4 ms·

> Generally my point in this discussion is that you should not bundle together factory farms and slaughterhouses in the US with, e.g. small dairy farms in the P

> Generally my point in this discussion is that you should not bundle together factory farms and slaughterhouses in the US with, e.g. small dairy farms in the Pyrenees or Austria, or Bantu farmers in Africa, etc. There is one way that people eat meat in the Americas, Australia and China, and quite another in other parts of the world. The countries which you claim aren’t factory farming are just importing much of their meat from countries which do, see: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat And even if you assume the existence of supposedly “ethical” animal agriculture — which is considerably farcical given the non-consensuality of murder in any case — it’s inherently irrelevant because these niche models of food production don’t scale to feeding the world.

cheese_goddess 5y ago
> The countries which you claim aren’t factory farming are just importing much of their meat from countries which do, see: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat That's not what the data you link to ("your data") shows. It shows who are the biggest single country net exporters and importers of poultry, but it doesn't show you who sells to whom and who buys from whom, for example, Germany and France are in the groups of both biggest net importers and exporters. Further, that import/export data is not at all representative of the amount of meat consumed by people in the different countries in "your data". The following is from Our World in Data and it shows that, for example, China, which is listed in "your data" as one of the largest net importers of poultry, has a very low rate of overall meat consumption compared with the countries that are net exporters: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?tab=chart&time=latest&country=POL~NLD~DEU~FRA~BEL~USA~BRA~GBR~CHN~JPN~SAU~MEX https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?ta... So, perhaps counter-intuitively, it is possible for a country to be both a large net exporter and exporter, or one of the two and at the same time not have a large per-capita meat consumption. Finally, "your data" is only about poultry, whereas factory farming and slaughterhouses in the Americas produce primarily beef cattle. Certainly, in my comment I mentioned beef cattle, not poultry. > And even if you assume the existence of supposedly “ethical” animal agriculture — which is considerably farcical given the non-consensuality of murder in any case — it’s inherently irrelevant because these niche models of food production don’t scale to feeding the world. Killing non-human animals is not "murder" in any legal system I'm aware of. Where do you live? As I say in another comment, yes, small-scale farming can absolutely feed the world. Most of the world eats way too much meat, way much more than any human needs to. We have factory farms because of the way the economy works, not because of what humans need to eat to survive. Healthy adult humans only need to eat meat a few times a year and can fulfill their needs for nutrients found only in animal products with eggs and dairy, and I guess fish, depending on whether one considers fish to be "meat" or not. Humans are omnivores, but there's a lot of other stuff we need to eat, besides meat, and to have a balanced diet we really need to eat everything - in proportional amounts. Bottom line, perhaps factory farms are needed to cover the demand for meat in the Americas, but they are not in any way "needed" to cover the need of meat of any humans anywhere.

cheese_goddess 5y ago

> The countries which you claim aren’t factory farming are just importing much of their meat from countries which do, see: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat That's not what the data you link to ("your data") shows. It shows who are the biggest single country net exporters and importers of poultry, but it doesn't show you who sells to whom and who buys from whom, for example, Germany and France are in the groups of both biggest net importers and exporters. Further, that import/export data is not at all representative of the amount of meat consumed by people in the different countries in "your data". The following is from Our World in Data and it shows that, for example, China, which is listed in "your data" as one of the largest net importers of poultry, has a very low rate of overall meat consumption compared with the countries that are net exporters: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?tab=chart&time=latest&country=POL~NLD~DEU~FRA~BEL~USA~BRA~GBR~CHN~JPN~SAU~MEX https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person?ta... So, perhaps counter-intuitively, it is possible for a country to be both a large net exporter and exporter, or one of the two and at the same time not have a large per-capita meat consumption. Finally, "your data" is only about poultry, whereas factory farming and slaughterhouses in the Americas produce primarily beef cattle. Certainly, in my comment I mentioned beef cattle, not poultry. > And even if you assume the existence of supposedly “ethical” animal agriculture — which is considerably farcical given the non-consensuality of murder in any case — it’s inherently irrelevant because these niche models of food production don’t scale to feeding the world. Killing non-human animals is not "murder" in any legal system I'm aware of. Where do you live? As I say in another comment, yes, small-scale farming can absolutely feed the world. Most of the world eats way too much meat, way much more than any human needs to. We have factory farms because of the way the economy works, not because of what humans need to eat to survive. Healthy adult humans only need to eat meat a few times a year and can fulfill their needs for nutrients found only in animal products with eggs and dairy, and I guess fish, depending on whether one considers fish to be "meat" or not. Humans are omnivores, but there's a lot of other stuff we need to eat, besides meat, and to have a balanced diet we really need to eat everything - in proportional amounts. Bottom line, perhaps factory farms are needed to cover the demand for meat in the Americas, but they are not in any way "needed" to cover the need of meat of any humans anywhere.