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“Judas goats” were once key players in meatpacking plants
- sharadov 4y agoI wonder how the term "sheeplike" came into existence, because based on this article sheep are not exactly the docile, willing animals as we were told.
- jFriedensreich 4y agoi mean they literally follow a goat to their certain death.
- kornhole 4y agoGeorge Orwell's Animal Farm portrays it well. Most people are sheeplike and follow the herd. After you are fattened up, you are led into the meat grinder.
- robnado 4y agoNowadays, these goats would be called influencers.
- jason-phillips 4y agoI was gonna say, there's plenty of modern analogues in the human meatspace.
- astrea 4y agoDoes anyone actually listen to influencers?
- the_af 4y agoIt depends on the actual definition of "influencer" (I mean, I certainly don't follow vapid TV or YouTube celebrities), but I do listen. In the niches I follow on YouTube, I certainly pay attention to the channels I enjoy and sometimes buy the products they recommend.
- kibwen 4y agoThe entire industry of cryptocurrency scams would evaporate without, for example, complicit scammers shilling dogecoin on Twitter. That's an influencer.
- lbriner 4y agoAre you kidding? 1000s and 1000s of young people are completely enamoured with all types of fashion, make-up, gaming and fitness Influencers.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoThey get tons of views but it's more difficult to know how much of that translates into sales, but this has long been a problem with advertising. There was recently an influencer who tried to sell her own line of shirts directly and went on an angry rant because of low sales despite having a large number of followers.
- scarecrowbob 4y agoA lot of what is going on just looks, for instance, like "musicians talking about their tools" (selling guitar pedals) or "hikers talking about how they got the weight down to do a through hike" (selling fancy bags) or "how to bunny hop a mountain bike" (selling $6k bikes). I can feel its pull on me: especially around the bike, as I would like to be off the ground more but don't -really- wanna drop twice what I paid for my first car on one.
- Havoc 4y agoAbsolutely - it’s no coincidence that brands throw brand deals at them. It works better than classic ads if the ad is effectively narrated by someone you’ve got a parasocial relationship with
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- anigbrowl 4y agoThe term 'Judas goat' goat is also used in political organizing, albeit casually rather than technically. That's where I first heard of it.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoThere is a different type of Judas goat that requires no nicotine. Essentially a single goat with a gps collar is released until it finds the local feral goat population, at which point a helicopter shows up to shoot them all. The Judas goat is then left to search for the next herd.[0] [0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-03-mn-439-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-03-mn-439-st...
- cowpig 4y agoMissing context here is that humans bring goats to islands and the goats wreak havoc on the ecosystem there, and then they are very hard to find and remove. Goats are inherently social, and so a lone goat will find a new group to interact with. What you end up with is a single, ultra-traumatized goat repeatedly finding a group of friends who all get murdered by a flying machine. I suppose it's worth it because otherwise the whole island ecosystem collapses? There was a wonderful radiolab episode about this in the galapagos[0] [0] https://radiolab.org/episodes/galapagos https://radiolab.org/episodes/galapagos
- sidewndr46 4y agoAren't donkeys the same way?
- scotty79 4y agoI think all the horribleness of human-animal interactions is ripe inspiration for chillingly fascinating SF novels. What animals do to each other (esp parasites) can be great too.
- lbriner 4y agoThe "correct" way to deal with it is the use of natural predators. Problem is people often don't like or know how to live with proper apex predators so they get killed off and we have to artificially control animal numbers. However, in many places, we have introduced non-native species that never had natural predators. Then what?
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- VincentEvans 4y agoPretty macabre.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoit's hard NOT to think what a horrible species we are, running killing floors
- nonethewiser 4y agoAnd then ripping their delicious burnt flesh of their bones with our teeth.
- scotty79 4y agoI wouldn't say it's delicious. Try preparing meat yourself without any seasoning. It's eadible but that's the best you can say about it. We have to do additional work to make it delicious.
- ambicapter 4y agoWhat? I've eaten plenty of meat without seasoning before. I question your cooking procedures if it doesn't taste good (or maybe you just don't like meat, that's a possibility too).
- scotty79 4y agoIt's possible that it's something about my tastebuds bacause I really can't relate to people saying meat tastes good. For me salt tastes good, pepper tastes good, rosmary tastes good. Without them meat is as appealing as anything vultures dine on. And even in well prepared meat the first bite is something I need to suffer through before I can start enjoying the meal. To me it tastes exactly what it is. A piece of animal that died. And I have no moral qualms. It just tastes bad to me.
- at-w 4y agoMost things we eat are chosen because they taste good in combination with other things, and better than the sum of the individual ingredients eaten separately. Eating a stick of butter probably isn't appetizing, but neither would your examples of eating pure salt or unprocessed pepper unless you have particularly odd tastes.
- eternalban 4y ago"a wise man or a trained goat" This somewhat sums up a cynical view of mass movements in human history.
- RektBoy 4y agoThere is Czech sci-fi book series called "Legie", it's about aliens conquering planet Earth. And making minced meat from humans, too bad it's not in English. Because it reminded me what these animals must feel like. Also there're people which acts like sorters, they decide which human goes to meat factory and which to mines and then to meat factory :D.
- fbn79 4y agoSounds like sci-fi movie "Under the Skin" with Scarlet Jojansson (based on book by Michel Faber). A beautiful girl is used to attract males to a masked alien slaughterhouse.
- the_af 4y agoHaven't watched the movie (I just know from the synopsis it's not very faithful to the novel, what with all those biker dudes) but boy is the novel bleak! It's especially depressing because the main character is so unhappy and downtrodden, even though her job is to lure humans to the slaughterhouse.
- fbn79 4y agoYou have to watch it. I read the book too. The movie is not faithful but I liked it as the book.
- lupire 4y ago"even though"? Seems natural.
- the_af 4y agoMy phrasing was clumsy but also spoilerish. Trust me it's not natural that she'd be depressed because she led people to their deaths (consider farmers), and in fact, that's not the root of her depression! Let me rephrase for clarity: even though her job is to lead people to the slaughterhouse, making her a "villain" in a more traditional story, we nonetheless empathize with her and feel her pain, since she is an outcast, unhappy with her life and downtrodden by her own people. "Even though" she leads people to their deaths, she lacks any real agency in it; she's pressed into that life.
- burkaman 4y agoHow does it work today? Did we just get rid of the ramps and that makes it easier to herd the sheep?
- nerdponx 4y agoI think the plants are no longer "gravity powered", so there's no need to try to get them up to the top of the big building.
- blockinator 4y ago> A living cow, pig, or sheep entered the killing floor on top of the slaughterhouse and met with a sledgehammer or captive-bolt, and descended each floor in bits of appreciating value, i.e., eventually exiting the bottom floor as packaged bacon or a side of ribs. regarding the bacon - is that really correct? I thought bacon-making was a longer, more involved process that would probably have been done off-site (brining,curing,smoking,etc).
- voxic11 4y agoIts involved but seems like it can be done pretty quickly https://nassaufoods.com/resources/basic-manufacturing-of-bacon/ https://nassaufoods.com/resources/basic-manufacturing-of-bac...
- swamp40 4y agoI think there is a bit of poetic license there.
- paunchy 4y agoIt's called pipelining. If you have 5 floors of space to work with, there's no reason you couldn't run a 48 or 72 hour bacon-making process on a portion of the pork running through the facility.
- Infernal 4y agoI believe bacon just describes the cut. In my area of the US, you can buy a package of uncured bacon right alongside the usual cured varieties. I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine the slaughterhouses described here wouldn't be doing any processing outside of the slaughtering, butchering, and packing.
- peteradio 4y agoFYI, the cut is pork belly. Uncured bacon is still processed in roughly the same manner as cured bacon but without direct use of nitrates. It is dubious to call it uncured however.
- alexnew 4y agoJudas goats were also used on the Galapagos where they were used to attract the invasive wild goats on the island out in the open where they could be killed. https://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/killing-goats-galapagos/ https://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/killing-goats-galapagos/
- prettyeyes83 4y agothere's a nice podcast episode from radiolab about the goats on galapagos! https://radiolab.org/episodes/galapagos-2206 https://radiolab.org/episodes/galapagos-2206
- dexwiz 4y agoI remember listening to that and it really struck me how much a single species could change an environment. I wonder how many ecosystems we praise as natural are actually warped by human introduction of species in the last few thousand millennia.
- PicassoCTs 4y agoThe whole desertification of the middle east can be blamed on goat herding of nomadic farmers.
- diordiderot 4y agoI've heard that before. Are there any good books/ papers on the topic?
- PicassoCTs 4y agohttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/316721412_Blame_it_on_the_goats_Desertification_in_the_Near_East_during_the_Holocene https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316721412_Blame_it_... https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research/environmental-implications-livestock-goats https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research/environmental-implication... Its inconclusive on the goats. but the overall appearing cities and nomadic lifestyle selling whool to cities might have amplified the whole situation. Todays nomads definitely amplify the situation
- neilv 4y agoFor anyone who doesn't know, Judas was the betrayer symbol maybe most familiar to US people then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot Another facet of this reference is that Jesus was called "the Good Shepherd", and there were analogies of protecting and leading his flock in a caring and benevolent way, rescuing a lamb who was lost, etc.: https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=good+shepherd&iax=images&ia=images https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=good+shepherd&iax=images&ia=... Judas, an apostle (kind of an apprentice) of the Good Shepherd, when a slaughterhouse goat leading literal sheep to their deaths, sounds like a very Bad Shepherd.
- whimsicalism 4y ago> Judas was the betrayer symbol maybe most familiar to US people then: Probably still so now. Judas is the betrayer par excellence in American culture.
- bombcar 4y agoEven more than Benedict Arnold, I'd say. And certainly Judas is more well-known world-wide (c.f. Dante).
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoThought it would be Benedict Arnold for the US. Is Judas not considered a betrayer in Christian communities outside the US? Seems weird to connect Judas uniquely to American culture.
- neilv 4y agoI have some idea of the US where and when the original article is talking about, but can't speak of elsewhere.
- whimsicalism 4y agoNot sure where you read the "unique" statement in my comment, but it was never meant to be implied. American culture is very Christian influenced, even now. e: I would be curious if the name "Judas" or its equivalent is a common synonym for traitor outside of english, however.
- goatingaround 4y agoI just imagined Judas Priest as a goat shepherd. Shepherding his flock of influencers.
- raldi 4y agoIn the Netherlands, I hear, they have a term "first sheep across the bridge". Apparently if you bring a flock to a bridge, they all hesitate until one finally tentatively steps onto it, and then they all go. You can see the obvious analogies to first-mover human behavior.
- krylon 4y agoAt traffic lights, it's very common when one person starts crossing the street while the lights are still red, for others to follow immediately. It takes surprisingly much conscious effort to resist the instinct and look at the traffic lights first.
- nerdponx 4y agoThat's not it. Sometimes this happens because people are on their phones or otherwise zoning out, and only realize it's safe to cross when somebody else starts doing it. But I think the big reason this happens is because, if someone else starts crossing the road, then it must be because either nobody is coming, or because the drivers on the road have already indicated their willingness to yield to the pedestrians. In the latter case, it makes sense to cross directly behind somebody else who is crossing, because a yielding driver provides a short window of opportunity for crossing safely. In general, watching somebody do something that you thought was risky tends to be a subconscious prompt at the thing was perhaps not as risky as you thought. It's a little more subtle than "animal brain bad, look at the lights you dummy".
- ectopod 4y agoOr there is a car coming and it isn't slowing down but there is just enough time for me to nip across in front of it. Maybe this doesn't happen in countries with jaywalking laws, but it does happen here.
- jamiek88 4y agoI was weirdly proud of when I got a jaywalking ticket in Edmonton, ca on a business trip. No cars visible, looked both ways, crossed. Suddenly 3 cops surround me. I didn’t use the crossing. I just couldn’t take it seriously in my mind. What a stupid law. But I’m in their country, acted respectful, paid the fine. But man. North America has ceded sovereignty of their streets fully, completely to the automobile.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago"It strains credulity to envision the surreal parade of a lone goat leading sheep across a meatpacking facility, coaxing the flock up concrete ramps" What kind of reality-detached schoolwork essay writing is this? No, it doesn't. Anyone who's actually lived with farm animals, especially sheep, will go "yeah, that's how sheep work? Why the literary pretentiousnes, whose pants are you trying to get in?"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DonHopkins 4y agoSheep don't wear pants!
- zeristor 4y agoThere's the BBC Horizon programme from 2006 "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow" about Temple Grandin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00791tq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00791tq Who went to great lengths to make it easier for Cows to be slaughtered, perhaps I missed something, it talks about her efforts to empathise with the cow, at what might disturb it as it is moved into the slaughter house. It just seemed quite jarring about being so empathetic to cows, yet making it easier to be slaughtered, a strange disconnect. I eat meat, and indeed spent summers on the family pig farm, but this documentary just seemed very strange, yet no I know of thought it was strange.
- retrac 4y agoI don't find it jarring or disconnected. In many worldviews, the most problematic aspect of meat is the pain and discomfort inflicted during the rearing and slaughter process. I've met hunters who will tell you they're far more at-ease with eating meat from an animal they killed in the wild (thus knowing it did not live in a cage and died instantly) than they are with factory farming.
- dr_orpheus 4y agoOther like-minded people are some of the former vegetarian/vegan run butcher shops [0]. Basic premise is they only wanted to eat meat if it was from somewhere with animal well-being and conservationism as a focus, and they came to the conclusion that the best way to do that was to source the meat themselves. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/dining/butchers-meat-vegetarian-vegan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/dining/butchers-meat-vege...
- sweetheart 4y ago> Basic premise is they only wanted to eat meat if it was from somewhere with animal well-being and conservationism as a focus When meat is being served, you know animal welfare is not being considered. One cannot claim to value the welfare of a being before killing it prematurely and unnecessarily. That is a simple fact. EDIT: I'd love if someone could reply and provide an analogous situation where we can safely say that we value someone's wellbeing before causing them fatal harm, outside of mercy killings.
- sungam 4y agoThis is an incredibly effective - presumably accidental - clickbait headline by agweb!
- anigbrowl 4y agoWhy presumably accidental? The article is written in the same style. It's not a styleI care for, but the writer knew what they were doing.
- songeater 4y agoa reason why this is necessary (and cited in TFA why sheep in particular needed this): https://nypost.com/2022/11/17/sheep-filmed-walking-in-circle-for-12-days-straight-in-china/ https://nypost.com/2022/11/17/sheep-filmed-walking-in-circle...
- sam1r 4y agoWow. This truly cannot be connected, but so glad you posted this.
- gumby 4y agoYou can see this if you watch the huge mobs of sheep being moved in Australia: if one of them trips, the one behind will also jump when it gets to the same point, and the next one will do the same, until one of them fails to notice and it stops. So you look across and see a small standing wave spontaneously develop in the flock, that then eventually spontaneously damps.
- mortenjorck 4y agoIf I may take a moment to appreciate the art of the headline: On one hand, this headline is so densely obscure, I had no idea what the article would be about until I started reading it. On the other, it is absolutely dazzling, in the truest, entrancingly disorienting sense of the word. The cocktail of eyebrow-raising lexical connotations it whips up is sublime.
- mungoman2 4y agoCame here to comment on the headline but you a better job at it! Clickbait for sure, but it really delivered
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ransom1538 4y agoNo joke. I am framing this: https://fj-corp-pub.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/2%20Photo%20by%20George%20Newman%2C%20courtesy%20of%20Sioux%20City%20Public%20Museum.jpg https://fj-corp-pub.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/i...
- DonHopkins 4y agoNow days they call them "Influencers".
- lancesells 4y agoReading the headline my mind went immediately to humans and not livestock.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 4y agoSurprised a single cig is enough. I would have thought you’d need something a little more chemically powerful frankly
- angry_octet 4y agoYou're not a current or former smoker to say that. Nicotine is incredibly powerful.
- tomcam 4y agoI mean, do you know what I‘m willing to do for a Mountain Dew with real sugar?
- seri4l 4y agoAlthough they probably don't employ nicotine anymore using trained animals to guide sheep to a slaughterhouse is not a thing of the past. Another comment mentions Temple Grandin. This video of hers showcases the use of leader sheep in a short clip (WARNING: graphic content): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoB3tf9Q2AA&t=155 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoB3tf9Q2AA&t=155
- asdfman123 4y agoThey had a little too much fun with this headline
- techtitan2000 4y ago
- gennarro 4y agoIf you’ve read the book “sea of rust” by Robert Cargill you will know the phrase quite well. A bit dark but not a bad read.
- jimnotgym 4y agoWow, that is how you turn a single paragraph of information and a single photo into a whole article! Repeat youself, write about what a quote is about to say, then zoom in on the same image and show it again!
- wahern 4y agoSort of like the formula for public speaking: Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.
- aendruk 4y agoConfusingly the article doesn’t ever explain this, just noting that the goats are “aptly named”: > The term is a reference to Judas Iscariot, an apostle of Jesus Christ who betrayed Jesus in the Bible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat A perplexing omission given its verbosity.
- tga_d 4y ago"Judas" is also just a word in English that is a synonym for "traitor", derived from the same etymology. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Judas#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Judas#English
- galdosdi 4y agoReminds me of the anachronistic line from Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar", in which Jesus yells at Judas, "You liar! You Judas!" Which is a pretty clever little joke
- Macha 4y agoGiven the references to thanksgiving and the FDA in the other top articles, the site appears catered for a US audience, and the privacy policy expects users to be over 13. What percentage of Americans over 13 wouldn't get the Judas reference? Has to be under 0.1%
- aendruk 4y agoI asked around and indeed it looks like it’s just me who missed the memo on biblical terms for traitors.
- throwaway675309 4y agoA "Judas" has long been part of the popular English lexicon. Any US or UK centric blog could comfortably employ this term with a reasonable expectation that the majority of the readership would instantly understand it.
- SkipperCat 4y agoFor some reason, this article really resonated with me. Every time a group commits an atrocity against another, there's always someone in the abused group that facilitates the horror for a small payment or benefit. I read about it in the Holocaust and I'm would not be surprised if it happened in Rwanda, Cambodia and other places. To hear that it happens in the animal kingdom too kinda crushed me a little bit.
- wahern 4y agoGenocides in both Rwanda and Cambodia were carried out by broad swathes of the populations. In Rwanda in particular, you had neighbor killing neighbor using machetes. Something similar happened in Indonesia. Likewise the Cultural Revolution in China. There wasn't much need for a Judas as there was nowhere to hide or no small group of people to hide from. Though given the scope of these events you'd expect to see every variation of human behavior many times over, so of course there are countless situations of betrayal and subterfuge, and these stories tend to resonate with people as they're highly personal and emotionally charged. People in more developed societies (or maybe just societies which emphasis individualism and individual moral agency, like many Western nations) find it difficult to fathom how such brutality could unfold at the hands of individuals without the interpersonal drama to help contextualize and connect to their own experiences.