The world: [Progresses]
Republicans: Not on my watch!
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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As always, the cruelty is the point.
The fact is, most animals in our food system live under dismal conditions, and the pitifully low bar for their treatment was set in directives from the same industry’s leaders who today are so upset about being vilified. “Forget the pig is an animal—treat him just like a machine in a factory,” recommended Hog Farm Managementin 1976. Two years later, National Hog Farmer advised: “The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.”
And farmers, eager to squeeze every dollar from their crops, complied. Today, nearly 5 million of these smart, social animals (representing over 80 percent of all sows in pork production) are confined to tiny gestation crates—cages so narrow the animals can’t even turn around. They spend their lives lined up like cars in a parking lot, barely able to move an inch and driven insane from the extreme deprivation
I went vegetarian this year (vegan when it’s possible) mostly because of the horrors of factory farming. I could not continue to participate in such a horrific system anymore.
We don’t eat cats or dogs, so why is it okay to eat other animals? They all have thoughts and feelings.
I'm also returning to a more plant based diet in part because of animal cruelty but also because creating demand for plant based meat alternatives could potentially reduce the need for agricultural land use by ~70%. But not all animal production has the same impact on climate change: just cutting out beef and eating more nuts will help.
Ideally, pasture-raised and kosher or halal meats would be more (at all) prevalent. That's what ethical meat consumption looks like.
Alternately, lab grown.
Grass-fed production doesn't really scale, so there's not much way around consumption changes here. It also comes with a side effect of raising methane emissions
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401/pdf
To be fair, pasture raised is more expensive, so people would eat less beef. I don't think it's fair to talk about scaling current consumption.
You say that, but it's not really just about grass-feeding. Cows are already fed almost 90% inedible crop materials that would be getting disposed of anyway. We could be doing better, but cattle's food source is sorta the wrong focus.
And as much methane is in manure, it's better for the environment (including GHG) than synthetic fertilizers.
The real answer is changing our meat/vegetable balance AND improve the process AND continue to improve humane regulations (and those 3 goals often synergize with each other).
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Why is it ideal or even ethical to kill others "kosher or halal" when we don't have to kill in any way? How does this relate to them living in cages before?
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Nah, they really only care about $$. Money is the point. They literally care about nothing else.
Unfortunately this just isn't always true. They also care deeply about the maintenance of existing hierarchies and will cheerfully vote against their own financial interests in order to maintain them.
That's only poor Republicans who do that. Ultimately it will line the pockets of some rich piece of shit one way or another. I hate this place.
Example?
This bill, if it passes, applies to much more than just what the just the title says here
The bill would also threaten other farmed animal welfare laws, like California’s and New York City’s prohibitions on the sale of foie gras, a product made by force-feeding ducks and geese.
[...]
The bill is written so broadly that it could threaten some 1,000 other state and local laws and regulations that govern agriculture, from timber to beef to crops, according to Kelley McGill, a regulatory policy fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program
Who's the loser that's downvoted every comment on this post? Please actually argue why we should treat animals even more unconscionably than we already do. I'd like to see how pathetic it is
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They're leaning hard into the cartoonishly evil caricature.
Of course they are, they want the vast majority of us in cages as well.
They're called cubicles
Also at their behest.
Ya know it might be time to eat less meat
Can't wait for lab grown meat to become practical and affordable.
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States Rights! Amirite?
They'll say anything in the moment to justify the decisions that the corporations paid for. Their positions don't need to be consistent for longer than a few minutes.
Pssh, a few minutes? Trumpy contradicts himself sentence to sentence, and the people cheer.
They found an issue that profits them that undecideds will get behind, is why.
Free Range laws are a complicated and touchy subject in a lot of Blue areas. Eggs more than doubled in price in my state in the last 6 months or so. I'm willing to pay for them because I think Free Range laws are humane, but I'm a couple towns over from a very depressed urban community that really feels the difference when eggs were one of the cheapest nutritional purchases they could buy.
THERE, there's been a lot of grumbling by traditionally blue voters about the Free Range laws. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, empathy ends when it affects their family.
IMO, we needed subsidy or purchase-subsidy of some sort to counteract the cost of Free Range laws, and this might not have happened because it might not have been popular enough. Nonetheless, hopefully they shoot themsleves in the foot with this. They're leaning on the same commerce clause that could eventually lead to a federal Free Range mandate.
If the prices doubled, are you sure that's not due to the bird flu going around? Some producers have had to cull entire barns of birds.
I know chicken farmers and breakfast restaurant owners on a first name basis. It was absolutely, positively the free-range law. I'm not saying no other price influencers could exist, but the market, retail, and wholesale I've seen is all about the free range law.
And most of the ones I Know are torn because "business is business" but they know deep down inside that free-range requirements are reasonable and humane.
It's a very old story, states rights unless the states do something conservatives don't like.
An example was banning slavery. Conservatives didn't like that, so they started a war over it. A war meant to deny the states the right to ban slavery.
Now they want to ban states from bettering the world. I say now, but it's actually always.
Conservatives in state government do the same things to local governments. It's authoritarianism all the way down.
Me: Playing Fallout 3 for the first time, thinking that Littlehorn & Associates is just a silly joke based on a biblical deep cut. No one would be that unnaturally petty and evil in the real world.
Republicans: Hold my beer.
I don't see how this would go anywhere after 303 Creative.
Corporations are people for the purposes of free speech thanks to Citizens United. Congress can't pass a law depriving them of their free speech rights - and animal welfare would definitely fall within the scope.
303 says - among other things - that state or federal law can't compel to to perform an act against your right to free speech.
I think you may be misunderstanding this bill. This bill attempts to gut existing state and local laws (that themselves still are weak)
The EATS Act, short for Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression, was introduced last month by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) with a companion bill in the House from Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), and would prohibit state and local governments from setting standards for how agricultural products imported from other states are produced. The bill’s language is not only sweeping, but vague, and some of its potential effects are unclear. For example, it covers the “preharvest” production of agricultural products, but “preharvest” isn’t defined.
Yes.
They're mad because California won a Supreme Court battle that banned importing pork from other states unless the provider can show that the animal was allowed to move freely while being raised.
And since California is a HUGE market, it essentially makes a lot of animal farming.. I won't say cruelty-free, but less-cruel.
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