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Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

> One thing implies the other, as it's impossible to produce enough dairy for so many people using the methods you mention, that is why most dairy people consume comes from factory farms in the first place.

This is simply not true. What you probably mean is it is not possible to achieve the same results while not caring how it is done (ie. going about our lives).

Throughout the history people relied on dairy way more than today. In some places it was almost life or death as during winter grain and dairy was the only feed available.

Of course, today, you don't want to spend your entire day tending cows and the field.

But don't try to imply that our way of life is the only one possible.

There exists whole industry of keeping cows and producing diary in humane way. It costs more, true, but not nearly as much as to make it impractical.

It is simply our choice -- people choose the cheapest product the cows be damned.

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You said it yourself:

> people choose the cheapest product the cows be damned.

When vfc1 says "One thing implies the other", the charitable interpretation of that statement is likely "given the way our society is structured at this time, it's inevitable that this result will obtain".

When taking care of cows means spending more money on their welfare than some competitor, and when people are willingly disinterested in the welfare of the cows whose milk they consume, we have a good-old-race-to-the-bottom.

The most powerful work I've read on the topic is the 1975 classic "Animal Liberation" by a philosopher Peter Singer. In it he uses excerpts from literature written by the industry (presumably the most-rosy picture you can find of the conditions of animals in the factory farms) to show how horrible the conditions are (and to make an argument why we ought to abstain from consuming and why we ought to try to dismantle the system).

This doesn't help actually fix the problem, because you have equivalent problems with irresponsible production of plant based food (soil erosion, destruction of entire ecosystems and replacing them with plant fields and so on).

If we keep attacking the problem from the wrong angle, we won't ever have a good solution.

> irresponsible production of plant based food (soil erosion, destruction of entire ecosystems and replacing them with plant fields

In most cases, this is actually done to create feed crops like soy and corn. Most of the agricultural fields in the world are used to feed animals either used for slaughter or for dairy and not to feed people directly.

Feeding the same amount of people directly instead of feeding animals and then eating them could be done with a fraction of the agricultural resources.

Dairy production is actually one of the most environmentally impactful things that we do, if we want to go that route.

> In most cases, this is actually done to create feed crops like soy and corn.

Soy and corn, particularly corn, have many uses beyond animal feed.

> Most of the agricultural fields in the world are used to feed animals either used for slaughter or for dairy and not to feed people directly.

Please support that statement.

Here is a source: https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-ani...

> Livestock is the world's largest user of land resources, with pasture and arable land dedicated to the production of feed representing almost 80% of the total agricultural land. One-third of global arable land is used to grow feed, while 26% of the Earth's ice-free terrestrial surface is used for grazing.

Pasture land isn't really usable for anything else, and the level of destruction caused by converting land to monocrops far exceeds that of animal grazing.

A lot of pasture land, for example in Amazonia has actually been created by systematic deforestation, also in Europe, which was deforested a couple of centuries ago.

So a lot of that land could be used for reforesting. And if it would be so simple to use that land to raise cattle, why are there factory farms then?

It sounds cheaper to raise the cows on grass which is free food, unlike rations. Clearly the amount of meat produced that way is not sufficient for the demand.

Non-arable land cannot be used to feed people directly, by definition. That makes your original statement misleading at best.

agree 100%. I don't know of any truly sustainable farms that don't involve some nonhuman animals in the value chain. The problem is not that industrial farming is less efficient when incorporating animals, it's that we're calculating efficiency in terms of fossil fuels in > Calories out.

There are all sorts of alternatives to that paradigm, but none allow us to compare a single metric for both. The nature of the debate reminds me of the apocryphal drunk, looking for his car keys below the streetlamp even though he knows he didn't lose them there.

There are many ways to solve the problem of people choosing the cheapest product.

For example, states require cars to meet minimum quality, safety and emissions standards and also have insurance.

This is in recognition that, given choice, most people will not voluntarily pay for these things.

I think you are right, unless factory farms are simply forbidden they will continue to exist for the sheer force of economics.

The context OP was speaking to is factory farm conditions relative to animal welfare on the "traditional" 100 herd farm. Fields, grass, no hormones or unnecessary antibiotics.

Singer argues that these conditions aren't good enough, agriculture inevitably leads to stuff he can't live with. That's a reasonable thing to argue. I disagree. It's not reasonable to argue that these conditions are a practical impossibility. That either prices skyrocket or cows can't fields. It's not true. It is possible, and common.

> There exists whole industry of keeping cows and producing diary in humane way.

These are usually market gimmicks. They say a cow is pastured raised if they leave it out an hour a day, grass-fed if it gets fed half the diet in grass the other in grains, etc.

The costs of raising cattle and producing dairy in that way would simply not allow to meet the demand and it will never happen. Factory farms are the reality of what it takes to produce dairy for so many people.

Ultimately, in the end the result the animal dies a horrible death after having lived often a horrible live, so there is nothing humane about that.

I always get my dairy local. Where I live I am lucky enough to have a family farm that services our area. The nice thing is that their milk isn't that much more than any of the name brands. Maybe 50 cents a gallon.

You can tour their farms and watch the process and they are very open about it.

http://debackerfamilydairy.com/

If we had more of these local farms servicing more areas it would definitely help reduce reliance on factory farms.

If you live in an urban/highly populated area I don't see anyway for a small farm like this to produce enough for the population.

When I saw your post I thought it would a Mom and Pa farm down the road with 5 cows, but this actually looks like a small (to medium?) size factory farm to me, well marketed.

Those huge structures are I imagine grain silos to store feed -https://www.google.com/search?q=de+backer+family+dairy&rlz=1...:

How many cows do they have? Apparently farms with more than 100 cows make up just 0.3 percent of the total dairy farm population.

You can clearly see that it's a factory-like installation. Are all those people part of the family or full-time employees? I bet several are employees.

At least it does not come from across the world it's local so less impactful.

> use to make the richest ice cream that you’ll ever taste.

The other day I tried one of those plant-based Magnum ice creams, I couldn't tell the difference and actually liked it more.

Some of the worst practices I've witnessed (shooting/drowning male calves) existed on small family farms. The idea that these places are synonymous with humane is absolutely false. The male calves are still treated horrifically - either killed within days or sent to a veal farm. And the female calves are usually put into isolation, which is horrific for a young mammal to have to go through.

> These are usually market gimmicks. They say a cow is pastured raised if they leave it out an hour a day, grass-fed if it gets fed half the diet in grass the other in grains, etc.

This is the "market for lemons" problem: Consumers can't tell actually humane treatment from fake, which ends up economically pressuring farms to cut corners and go towards the fake.

You could register a trademark and have a certification program for "humane" milk / meat producers to use. Then go around raising awareness of what "pasture-raised" and "grass-fed" really means. If you do a good job of communicating, people will be happy to pay the extra $0.50 (or $1) to know the cows are actually chilling in the fields and not cooped up in a pen.

This is solvable problem. When consumers and producers don't have incentive to do the right thing very frequently the solution is to regulate.

As an example, if a producer declares they meet a specific standard this could mean they voluntarily undergo regular audit of their entire process including how the cows are treated.

We do this for many products and services. Here in Poland, eggs are regulated in many categories from hens kept in cages to free-range. When you buy eggs they are all individually stamped with a mark that clearly indicates how hens are kept and fed and you, as a customer, can choose the more expensive product but with a knowledge that you get what you pay for.

But do most people actually even know what the numbers on those eggs even mean? http://www.krakowpost.com/9096/2015/04/healthy-living-what-d...

It seems like it's just not very effective, most people are looking for the cheapest alternatives as one would expect - https://polandin.com/36653246/consumption-of-ethical-eggs-st...

People that are interested, like me, do know.

But I agree that packaging for products contains multitude of markings and without extensive research it is difficult to recognize which markings are regulated and which are not and what they mean exactly.

There just aren't enough pastures to raise enough cows that way to meet demand. Otherwise, it would have been done already, its much cheaper to let cows roam around eating free food, instead of having to pay for it.

The reason why factory farms exist is to meet the increasing demand. Farmers have every economic incentive to try to raise the animals in the cheapest way possible.

Still the cow is a prisioner, it has its childs taken away at birth and shot and gets impregnated immediately after, to keep producing more milk.

If the cow stops producing as much milk, it gets shot as well. Even if the cows lived a live chilling in the fields, all of this would still happen.

It kind of exists in the UK; organic milk production involves higher welfare standards for the animals. There's also specific definitions for things like "free range" when it comes to chickens.

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