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Comment by malte | Hacker News Reader

For everyone interested in this topic I strongly recommend "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer:

http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp...

I became a vegetarian before reading this book, but reading it only made me more convinced that to stop eating meat and fish was one of the best decisions in my life.

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Factory farming is terrible. I would recommend that anyone interested in this find some local farmers and talk to them about how the raise their animals.

I can get local grass-fed beef for $4.50/lb that is from very happy cows. Expensive as hell but pretty much an ideal food.

Federal regulations play a role in this too. Anybody other than a factory farmer is at an immense disadvantage when it comes to meeting the often arbitrary and pointless regulations.

Check out "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front" by Joe Salatin if you're interested.

Over here in Uruguay we have 18 million grass-fed cows (they live better than many persons!), probably as healthy as any you have ever eaten.

Yet, we have quotas on selling to the US, because they have to maintain the subsidies on farming (it doesn't make sense if growing cattle in the US is so much more expensive). And the EU is way worse than the US in its subsidies - I've seen cattle in Austria, it is VERY expensive to raise it there - of course you want to maintain some local livestock for strategic purposes if nothing else, but it is still extremely inefficient.

And I pay about U$ 1/lb for very good grass-fed beef :)

Perhaps they're treated better than humans, but in South America, the business of raising cattle has destroyed the rainforests specifically to sell cheap cattle to the US and the EU.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/rain...

That's probably true of Brazil, but not of Argentina and Uruguay which never had any rainforests to start with :) (and Argentina is HUGE).

Tell me about it. I'm reading all these comments about 'expensive' beef at $5 pr lbs and simply shaking my head. Here in Sweden I have to pay double that, and that's for the lower end. If you want a really nice cut, double or triple it again.

That cost probably includes some externalities of eating something detrimental to the environment and your health. It sounds smart to me.

In Australia, I regularly pay AUD30-35/kg for a decent cut of beef. I think that's about USD12/lb or more. I'd love to be able to get good stuff for $4.50/lb!

can you summarize what the book says about fish? is there an article similar to this about fish farming?

You are lucky. There is an extract from the part dealing with fish farming on the Guardian's website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/jonathan-s...

Thanks for that informative and thoroughly depressing link.

The whole book is informative and very depressing at the same time. However, I think we need to face reality and stop denying the wrongness of today's meat processing practices (at least those of factory farming).

As Paul McCartney puts it: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."

Hmmm... not sure about that remark... I've slaughtered a lamb myself, then ate a very good roasted lamb (it was very distressing, though).

I also put down my dog when we had to (which was way more distressing than that), so it might not be for everybody.

Way to miss the point.

There is a world of difference between slaughtering an individual animal and a modern factory farm slaughterhouse.

Maybe I missed the point, but I thought that McCartney's point had to do with witnessing the distress (and the killing) of the animals, not with the specific practices.

So I thought that if you're willing to kill the animal yourself, then maybe you're able to condone the slaughterhouses even if you see them through a glass wall

(maybe it will diminish your appetite, though :P - I wouldn't want to see it while eating!).

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