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I made a website to help visualize American meat consumption in terms of animals slaughtered per second. It’s pretty insane and I think does something to help c

• creata 4y ago
  Hey, don't let me tell you how to run your website, but it took me a while to realize that I should scroll. You could add a little "scroll down ↓" indicator that fades in after a bit.
• nemo44x 4y ago
  Ha that’s great! Hopefully we continue to see these numbers as increase as a leading indicator of a wealthy and well fed society.
  • vkou 4y ago
    No, hopefully we can see these numbers stabilize at some long-term sustainable level, whatever that is. They aren't at that level at the moment, with large parts of modern agriculture more similar to a kind of mining - resources are extracted, with insufficient replenishment. The thing with mines is that they are eventually exhausted, and stop producing.
    • nemo44x 4y ago
      We can also invent and engineer new tech that makes more production sustainable.
      • vkou 4y ago
        We can, I don't really care how we get to that point, I just want us to get to that point. We're not at that point right now, and we're not really prioritizing it.
    • tomrod 4y ago
      I'm liking the research into kelp and algae farms. Go IwI!
  • mandmandam 4y ago
    From your perspective, you just made a smart comment that adds wider context on this issue. From mine, it's something of a cosmic horror that people can think like this and be proud of themselves. We are wreaking havoc on the Earth and all life on it; strip mining it to the bone for the shallowest purposes. And some people have this strange glee about it... It's Lovecraftian to me. Like cultists worshipping death and darkness - literally. Dramatic? Sure. But you're literally cheer-leading the death of billions and billions of lives as a strong economic indicator. The fact is, we can't afford industrial farming (and many other 'indicators'). The bill is coming due for our lifestyle. Faster and closer every day. What to you is "determination to enjoy life", reads to me as blissful ignorance - but only blissful for the ignorant.
    • Spivak 4y ago
      Of course people are going to be proud, the horrors of capitalism aside, we’ve completely eliminated hunger in the US (not implying we’re the only place). Not one single person is starving because we are unable to feed them. And we’re able to feed everyone with the absolute top tier of food desired by humans. It used to be an event only for special occasions to slaughter your lifestock. The only people who got a steady diet of meat were the wealthy. Cruelty aside that is something to take so much pride in. I think it’s easy to forget the bigger picture of progress here. Are we destroying the planet, oh yeah. Have we created a machine of unfathomable cruelty, also yes. But are we well fed with exactly the food we want to be eating given the choice, hell yeah and that’s an insane accomplishment. That’s something that was not possible 150 years ago.
      • throwanem 4y ago
        The question of present concern is whether it will still be possible 150 years hence.
      • fnimick 4y ago
        "We're destroying the planet with unfathomable cruelty, but at least we get to eat what we want!" This is not the accomplishment you think it is. This is absolute depravity on a societal scale and the fact that we're all so okay with it is horrifying.
  • version_five 4y ago
    Yes! Happy to see more people celebrating human achievement amidst all the usual doom and gloom that people like to leverage to push their political beliefs. The GP should be commended. Seriously, it's a bit tiring that [vegetarians] people that want to control what I eat get a pass for posting the same tired stuff every time it came up. If any other fanatic jumped in with their own agenda at every conceivable juncture, you'd expect it to be shut down. (I suppose cyclists may get a similar pass)
    • dvzk 4y ago
      As a cyclist, online cyclists are among the most annoying people in the world. What’s worse is most of them aren’t even athletes.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • fnimick 4y ago
      Maybe because your meat consumption and demand for increasing land and water use to satiate your meat consumption is ruining the planet for the rest of us? If I could trap all the "unrepentant meat eaters" in a dome and let you ruin your own environment without broiling the rest of us, I wouldn't have a problem with your choices.
      • version_five 4y ago
        Consider that you may be in a doomsday cult.
        • fnimick 4y ago
          https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-crisis-un-pathway-1-5-c https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-... Our lifestyle is unsustainable. Take your head out of the sand.
  • throwawaylinux 4y ago
    Strange this is getting downvotes. Protein consumption was traditionally one of the fundamental measures of social health, wealth, and quality of life, and it is on track to massively expand as population grows and huge parts of Asia and Africa (and others) continue to catch up in wealth. Apparently now we're in upside-down world were the richest and most highly consuming people on the planet believe that the production that supports their lifestyles is now immoral, and the idea that poorer people might increase their wealth and consumption a bit is so horrible to contemplate.
    • pencilguin 4y ago
      Hint: you do not need to eat any meat to get plenty of protein.
      • throwawaylinux 4y ago
        That's not a "hint", meat is a desirable food, a very good source of protein, can be a good income for poor farmers and can be raised in places that aren't suitable for cropping. But even if you set aside meat, modern lifestyles necessitate the killing of other life. Take your protein-rich plant food, for example. Do you know how modern cereal and vegetable farming is carried out? The idea is basically to create a holocaust of chemical poisons that exterminates all animal, plant, and fungal life except the crop, over millions of acres, and that is after the land has been cleared and the native plants and animals killed and wiped away. Housing, water, energy, mining, all that costs lives as well. You can't absolve yourself just by not eating meat.
        • hn-is-retarded 4y ago
        • Schroedingersat 4y ago
          You don't need absolution, just reduction. If the option is eating cows that eat some grass and feed from a couple of acres of desolation vs. eating beans and grains from a quarter acre of desolation, then the option is obvious. You can still eat the tenth of the cows that can survive on the grass alone. Reducing the desolation and increasing the yield by building an ecosystem rather than monocrop is better, but that is a harder transition.
• ISL 4y ago
  It would be helpful to add the total number of meals consumed per unit time as well, and perhaps the number of humans born/dying. We eat a lot because there are a lot of us.
  • PostOnce 4y ago
    There aren't as many hungry kids as there used to be. There aren't as many hungry adults, either, for that matter. Global hunger is declining. I am rather more worried about hungry kids than dead cows. I also don't care if people can subsist solely on vegetables; subsistence is not our aim -- we can live in appalling conditions, but we got out of those circumstances deliberately. It took a great deal of time and hard work in miserable environments to do so. That's why there's so much meat now, we were tired of being hungry and we built a better world. We have build such a peaceful, prosperous world now that large numbers of people are worried about the emotional state of our meat. They're not worried about hunger or violence or poverty because, for enormous numbers of people, those issues are gone. So now we worry about chicken burritos.
    • xorfish 4y ago
      We have also learned quite a bit about animals and their capacity to suffer. Sorry to break it to you, but humans just aren't that special.
• virgildotcodes 4y ago
  What a fucking atrocity.
  • scotty79 4y ago
    You might consider the other side that equal amount of animals get to be born every minute and live some lives. We usually don't consider a person being born a tragedy almost regardless of what life this person had.
    • arcticbull 4y ago
      Well humans aren't generally born into farrowing crates in factory farms and jammed together a few inches apart until killed. We did a whole Matrix thing about how that kind of life might be sub-optimal. I'm pro meat btw, just opposed to factory farming and waste.
      • scotty79 4y ago
        Well, they almost used to. And we sort of agreed it's a bad idea only after it lost economic sense. And we still have it in the pockets of the world where it still makes economic sense.
    • virgildotcodes 4y ago
      Could we use this to justify factory farming humans, in that the agony and terror they experience is eclipsed by the good of them being bred into being rather than not existing at all? We would certainly have more humans being born in that case than now, is it a negative thing that we are not doing this?
      • GauntletWizard 4y ago
        That is, in fact, the modern city.
      • undersuit 4y ago
        I was certainly going to bring it up. The fabricants from Cloud Atlas haunted me.
• eyko 4y ago
  What gets me is that over a quarter of that (26% as of 2010 by USDA's estimates) is simply thrown away.
  • arcticbull 4y ago
    • prvc 4y ago
      >Almost 40% of all food in the US is wasted each year and that's enough to feed every hungry person on earth. You have a feasible plan to distribute all the wasted food in the U.S. to all the world's hungry people that you'd like to share?
      • arcticbull 4y ago
        Nope, but we can reduce waste by raising prices for instance by ending farm subsidies. We can mandate the removal of (or at minimum the regulation of) expiration dates on food. Also, educating people about food. People assume that milk goes bad the second the clock rolls over on the unregulated 'best-by' date, so there's incentive to goose the numbers to raise sales. Further, slightly sour milk can be used as a substitute for buttermilk in baking, for instance, but people have to learn that. [1] Any competing plans you'd like to share that allows us to avoid losing unfathomable quantities of limited fresh water and raising a ton of animals so they can be hucked onto a landfill? [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/spoiled-milk https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/spoiled-milk
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • notch656a 4y ago
          I fail to see the connection between raising prices and better affordability/access of food for the poor. Certainly you could make food as valuable as, say gold, and most would be loath to waste a single gram of it.
• ketanmaheshwari 4y ago
  I know it is not liked but I will say it that I am really proud to be a vegetarian.
• andsoitis 4y ago
  > 17,123 Chickens Slaughtered/min > > vs. > > 61 Cows Slaughtered/min It seems much more moral to be eating beef than chicken. Fewer consciousnesses demolished.
• hayst4ck 4y ago
  I am an unrepentant meat eater, but your visualization was absolutely fantastic. I would add that (my maybe incorrect napkin math) shows that 5 Americans die per minute to give it scale. My understanding is also that we destroy an absolutely phenomenal amount of chicks in an entirely gruesome way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling I have trouble handling that.
  • fnimick 4y ago
    • notch656a 4y ago
      I think you make it sound easier than it is. I also decided over dinner one evening. Then I realized meat was in almost every meal I loved. I tried them without meat and hated it. Habit I guess. Then I realized I'd rather be a bad person than a miserable person; that it was wrong, but I'd do it anyway. This is what you're up against -- the sad but brutal reality of apathy and willful disregard. Mea culpa.
      • Scarblac 4y ago
        Try to eat fewer meals with meat first. Find recipes, try them a few days of the week. That already helps.
      • garren 4y ago
        I went vegan for about a year not too long ago. Just thought I’d try it. I ended up really liking it, mainly because it got me a bit more comfortable cooking and trying recipes and ingredients I would never have considered. I’m not vegan anymore, primarily because of a living situation (roomies.) I like meat, but I’m still thrilled to whip up a good quick vegan or vegetarian dish now and then. However, if you take a meat centered dish and just remove the meat, or throw in a meat-like substitute (beyond burgers more than something like tofu or seitan), then yeah, it’s not going to be great. Vegetarian and vegan recipes are often really good precisely because they don’t attempt replace meat with anything. Instead I think they rely more on spice and flavor combinations. You’re not going to find a replacement for a killer dry-aged ny strip steak that’s grilled to perfection. But you might find a fantastic curry, kimchi stew, roasted pepper, or black bean burger recipe that help to broaden your tastes and get comfortable eating less meat.
• netmonk 4y ago
  Could you add the total amount of wasted meat (and food) per day also ? From several sources like WHO or WEF the annual wasted pourcentage of food is around 50% in the world. Guess where the inflation come from.
  • nine_k 4y ago
    I suspect the majority of wasted food is fruits and vegetables which spoil pretty easily. Meat is likely a minority. Amounts of grain or potatoes produced / consumed per second, in square kilometres of fields, would be impressive, too.
• rpastuszak 4y ago
  I'm obviously overthinking it, but I love that the visual style manages to somehow marry minimalist typography with a 90s geocities vibe. I was trying to see if there's a way of "visualising" some of these numbers using audio, but at 285Hz (for chickens), we're at C#4/D4. For the other animals you can distinguish between the specific beats, but this is just uniform noise. (cue the quote about one death being a tragedy, 1000s a statistic lost in the noise)