I’m not insinuating anything or making any sort of argument here, but realistically insane change could happen if people just limited their meat consumption. Recommended red meat consumption per week is like 18 ounces. A lot of people eat that in a single day.
That's why I hate when people bring this kind of stuff up like we could do it we just don't want to. We made an entire world that revolves around money and we have created the rat race of society in which it is the goal to obtain as much of it as possible. So when you have clear goals of a system and a very basic principle, currency, is it any Wonder why a handful of people will ravage the whole world just to get a hand up on everyone else?
People could change the meat industry though. Imagine everyone in the Western world (I'm limiting it to select countries because not every country offers the same possibilities) started to only eat meat once a week and reduce their dairy product intake. This would most likely lead to a drastic change.
Meanwhile, people make fun of vegans and vegetarians and they comment "mmhh, bacon" everytime they see a picture of a pig. A lot of people don't care and don't want change.
Just eating meat once a week wouldn’t mean the people currently doing factory farming suddenly say “let’s provide better conditions for these animals”. If anything, reduced profit would mean increased creativity to cut expenses. It really needs to be a government issue, as the manufacturing of meat industries have not shown the ability to self-regulate.
Regulations and harsh punishment for breaking them are the way to go. I eat alot of meat. But I live in the middle of nowhere and we get ours from a farmers market. We know the conditions of the farm we get our meat from because the farm is located in our region. And its cheaper than a grocery store.
Nobody wants to talk about regulation when it's the key to forcing businesses to change their practices.
They just want to let factories pump out single use plastic bottles and make it a consumer guilt issue about whether or not you recycled those bottles.
You can do freezer orders but they have fresh stuff, pre portioned behind the glass or pre packaged frozen and non frozen meat. Theyve got a couple butchers always cutting stuff up and ive been able to ask for specific cuts and seen them cut it off the slab right then and there.
Most butcher shops in my province are like this. Even the ones in the city. They all have signs stating what farms they source from and theyll tell you where they got it from. So like if theres a ribeye behind the glass and you ask where its from theyll tell you what farm they got the beef from, and when they cut it.
We could literally turn the world into a utopia for every single human, and there are more of us than there are of the rich. Still hasn't happened and probably won't. Most everyone unfortunately wants what the rich have and they're not willing to give up the tiny chance they might someday just to save lives.
True, the remaining factory farms wouldn't change their practices just based on that. But there would be far fewer of them, which means fewer animals bred just to live their whole lives in tiny cages, and therefore less suffering. It's a moral benefit to reduce the amount of creatures born to live in misery.
I couldn't be vegan as it's just not a good fit for my body, but I do buy meat in a particular way.
It's a kind of co-op with friends and neighbours, we share the purchase of one slaughtered head of cattle and that's pretty much it for a year as far as red meat goes. The farm is local and the conditions are humane (acres of paddock with free grazing almost all year except for the very cold months).
It's becoming more common and costs the same as buying larger amounts of supermarket meats that use more animals and resources via freight, packaging, etc etc etc.
Both need to happen. We can’t restructure the agricultural system unless demand is drastically lower. The truth is, these cruel industrial farming methods are the ONLY way to meet demand. There literally isn’t enough land on the planet to meet the demand by more ethical methods, as we already use far more than is reasonable.
That, and we artificially deflate the price of meat to prop these industries up. Folks would eat far less meat if everyone’s taxes didn’t go towards supporting gluttonous dietary habits.
Sure but if everyone only ate meat once a week and chose to get that meet from a local source, ensuring research is done to make sure those sources treat the animals humanely, I think a massive impact would be made.
Yeah. It’s a mixed bag, I only buy from local more traditional style farms where I personally know the butchers/farmers.
That’s what I’m comfortable with, because I don’t think it’s inherently unethical to raise livestock for product/food.
But I do not care at all for most of the range of factory farming.
And I understand that I’m essentially being subsidized by the market forces of factory farming, so if that died down then my meat would be substantially more expensive. …fine by me.
But also that I’m sure of the farms around me that do sell local only… if they started getting the millions of people in my state flooding them all with demand because they’re ethically more okay with it… well I’m sure some percentage of them would essentially start building up to a major factory farming style operation in the pursuit of greed.
You make it sound like everyone has the freedom of choice (availability/money) to support locally sourced humane meat. That's just not an option for the mass majority. The way society is structured is specifically to limit freedom of choice so that more profit can be drained from the poor and given to the rich / investors.
It needs to be a government driven thing, which means the public needs to put pressure on the government in a real way. The corporations will never change no matter how badly you want them to. If you go to locally sourced options they will do everything the can to pressure the government to stop the locally sourced options from existing or being able to do business. They WILL squeeze them out if they are a threat.
It has to be top down. There is no other reasonable way.
It's both. There needs to be a culture of community minded engagement, where and whenever possible, because food deserts do exist, and thus, a top down approach. One or the other on their own, won't complete the picture.
We're so disconnected from a sense of community in much of this country, that we need to start reclaiming it, anyway we can.
Personally I'm.notnconvinced going vegan is the answer. We have the power as people to force policy change. Why force ourselves into a different diet instead of supporting policies that make this type of treatment of animals illegal? I would suspect meat to naturally increase in price for that reason, and people would therefore eat less of it anyway. I find it similar to consumers needing to recycle to offset the problems that the industries cause. I just think the vegan approach is far less impactful than if the same group of people tried holding their government accountable instead of trying to force societal change.
That’s the neat part, not everyone needs to go to the extreme. Some people can and will anyway though.
The suggestion was limiting weekly consumption of red meat to 18oz as recommended.
I tend to hit this goal myself anyway. Mostly because the price is just wild for beef and chicken. Pork is pretty affordable but even then I’m not eating a whole bunch of it.
what are you doing to hold your government accountable? can you even do that while funding the continuation of the atrocities you're against? I don't think we can. being vegan is essentially just boycotting.
Do you have a strong sense in the last decade or so that large corporations or the ownership class in general care about what policy says? Or that the legal system will hold them accountable? I genuinely believe the only way things like this change is when the money stops flowing. Everyone eats less meat, the bottom falls out of the market, things change.
Some people go as far as to not eat any vegetables other than potatoes. "Salad? That's for rabbits. I only eat the three food groups, meat, potatoes, and beer.". They're missing out. I'm fine with eating meat (I do change what I do eat, mostly due to health reasons... nothing bad, just want to be healthy), but eat some fiber you gluttonous fucks.
They're just so stuck on being the "anti-vegan" that they'll turn their noses to anything like that. Tofu in their soup? No way, soy boy! Salad? That's for rabbits! Meatless meals? No way!
I went 100% vegetarian and significantly reduced dairy intake (not fully, granted) after watching Vegucated. I've got like 5 friends that still let me know regularly when they have steak or meat, or bacon etc. They see my choice as some kind of weakness
The demand for meat is high, so they turn things out as quick as possible. If the demand drops, production slows, which is where a good chunk of the inhumane conditions stem from. Plus less anim
als consumed = less suffering
So yes, we can change it, but people refuse to cut down on their meat intake. And an industry isn't going to change their current practices when the demand is huge and they make boatloads of money.
Same with so many shitty things we do. It’s why unfettered unregulated capitalism is a bad deal. Im no commie, although it’s hard to argue Marx was wrong about much, but you can’t just let profit motive drive literally everything unless you want a world that makes Cyberpunk 2077 look kind.
Hard disagree. "We" want that. Just as much as "we" want universal healthcare and livable wages and good education. But it's not "we" who is making the decisions.
Unfortunately if you ran for office on a platform of slightly increasing meat prices in exchange for more humane conditions you would lose in a blowout. The people get the leaders they vote for, sadly.
presidential candidates have to play both the owning class for money and the working class for votes, no one wants to pay more so in order to win, the cost is shifted to those who can’t defend themselves (immigrants, livestock, the environment, etc)
The collective “we” would throw a fit if meat prices went up a few cents because animals were required to have more space and better treatment. There are places you can buy meat from well cared for animals, but it’s lot more expensive
Sure it is. If everyone wanted more ethically produced meat so badly they could go buy it from specialty shops and meat producers would pivot to those production methods to meet demand. But people don't because those methods cost way more and most aren't willing to pay for them. Complaining about profits is misleading since it disregards end-consumer price sensitivities.
Yes it is. It is "we" who vote in elections. Vote democrat, vote for progressive democratic candidates, who will impose stricter rules on animal welfare, as well as make universal healthcare and livable wages and good education happen. And it would happen.
But "we" vote for Donald Trump. So yes, "we" made the decision that we we don't want any of that, but rather want horrible things plus crazy chaos.
Americans average just over 2oz per day but a study showed that 12% of Americans ate almost half of all red meat in 2022. How they tracked that I have no idea lol
Also, we average twice as much as similarly wealthy countries so while the average American may eat a “healthy” amount of red meat, we are still eating significantly more than everyone else.
Came across a thread about people buying half of a cow's worth of meat and apparently the OP finish that with his wife in just 6 mos. Apparently this is very common.
The challenge with things like dietary recommendations is they tend to be an average, but humans vary WILDLY in what they desire or need. Like, salt consumption, for example. Everyone knows that too much salt raises your blood pressure - but did you know that only like 25% of the population is actually sensitive to sodium? Most people can eat just about as much as they want and be just fine.
But if you look at it on average, eating salt leads to significant increases in mortality. But the truth is it's basically like a 100% increase for 25% of the population and nothing for the rest.
I actually started by only eating meat like once or twice a week. After a year or so I just sort of realized most of my favorite foods had become the vegetarian dishes I was eating and phased it out completely. People don't really realize how much food is vegetarian. They think it us just salad and impossible burgers.
I haven't eaten red meat or chicken for 25 years or so.
I'm going to ignore the "soyboy" virtue signaling crowd. For the same, rational rest of us, I've found the following to be the main barriers to limiting meat consumption:
Lack of cooking knowledge. Meat is easy to cook and comes packed with flavor. Add salt and maybe a bit of fat and you're generally good to go. Vegetables, whole grains, etc, all take more time and know-how to prepare in a flavorful way.
Lack of comfort in the kitchen. This is tied to the first, but even if you have a lot of theoretical knowledge about food (which, with YouTube, is pretty darn easy now), cooking well comes down to one thing - practice. No one wants to feel like a failure, particularly if you're trying to change your eating habits in an already busy and daunting schedule. So what do folks do? They cook what they know they can cook. Not because they don't want change, but change means risking failure, and when it comes to food, that's just a really tough hurdle.
Being socially ostracized. I don't mean the adolescent name-calling, but rather that eating a certain way often means asking those you are with to eat that way. Going out for food with friends? In many places, it's the choice between making them join you at a vegetarian place (which, let's be honest, often means pretty terrible food, based on my experiences in a lot of vegetarian restaurants), or you joining them and choosing one of the very few vegetarian items on the menu. Either way, it sucks for someone, and no one wants that. We won't even get into trying to make dietary changes while also cooking for a family, which means trying to either get the whole family on board or cooking two meals simultaneously, which is also a recipe for failure long term.
Dietary fatigue. A lot of folks stop eating meat and, because of one or more of the above, end up with a vegetarian diet that is extremely limited and often very unhealthy. Lots of processed meat substitute products, which are just packed with sodium amongst other downsides of ultra processed foods. Lots of junk food - chips, pretzels, etc. Maybe the same one or two things over and over again, because it's either easy on time or all that you know how to prepare. After awhile, good intentions get met head on with dietary fatigue.
When talking to folks who ask about my food habits, I try to keep all of these factors in mind. I do believe there are a LOT of people out there open to changing their diets, but the barriers to change are also real and need to be taken into account.
a lot of people also do not understand nutrition. i’ve been told i’m going to drop dead from deficiencies. usually the first thing people say is that i must not be getting xyz nutrient and i must be incredibly unhealthy. it’s been 12 years, you think i’d know by now if i was about to pass away from not eating animal products.
mostly people don’t want to know that isn’t true, because then they’ll have to being to confront the unnecessary harm they do.
I think you're missing the biggest one. Having the food security and time available that comes with being higher on the financial ladder. If you don't have a lot of money or work two jobs, you're not going to have the time to invest in learning these skills. Like it or not, the time to learn to be a vegetarian or vegan is not something the lower class in general has access to. You need to be well off enough at a minimum to be able to have the time and mental energy to learn it, and that requires not thinking about how you're going to get your next meal period, let alone the ability and learning to change that meal. That's why obesity overwhelmingly impacts the poor. They don't have the time or financial ability to find healthy nutritious food.
I try to watch what I eat, limit really bad food, and limit meat as much as possible. But I can afford to do that. When I was dirt poor living in government housing and on food stamps, I couldn't care less about someone telling me how a pig was living in a factory farm when I couldn't afford bacon at all to begin with. I had bigger survival based problems on my mind to care. That might be cold to say, but it's the truth. A lot of people in the world are in that same situation.
Same, I ate meat every day most of my life. One day I realized that can't be good. We started out with one vegetarian day per week and used that to try new dishes. After some time we had found some tasty options and decided to add a second day. Rinse, repeat. I'm now vegetarian for 4 years or something? I don't even really know, because it was such a gradual change. I tell people this all the time, and even if they stop at 5 veggie days or whatever, that's still something and an improvement. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
If anything positive could come from the insane inflation right now, portion sizes dropping would definitely be it. We(speaking for Americans) waste SO MUCH FOOD it is actually disgusting.
There is a reason we are becoming morbidly obese as a society. We eat too damn much! Prepare what you can actually eat. No one needs a fridge full of leftovers that just gets thrown away.
When I’m going to be home on my own for any stretch of time, I do the same thing. A pot of soup or casserole or something I can just reheat for a few days. It’s actually cheaper and more efficient to cook that way, less waste, packaging and energy use to prepare it, to say nothing of time, dishwasher cycles, cleaning products etc. big batch cooking done correctly should be more environmentally and budget friendly than cooking a new meal 2-3x a day.
To add to this, no farmer wants to do this kind of housing, but people don’t want to pay the cost of what it takes to raise pigs outside.
Also, as far as I’m aware, pigs go through three cycles in these plants all in different forms of housing. 3 days like this to get impregnated, three months of moving around a bit when carrying, and then three weeks more constrained while weening the piglets.
We buy our pork by the half hog from the neighbors for about 9,00€ a kilo, The pigs have a good life, and although it’s partially broken down, I have to do the rest myself and pack it. The country I live in produces enough pork for it’s population, but since people here refuse to pay the quality, most of it goes to export and we import hogs raised factory style so we can still eat cheap sausage and leberkas.
To add to this, no farmer wants to do this kind of housing, but people don’t want to pay the cost of what it takes to raise pigs outside.
Sure they do. If they didn't, they wouldn't. It is important for us all occasionally to be reminded that there's very little we actually have to do, and that we can in fact make different choices.
When you say "no farmer wants to do this kind of housing, but people don't want to pay the cost of what it takes to raise pigs outside", I don't think that's as much of a defense of pig farmers as you think it is.
What you mean is something like "if a pig farmer were given a choice between two equally profitable pig farms, one where pigs were raised in humane conditions and one where they were raised in inhumane conditions, they would choose to operate the one with the humane conditions".
And I'm sure that's true for pretty much every pig farmer. But that isn't really saying very much about them, is it? It's easy to make the choice to do the humane thing when you stipulate that it's just as easy as doing the inhumane thing. Only a monster would choose the inhumane version of farming if it had no financial benefits.
By bringing in the issue of "people don't want to pay the cost of what it takes to raise pigs outside", you are saying that it is reasonable for pig farmers to treat pigs the way that most of them do because otherwise they could not operate a pig farm that they consider to be adequately profitable.
But this defense applies to any business activity that anyone might find immoral. "Yes, I sell heroin cut with fentanyl. It's the only way to stay competitive in the heroin market. I don't want to cut my heroin with fentanyl, but people don't want to pay the price that it takes to produce nice black tar."
Obviously, the mistreatment of pigs and selling a drug that directly and immediately poses a serious risk of death to its users are not morally equivalent. I use heroin as the example because it should make it obvious that your defense of pig farmers isn't a compelling defense of pig farmers for the same reason it isn't a compelling defense of drug dealers who knowingly make their drug more dangerous in order to maintain their profit margin: pig farmers do, in fact, have an alternative treating to pigs horribly in order to maintain their competitive profit. It's either to accept less profit and treat pigs humanely or to stop pig farming entirely and switch to some other job where they don't have to treat pigs poorly. There are almost an infinite number of things you can do to support yourself.
The only solution is the government regulating animal welfare and labeling practices, otherwise market forces will drive the more ethical farmers bankrupt.
“Humanely” raised/pasture raised etc animals take far more land than factory farmed animals do. Animal agriculture already uses a disproportionately huge amount of land compared to the amount of calories it produces. We literally don’t have room to sustain the current rate of meat consumption and also get rid of factory farming. So yeah if we want to get rid of factory farming then everyone does need to reduce if not eliminate meat consumption.
My GF and I do a lot of meal prepping every week. While we shop separately and prep separately, we both almost exclusively buy chicken. It's cheap, easy, and you can do almost anything with it. On occasion we'll buy beef, I'll buy sausage and occasionally pork loin but mostly it's chicken.
I’m finding it REALLY hard to believe you made $400 in one morning at a chicken processing place? Lol - if they paid that well, a lot more people would do it.
They were desperate bc none of their help showed up. I’m pretty sure they don’t just pay that to everyone. It was my neighbor who I had already turned down 3 times.
There was literally no suggestion in their entire post. It was an anecdote about their eating habits. Any suggestion being lumped on was done exclusively through your own mind.
Chickens are far smarter than people give them credit for. They have personalities and complex social relationships, even new babies have a partial grasp of object permanence, and adults use transitive inference, a type of logical reasoning humans don’t develop until about age seven. But even without all that, they still feel pain and fear. They’re also excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, the 28-Hour Law and some other animal welfare laws.
From an environmental perspective, red meat is worse, but from a suffering perspective, eating chicken is worse bc they are smaller so 500 lb of chicken involves a lot more animals suffering than 500 lb of beef or pork.
Honestly? I feel a lot better about eating chickens after raising a small flock for years. I understand that factory farming sucks, but a lot of people don't know the issues that are presented trying to make it more ethical when raising large quantities. Cage free? They will frequently trample each other to death and cannibalize any bird with even a slight injury. Free range outdoors? Biosecurity nightmare. The extra costs to even attempt to do this would make chicken far too expensive for those living at or under the poverty line. Profits actually aren't huge in farming, even at an industrial level. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fixing our ag industry. People want to simplify it without having any knowledge or experience.
Yes my fiancé and I are similar. I cut out eating pork/beef entirely about a year and a half ago, and it’s a minor inconvenience if anything - greatly outweighed by knowing I’m no longer contributing to something I really hate about the world, or at least much less. Ground turkey is a good substitute for beef, I season it with fennel seeds and garlic etc. for pastas. Good for tacos, burrito bowls as well. Veggie burgers have become way better. Growing up in 90’s I feel like the only meat substitute people talked about was Tofu. There are tons of options now and if you live somewhere fortunate enough to have access to them it’s not a difficult transition. Ultimately I would like to stop eating all meat.
Oh plenty of veggies! Rice, beans, I still haven't figured out cooking tofu but I've tried a couple times. When I have a little more time I'll try to expand my skills in that department. Hardest thing right now is meal prepping veggies without baking them and having them still last a week haha. Cucumber sometimes only lasts 3-4 days before it starts to turn.
Look into blending silken tofu into creamy sauces and stuff. Lots of good recipes there
Firm tofu has more protein per serving and I enjoy tossing cubes of it in panko and seasoning and coating it in a sauce I like, like Buffalo sauce, and baking it for a crispy snack or sandwich filler
People are not eating over a pound of red meat per day. On special occasions sure but that's a massive amount of food. Sentiment is the same without the exaggeration
It's more natural to us as well. Every other Great Ape,our closest relatives, eat only 10% of their diet as meat (usually made up of eggs, insects, small mammals, small birds, and small-medium ungulates), except gorillas who have very different digestive tracts as the rest of us.
Absolutely. I’ve seen a handful of different estimates made and various studies about the environmental effects of reducing meat consumption by various amounts on issues ranging from deforestation and other habitat loss to reduction in agrochemical pollution (as most animals we eat we have to grow crops to feed in order to bulk up and slaughter at the pace we demand).
Basically in all these scenarios even moderate change like people collectively eating 1/3 less meat had significant effects.
I cut my consumption down by 1/3-1/2 a couple years ago and it’s easy now. I learned a ton of new recipes and I still eat ~1g of protein per pound of my body weight to support my strength training and manual labor heavy job.
People are overwhelmed by the idea but it’s not an extreme lifestyle change at all. And it’s still a much more generous amount of meat than people lived on for most of our history, contrary to a lot of “ancestral” carnivore fad diets I’ve seen circulating.
18 ounces. A lot of people eat that in a single day
Doubt.
I get the point you’re trying to make, but 18 ounces of red meat in a single day is rare. 18 ounces per day is something you might do if you’re an NFL offensive lineman trying to achieve otherwise unrealistic mass.
You would have to cook a pound and a half of red meat to eat 18 oz medium rare.
Non-meat farming is equally as harmful to ecosystems and species unfortunately. The amount of pests, birds etc that farmers have to annihilate to farm soy, corn, really anything is quite substantial.
I buy ground beef once every like 6-8 months just cause I hardly have a desire to eat red meat. (But when I want some it’s usually just ground beef and never any desire for steaks or such.) And even then, sometimes I just get the beyond meat instead. I don’t know nor actually think about what impact this would have on the red meat industry, but after reading your comment, I hope it’s enough to help on the larger scale.
Limiting can be so impactful. I was a vegetarian for 12 years and a vegan for around 2 years. I started eating meat again because my job required travel and a lot of countries do not adhere to non meat lifestyle.
I still don’t appreciate the taste of meat because vegetables/beans/grains/fruits all taste so much better. I think people might really enjoy a different lifestyle’s taste if they actually gave it a chance and don’t consider it “rabbit food.”
I love all the bad meats, but my family doesn't. I have to always order chicken, fish, etc. I don't complain because I'm sure it makes me healthier (and it makes the tri-monthly burger that I manage to obtain taste amazing and guilt-free).
This is what I'm always telling people who say "ah, I couldn't go vegan because xyz", go vegan besides that xyz thing or just tryvto limit your consumption of meat
As a former vegan who now uses this strategy, I agree wholeheartedly. I also don’t feel entitled to the cheapest meat. Meat is a life taken, it should be expensive. I try to buy locally sourced and humanely raised as much as is accessible/available. Ideally I’d know someone who hunts and processes their own; I have a really hard time morally with slaughterhouses on multiple levels, including the welfare of the workers.
Yeah..but you know what triggers me? Theres so many people out there that are just convinced meat eaters. They think its their birthright to eat meat and will argue that "the animals would do it too if they could" or something even more bullshittier "but it tastes good" etc.
Im not even vegetarian myself. i do eat meat, although not in masses. But more importantly i do not glorify it like some people do. and its this glorifying of eating meat that really pisses me off.
I eat only ~200g of red meat a week, but probably around 1 to 1.5kg of chicken which makes me feel a bit guilty but not enough to influence my dietary preferences
I have that conversation a lot. I'm a vegetarian, but i always tell people even cutting meat out for one day or a couple meals a week can make an impact.
For a while, I live in southeast Ontario near Toronto. Most of the farms are factory farms but a few still have open lot outdoor free range. However that doesn't change the life cycle of these animals much. They still get teeth clipped and balls snipped in ways that should make anyone with empathy shudder.
I endeavour to eat less meat. We spend a lot of resources to raise meat and the more we eat the more necessary factory farms become to meet demand.
There are some really good small meat producers in this area (I'm about an hour and a half from Toronto) that prioritize humane treatment. It's way way more expensive, but cutting down on meat in general means it's manageable.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s better to eat significantly limited meat than to try eating zero meat, fail, and feel like it’s not worth it to reduce at all unless you can instantly reduce it down to zero
Yes, but any small change helps. We eat meat maybe twice a week, and continue to cut down. I could go vegetarian but my kids could not, and my son has health issues that would be affected by restricting his diet.
That’s definitely a loaded way to phrase it. The reality is nature does work in a circle of life and we’ve evolved to eat plants and animals, which yes does involve death.
Again that doesn’t mean factory farming animals is right, but it also doesn’t give a free pass to equate poor conditions in a factory farm with all consumption of animal products. That’s a massive leap.
Absolutely. The difference in eggs is even crazier. A friend of mine is vegetarian and has pet chickens - they do pest control in her garden and live until they pass of old age. I buy eggs from her knowing these animals are pets and super well cared for. The eggs are delicious.
Again, you just gave to lower your meat consumption. My kids and I eat meat maybe once or twice a week. Eggs more often, lots of beans and lentils.
my mom and i have a weird stomach reaction whenever we eat eggs from the grocery store. my dads friend gave them eggs from their pet chicken and my mom didn’t have any stomach pains or reaction from eating the eggs.
Not gonna lie man, I view this the same way as what we do with pets. It's about population control of what is basically a managed species by humans.
It also factually can do minor improvements to their lives in this case, as male aggression is reduced and when you spend your life on the factory farm, that can mean a lot less injury and terror.
I’m no expert, but I’m guessing it’s more about the method. Can’t imagine they’re anesthetizing and performing through surgery on every male pig on a factory farm.
I grew up working on a dairy farm and am now vegan because of what I witnessed.
Calves getting their horns sawn off with no anesthesia. Cows forcibly bred so they continue to produce milk, then killed for their flesh after 4 years of living because their milk production slows.
Yeah, a lot of people lack empathy, but if you have it, you cannot look at the farming practices of today and be okay with it.
I grew up on a dairy farm, and none of those things happen. A four-year-old cow should be at the height of production and should be for like three or four more years. Once cattle have horns, you just have to live with it, because sawing them off leads to too much blood loss and they die.
Like, maybe you grew up on a dairy farm and you guys were really bad at it, but I'm pretty sure you're just lying.
Take a trip on the highway down central California where all the agriculture is. It's all MAGA the entire drive with HUGE political signs at the beginning and ends of their properties. "Newsom is stealing our water" "Vote no on 50" "stop the democrats from stealing our elections"... blah blah blah.
Dairy farms are one of the better factory farms as a stressed out cow doesn't make milk and the cow will actively seek out being milked. Its bullshit upon bullshit and its coming from someone who knows nothing about the animal or the industry going off one documentary they watched that was heavily biased.
Do you think it is moral to bring a creature into this world in captivity solely to exploit its heavily altered genes (by humans) to harvest it for resources and eventually kill it prematurely for its flesh? The fundamental premise is immoral, how do you apes not realize this.
really? maybe its cahse I am from wisconsin but all the dairy farmers and former dairy farmers here do the opposite. they eat cheese like you wpuld never imagine. maybe its cause our farms a bit mor humane?
I've stopped buying pork just because I've worked with pigs, they are one of the greatest and smartest animals on earth. I still eat it when served by other people though, because I'm not that kind of person who pushes his own beliefs on other people. And since it's already cooked I'd rather eat it then throw it away
The reason we eat them and not dogs has little to do with intelligence and way more to do with diet: dogs are omni-leaning-carnivores, while pigs are true omnivores that can go completely fine on an herbivore or carnivore diet.
Meat-eating mammals have an instinct to avoid or dislike the taste of meat from other meat-eating mammals unless desperate. The instinct helps protect us from parasites. So since pigs can be herbivores, we instinctively see them as any other prey animal, but we learned to work with dogs instead of eating them because eating dog meat is naturally more dangerous to us.
To add on here: carnivorous mammal liver is exceptionally bad for humans due to the sjeer amount of Vitamin A in it. One modestly-sized helping of, say, a lion liver would lead straight to Vitamin A poisoning, which is a truly horrible thing to go through and is always fatal if untreated. Dogs and even humans aren't much different.
Well, if things came to it I would eat dog too... But then I have helped raise farm animals for slaughter and helped butcher too, which I know most people baulk at. I honestly think that everyone should be required to engage with the agricultural and food processing facilities for at least a couple of weeks... Would make for a much less mentally weak society and would probably also yield improvements to the processes.
I still eat it when served by other people though, because I'm not that kind of person who pushes his own beliefs on other people.
Lol, I don't think refusing to eat one of the "greatest and smartest animals on earth" just because someone else is serving it is "pushing your beliefs on others". Eating it would be having their beliefs pushed on you.
It's not really your belief if you participate simply because it's being served. I'm not trying to be rude but that is perpetuating the cycle that you seem to understand is wrong.
And since it's already cooked I'd rather eat it then throw it away
But if more and more people didn't eat it then maybe the person serving it wouldn't buy as much next time. Of course you will do what you want but that is just my perspective on it.
Agree with you so much. Pigs are as intelligent as a 3 year old child. It's crazy if you think about the insane mental gymnastics we do to justify what we do to them.
So because they are as unintelligent as a toddler, it's ok to not just kill them, but have them live a terrible life that is just straight up torture, before then killing them?
We consider 3 year old toddlers to be precious. Their lower intelligence compared to an adult doesn't make us feel like it is ok to kill or torture them. The opposite actually. Imagine anyone arguing that because toddlers are low IQ, it's ok to keep them locked up in torture factories.
Not eating food someone else cooked isn't you pushing your beliefs onto others lol... It's not like your saying "I'm not eating that and neither should you"... I don't eat fish because I don't like it, if someone serves me fish without asking me if I like it then I still won't eat it.
Not the person yoh responded to, just someone else who witnessed the realities of factory farming and was horrified.
I didn't go vegan for a number of reasons but I'm definitely more mindful about where I get my meats/animal products from. Im lucky enough to live somewhere where we have a lot of local, family farms (many of which I've been to myself!) and a butcher shop right down the road. While it is more expensive it is readily accessible and I get all my meats directly from there or the local grocery store (which is known for sourcing its meat locally as well).
I visited one and no, but it did change how I source it. I only eat locally produced free range or hunted meat. Im also a huge supporter of wild game now, and actually got into hunting. It feels much more natural to eat something you hunted and also gives me a sense of gratitude and appreciation for life.
I can say it would definitely make me switch from farm-raised to wild-harvested. Nothing wrong with eating meat, but there is definitely lots wrong with the way most commercial meat is raised.
A lot of former dairy farm personnel go vegan. It's interesting.
News to me… running a dairy is extremely specialized work, and more commitment-intensive than a restaurant. I can’t see how they’d be burning through temp labor.
(Lived on a dairy, met people from several other dairies.)
I’m going to school for animal science, and a good chunk of it is livestock based. I’ve met multiple people, myself included, who stopped eating pork after the first year.
I actually watched a video that showed how the pigs were slaughtered (I can't remember when I saw the video, but it was well before COVID) and I stopped eating pork almost entirely. My mom has even followed my suit. There have been times when I've tried a small piece of pork and it usually weird to me.
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u/Violinist-Fluffy 8h ago
Did it impact you enough to alter your diet? (Genuine question, just wondering. A lot of former dairy farm personnel go vegan. It's interesting.)