3 ms·

Well they are still forced to reproduce so that their offsprings can killed quickly (and sold as pricier calf meat) so that their milk can be used for making bu

by kmarc 3y ago

Well they are still forced to reproduce so that their offsprings can killed quickly (and sold as pricier calf meat) so that their milk can be used for making butter you eat on an other continent. I wouldn't mix in "ethics" here, but the rest is true. Butter tastes good.

darkutopiae 3y ago
Im a dairy farmer living in castletownbere Ireland doing work remote at MIT. Actually we're in a little village called allihies a wee bit outside. Its a beautiful area. My family have run the farm since the 1920s. What you said is frankly incitement to violence against my family. We love our cows and they live good long lives on our hills and meadows overlooking the sea. No regular farmer i know would ever do anything you said in your message.
- kmarc 3y ago
  Good that there are farmers like your family. By no means did I want to point to any individual's family, and certainly didn't say that this is the only way. For the rest, unfortunately, as any mammal, cows only start producing milk when they become pregnant, and then stop later. Since feeding and raising the calves are more expensive than selling them for their meat, they rather do that on bigger / profit optimized farms. This procedure is hard to be thought of ethical. Other farms also keep a breed that was already "genetically engineered" to simply produce more milk (called diary cows/diary cattle). Probably less extreme, ethically still challengable. I live in Switzerland and this is one of the hot topics w.r.t. animal exploitation / sustainable farming and food production. So next time you find yourself in the unlucky situation you have to eat someone other's / mass produced diary product, you might want to take this into consideration. Solution? Not yet, to my knowledge. Systematic problems would need systematic solution.
mandmandam 3y ago
> I wouldn't mix in "ethics" here Ethics is not an all-or-nothing proposition. I think the idea that ethics doesn't come into this until you're approaching Jainist levels of respect for life is not just wrong, but counter-productive. If you're going to eat butter, is it not inarguably better to get it from cows that could go outside and enjoy nature and eat grass; rather than cows that were subject to factory farming? Would it be better again to be vegan? Sure; no argument there... But the difference between the horrors of factory farming versus the much milder horrors of traditional farming is vast. It's honestly quite surprising to me that anyone (other than a big agri PR goon) would take issue with pointing out the quality of the farmed animal's life as an ethical concern.

by kmarc 3y ago

darkutopiae 3y ago

Im a dairy farmer living in castletownbere Ireland doing work remote at MIT. Actually we're in a little village called allihies a wee bit outside. Its a beautiful area. My family have run the farm since the 1920s. What you said is frankly incitement to violence against my family. We love our cows and they live good long lives on our hills and meadows overlooking the sea. No regular farmer i know would ever do anything you said in your message.

kmarc 3y ago
Good that there are farmers like your family. By no means did I want to point to any individual's family, and certainly didn't say that this is the only way. For the rest, unfortunately, as any mammal, cows only start producing milk when they become pregnant, and then stop later. Since feeding and raising the calves are more expensive than selling them for their meat, they rather do that on bigger / profit optimized farms. This procedure is hard to be thought of ethical. Other farms also keep a breed that was already "genetically engineered" to simply produce more milk (called diary cows/diary cattle). Probably less extreme, ethically still challengable. I live in Switzerland and this is one of the hot topics w.r.t. animal exploitation / sustainable farming and food production. So next time you find yourself in the unlucky situation you have to eat someone other's / mass produced diary product, you might want to take this into consideration. Solution? Not yet, to my knowledge. Systematic problems would need systematic solution.

mandmandam 3y ago

> I wouldn't mix in "ethics" here Ethics is not an all-or-nothing proposition. I think the idea that ethics doesn't come into this until you're approaching Jainist levels of respect for life is not just wrong, but counter-productive. If you're going to eat butter, is it not inarguably better to get it from cows that could go outside and enjoy nature and eat grass; rather than cows that were subject to factory farming? Would it be better again to be vegan? Sure; no argument there... But the difference between the horrors of factory farming versus the much milder horrors of traditional farming is vast. It's honestly quite surprising to me that anyone (other than a big agri PR goon) would take issue with pointing out the quality of the farmed animal's life as an ethical concern.