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Comment by nikivi | Hacker News Reader

Just wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings.

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.

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It actually would be a great idea if the government encouraged companies (e.g. via tax cuts) to put a photo of real animals (taken on location by an approved government inspector) on the packaging of the meat product. This would create an incentive for companies to treat animals well so that the photo also turns out well and they get a nice tax cut for participating so it can be totally voluntary for companies to participate.

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).

Makes sense to me. At a minimum people should know how reality looks.

Strikes me as a great way to harden opposition.

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.

I don't think this is true. I think many people who eat meat do it because they enjoy it and in most cultures, eating meat is the default thing to do; most don't actually approve of factory farming conditions. If the pictures actually depicted animals in the conditions they were raised (humanely raised meat could depict something more humane than something factory-farmed on the packaging), many people would try to eat more humanely raised meats.

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.

Consider that taxing factory meat and putting the proceeds into a subsidy of humane meats would accomplish the policy goal without the tedious social shaming.

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.

That’s a very convenient but not very ethical conclusion. You are basically saying “I believe some people will try to go further than I like,I conclude it’s best to do nothing”. I can’t agree with that but it’s a common political trick to mark things you don’t like as too extreme and therefore nothing should be done.

Would it work like the warning labels on cigarettes in Europe with diseased lungs on them? Show what a factory farm looks like on the package and if you still want it go for it.

Just your periodic reminder that a vegan diet is deficient and not sustainable.

> Just wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings.

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.

I am confused. The animals killed in slaughterhouses... don't they also eat vegetation before they are killed? That vegetation doesn't need to be protected from insects?

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?

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