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Yes there is. Egg farms grind male chicks alive. They burn off the tip of the hens beak without anesthesia (which we know is high in nerves) so they don’t figh

Yes there is. Egg farms grind male chicks alive. They burn off the tip of the hens beak without anesthesia (which we know is high in nerves) so they don’t fight each other in captivity; which they don’t do nearly as much in nature because surprise surprise they’re not as stressed. Hens laying eggs every single day of their lives (because they’re taken away daily) live much much shorter lives and develop physiological issues more often. When they’re finally exhausted after a few short years and stop producing as much, they’re turned into chicken nuggets or broth cubes. Cows producing milk are constantly inseminated. Maybe they don’t care or maybe it’s a form of rape. Nevertheless, their calves are taken away from them shortly after they’re born (so they don’t eat the milk instead of the factory) and slaughtered. Cows call for their missing baby for several days. Dairy cows are also living much much shorter lives (imagine how long a human that does nothing but give birth would live) and are turned into hamburgers afterwards. Not to mention cheese which need casein to be made and that can’t be obtained without killing cows as it’s the acid in their stomach, basically. So, yes, eating milk or eggs doesn’t directly require the animal to die. But it’s so close and it enables such a cruel, abhorrent, and revolting meat industry that it’s impossible in my opinion to ethically justify eating eggs and milk (let alone meat or fish)

hackernewds 5y ago
you're generalizing quite a bit here, perhaps driven by emotion. it's possible given the movement for compassion for animals to purchase local, free-range, cruelty-free sourced eggs at any decent grocer.
- ornornor 5y ago
  You can’t make eggs without killing male chicks, shortening hens lives, and killing them off. Free range, organic, local, or factory. The specifics of it may vary depending on the mode of production but not the reality: it enables animal exploitation and suffering.
  - eulenteufel 5y ago
    You (kind of) can by now. Killing male chickens after hatching is outlawed in Germany since the beginning of this year. From [1] it reads like Germany subsised research into preselecting female eggs and only hatching these ones. This is still killing male chickens in some way, but arguably less gruesome than how the industry has dealt with male chickens before. [1] https://www-bmel-de.translate.goog/DE/themen/tiere/tierschutz/tierwohl-forschung-in-ovo.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-bmel-de.translate.goog/DE/themen/tiere/tierschut...
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    > You can’t make eggs without killing male chicks, shortening hens lives, and killing them off. Yes, you absolutely can. Hens lay eggs whether there's a rooster around or not. I live in a farm (not mine, I'm a guest) and we get a few eggs each day from the hens in the coop outside my window. We don't kill the male chicks off. I don't think anyone on the farm can even tell which chicks are male befor they grow up. We occasionally slaughter a rooster when there's too many of them and they start to fight each other. We also slaughter a hen once in a while. Last year, we slaughtered four animals, altogether, one rooster and three hens. In factory farms, male chicks are killed off, but there's no reason for that other than the industrialisation of production and consumer demand for plump birds with big breasts (at least in the US as far as I can tell). The birds in our farm are lean, their meat is dark, chewy and wiry because of all the muscle fibers and it has to be coooked for several hours before it is edible. Their bones are also hard and impossible to snap with your fingers, like you can the bones of factory chicken. The taste also doesn't compare. Real free-range chicken (not "free range" as in growing up in a factory with a 2 x 2 concrete yard outside) actually has taste and it tastes of game bird, not what supermarket chicken tastes like. Chickens and factory chickens could as well be a different species. Tasting the flesh of the farm chickens has put me off eating the supermarket birds, just because it makes me think that it can't be healthy eating something that was raised to be degenerate and fat like that. So you're talking about factory farming but there are other kinds of farming that have very different effect on the animals farmed. Maybe you should try to learn more about that?
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cheese_goddess 5y ago
> Not to mention cheese which need casein to be made and that can’t be obtained without killing cows as it’s the acid in their stomach, basically. Casein is not the acid in animals' stomachs. Caseins are one group of proteins in milk, and the main component of cheese. You're probably thinking of rennet, the enzymes in animals' stomachs that help them digest their milk. Rennet is used to coagulate milk to make cheese, but in modern cheesmaking practice the vast majority of it is produced by bacterial or fungal fermentation. Rennet taken from the stomachs of young ruminants is used only by a minority of "artisanal" or traditional producers. Since you got this one completely wrong, is there a chance that the rest of the information in your comment is also slightly off, do you think? Would you find it very hard to re-examine the source of what you know about animal agriculture and try to find out how much of it is really true?
- marliechiller 5y ago
  im sorry, but you cant dismiss the rest of his valid points purely because he got 1 out of many incorrect. I detect a hint of bias might be present on your side from your username also...
  - ornornor 5y ago
    Thank you
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    Where did I dismiss any of "his valid points"? I asked if they thought they might want to re-examine where their information comes from. How is that a dismissal of any point, valid or not? > I detect a hint of bias might be present on your side from your username also... What bias do you mean? I make cheese so I know a couple of things about how it's done.
- ornornor 5y ago
  My mother tongue isn’t English and I indeed mixed up rennet and casein because they sound completely different in my language. Natural rennet cheese may be “artisanal” in your corner of the world, it’s 99% of cheese where I live —just in case, 99% might not be totally accurate, it’s an exaggeration to mean “the vast majority”
ComputerGuru 5y ago
Great job arguing something I already agree about and similarly abhor while also completely missing the point: I specifically said “necessarily.” We have family friends that provide eggs and milk from their free range chickens and cows and that’s certainly not how they do it. Your fight is with greed enabled by capitalism leading to these animal abuses, not people who want to eat/drink their eggs or dairy.

hackernewds 5y ago

you're generalizing quite a bit here, perhaps driven by emotion. it's possible given the movement for compassion for animals to purchase local, free-range, cruelty-free sourced eggs at any decent grocer.

ornornor 5y ago
You can’t make eggs without killing male chicks, shortening hens lives, and killing them off. Free range, organic, local, or factory. The specifics of it may vary depending on the mode of production but not the reality: it enables animal exploitation and suffering.
- eulenteufel 5y ago
  You (kind of) can by now. Killing male chickens after hatching is outlawed in Germany since the beginning of this year. From [1] it reads like Germany subsised research into preselecting female eggs and only hatching these ones. This is still killing male chickens in some way, but arguably less gruesome than how the industry has dealt with male chickens before. [1] https://www-bmel-de.translate.goog/DE/themen/tiere/tierschutz/tierwohl-forschung-in-ovo.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-bmel-de.translate.goog/DE/themen/tiere/tierschut...
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  > You can’t make eggs without killing male chicks, shortening hens lives, and killing them off. Yes, you absolutely can. Hens lay eggs whether there's a rooster around or not. I live in a farm (not mine, I'm a guest) and we get a few eggs each day from the hens in the coop outside my window. We don't kill the male chicks off. I don't think anyone on the farm can even tell which chicks are male befor they grow up. We occasionally slaughter a rooster when there's too many of them and they start to fight each other. We also slaughter a hen once in a while. Last year, we slaughtered four animals, altogether, one rooster and three hens. In factory farms, male chicks are killed off, but there's no reason for that other than the industrialisation of production and consumer demand for plump birds with big breasts (at least in the US as far as I can tell). The birds in our farm are lean, their meat is dark, chewy and wiry because of all the muscle fibers and it has to be coooked for several hours before it is edible. Their bones are also hard and impossible to snap with your fingers, like you can the bones of factory chicken. The taste also doesn't compare. Real free-range chicken (not "free range" as in growing up in a factory with a 2 x 2 concrete yard outside) actually has taste and it tastes of game bird, not what supermarket chicken tastes like. Chickens and factory chickens could as well be a different species. Tasting the flesh of the farm chickens has put me off eating the supermarket birds, just because it makes me think that it can't be healthy eating something that was raised to be degenerate and fat like that. So you're talking about factory farming but there are other kinds of farming that have very different effect on the animals farmed. Maybe you should try to learn more about that?
  - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cheese_goddess 5y ago

> Not to mention cheese which need casein to be made and that can’t be obtained without killing cows as it’s the acid in their stomach, basically. Casein is not the acid in animals' stomachs. Caseins are one group of proteins in milk, and the main component of cheese. You're probably thinking of rennet, the enzymes in animals' stomachs that help them digest their milk. Rennet is used to coagulate milk to make cheese, but in modern cheesmaking practice the vast majority of it is produced by bacterial or fungal fermentation. Rennet taken from the stomachs of young ruminants is used only by a minority of "artisanal" or traditional producers. Since you got this one completely wrong, is there a chance that the rest of the information in your comment is also slightly off, do you think? Would you find it very hard to re-examine the source of what you know about animal agriculture and try to find out how much of it is really true?

marliechiller 5y ago
im sorry, but you cant dismiss the rest of his valid points purely because he got 1 out of many incorrect. I detect a hint of bias might be present on your side from your username also...
- ornornor 5y ago
  Thank you
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  Where did I dismiss any of "his valid points"? I asked if they thought they might want to re-examine where their information comes from. How is that a dismissal of any point, valid or not? > I detect a hint of bias might be present on your side from your username also... What bias do you mean? I make cheese so I know a couple of things about how it's done.
ornornor 5y ago
My mother tongue isn’t English and I indeed mixed up rennet and casein because they sound completely different in my language. Natural rennet cheese may be “artisanal” in your corner of the world, it’s 99% of cheese where I live —just in case, 99% might not be totally accurate, it’s an exaggeration to mean “the vast majority”

ComputerGuru 5y ago

Great job arguing something I already agree about and similarly abhor while also completely missing the point: I specifically said “necessarily.” We have family friends that provide eggs and milk from their free range chickens and cows and that’s certainly not how they do it. Your fight is with greed enabled by capitalism leading to these animal abuses, not people who want to eat/drink their eggs or dairy.