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Go 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 s

Go 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 ago
Of 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 ago
  So 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 ago
    150+ animals per person per year? Citation needed.
    - ironSkillet 3y ago
      There's just no way it's true. A single cow can feed someone who eats beef often for an entire year.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        Count 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 ago
        FWIW 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 ago
        How long can a single shrimp or chicken feed someone?
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/ https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetari... Here's a pretty good analysis based on USDA data. Prediction: "Seafood don't count! for handwavehandwave reasons!"
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  Again; butchers are fine. The animal is dead already. What you are missing is the industrial process we put together in the last 70 years to produce more meat; cheaper and faster. Those are weird, and inhuman. Those technics make most people uncomfortable. If not, the amount of antibiotics we have to pump into the animal to keep them healthy will hirk another slice of the public. A data point here is the % of depression in slaughter house worker. Those are the one that are exposed for real. Not a wet meat market worker, not a fancy butcher.
djbusby 3y ago
Ugh, 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 ago
  When 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 ago
Factory 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Oh, 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.

Go 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 ago

Of 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 ago
So 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 ago
  150+ animals per person per year? Citation needed.
  - ironSkillet 3y ago
    There's just no way it's true. A single cow can feed someone who eats beef often for an entire year.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      Count 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 ago
        FWIW 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 ago
      How long can a single shrimp or chicken feed someone?
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/ https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetari... Here's a pretty good analysis based on USDA data. Prediction: "Seafood don't count! for handwavehandwave reasons!"
dopidopHN 3y ago
Again; butchers are fine. The animal is dead already. What you are missing is the industrial process we put together in the last 70 years to produce more meat; cheaper and faster. Those are weird, and inhuman. Those technics make most people uncomfortable. If not, the amount of antibiotics we have to pump into the animal to keep them healthy will hirk another slice of the public. A data point here is the % of depression in slaughter house worker. Those are the one that are exposed for real. Not a wet meat market worker, not a fancy butcher.

djbusby 3y ago

Ugh, 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 ago
When 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 ago

Factory 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Oh, 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.