above.