Hacker News Reader

Comment by linkmotif | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think you need to invoke concentration camps here, true as it may be in some cases.

They use antibiotics to make them grow faster. That’s half the reason.

What's the difference then? Piling up living beings in awful conditions to kill them in the most cost-effective way is pretty much the definition of a concentration camp. And making them grow faster than they're supposed to at the expense of everything isn't very nice either.

They're not people. Concentration camps are for people. At least we don't eat them alive, like their other natural predators.

At least they have a chance to fight for their survival, which makes all the difference. If it's horrible when done to humans, it's horrible when done to animals. And as long as we keep doing it to animals, we shouldn't expect to escape the same fate ourselves; Karma 101.

Fair enough, if you fear karmic retribution that makes sense. I don't, so for me the shoe remains on the same foot. Other people are more valuable to me than animals, and also more dangerous. The stakes are higher and therefore the moral considerations are more prudent (or karmic, if that's your bag).

Karma has nothing to do with revenge, karma is just another word for consequences. Every action leads to reactions; if they didn't the universe would have descended into chaos in no time at all. And thats how we learn, by acting and studying reactions until we get it. One of those lessons is recognizing the value of all living beings.

A big difference is that humans in concentration camps generally don’t get antibiotics, not for disease or for accelerated growth, and their bodies are generally not used as food.

Also, animals kept not in high concentrations have often been given antibiotics since the 50s. It’s not all about supporting concentration.

I understand that animals suffer in mass farming conditions—which is why I don’t buy mass produced meat or eggs or milk—but concentration camps are for people. You cans say animals are just like people, and I may even agree with you mostly, but to me and most people they’re not entirely like people. I understand if they are to you.

The metaphor is backward actually. The Nazis transitioned to gassing and extermination camps because the leadership saw first hand the psychological problems of having ordinary people commit mass murder, not because it was cheap. It was probably far more expensive. Think of all the war time train and supply usage.

> During a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. By November he made arrangements for any SS men suffering ill health from having participated in executions to be provided with rest and mental health care. He also decided a transition should be made to gassing the victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. Gas vans, which had been used previously to kill mental patients, began to see service by all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942. However, the gas vans were not popular with the Einsatzkommandos, because removing the dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen#Transition_to_g...

My understanding is that this practice is now banned in both the US and EU.

Sounds like a bedtime story in my ears. We're eating more and more meat, and demanding that it gets cheaper and cheaper while the stock market index needs to go higher and higher. It won't stop until the majority is willing to look beyond the bullshit we're being fed and start using their brains.

We (french) are not https://www.planetoscope.com/elevage-viande/1587-consommatio..., pretty much the opposite actually

They grow faster because they are less sick. Antibiotics are not like growth hormones.

That is probably true (that they don't act like growth hormones) but last I visited the subject, scientist don't know exactly why, but antibiotics actually do increase growth in some livestock.

No, antibiotics make animals like chickens and pigs (and humans) actually grow much faster and bigger.

I would encourage you to read Antibiotic Growth-Promoters in Food Animals ( http://www.fao.org/docrep/ARTICLE/AGRIPPA/555_EN.HTM ) (the fao domain is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) or the introduction of Antimicrobial Growth Promoters Used in Animal Feed: Effects of Less Well Known Antibiotics on Gram-Positive Bacteria ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC153145/ )

The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock also covers it:

> Certain antibiotics, when given in low, sub-therapeutic doses, are known to improve feed conversion efficiency (more output, such as muscle or milk, for a given amount of feed) and/or may promote greater growth, most likely by affecting gut flora.[15] However, any antibiotics deemed medically important to humans by the CDC are illegal to use as growth promoters in the U.S. Only drugs that have no association with human medicine – and therefore no risk to humans – are allowed to be used for this purpose.[5][16] It is also important to note that some drugs listed below are ionophores, which are not antibiotics and do not pose any potential risk to human health.

They are indeed not growth hormones, but they do change the gut bacteria balance and make it easier to extract calories from the feed stock. This has nothing to do with actually being sick or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com