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As someone with trouble giving up on meat this is a highly hypocritical comment but news like this always gives me an unsettling feeling in my stomach. We are s
by pluijzer 3y ago
As someone with trouble giving up on meat this is a highly hypocritical comment but news like this always gives me an unsettling feeling in my stomach. We are sacrificing the life of an intelligent entity to fix the knee of another. Like I said it is hypocritical and I probably found a way to explain it away if I needed itvmyself and am happy for the people it will help but still, we as a species do have the tendency to put ourselves above others. I feel very conflicited by it.
- ceejayoz 3y agoI'd draw a pretty big distinction between this and regular meat eating; you're not getting a new tendon several times a week. In this case, it's not even extra animal deaths: > It was important to Dr Hartnell that no kangaroos were killed expressly for his research, and this has remained his practice throughout his investigations: all of the work has been done only using kangaroos that have either been culled for reasons of population control or harvested for meat.
- pluijzer 3y agoThat is true, I think I agree with this.
- foobarian 3y agoTIL kangaroos are harvested for meat
- ceejayoz 3y agoYeah. Very similar to venison, in both taste (lean and a bit gamey) and reasons for culling; too many in an area and no real predators other than humans.
- aziaziazi 3y agoThat sounds ironic as kangaroo’s predators were predated (“culled”) by humans.
- 9991 3y agoWe're just going to work our way down the food chain.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoAlready have, many people personally cull grass periodically.
- oefnak 3y agoWe even have solar panels.
- ambicapter 3y agoOut of curiosity, what are/were kangaroo's predators?
- ceejayoz 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacoleo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacoleo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine too, but probably not for adult kangaroos.
- callalex 3y agoSame with deer (wolf culling)
- senectus1 3y agonot just, but yeah ! Kangaroo meat is super lean and very tasty. needs to be cooked very carefully or it goes very chewy and dry.
- reaperman 3y agoLeather as well - kangaroo leather was rather prized in the motorcycle community for being more abrasion-resistant per thickness/weight than cow-hide leather. I think its popularity has somewhat fallen off but I believe it's still the most performant material.
- abracadaniel 3y agoSame for whips as I recall. Niche use cases, but it’s apparently much better than others.
- reaperman 3y agoHmm, I wonder which material properties contribute the most benefit to that application. "Abrasion resistance per weight/thickness" seems like it would be somewhat lower on the scale for whips than it is for motorcycle rider protection.
- tsol 3y agoYou can buy the jerky on Amazon last I checked. This amazed me the first time I learned about it but apparently it's pretty mundane in Australia
- pdabbadabba 3y agoIt's a common ingredient in dog food. If a dog is having some sort of allergic reaction, a vet will often recommend switching to kangaroo food to try to rule out a dietary cause. (I guess because kangaroo allergies are rare in dogs? At least in NA?).
- nineteen999 3y agoIt's a common ingredient in human food here in Australia. https://www.coles.com.au/search?q=kangaroo https://www.coles.com.au/search?q=kangaroo It's pretty gamey, I don't find it unpleasant, but I wouldn't eat it in favour of a good beef steak.
- microtherion 3y agoIf you're in the US, meat selection tends toward the conservative. People have literally been fired for serving kangaroo: https://time.com/5430454/nebraska-school-cook-fired-kangaroo-meat/ https://time.com/5430454/nebraska-school-cook-fired-kangaroo... But in some European countries, more bits of the animal are being eaten (beef tongue, e.g.), and more animals are being eaten (e.g. horses). In Switzerland, kangaroo and ostrich became somewhat popular when at the height of the Mad Cow Disease epidemic, people were reluctant to eat beef.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoAnd that’s a shame, I really feel like we need more exotic meats in the US. Maybe we can bring back the “lake cows” and their “lake cow bacon”. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-us-almost-became-a-nation-of-hippo-ranchers-180982244/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-us-almost-bec...
- cdot2 3y agoYou can definitely get beef tongue in the US.
- microtherion 3y agoYes, I did not mean to imply that you can't. But in my informal surveys of Americans, "Do you eat beef tongue?" is an interesting shibboleth to determine culture of origin of the respondent. I think I've yet to meet somebody with a Christian Anglo-Saxon background who said they did. People with Hispanic, Jewish, Eastern European, and many continental Western European backgrounds often do. Of course beef tongue is also found in Chinese cuisine.
- aziaziazi 3y agoThanks for pointing that quote up. Nonetheless I have the feeling it only respond to GP in a very short-sighted term. I do understand medical research should go on but don’t mismatch research process with industrial application, especially when they bring ethical concerns.
- Tade0 3y agoI suppose this sort of grafting is a behaviour unseen in the natural world, whereas eating is. I admit my first thought was "are they going to at least eat the kangaroo?" - like that's any consolation for the animal.
- SoftTalker 3y agoAlmost all of medicine (aside from the few natural/herbal remedies that actually work) is unseen in the natural world, I don't think we justify closing all the hospitals and medical clinics on that basis.
- DashAnimal 3y agoI really encourage you to try and give up meat and eggs again! It's not too hard -- just like any other habit to build and continue. And honestly I have the same mindset as you. The sacrifice we make to intelligent creatures for 5 minutes of sensory pleasure (taste/smell) makes no sense.
- stuff4ben 3y agoBut they're sooooo tasty! Other animals kill other animals, humans are no different.
- spicymaki 3y agoSure I think there is broad agreement with taste argument. However, I think we can agree that humans are on another scale with respect to animal killing. We are way past the survival of the fittest on the plains of the Serengeti here.
- ChatGTP 3y agoWe might be, but that's not by choice for many. I hate factory farming and if we lived in a world with more wilderness and healthier oceans, I think hunting is a fairly humane to operate. For most wild animals they die horrible deaths, the most humane way to go is being taken by an expert marksman or archer during adulthood. I've seen a fish have it's face mauled off by squid, and much worse. If that fish could've been dispatched by fish spike in seconds as opposed to having it's face mauled off, I think it would've went with the spike.
- flextheruler 3y agoWhat would you say to someone who’s only qualm is the animals humane treatment? I typically only eat chicken but I just don’t see an issue with if the chickens are humanely treated and killed. What else would we do with all the chickens besides eat them? They’d die out if we stopped eating them and it’s not like anyone’s going to put them in a zoo. The way I see it is we’ve bred these animals as livestock and we’re responsible for them as livestock and that’s okay. It’s how we treat them as livestock that matters. Factory farms are one of many gross byproducts of industrialization that we now have to deal with like fossil fuels.
- xutopia 3y agoI understand that paradox. The way I rationalize when it comes to food is that we wouldn't feel bad for a lion eating a gazelle... well we might but it would be required as lions eat that food. We're somewhere on that spectrum of omnivores who eat meat and that means eating animals.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe lion doesn't really have our capacity to reason (to the same extent) or come up with alternatives. Lions can't make an Impossible Burger; we can, which changes the ethical calculus a bit.
- reformedveget 3y agoThat's because the lion doesn't have an abundance of resources that allow it care about "ethical calculus." It simply eats, mates, socializes, and sleeps; and it is satisfied with this arrangement -- never feeling the need for "more." In my opinion, thought that verges beyond: "how to acquire food," "how to acquire mate," "how to acquire friend," and "how to acquire sleep" is "too much," and a neuroses. Or maybe all of our actions are predicated on fulfilling these base needs? And that our civilization has created an environment where these needs can no longer be simply attained, so we come up with ever more complex ways to attempt attaining them. One can also make the distinction that those needs are also simply just "feel good" and "don't feel bad." For a lion, the aforementioned things are enough to "feel good." But for us people, the simple pleasures have become unattainable in any sustainable sense. So we once again try to find something to make us feel good. For the GP, that might be practicing vegetarianism; for the readers of Hacker News, it might be stuffing their minds full of information of only temporary utility. And for what? So we can feel good, and escape the bad. "Ethical calculus" is no different. It's simply a rationalization of our base needs. Though I wish the simpler pleasures were more readily available... I'm getting awfully tired of working harder and smarter to find outlets!
- hombre_fatal 3y ago> we wouldn't feel bad for a lion eating a gazelle Most people probably do feel bad. Presumably you'd also feel bad if a lion attacked and ate a human even though it was just doing what you purport to be "required". Where it goes south is when people cherry pick the behavior of animals to justify their own actions.
- JamesBarney 3y agoI don't I always find it crazy that society has drawn these weird lines where if you want some chicken tenders you can slaughter a billion and treat them terrible but if you want to push the limits of human knowledge you need 6 levels of oversight.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoIt's a phenomenal demonstration of the human brain when a video of a guy being mean to a dog will win the outrage of Twitter while 23,000,000+ land animals are slaughtered per day for food in the US. What we seem to care about as a civilization is like a narrowly focused laser: we can only wrap our heads around the things small enough to fit in the tiny spotlight. Anything bigger and we just kinda take it for granted.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoIt's not that weird. We bred dogs for millennia to read and express human-recognizable emotional responses. They are sympathetic by design. In contrast, We bred most everything else to be delicious. A more fun one is to look at people's responses to guinea pigs, which were bred for eating but now are seen as pets.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoThat may be a satisfying explanation at first pass, but it breaks down quickly under scrutiny, I think. We can recognize the emotional state of pigs and cows, probably more than even we can with cats. Certainly more than we can with rodents and other pets. I also think most people wouldn't accept a video of someone abusing a cow, pig, or even a chicken. Let's just replace dog with piglet in my comment if that helps track the point. I'd wager most people wouldn't find footage inside a slaughterhouse or factory farm very palatable. But this happens by the hundreds of millions daily.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoCats may not emote in human terms as well as dogs, but they are unusually good among the animal kingdom at reading human emotional expression.
- 542354234235 3y ago>we as a species do have the tendency to put ourselves above others I mean, all species do this. Antelope don't lay down to be eaten by lions because it is good for the lion. It is funny that you feel like this is wrong while eating meat. I also eat meat and I would say it is morally much worse to kill a pig because I like the taste of the food and killing a kangaroo to provide significant quality of life improvement through increased mobility to those with severely damaged knees. I have zero issue with this being used until a better solution without killing a kangaroo could be developed.
- slashdev 3y agoKangaroos don’t have many natural predators anymore. Even if you don’t harvest them for meat, you’d have to cull them to prevent them overpopulating and destroying their environment. The article mentions that the kangaroos harvested for meat are sufficient to meet the current worldwide needs for ACL surgeries. Sometimes killing animals is the ethical thing to do. Reality is complex.
- dehrmann 3y agoWhat makes the kangaroo problem even worse is they're grazers, and maybe it's just a former British colony thing, but people like to plant grass.
- stubish 3y agoGrasses plant themselves and taken over from much of the native vegetation. We do like to cut down trees and clear bushland though. Every new cow paddock is also a kangaroo paddock.
- cyrnel 3y ago> you’d have to cull them to prevent them overpopulating and destroying their environment. We don't do this for cats, why should we have to do it for kangaroos? Trap Neuter Release exists. There have been struggles with implementing it, but it seems largely to do with lack of awareness and funding.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoAFAICT, no one around here culls or traps cats, but we don't have a cat overpopulation problem. OTOH, even with hunting seasons, we definitely have a deer population problem, and the rabbits have been going insane this year for some reason. Perhaps it's just a case of different strategies for different regions.
- bpiche 3y agoNew Zealand apparently does. Never been there, seems lovely (edit: this opening graf is too good not to share) "Animal welfare protestors at a hunting contest in rural New Zealand have faced off against a group of child attendees, some clutching dead feral cats, who repeatedly chanted the word “meat” at demonstrators." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/28/chaos-at-new-zealand-feral-cat-hunting-contest-as-video-of-children-chanting-with-dead-animals-emerges https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/28/chaos-at-new-z...
- dehrmann 3y agoNSW is culling them because of overpopulation. At least that's what the kangaroo scrotum keychain the gift shop was selling said.
- slim 3y agokangaroo scrotum ? where I live they sell souvenirs allegedly made of camel scrotum. it seems the scrotum trick works seemlessly on all tourists whatever origin they have :)
- go_prodev 3y agoIf it helps to put your mind at ease, in some parts of Australia Kangaroos are a pest. They are culled in agricultural areas and this treatment prevents some of the animal from going to waste. They're also often roadkill as they chase headlights at night. Companies pay hunters around $1-$2 per kg for the kangaroo meat. An adult kangaroo can be upwards of 60kg (130lb). The meat is often used for dog food, but is extremely lean but a bit gamey tasting I've been told. So, hopefully this treatment doesn't cause additional death of the roos, but helps to make their deaths less wasteful.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoIt’s possibly the Disney effect on the culture affecting your subconscious. If we had happy cows as cartoon characters we might not eat as much beef.
- 1MachineElf 3y agoA film that explores a similar theme is The Island (2005) - recommended!
- xgl5k 3y agoI am not conflicted in the slightest. It's a "dog eat dog" world where every species put's its survival over others. I hunt and slaughter animals. While I do fully understand and appreciate the sanctity of all forms of life, I also understand that my actions are part of the natural order of the universe.