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Anecdotal “proof”: In the heart of Manhattan’s ultra trendy Chelsea neighborhood is the Chelsea market which is now this super trendy food hall. In the basement
by lefstathiou 3y ago
Anecdotal “proof”: In the heart of Manhattan’s ultra trendy Chelsea neighborhood is the Chelsea market which is now this super trendy food hall. In the basement is a delicious butcher named Dicksons where literally hundreds of New Yorkers and tourists eat and drink craft beers while they literally saw entire pigs and baby calfs in half and dangle their carcasses in clear eye sight of where you sit and eat. I take my family there all the time because of how tasty and fresh the meats are and my children love it.
Showing people where their meat comes isn’t going to reduce the demand in my opinion. I personally believe people should know where their food comes from as it reduces waste and garners introspection about our role in the planet and ecosystem.
I’m Greek American and lamb on the spit is a cultural tradition on Easter. As a kid, it was very weird for my American friends to pick food directly off of a carcass but so many told me over the years it was an unforgettable experience. My uncle once took me to the farm in Georgia where he got the lamb, handed me a large knife and asked me to slit its throat, I was 13 at the time. I couldn’t do it, I cried and watched him do it. I will never forget that. To this day I have a profound love and appreciation of animals, especially lambs. I still eat them. The two ideas for me are not conflicted to me. The only thing I abhor when it comes to meat is wastefulness.
- ethanbond 3y agoGo show your kid a real factory farm instead of a high-end butcher in a trendy food hall and report back! Easy experiment to run and your kids’ reaction could settle this debate.
- lefstathiou 3y agoOf course seeing something you haven’t seen is shocking. To make someone give up meat is a stretch. My kids have been up close and personal to butchers in wet markets chopping up fish, pigs and chickens in Taiwan. This is the daily way of life for billions of people. I believe people over estimate the reaction this would garner from most of the world’s population, which indicates to me that a similar reaction would happen here if we saw it regularly.
- ethanbond 3y agoSo the shock of a factory farm is just the shock of “seeing something new,” akin to going to Disneyland for the first time? OP said “more people would be vegan” which I think is strictly true. Everyone? No. Would a lot of people reduce their meat consumption from the currently obscene 150+ animals per year (average American)? Probably.
- michaelgburton 3y ago150+ animals per person per year? Citation needed.
- ironSkillet 3y agoThere's just no way it's true. A single cow can feed someone who eats beef often for an entire year.
- mcpackieh 3y agoCount chickens it's a plausible number. If you count things like small fish and shrimp then it's probably a severe underestimate. I guess he isn't counting those, self-described vegans often don't for some reason. I probably eat a thousand anchovies a year alone.
- ethanbond 3y agoFWIW I'm actually not a vegan, or even a vegetarian. I eat and thoroughly enjoy meat. But anyway yes, most of the specific individuals animals killed are chickens and water creatures of various types.
- ethanbond 3y agoHow long can a single shrimp or chicken feed someone?
- ethanbond 3y ago
- djbusby 3y agoUgh, or large scale dairy-farm. Milk production is gross! But, manually getting milk from one happy cow is... much less gross...almost fun even.
- mcpackieh 3y agoWhen I was in elementary school it seemed like we took a field trip to a dairy farm two or three times a year every year. Not some traditional dairy farm for tourists, but a big factory-style dairy farm owned by a big company that had farms and distribution covering the entire state. They showed us the calves in veal crates. I don't think it turned many people off milk and cheese. Actually the grossest field trip we ever went on was to a potato chip factory, the stink of rotten potatoes was overwhelming. They never took us to a pig or chicken farm though, I've been to a few at other times and those would have beat the chip factory easily. A lot of people who grow up around cows say they appreciate the small (I do, to an extent) but I've never heard anybody say that about pigs or chickens.
- JohnFen 3y agoFactory farms are pure nightmare fuel. But showing people factory farms, I think, is less likely to make people become vegans than it is to make people agitate for more humane forms of slaughter.
- ethanbond 3y agoI think it'd do both, and either/both is an improvement. Which is, of course, why factory farms try so hard to disallow their operations from being shown.
- JohnFen 3y agoOh, I agree that would be an improvement. I'm just saying most people will get more emotionally distressed by animal torture than about killing animals for food. But I should admit my bias here: I am not a vegetarian (although I don't eat a great deal of meat either) and so I'm not upset that animals are killed for food. But I get very worked up about animals being tortured whether they're ending up as food or not, so I'm ascribing to "most people" what I feel myself, which is always a bit questionable.
- dopidopHN 3y agoyou must realize that a high end butcher has nothing to do with a meat factory where the bulk of our meat is coming from? Bring your family to the one where they crush the male chick on a conveyor belt next time. ( chick culling, you can find video online and watch it before the omelet dinner ) Or just a good ol’ bunch of pigs understanding very well what’s gonna happen and try to escape. It’s kinda cute. Or you could discuss why a cow produce milk. That it needs to had deliver a calf recently. And how impregnate the cow ( it’s a “rape rack” device ) and then finish by the cow following the calves in despair over cookie and milk. — A butcher is not a industrial meat factory. The latter are the issue.