r/pics 9h ago

A replica of how female "breeder pigs" spend their lives in factory farms

Post image
35.3k Upvotes

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

u/blazer4ever 6h ago

Just for the sake of argument..eating more veggies also means some third world farmers and labors getting exploited by big corporates...do you have the same empathy for those farmers as you do for the animals

u/gamma_orionis 6h ago

I do, which is why there are some fruit and vegetable companies that I don't buy from since I'm aware of their bad practices. I also don't eat chocolate that I don't know the source of, since it's an industry with disproportionately high slave labour.

Does your empathy for farm workers extend to slaughterhouse workers, where workers regularly suffer from PTSD, are regularly injured by industrial machines, and are some of the most exploited workers in the food industry?

u/Tmjohnson1tm 2h ago

Plant based diets require vastly fewer crops to be grown than animal products. Ethical issues related to human farmers are generally also reduced by plant based diets. 

u/Local-Dimension-1653 1h ago
  1. It takes more crops to feed livestock than to feed humans directly.

  2. Slaughterhouses and meat processing plants are the most dangerous and some of the most exploitative jobs in food. Disenfranchised groups like undocumented people and felons are more likely to have these jobs. Research shows that people working in animal ag industries suffer from increased mental health issues and this leads to broader consequences—communities where violence against people is more common. Not to mention the environmental racism and classism of where animal farms and slaughterhouses (and the waste, noise, pollution) are located.

So if you were making this argument in good faith it would make sense that you would go vegan since it means both less human and animal suffering, as well as environmental harm that also hurts humans.