Animals killed since opening this page
justone.earth
justone.earth
Ideally each animal product comes with the imagery like one you get now on cigarette packs (but of an animal in a cage/slaughterhouse) + appropriate cost increases for welfare.
Recent law introduction of putting 1, 2, 3 stars on animal product packages to signify how well animal was treated is great start but we can do so much better as species coexisting in this planet with every other animal.
In my eyes it all starts with education and awareness of alternative plant based diet but government enforced help would be great too.
Meat eaters are going to want the nasty images taken off of packaging, and the cheaper option is to lobby to remove them, not pay substantially more for an idyllic, pasture-raised, humane future.
Congratulations, you now have a pro-factory-farming lobbying group with actual grassroots support.
Might also have more people on your side; might not. Worth considering the adversary in any move of this nature.
There will of course be people who don't care, and people who revel in the pictures, and people that lobby to have them removed, but overall I think those groups would be in the minority. Many people would slowly (and unconsciously) improve their consumption habits, in the same way that people didn't really notice that the tides turned on issues like gay marriage and marijuana consumption.
Part of the knee-jerk antagonism by people who eat meat to posts like this one is that most vocal vegetarians/animal activists are absolutists: eg there is no desirable path forward for most Animal Liberationists where a greater percentage of animals are raised humanely but people keep eating meat. As is often the case, everyone could benefit from agreeing to a compromise where we improve animal farming conditions but don't vilify people who choose to continue eating meat.
Another element here is that eating meat is integral to many cuisines and is extremely culturally important to most people - stating that your goal is to remove it wholesale feels like a direct attack. Claiming that people who enjoy eating meat are your adversaries seems like exactly the wrong thing to do. It's as unhelpful as saying that everyone who owns a car is contributing to climate change is therefore the enemy of environmentalism.
The problem that faces is that it looks and feels more like an animal-lib play than an animal-welfare one. As you point out, the animal liberationist faction will not stop pushing until there's no meat at the market, and raising and slaughtering your own is as illegal as slavery.
Since I don't want that, I'm obliged to oppose anything that gives them power and influence. A lot of people would implicitly come to the same conclusion.
I think creating incentives for companies to be more transparent by offering tax cuts would be a great model for many industries and would give ethical operators a competitive advantage.
IMO, the government should put more focus on creating incentives which encourage positive behaviors because enforcing laws is difficult, expensive and their interpretation is often subjective (hence the need for lawyers).
It should also be illegal for vegans to lie about how a vegan diet is cruelty free. Farming kills far more animals than raising livestock. Far more insects, worms, rodents, etc are killed to protect vegetation and harvest vegetation than are killed in slaughterhouses.
Every bowl of salad has more animal parts than a plate of steak.
Is it more ethical to kill one cow to provide 1000 meals for 1000 people or kill 1000 animals to feed one vegan one meal?
You are right, every meat package and every vegetable, fruit, etc should list how many animals were killed to feed you.
Also, it should show how much environmental damage the vegan diet is causing.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/10/avocado...
Also, every food item should explicitly show that humans are natural omnivores and that the vegan diet in an unnatural diet that humans cannot survive on in nature.
The way you described it, it sounds like a cow appears out of thin air -- poof! -- then it is killed, and 1000 people can eat with only 1 animal killed. It's the people who step on insects while they water the salad who are the true monsters, because they kill 1000 animals for 1 lunch. But how many insects does the cow step on before it grows up and gets killed?
However, let's say hypothetically we're only talking about farms run with a focus on animal welfare. (And not just giving animals 10 square feet of 'pasture' so they can say they're free range, but really.) So the issues of poor living conditions are removed, and we're just talking about killing animals for meat. If people stopped eating meat altogether, most farm animals simply wouldn't be born in the first place. Farmers aren't going to raise animals if they can't eventually earn money from them, obviously, and most of these animals wouldn't exist in large numbers in the wild. So what I'm wondering is, for a farm animal is it not possible that a decent life followed by being slaughtered for food might be superior to no life at all?
Obviously if we think in terms of humans, that would be horrific; we consider killing humans unnecessarily an absolute moral wrong. If someone decided they would have a child, but only if they could murder them after some period of time, that's obviously monstrous. I'm just not sure that that analogy applies to farm animals who certainly are living creatures who feel pain, but don't have the same understanding of the world and their place in it that humans do. To me that's the rational reason why the the idea of killing humans could be considered differently from killing other animals. That said, I expect the real reason we instinctively feel that killing humans is wrong is more an evolutionary drive to protect our own species.
I do grant that it's uncomfortable to think about when the analogy to humans is drawn. For some I'm sure it's uncomfortable even without consciously making that connection. I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.
Why not? Your comment makes it clear that industrial animal agriculture is wrong (not to mention ecologically disastrous), but then your last sentence makes a 180 out of nowhere. It feels extreme at first, but I'd like to assure you that reducing your consumption of these industries is possible (and sometimes even easy!).
It’s horrific in terms of animals as well.
I think there's real pressure on nutrition science to overlook the utility of eating 'non-essential' animal nutrients such as carnitine, creatine, and cholesterol.
I was a vegetarian for most of my life, and won't ever do it again. I will accept muscle tissue grown in culture, happily, but don't believe that plant-source nutrition can replace animal foods in (my) healthy diet.
I'm sympathetic to animal welfare arguments: I refuse to eat factory-farmed pigs, and avoid factory chicken, and eggs which aren't pasture-raised. I'm firmly convinced of the necessity of meat to my good health, I've A/B tested vegetarian and vegan diets to my own satisfaction, and won't be changing my mind on this.
I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.
“[F]armed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
If it came down to me or a chicken - I sincerely hope society would prioritize me.
The only exception I'm aware of is India and since that's religious it seems difficult to scale. Islam has animal slaughter as one of its few obligate rituals.
Except for the westerners who disagree with this. They can be subjugated.
Cultural imperialism is so last century.
I personally don't feel shame in eating animals bread to be eaten. Having had grandparents practicing subsistence farming, also being born in Eastern Europe during communism and thus suffering from food shortages, from a young age I've seen chickens, pigs and lambs being slaughtered. Not a big deal, and in an environment in which food is in short supply, killing an animal for food is a reason for celebration.
People say that we've been desensitized due to being disconnected from our food source. But I think that's backwards. You rarely see vegans among subsistence farmers. Even when meat is a luxury, eggs and dairy are staple foods.
Unless there's a massive economic incentive for stopping meat production, no country will ever get "on board" with not eating meat.
The CO2 emissions story is the only argument that has any legs. But if you think about it, it's an argument for efficiency and for taxing CO2 emissions, with plenty of low hanging fruits, e.g. we should waste less food, prefer chickens and pigs over ruminants, etc.
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Note I'm actually a vegan 3 days per week out of 7 and I prefer to go through all periods of religious fasting, which is basically hard core veganism (no traces of animal products are acceptable) before the big holidays, e.g. Lent (I'm not religious, I just like the practice).
Meat is the most efficient protein source, per calorie, with a complete profile and unfortunately there's no equivalent unless you start taking protein extracts.
Otherwise a vegan diet is a diet in which you have to eat a lot of legumes every day (lentils, kidney beans, soy) for getting 60-80 grams of protein, an inadequate level if you're looking to maintain or build muscle and going over that is hard for me without being in a caloric surplus. Also, during vegan fasting periods I take B12, Calcium supplements and I strive to eat a varied diet.
My point is, from first hand experience, a healthy diet is pretty challenging and expensive, with or without meat and for poorer populations life is hard enough as it is.
It's now the main "meat" we use for tacos. I'm not a big fan of it for burgers, though.
Impossible burgers, on the other hand, are great. It's a shame they only sell to restaurants.
Thinking about memes as living organisms (infomorphic beings?) would be an interesting way to frame cultural decay.
Considering we have to eat, we should try to minimize the suffering.
I posted this because I thought it was interesting. Didn't realize this conversation would devolve. I'll try to post more consciously in the future.
My heuristic: when given the option to choose between a vegan option and a non-vegan option, choose the vegan option. There aren't any ways to reduce our dependence on animal agriculture (or human suffering) to zero, but it's pretty easy to reduce it most of the time. I'd recommend giving it a shot. Happy to answer any questions.
"Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."
So the keyword here is 'practicable'.
People living in places where there are no alternatives and where people need to eat meat to survive then that would be OK.
People living in the western world don't need meat & dairy to survive.
It's possible to materially enjoy the taste of meat while simultaneously being horrified by the scope of man's destruction and industrialized cruelty. It's entirely another thing to revel in your own ignorance and disinterest of the issue. Really revolting.
We don't even have to think what we're doing isn't bad. It's enough if we think it's not as bad as it's being made out to be.
Also, just about everyone in the English-speaking world is sick of PETA's sanctimonious shenanigans. It's a bad look which rubs off on any group whose tactics rhyme with PETA's.
If so, do you think factory farmed animals have a good of quality life?
Avoid chicken (other domestic fowl are generally ok) and pigs, which can be (and are) tortured their whole lives for profit. There is considerable room for improvement in how veal is raised as part of milk and meat production, but calves which avoid that process and end up as meat get: two good years, a couple not-great months, and one really terrifying and shitty day.
Is our ecological footprint important as well when making food choices?
If so, why not listen to the science and try to reduce meat & dairy as much as we can.
"A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions."
From: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
50Bn chickens each taking 1 square foot of space in an endless battery farm makes an area about the size of Delaware. Per year.
Save them, and then what?
Yeah but chickens - that given number corresponds to 50B per year. But there are more than 65B (though less than 20B at any one time exist).
The sort of one dimensional thought process presented here is somewhat dangerous.
In comparison, animal rearing is feasible in pretty desolate places as long as you can transport feed and water.
Just claiming it's a lossy energy conversion is pretty irrelevant. Not all the 'calories' here are created equal.
To answer your question, almost anything will do as feed. Byproducts of agriculture, grasslands, processed/filtered organic waste. Animals will thrive on rotten meat too -- famously leading to the mad cow disease.
Sure, if you want to raise awareness, but for what purpose?
To provoke meat-eating people's conscience? Or make them angry?
Edit: Comments did a great job of explaining the objectives, and rationale. Thanks!
When I look at this I see 1.5 billion pigs producing insane amounts of by product that directly affects our climate and our watershed. Not to mention the impact on human health.
Oh man, now I want a chicken sandwich with bacon on it.
Also it should be noted that most of these farm animals would never have been alive if humans did not breed them in the first place so we shouldn't see death as necessarily a bad thing. We give them life and then we take it away. Every creature dies eventually - So do we.
I think the focus of animal protection movements should be based more on the ethical treatment of animals. It's important to make sure that all animals have the opportunity of a decent life before they are slaughtered; especially have room to move around in an open area with access to natural light.
Because it's a silly vegan propaganda page by wealthy privileged virtue signaling crowd without any grasp on reality.
Countless quadrillions of animals are killed every year in nature. Countless billions of animals are killed every year to clear land and protect vegetation from insects, worms, rodents, etc. Countless billions of animals are killed to build homes that these privileged people live in.
Not to mention the countless billions of animals killed by pet cats and countless billions of animals killed to feed our pets ( cats, dogs, snakes, etc ).