Comment by cheese_goddess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cheese_goddess | Hacker News Reader

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> Over 99% of all animals killed are killed on factory farms, so pointing out a handle of farms that are NOT factory farms doesn't really do much.

That's not true. The majority of farms around the world are small-scale farms with no more than a few dozen animals or so. Factory farms are not the norm.

> Besides, even those small farms are deeply unethical. They kill animals a mere fraction into their lifespans, and do so in horrific ways, often inhumanely.

I'm sorry but this is completely ridiculous. Why would farmers want to kill their animals "in horrific ways"? To achieve what? Hard as it might be for you to believe, farmers are not Jason Voorhees, going around with a machette murdering innocent little lambs for fun. It's obvious to me that despite your interest for animals' welfare you've never talked to a farmer and never been to a farm, looked at the animals and seen how they are treated first hand.

Instead, it seems to me that you take all your information from books and videos like the ones you ask me to "educate myself" with. Surely, you appreciate that those are written by vegans and for vegans, or for the purpose of indoctrinating more people into the vegan ideology? Such books and videos are no reliable source of knowledge for farming. They only show you what they want you to see: the horrors of factory farming. They seem to make the point that because factory farming is a horror, all farming is a horror. This is just a rhetorical trick and it should be easy to see through.

Anyway if you don't want to continue the conversation that's up to you. I don't want to convince you of anything, and I'm not in the habbit of pursuing internet arguments over emai. That sounds... unhygienic. What I was hoping to achieve with this conversation was to have a useful exchange of views. I don't guess this is possible though.

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estima...

Proof that I wasn't lying about the percentage of animals killed in factory farms. Thats USDA data, not some vegan propaganda. Good luck, and reach out if you ever come around to considering a world with less suffering.

The link you posted is not USDA data. It's estimates, based on USDA data, by the owners of the website. For example, the opening paragraph in the article says:

> We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present.

The owners of the website are the Sentience Institute, a nonprofit promoting various Effective Altruism goals. One of those goals seems to be the elimination of animal farming. One of the founders of the Institute is the author of a book called "The End of Animal Farming" that "argues animal farming will end by the year 2100 based on effective altruism reasoning and social movement strategy" (see Wikipedia on the book).

So it's vegan propaganda. From the point of view of Effective Altruism, but still, vegan propaganda.

Let's see that quote again:

> We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present.

It says US farmed animals. The whole link talks about the situation in the US. In our discussion, I made the point that factory farms are the norm in the Americas, but not in the rest of the world. I agreed with you that factory farms are an atrocity that must be eliminated. But that atrocity is an American atrocity, and the rest of the world, by and large, is not yet responsible of it although this situation is changing rapidly, because of course where America leads the way in atrocities, everyone else soon follows because that way lie dollars and everyone wants dollars.

In general, my complaint about your comments is that they seem to ignore that there is a world outside the Americas, or even the US, and that this world is not the US and doesn't do things, particularly farming, like the US does them. I seem to be justified to complain so, given the continued American focus of your discussion of farming and animal rights.

I'm sorry, but what would someone need to hand you for you to at least admit there _might_ be a worldwide problem.

You complain this doesn't prove anything outside of the US, but I've already linked to material which covers similar issues in Australia, the UK, and Peter Singer's book which talks about this for all of Europe!

Does someone need to literally drag you to each and every factory farm? Seriously asking, what would it take? Just to consider, on your own, seriously, that perhaps the way we kill these _billions_ of animals every years (100s of billions if you include fish!) might be pretty fucked up.

You say you're interested in exchanging views, but that doesn't seem to be the case. What would it take for you to actually be convinced that there is actually a problem?

Also, it _is_ USDA data. They are using it to draw a conclusion based on things like # of animals that farms own, etc. But it is USDA data they are using.

> Does someone need to literally drag you to each and every factory farm?

This is a threat of physical violence and it is very disturbing, especially as it comes after your offering to buy me a book and asking me to contact you by email. You've crossed from creepy stalker to online bully behaviour.

The most disturbing thing is that you seem to not even understand what we are disagreeing about.

What I keep saying is that factory farming is typical only in the Americas. Yes, there are factory farms outside the Americas. No, they are not the norm outside America. Outside America, most farms are small-scale farms with a few dozen animals.

The typical farm in most of the world is a small-scale farm, run by a family, often not even commercially.

Despite your threats to drag me to factofy farms and your insistence that I don't know they exist (clearly, I do, I have repeated several times that "factory farms are an atrocity that must be eliminated"), it is you who hasn't seen the world with your own eyes. It is you who relies, for your knowledge of farming, on books and youtube videos. Books and youtube videos that are specifically created to spread vegan propaganda: they show you the horrors of factory farming, that should rightly outrage everyone, and pretend that there is no other way to farm animals, and that all farming is an atrocity, that all farmers are Freddy Krueger, monsters who torture animals and kill them in "horrific ways".

Instead of trying to coerce me into agreeing with your misinformed beliefs, you're the one who should go and look at the things that the brainwashing rhetoric you try to spread hasn't shown you. Go to the rural communities that subsist on farming, in Europe, in Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in South-East Asia. Go and see the farms, see the animals, talk to the farmers. If you really care about animal welfare, go help the farmers to care for the animals.

But do you really care about animals? Do you really want to know what's going on in the world, or are you more interested in fighting a pointless culture war on the internet?

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