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Comment by AbrahamParangi | Hacker News Reader

In retrospect it’s sort of insane that this sounds like a ton when that many dead animals pass through my local grocery store in… a week? Looking up the stats Costco sells 150k rotisserie chickens a day.

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There's obviously a difference, since animals can be slaughtered instantly and have not expectation of what will happen to them and no memory after. [0] On the other hand, experiments where they eventually die are likely to cause immense stress and pain.

[0] Now there can be a very complex discussion about this. I'm not saying slaughtering is unproblematic. I'm not saying you couldn't try to make a similar point for humans to which I would also have replies why that's a different matter. I'm just making the point for this specific purpose of comparing here.

OK but that is not actually how US factory farming operates. They are almost universally factories of extraordinary animal suffering, where broken or sick animals are discarded like trash (smashed, shot, thrown in a dumpster to die, etc).

I think it's likely that even the most terribly mistreated lab animal has a better quality of life and death than the average US foodstock chicken.

Not true.

I've been involved in atudies where we cut the heart out of sheep and then implanted a pump to replace it. One animal had the pump strapped to its back. The animal bumped up against its pen one day and broke one of the 1/2" tubes free and the pump (artificial heart) sprayed blood all over the pen and the animal bled out. We discovered it in the morning.

I'd rather do just about anything than that. Worst death imaginable.

>almost universally factories of extraordinary animal suffering

I'd love to see some sources that support such a strong claim. Otherwise, it just comes off as bait for argument.

They're not exactly hard to find, or secret. They are, however, subjective; you may think it's funny to throw male chicks alive into a meatgrinder, or to cull a entire facility's worth of unsalable pigs by turning up the heat.

France is force feeding/torturing 700,000 geese and 37 million ducks every year for foie gras according to google. That is definitely causing them stress and pain.

And similarly there are other countries that are much more lax when it comes to animal and human studies, so there is a cottage industry of US and european companies doing clinical work in those countries before doing their big US or EU studies. Each country has different laws, different lines that can or can't be crossed. Your example and mine are both good examples.

That‘s why it‘s often banned outside France.

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