2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees
wcvb.com
wcvb.com
I think these birds were doomed. A more accurate title might be "Processors throw away 2M Pounds of chicken meat due to lack of employees."
If its a the processing plant that's kind of true, even if they could run them through the automated 'harvesting' system its probably really expensive to store until an undisclosed time for it to be processed and then sent to market. At a significant loss in Market price, I imagine. So its best to take the subsidy/insured loss and restart again.
This is actually really fucking sad... I hope it encourages more people to focus on the World's broken food supply and its immense waste and do something about it. I hope we don't have to see the same thing that happened with toilet paper, and paper towels happen with our food before people get the message that we have to re-think our entire infrastructure.
> Americans eat 24M chickens per day. So 2M killed is only a fraction of the number eaten in a single day.
That's a horrible calculus, and quite frankly stereotypical of People so detached from their food system: have you taken into consideration the externalities of hatching, raising, and ultimately getting them to Market size? It's actually incredibly costly. And they were probably factory farmed, which makes it even worse given the cruel practices involved.
On a positive note: Spring is finally here, and I saw a bunch of people's Community Garden's today.
That is an extremely hyperbolic statement.
According to the United Nations [https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez] fruits, vegetables, cereals, and roots account for 70% of all food waste. It is unfortunate that due to a global pandemic they had to be put down, but chickens are the most efficient form for preserving and delivering calories from grains to the table.
Additionally, industrialized and developing nations waste food at the same rate - just in different stages of the logistics chain. No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7 billion people have a meal a day.
Apparently, flour can (should?) be frozen for long-term storage, and would keep indefinitely: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay... (unfortunately that link to University of Nebraska is 404 now).
Long-term grain storage concerns: https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and-equ... ; as a non-expert, this begs the question of why more climate control is not done, to create indefinite/permanent storage (probably just not economical to do so, but given disruptions like COVID-19, maybe this will change?).
It can be forzen but there are lots of difficulties in doing so. Top of the list is moisture. Frozen flower is cold. If you take it out and put it on the shelf flour will condensate moisture, quickly turing it into a useless lump. Microwaving it is difficult. You have to warm it in a totally dry environment. A frozen chicken breast doesn't have these issues.
Yup. Grains are so incredibly cheap that's it's not worth preserving them.
My favorite stat to pull out at parties:
The price of a bushel of wheat (aka 60 pounds) has been approximately one British pound since the mid 1300's.
It's currently worth about 4 British pounds, but that says more about how much the British pound has declined against the USD than it says about the price of wheat.
First: Its only 'cheap' because Wheat is an almost universally subsidized crop in most of the World. Which means the farmers externalities are obscured in what is actually a ubiquitous but environmentally challenging crop to grow in terms of land use, and irrigation. Harvesting, too if you don't have access to modern combines and want viable yields. Not to mention growing practices themselves and if its a GMO crop its often sprayed into oblivion with all kind of pesticides that cross contaminate and pollute water supplies and kill local insects and soil bacteria, microbes, and unsettle the flora/fauna.
Second: The USD-GBP bushel parallel is also not correct as neither are what they were meant to actually represent since becoming fiat: A pound sterling in the case of GBP, and grains of silver (371.25) in the case of USD. The measurements are off for the analogy that you're trying to make.
Can you please point me to where this is investigated? I know rough vacuum-grade vacuum-packed frozen meat rates a 3-year shelf life [1]. I've yet to find information beyond rough vacuum [2], though. I would imagine ultra-high grade vacuum, in a retort bag, in a medical-grade freezer (-140 to -150° C [3], well beyond even commercial food deep freezers in the -30 to -50° C range) can extend that shelf life, but I've never found anyone who experimented and wrote it up.
Flour can be stored indefinitely in the freezer supposedly [4], but I haven't seen anyone investigate vacuum-sealed, oxygen-absorbed, frozen flour shelf life. Whole wheatberries when vacuum sealed with nitrogen flush will keep for 25 years at room temperature, don't know what adding freezing will do.
[1] https://foodvacbags.com/blogs/foodsaverblogs/can-you-vacuum-...
[2] https://schoonoverinc.com/new-vacuum-roughing-gauge-sensors/
[3] https://www.labrepco.com/product-category/cold-storage-produ...
[4] https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay...
That is the number for taste, not food safety. There is lots of guidance that meet is "good" for a few months to a few years. But it is also true that people have eaten mammoth meat frozen for thousands of years. The reality is that long-frozen meat will not taste as good as meat only frozen a few days.
>>Because freezing keeps food safe almost indefinitely, recommended storage times are for quality only. Refer to the freezer storage chart at the end of this document, which lists optimum freezing times for best quality.
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety...
It isn't, having worked in both Agriculture and Culinary in 11 countries spanning two continents, and 2 islands I think my position is far more informed than your own and perhaps even those stats you have given as it only gives averages.
Context: I also have a background in logistics and supply chains at VW and BMW, and I can tell you that any Industry losing UPWARDS of 40% of all product from start to end (even more when viewing farm to end consumer depending on distribution channels) and accepts that loss is utterly doomed--the monetary losses are masked in murky mix of poverty and subsidies.
There are many challenges with having a global food supply system, some that we will have to radically alter or abandon altogether, which are mainly environmental in the best of times and scarcity ridden disasters and Humanitarian crises in the worst. I've seen it occur in Egypt, Somalia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela and had interactions with people on the ground as it happen or that lived through it themselves and we later worked together.
Its easy to dismiss when food is so plentiful at the shops, but this is actually why I went to IBM to go into their Food Safety program and left when I realized it was just vapourware.
I understood that it only takes very simple variable changes to alter the very delicate and fragile system we have in place that we all rely on. There is a massive opportunity loss in not addressing this on so many levels, but even the glaring monetary one seems to go past unappreciated despite the fact that Agriculture is the biggest Industry in the World only second to FOREX, and mainly because FOREX includes the transactions within International Ag supply chains.
Consider also that less 1.7% of the World's population feeds the other ~98% and things start to sink in really fast. The 'technical-debt' like issues with specialty crops that only grow in one specific area (almonds in Central CA is one example) rather than having several cultivars throughout the World are disasters waiting to happen. I'm not sure if its by design or sheer ignorance anymore, as some to profit from either scenario but either way it needs to be resolved.
I'm glad you guys have taken so much interest in this subject, as its a personal passion of mine; I will go thoroughly in all the responses, and please engage if you want to discuss the matter further as I welcome more discussion to get people involved as this is not only a dire problem, but its ultimately a solvable optimization issue given enough focus. And I think tech people are what are needed most, on a calories basis we've already reached a post-scarcity situation in food production already.
> No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7
Agreed, I would go so far as to say its a modern working miracle it does yield that result when you see its inherit flaws we seem to willfully neglect because it doesn't affect +98% of thew World's population, and have gone into detail before why that is in other posts. On the other end of that equation for the farmers is often poverty and suicide.
That’s a fuckton of chickens.
However it's still deplorable that we can't find a way to not waste this amount of food.
While it is disturbing to hear this, I'm sure this amount of chicken meat is wasted on a daily, or at least close to it.
Another part (not counted in the statistics if I understand right), is obesity. We over-consume to the point of illness.
Another part is deliberate over-production in good years so that we don’t go hungry in bad years. This part ought to be considered as unavoidable.
Another part is the types of food. Meat is, in general, a wasteful indirection between sunlight and us. Even ignoring any argument about vegetarian/vegan diets, I accept that this isn’t universally so, as some land (I don’t know about fish vs. seaweed) is unsuitable for growing human crops. However, it remains broadly true.
In principle, though perhaps not in practice, indoor farming (not just artificial lighting, also greenhouses etc.) could supply a more consistent yield. I can’t comment on the economics of that, not even a little. However, as farming as a whole represents a very small, and still diminishing, fraction of the west’s GDP, my guess is that it could become achievable even if it is not yet achievable.
I imagine this sort of waste is less of an issue with things like meat.
While meat is wasteful as you say, people do find it satisfying to eat meat. I am looking forward to fake meat getting better. I've tried an Impossible Whopper, it is indeed close but still not there. It should be better for the environment as well as feeling better to those of us who find it disturbing to kill animals for food.
Agreed, often to the detriment of your second point.
> Another part (not counted in the statistics if I understand right), is obesity. We over-consume to the point of illness.
Also agree, most cultivars are created not for taste, quality or nutrient density/availability but for shelf life and transport robustness. Which when looking at this from a biological metabolic satiation feedback system standpoint, specifically those damaged from processed foods and, you get that end result. Its actually really dark when you think about how poor the Human physiology and psychology has responded to excess in the modern age, and we al do it to ourselves to some degree.
> Another part is deliberate over-production in good years so that we don’t go hungry in bad years. This part ought to be considered as unavoidable.
Agree again, the key difference is if best practices are put into place: food shelters, food banks can be well supplied for those in need and value added products can be made to recapture perceived waste and sent to Market, what isn't used from that is fed to livestock or composted and returned to the soil.
> Another part is the types of food. Meat is, in general, a wasteful indirection between sunlight and us. Even ignoring any argument about vegetarian/vegan diets, I accept that this isn’t universally so, as some land (I don’t know about fish vs. seaweed) is unsuitable for growing human crops. However, it remains broadly true.
Partly agree, its way over-consumed in the North and South America in relation to the rest of the World. I took it particularly hard when I realized how accustomed I had become to it, especially after 15+ hours of exhausting farm work. My body had come to depend on it for recovery, and mood enhancement.
However, I think/know it can be done correctly with proper field grazing and rotation systems: part of my apprenticeship was tending to 45 dairy cows at the base of the Swiss alps on less than 35 acres in Spring, while keeping quality and yield of milk near or at same and within budget. Its hard, actually really hard... but it can be done. Its about putting the right incentives in place, that milk was bought for 2,5 CHF a liter from a a well-renown local Cheese artisan. When they go up the Alps in the summer-fall its closer to 5 CHF as its much higher quality and more desired by cheese makers, but are smaller yields with higher transport costs.
> In principle, though perhaps not in practice, indoor farming (not just artificial lighting, also greenhouses etc.) could supply a more consistent yield. I can’t comment on the economics of that, not even a little. However, as farming as a whole represents a very small, and still diminishing, fraction of the west’s GDP, my guess is that it could become achievable even if it is not yet achievable.
I think your post underscores how easy people can get lost in the superficial view derived from focusing on just statistics and averages, can you quantify that statistical analysis in GDP without seeing the loss in all economic activity if food shelves are empty? Agriculture/Food is actually the World biggest Industry [1] its just impossible to properly quantify.
Also, Modern Greenhouses can be very efficient at creating profits when correctly modeled: I worked in Germany on a farm that had 2 half hectare glass houses with temperature/humidity controlled sensors, self watering and auto-lifting panels. I've only ever seen this for large scale, well funded MJ operations in the US. But, the yield was amazing for things like nightshades in one, and quick growing greens in the other.
The fact that we could charge 5 euros for a healthy Eggplant, 3,5 euros for a head of salad, and 4 euros/Kg for tomatoes because of Biodynamic prices (with more demand than supply) made this a lucrative operation.
The few days I did at the Farmer's Market for that Farm were eye opening to say the least; the main issues with this model I saw were infrastructure costs and labour as they require a long pay-back period but when it does it pays well if you're a multi-generational farming family as they were.
I wrote a proposal in my, later stolen, journal and notebook about how if Ag subsidies shifted from crop insurance to solely infrastructure/equipment based models how the food supply would change. I didn't get far, as I couldn't apply any analysis or experimentation to it but you just reminded me of that idea I had.
Slight misunderstanding, my apologies for being unclear.
I was trying to suggest greenhouses for staple crops like rice or wheat, so that the overproduction margin for famine years could be significantly reduced rather than totally eliminated.
I didn’t make that at all clear, sorry.
Do any greenhouses grow meaningful quantities of staple crops? This is far outside my area.
None that I know of as its unlikely to be a good idea outside of a breeding program because of the opportunity costs; I imagine staples like wheat/rice/potatoes confined to such limited scale/size would not be able to recover the costs if profit from yield is the only source for ROI in its current model.
> I was trying to suggest greenhouses for staple crops like rice or wheat, so that the overproduction margin for famine years could be significantly reduced rather than totally eliminated.
Perishability is an inherit and unavoidable factor, and famines are not uniform throughout the Earth which is why I think optimizing the Global Food Supply Chain, rather than entirely abandoning it is the goal; the Citrus Industry in Florida nearly collapsed a few years ago due to a psyllid issue that destroyed nearly 1/2 of Florida's orange groves [1], only to find out in PR (after failed studies in China and Mexico) where topology differences revealed that its preferable to grow citrus at higher elevation to avoid the disease they were seeing below that--after a certain elevation, reported at 600M, the groves weren't as susceptible to infestation from the psyllid.
Having data, metrics and analytics in place accessible in Real Time in a readily available and comprehensible system for producers to work with is critical moving forward in the 21st Century; adapting an Ag model to suit this is no longer a luxury but has become a necessity if we have any chance of surviving on this planet as Climate Change, and nearly unpredictable weather patterns/disasters are becoming ever more prevalent and even more severe.
Again, the opportunity costs in not addressing this problem is so unbelievably immense to anyone who takes the time to just look; we can see the 2 million chicken culling and its subsequent waste and be outraged--and it would be justifiable--but more importantly I hope it serves as indication of what is seen as common practices and serves as a catalyst for change as this cannot go on any longer without severe widely felt repercussions.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...
Empty shelves in USSR only occurred at later years and were not a (direct) result of having a planned economy. It was a bad side offect of introducing parts of self-regulation a la market economy.
It doesn't take much planning to not waste 40% food.
If less waste occurred elsewhere perhaps less would be sold, but I do not see why that would necessitate a planned economy. In fact, 43% of the waste is in the household. This is an addressable gap that doesn't require legislation, just for just for people to be more diligent about the first two Rs in Reduce/Reuse/Recycle.
I know the answer is to dish out a little and get seconds if need be. Problem is I live with people who do more cooking than I do and because I am a fairly big guy they can't help but dish out massive quantities of food.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/just_eat_it_a_food_waste_st...
Even though I have become mostly vegetarian, it is quite tempting to buy meat for the convenience and the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west).
Human progress and social evolution has somehow come with greater compassion for fellow beings. Will our coming generations value compassion in itself and will that affect the way we eat/farm.
Will an advanced alien visitor be shocked by our animal farming or will will they hunt us down for meat. I guess we should expect either based on our own behaviour.
What are your thoughts on where they will judge us for our pro-choice stance? Do you think that will shock them too?
We are likely too inconsequential to even bother with examination.
I was with you until this part, there's simply no way that's true. Even if the universe was brimming with life, an advance species' scientists and would be foaming at the mouth to discover a new sentient species, just like ours do when we discover something new.
You need to eat vegetables anyway. You just replace meat with cheese, eggs and beans; all of them are cheaper.
Only a conscious being would feel pain, so what is consciousness? Does it come down and embed itself into creatures that are born? If so, if they weren't born, would that be necessarily better? What if consciousness, if it didn't have a body to enter into, appeared in a different universe from ours with its own, possibly worse, sufferings? Wouldn't it be better to give the animal a full, relatively pain free life than the possibility that it would suffer greater in some other universe in some other dimension?
Or does consciousness originate on the spot, somehow born along with the creature? In that case it would be better to not be born at all? Or would it be better to have more consciousness in the universe, despite the suffering an individual might experience, rather than otherwise? Is consciousness a good in itself? Would a universe devoid of all conscious beings be the perfect good, lonely, desolate, without meaning. Or one full of them, with shared misery to go around?
All in all, it's seems quite a murky topic to be throwing around judgement on people about.
Both propositions are obviously horrible. But why? The answer is similar to why the death of worms < chickens < pet dogs < people < great people.
Consciousness is a matter of connected/integrated complexity; as a result, millions of worms do not eventually produce the depth and richness of human consciousness. Secondly, consciousness is dependent upon other conscious beings; our consciousness isn't really our own, it is part of a shared web. So, consciousness that does not participate in that shared web is less conscious, in a real sense, than consciousness that does.
For both these reasons, if we value consciousness, the only real benefits of factory farmed chickens would come from how they help contribute to the overall conscious ecosystem. Perhaps they let us build more integrated complexity, in which case, thanks.
> Both propositions are obviously horrible. But why? The answer is similar to why the death of worms < chickens < pet dogs < people < great people.
>Consciousness is a matter of connected/integrated complexity
Can you prove this supposition, though? Would that make the internet conscious, for example? I would think not.
I think the propositions you mentioned seem horrible because of an offshoot of our instinct to form tribes to survive better. It feels bad to torture people and other beings that help us survive, because that's integral to our survival. A lone human being has a much rougher time than a group does, and a group that trusts each other would survive better than where everyone is at each other's throats.
My theory is that human beings need a religion to feel sane. If there isn't an organized one that they accept, they create one of their own. This is why these sort of "common sense" laws of morality (better to not raise animals in a factory) come into being. People need to believe in a higher set of laws than what man can provide, even if there isn't any real justification for them one way or the other.
The internet is governed by consciousness and consciousness emerges from it, in the same way as our neurons or brain parts are not conscious per se but are structured by consciousness and provide the mechanism for it.
Also, karma is not about judgment. It's about each individual's own state of consciousness.
You understand that I'm not saying relative to your life, right, but to some other life in some other universe?
> Also, karma is not about judgment. It's about each individual's own state of consciousness.
It seems to be about your individual biases and judgement, actually.
It seems much more sane to benchmark against the life we have and know here.
I never said this.
> let's all eat each other while we ponder these great questions.
Let's make sure no being is ever born again who might suffer. Seems totally good and just, therefore it must be true, right?
What arrogance...
That's what I hear a lot, but I'm not sure it's true. Since being 'plant-based' I've not really noticed much change in how much I spend on shopping. I tend to buy seasonal and what's on offer, plus I pretty much eat anything.
Meat substitues tend to be the most expensive, but I try and avoid these products.
Slavery has existed for most of human history. The inherent cruelty has only in recent times become something understood widely as morally wrong and unacceptable. We have abolished slavery and while it exists in some forms and niche cases, the majority of mankind looks with disdain and hate at those still practicing it, and with shame at their ancestors for accepting and tolerating it.
(Factory) farming/slaughter of animals has existed for most of human history. The inherent cruelty has only in recent times become something understood widely as morally wrong and unacceptable. We will abolish farming/slaughter of animals and while it will still exist in some forms and niche cases (eg pharmaceuticals?), the majority of mankind will look with disdain and hate at those still practicing it, and with shame at their ancestors for accepting and tolerating it.
But given the breeding of commercial chickens they'd simply not survive in the wild - not stop growing and after just days be unable to move, and easy prey.
If you're fortunate enough to have land, use it, even a balcony or window sill can be put to good use. There are plenty of guides on YouTube, and for a window sill no need to spend money on herbs again. For food or for leisure (or both) - if you like flowers grow some flowers!
And don't throw away potato skins, carrot tops, strings of beans, etc. Compost them, it really enriches the soil.
You're correct, I put them in their chicken-wire yard at night for good reason. A neighbour has geese. Geese get freaked out very easily. If a stray dog comes by at 3am the entire street knows about it.
I'm not from the farm. Interesting thing to learn is to let an egg rest a couple of days, no washing no refrigeration of course. Surprised me, wonderful variation in taste.
...so exactly like the fate of literally every other wild animal on Earth.
The ethically important part is that those would be different flavors of pain than the ones they would have experienced in factory farming normally.
There's momentum built in a system of scale and we're seeing what happens when the end consuming falls off the charts.
Once society starts back up, we'll see the opposite where we'll be angry there are shortages of things we expect even though we're "back online".
My point simply is that the hunger is not merely because of shortage of food.
To give a very short version of his conclusions: the only factor reducing births is reduced child mortality. Better healthcare and generally better economic prospects and birth rates drop on their own - no need for central planning or interventions. The book lays the evidence out extremely well and if you're a person that likes to have his/her worldview challenged I warmly recommend it!
US nukes Pakistan Afghanistan India Taliban politics cold war history army
Even the "living space" that is North America, Australia didn't belong to the White Man.
I feel when people do this it devalues both issues.
It just adds a fog that costs lives.
I guess one can't sell that as food but I'm pretty sure they can do something with it.
Although, it's fine by me, meat is in its nature pretty wasteful, in addition to those 2M chickens there's probably more tons of soy protein wasted on chicken feed.
Good thing that protein rich legumes do not need much processing.
Vegetables, especially if you eat them in amounts that sustain your weight, have enough omega essential fatty acids to last you a lifetime.
Legumes do have fat in them.
If you eat 2000kcal of red lentils, there's more than enough protein and fat content, almost meets your omega-3 essential fatty acid requirement. Nothing stops you from adding different fattier vegetables.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00219...
Here's a study on historical data, here are some statements: "Arteriosclerosis and degeneration of the myocardium are quite common conditions among the Greenlander" -- study from 1940
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002191...
IMO, best evidence ever is on Maasai people, where they find massive amounts of atherosclerosis in the blood vessels of young people and there are multiple cases where young people die of atherosclerosis. Only thing that makes Maasai survive is that they start with this kind of diet at early age, their blood vessels get extra wide and elastic and can withstand the hardening effects of atherosclerosis.
Fiberless diet is a death certificate for the modern western man if one's not on it from birth.
Hope you’re talking to a doctor and nutritionist!
That might have been from the lack of money, not the food itself. If you're eating them by choice and making the right dishes, beans are fucking delicious.
I understand that you associate beans with poverty, but when your circumstances are better (or now that they're already better, I don't know which) try them again, this time with some good recipes. And not the canned shit - gotta buy 'em dried, soak 'em, cook 'em in a slow cooker, instant pot, or pressure cooker.
I just make them with meat, pork, sausage and the whole party
Not to mention that there's lots of variety of ingredients, you don't need to eat beans every day ;)
I did not find convincing answers to these questions, so I stopped buying and eating meat.
I assume that the ethical, ecological, and societal impacts of that decision is somehow internalize in the price.
I know I am wrong - but I hope that becomes true one day.
Sorry, this content is not available in your region.
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/wasted-how-america-losing-40-...
"Sorry, this content is not available in your region."
Luckily outline.com was able to fetch the article: https://outline.com/yecexc
And animal protein consumes a lot of plant protein to make. If you want to feed people it's much more efficient to send over the soj and grain the chickens are fed, rather than the chicken meat.
Yes: you! That's what it takes, if I'm honest.
But if you're asking about startups, yes there is on based out of Texas and Colorado called Food Maven:
Check out Roy Choi's PBS series Breaking bread, its all good, there they highlight how other places have tackled this issue in regards to environmental impact, local economic commerce, and food insecurity. It's really a rad series, and makes me glad Roy has gotten the success that he has!
"A day will come when the idea that for the sake of food the people of the past raised and massacred living beings and with complete equanimity displayed their flesh in bits and pieces in shop windows, will no doubt inspire the same revulsion that the cannibalistic meals of the Americans, Oceanians, or Africans inspired in the travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
Plants are also living beings...
Most of the moral objection seems to be from the suffering and conscious death
Animals who live in nature might also live more fulfilling lives before they die than animals that live in the average meat processing plant.
There is basically no plant based diet that can be made more healthy with the addition of animal products.
If there is let us know. You'll probably get a Nobel prize for the revelation
But if you don't have all that infrastructure and support, if your region is overrun by locusts or warlords or gangs, then sticking to any "I'm only going to eat these categories" diet is impossible. You eat what you can get, and if you don't happen to have enough plant food today, eating meat (if available) is healthier than starving.
That fish throwing contest? Oh, it's almost definitely older than 100 years (as are dog fights, dolphin slaughter, goose pulling, cock throwing and other wonderful traditions from around the world).
[1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/utterly-disturbing-century-old-photo...
The last time farm animals had marginally better conditions was probably the Middle Ages, and even then I wouldn't be so sure. Especially not around bigger cities.
In 1000 years perhaps humans will look at our treatment of all life as barbaric because they will be directly powered by the energy of the sun.
Raising domesticated animals for slaughter is actually pretty humane. Before agriculture and farming, when people moved to an area it led to the extinction of all large animals and they died in agony.
For many of us human life is much more important than the slaughtering of domesticated animals. This isn't about a God.
We evolved feelings, morals, the concept of cruelty in order to care about human life. You can choose to care about whatever you want of course, but careful with your priorities.
And yes, chickens aren't human and are quite tasty.
I would not be so sure about feelings and morals. Cruelty yes, has evolved a lot.
> And yes, chickens aren't human and are quite tasty.
Those grown naturally, yes. Those grown in a plant not so.
Anyone who justifies in any way this is evil.
With practices like this, and other less murderous but still extremely wasteful shit like airlines burning thousands of gallons of fuel to keep their "slots" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22511488), I for one won't even mind if something decimates our so-called civilization.
The U.S. consumes 9 billion chickens per year, so that’s 24 million chickens killed per day for food.
So this article (about the 2m chickens) is about 9% of one days worth of chicken death in the usa, just for reference.
(I agree with your point, industrialised meat production is nighmarish)