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Are the pigs healthy? I think the sibling comment got to the heart of this a lot more directly. There's an economic reward for keeping the pigs healthy enough

Are the pigs healthy? I think the sibling comment got to the heart of this a lot more directly. There's an economic reward for keeping the pigs healthy enough to be harvested while spending the least amount of money on their environment. If this lowers the threshold for "healthy enough", or allows them to survive in an even worse, cheaper to maintain environment, that could introduce or exacerbate human health risks even if this change itself cannot. There is also the animal welfare element, that has resonance to a lot of people. I am by no means a vegetarian, do not in principle object to killing animals for food. But the sheer scale of animal suffering in our food system gives me pause. I am reluctant to accept innovations that would allow us to increase the degree of suffering in exchange for an increase in output or decrease in price.

barbazoo 1y ago
Healthy animals and industrial meat production are at two opposing ends of the same spectrum. You can have one but not both.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  You absolutely can have both. The threshold to pass for at least "decently healthy" isn't that high and prices aren't that much higher than "normal" industrial farming.
aaronbaugher 1y ago
Agreed. I grew up on a farm and spent some time in confinement hog buildings in the 80s, when that meant a few hundred hogs in one building. That setup would look roomy and quaint compared to how it's done today. Livestock are resilient and adaptable, and can be miserable and unhealthy while being healthy enough to be profitable. Corporate farm organizations like to claim that farmers have an incentive to keep their animals healthy, but that doesn't mean the incentive is to keep them in tip-top condition. The best ratio of profit/cost might be juuuust above "almost dead." Just as human employers tend to look at the low-cost end of the scale when judging employee cost versus employee happiness/productivity, livestock farmers tend to look to the low-cost end of the scale to improve that profit/cost ratio. I eat meat, some of which I raise and butcher myself, and I'm not generally a big fan of regulations. But I'd be fine with some tighter rules on animal welfare. What's done to cattle in kosher slaughterhouses looks like unnecessary torture to me, for instance. But if consumers want to eat animals that had a reasonably healthy and pleasant existence and a humane end, it should probably be on them to identify farms and butchers that provide that and buy from them. They do exist, but they're small because most people don't care about what they don't see. I'm definitely not excited about any technology which helps to further hide it from them.

barbazoo 1y ago

Healthy animals and industrial meat production are at two opposing ends of the same spectrum. You can have one but not both.

mschuster91 1y ago
You absolutely can have both. The threshold to pass for at least "decently healthy" isn't that high and prices aren't that much higher than "normal" industrial farming.

aaronbaugher 1y ago

Agreed. I grew up on a farm and spent some time in confinement hog buildings in the 80s, when that meant a few hundred hogs in one building. That setup would look roomy and quaint compared to how it's done today. Livestock are resilient and adaptable, and can be miserable and unhealthy while being healthy enough to be profitable. Corporate farm organizations like to claim that farmers have an incentive to keep their animals healthy, but that doesn't mean the incentive is to keep them in tip-top condition. The best ratio of profit/cost might be juuuust above "almost dead." Just as human employers tend to look at the low-cost end of the scale when judging employee cost versus employee happiness/productivity, livestock farmers tend to look to the low-cost end of the scale to improve that profit/cost ratio. I eat meat, some of which I raise and butcher myself, and I'm not generally a big fan of regulations. But I'd be fine with some tighter rules on animal welfare. What's done to cattle in kosher slaughterhouses looks like unnecessary torture to me, for instance. But if consumers want to eat animals that had a reasonably healthy and pleasant existence and a humane end, it should probably be on them to identify farms and butchers that provide that and buy from them. They do exist, but they're small because most people don't care about what they don't see. I'm definitely not excited about any technology which helps to further hide it from them.