Hacker News Reader

Comment by dev_north_east | Hacker News Reader

Why?

Because of the extraordinary suffering it causes to animals. https://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/live-animal-transport/

I'm sure it would be possible to transport animals more gently. Banning live animal transport altogether sounds like an overreaction.

You can slaughter them first and ship the carcasses.

What if you're trying to sell breeding animals?

Come on now, that's the exceptional case here.

The same animals walking under the desert sun for months coated in wool without nothing green at sight, does not seem like a totally cruelty-free better alternative necessarily. There is not logical reason to see it as a morally superior alternative.

There is bad ways and good ways to transport animals by road.

Where did I suggest we should transport live animals thousands of miles by making them walk the whole way?

Ok. Honest question. What do you suggest then? Teleportation?

The "but its cruelty against animals so lets kill them instead!" card is a random and really worn out argument nowadays. We have enough of real problems yet.

> Honest question. ... Teleportation?

Your suggestion gives your question the appearance of a not-so-honest question.

> What do you suggest then?

The answer would depend on your convictions. It could be one or a combination of, for example,

- Tight national and international regulations (with teeth) to ensure animal safety and well-being, comparable to the transport of humans,

- Local-only growth,

- Alternative protein start-ups,

- Etc.

> but its cruelty against animals so lets kill them instead!

I could not find any instances where the OP suggested this.

edit: Found someone else who mentioned that, which doesn't make sense to me either - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21637661

On the other hand,

> but its cruelty against animals

Then you would want to stop it in one way or another, no? What would be your suggestions?

I swear the video on that site is edited to make things seem worse than they are. Literally the only thing we ever see is a close up of cow faces, sped up to make the movements seem more erratic.

All the language is also full of hyperbole ‘the terrible exhausting journey’, ‘their sad faces’, ‘the aggressive behavior of the truck driver’.

I just cannot watch this thing. These people instantly have an agenda to me.

They may be right, but there are enough terrible stories out there without any attempt to make it worse (as seen from some of the stories posted here).

> Unexpected issues – in addition to routine suffering, long distance live transport can also result in fires, delays or sinking of livestock ships causing the suffering and death of large numbers of animals.

Apparently sinking ships with live stock is not uncommon?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com