> Very weird thing to hear from someone who claims to be a vegetarian
I'm vegetarian for environmental reasons, not ethical. Nothing wrong with eating a chicken or a pig who had a good life on an open field for me
I'm vegetarian for environmental reasons, not ethical. Nothing wrong with eating a chicken or a pig who had a good life on an open field for me
So if you are vegetarian for environmental reasons and had to eat a chicken, you should go with the battery-farmed one.
You would go with the (arguably mythical) happy chicken if you were vegetarian for moral reasons.
> feed (less energy expended from movement)
Less muscles, more disease, worse health, lifespan of 4 weeks, &c.
Given the same amount of money, I'm assuming they mean buy less chicken (but from non-factory sources) and spend the remainder on other foods with less environmental impact.
They're free to move about at least in their "bay" and have the company of other hens that can wander about too. Sure, they don't get the marketing feelgood "sun on their backs and wind in their feathers", but they also don't get raptors, foxes, or rats.
You can get rescue hens and they're just about savvy enough to figure out - after you've lost one or two - that predators are a thing, and you'll get an egg every couple of days per hen. They'll eat all the bugs in your garden (and most of the herbs, and the tops of your carrots) and shit everywhere.
essentially all animals raised for slaughter in the US are factory farmed
Because this is HN, where someone is sure to nitpick and/or take my next statement to logical extremes, I must be very careful about how I word this. I will regret it, but here I go:
I like eating chicken. I know lots of tasty recipes. I understand this involves killing the animal. Yes, I don't do it myself, but I could if I wanted -- I'm not squeamish. But factory chicken make me uneasy, it seems well past the inhumane line, almost like an extermination camp for chicken. I think free range chicken are happier, for whatever degree of "happiness" their tiny bird brains can understand. I like thinking that the chicken I eat lived a happy if short life trampling on actual grass and all that "breeze in their feathers" stuff. Yes, in the end it still involves killing them, but I think it's way better.
1) If I avoid all meat I cannot be held ethically accountable for it's provenance when, for example, a company's marketing department lies to you or the FDA does not sufficiently protect certain terms of art like "free range" which imply a lack of cruelty that wouldn't pass muster if I saw the treatment with my own eyes
2) If I am vegetarian, I will support vegetarian options, and I create support for companies and businesses that are unambiguously dedicated to reducing cruelty/suffering
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-est...
No kidding. They could start by using a single (and known) definition for "factory farmed".
Unless you are in the business of refining that data, this study is useless.
Except that this phrase doesn't mean anything.
And that is only if you stay within the reasonable people. Almost everybody with an impulsion to talk about this subject uses unreasonable definitions. How is a single name that applies to all that still meaningful?
Why vegetarian then? It's easy enough to buy meat that was raised on a local farm. Get a chest freezer, reach out to a local 4H club, and buy the whole animal. They'll butcher and vac-seal it for you. You could buy some kid's highschool project.
I live an hour from SF and I get much of my meat this way. It's surprisingly inexpensive. There are agricultural communities close enough to every urban environment to make it worth the drive.