[HN Gopher] "Judas goats" were once key players in meatpacking p...
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"Judas goats" were once key players in meatpacking plants
Author : emmanuel_1234
Score : 280 points
Date : 2022-11-18 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.agweb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.agweb.com)
| RektBoy wrote:
| There is Czech sci-fi book series called "Legie", it's about
| aliens conquering planet Earth. And making minced meat from
| humans, too bad it's not in English. Because it reminded me what
| these animals must feel like.
|
| Also there're people which acts like sorters, they decide which
| human goes to meat factory and which to mines and then to meat
| factory :D.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| So, the legendary low-budget movie "Bad Taste" by Peter Jackson
| has antropotarian aliens as well.
|
| Including the director himself making a cameo.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Orson Scott Card has a short story called "Kingsmeat" which
| also considers this situation. I read a lot of OSC short
| stories when I appreciated his fiction more, but this one has
| been particularly memorable.
| fbn79 wrote:
| Sounds like sci-fi movie "Under the Skin" with Scarlet
| Jojansson (based on book by Michel Faber). A beautiful girl is
| used to attract males to a masked alien slaughterhouse.
| the_af wrote:
| Haven't watched the movie (I just know from the synopsis it's
| not very faithful to the novel, what with all those biker
| dudes) but boy is the novel bleak! It's especially depressing
| because the main character is so unhappy and downtrodden,
| even though her job is to lure humans to the slaughterhouse.
| lupire wrote:
| "even though"? Seems natural.
| the_af wrote:
| My phrasing was clumsy but also spoilerish. Trust me it's
| not natural that she'd be depressed because she led
| people to their deaths (consider farmers), and in fact,
| that's not the root of her depression!
|
| Let me rephrase for clarity: even though her job is to
| lead people to the slaughterhouse, making her a "villain"
| in a more traditional story, we nonetheless empathize
| with her and feel her pain, since she is an outcast,
| unhappy with her life and downtrodden by her own people.
| "Even though" she leads people to their deaths, she lacks
| any real agency in it; she's pressed into that life.
| fbn79 wrote:
| You have to watch it. I read the book too. The movie is not
| faithful but I liked it as the book.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| If you liked "Under the Skin", you should watch "Vivarium".
|
| Once was enough for me. I never want to see either of them
| again.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I watched it recently and at no point in the movie is it
| clear that's what's happening (is it?). They specifically
| show abstract scenes when she leads them to a house. As far
| as I could tell it was on purpose so there's no specific
| explanation of what's going on.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| As someone who hasn't read the book but watched the movie,
| here's my best take (spoilers if you haven't watched it):
|
| The main character is from an alien hive race that runs a
| lot like ants, with workers (main char) and drones
| (motorcycle man). They are on Earth trying to harvest
| humans for their skin, but also their meat for research
| purposes or something, i dunno. Something about being in
| close proximity to and interacting with humans causes the
| workers to eventually catch feelings, and need to be
| replaced. The replacement workers don't care - they're just
| ants - right up until they catch feelings themselves and
| the drones have to fetch them for replacement. Hence you
| watch one worker with her lifecycle on Earth, where she
| experiences all the good and bad parts of being human.
| the_af wrote:
| Do read the novel. It's very explicit about her nature and
| what she's doing and why. Whether this explicitness is
| something good or bad is up to you, but I guarantee the
| novel is not confusing, just very bleak.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Now we call them "social influencers" convincing their
| followers that the latest crypto is going to the moon. The
| Judas goats are among us, and we are but sheep.
| Zagill wrote:
| I'll take getting rugged over becoming a burger any day
| aendruk wrote:
| Confusingly the article doesn't ever explain this, just noting
| that the goats are "aptly named":
|
| > The term is a reference to Judas Iscariot, an apostle of Jesus
| Christ who betrayed Jesus in the Bible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat
|
| A perplexing omission given its verbosity.
| tga_d wrote:
| "Judas" is also just a word in English that is a synonym for
| "traitor", derived from the same etymology.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Judas#English
| Macha wrote:
| Given the references to thanksgiving and the FDA in the other
| top articles, the site appears catered for a US audience, and
| the privacy policy expects users to be over 13. What percentage
| of Americans over 13 wouldn't get the Judas reference? Has to
| be under 0.1%
| sharadov wrote:
| I wonder how the term "sheeplike" came into existence, because
| based on this article sheep are not exactly the docile, willing
| animals as we were told.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| i mean they literally follow a goat to their certain death.
| kornhole wrote:
| George Orwell's Animal Farm portrays it well. Most people are
| sheeplike and follow the herd. After you are fattened up, you
| are led into the meat grinder.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| There is a different type of Judas goat that requires no
| nicotine. Essentially a single goat with a gps collar is released
| until it finds the local feral goat population, at which point a
| helicopter shows up to shoot them all. The Judas goat is then
| left to search for the next herd.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1990-05-03-mn-439-st...
| cowpig wrote:
| Missing context here is that humans bring goats to islands and
| the goats wreak havoc on the ecosystem there, and then they are
| very hard to find and remove.
|
| Goats are inherently social, and so a lone goat will find a new
| group to interact with. What you end up with is a single,
| ultra-traumatized goat repeatedly finding a group of friends
| who all get murdered by a flying machine. I suppose it's worth
| it because otherwise the whole island ecosystem collapses?
|
| There was a wonderful radiolab episode about this in the
| galapagos[0]
|
| [0] https://radiolab.org/episodes/galapagos
| elektrontamer wrote:
| > What you end up with is a single, ultra-traumatized goat
| repeatedly finding a group of friends who all get murdered by
| a flying machine.
|
| For some reason I found this hilarious and tragic at the same
| time.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Aren't donkeys the same way?
| lbriner wrote:
| The "correct" way to deal with it is the use of natural
| predators.
|
| Problem is people often don't like or know how to live with
| proper apex predators so they get killed off and we have to
| artificially control animal numbers.
|
| However, in many places, we have introduced non-native
| species that never had natural predators. Then what?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| I can't help but thinking of the Simpsons episode "Bart the
| Mother"
|
| Principal Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a
| godsend.
|
| Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when
| we're overrun by lizards?
|
| Principal Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after
| wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the
| lizards.
|
| Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
|
| Principal Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've
| lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake
| meat.
|
| Lisa: Then we're stuck with gorillas!
|
| Principal Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When
| wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to
| death.
|
| Lisa: Hmm.
|
| EDIT: Yes, I understand you are referring to keeping
| predators around, and not necessarily introducing new
| predators. But this is still what jumped in to my mind.
| selectodude wrote:
| >However, in many places, we have introduced non-native
| species that never had natural predators. Then what?
|
| I assume you're referring to humans.
| _Adam wrote:
| I think adding another animal to the situation would only
| exacerbate the problem. Let's say we add lions. Then not
| only goats are eaten, but other animals.
|
| Hunting goats to local extinction is the cleanest and most
| humane way to deal with them.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think all the horribleness of human-animal interactions is
| ripe inspiration for chillingly fascinating SF novels. What
| animals do to each other (esp parasites) can be great too.
| swamp40 wrote:
| You shouldn't have written that down, it will give future AI
| Terminators a good idea.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Now days they call them "Influencers".
| [deleted]
| lancesells wrote:
| Reading the headline my mind went immediately to humans and not
| livestock.
| gennarro wrote:
| If you've read the book "sea of rust" by Robert Cargill you will
| know the phrase quite well. A bit dark but not a bad read.
| seri4l wrote:
| Although they probably don't employ nicotine anymore using
| trained animals to guide sheep to a slaughterhouse is not a thing
| of the past. Another comment mentions Temple Grandin. This video
| of hers showcases the use of leader sheep in a short clip
| (WARNING: graphic content):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoB3tf9Q2AA&t=155
| burkaman wrote:
| How does it work today? Did we just get rid of the ramps and that
| makes it easier to herd the sheep?
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think the plants are no longer "gravity powered", so there's
| no need to try to get them up to the top of the big building.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| it's hard NOT to think what a horrible species we are, running
| killing floors
| throwanem wrote:
| Few other predators take the same trouble to ensure their prey
| is beyond suffering before beginning to eat.
| cpsns wrote:
| No other animal has the mental capacity that we do, the
| ability to reason, or ethics like us.
|
| We are not like other animals in this regard, we have the
| option to do better.
| scotty79 wrote:
| So far our option we went for is to reduce undue suffering
| of our prey.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think the complaint here is not about the moment of
| death, but about the literal lifetime of torment and
| agony leading up to that moment. Death probably comes as
| a relief for animals raised on factory farms.
| jkepler wrote:
| To even pose the question of animal suffering is unique
| to humans. After all, it's only humans who create humane
| societies to advocate for animal welfare.
|
| Why?
|
| I don't know how others belief systems would explain
| that, but from a Christian perspective, humans aren't
| exactly the same as animals. We're like animals in that
| humans and animals are all creatures, and yet distinctly
| non-animal in that we're the only creatures made in the
| image of God, and given rule over all creature to promote
| the flourishing of life---human, animal, and plant---for
| God's glory. And the biblical story is that humans went
| so far off-course in rebellion against their Creator God
| that the Son of God had to become human, die, and rise
| again to restore our ability to care rightly for
| creation.
|
| Thus, concerns to minimize animal suffering are uniquely
| human concerns because we /aren't/ animals, but human;
| and the concern itself is proof we're different from
| other animals.
| cpsns wrote:
| I think anyone who's been in a slaughterhouse would find
| it difficult to agree with that statement and even so,
| the sheer scale means that the amount of suffering is
| unfathomable.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Temporarily putting personal feelings aside, I think
| you've touched on interesting philosophical questions:
| can something so subjective as suffering ever be
| fathomed, does it scale, can you do math on it...
| notch656a wrote:
| Sheep are stunned and are pretty much out instantly.
|
| IDK if you've ever slaughtered a sheep the non-
| slaughterhouse way done where most of the people live
| (i.e. the third world). I've done it out in rural asia.
| You take a long blade and pierce the heart / surrounding
| blood vessels straight through the chest. It takes a
| second or two for it to pass out. The slaughterhouse is a
| slight upgrade with basically no suffering at the time of
| death as they're instantly knocked out by electrical
| impulse.
|
| If I were the sheep I would definitely pick the
| slaughterhouse over being shipped alive to the average
| end customer which is someone in the third world with a
| long blade.
| CelestialTeapot wrote:
| Not to mention the terrible conditions that animals are
| forced to live in and injuries caused by processing (from
| birth to death) [1] as well as abuse by low-paid workers
| who are, themselves, working in poor conditions. [2]
| Factory farming is not clean and free of animal suffering
| by any means, but most people's experience with animals
| as food comes in neat, little, clean plastic-wrapped
| chunks of meat.
|
| 1. https://www.ciwf.org.uk/factory-farming/animal-
| cruelty/ 2. https://ffacoalition.org/articles/dangerous-
| conditions-facto...
| porknaut wrote:
| Who defines what "better" is? You're a collection of atoms
| put together by a meaningless evolutionary process. In that
| sense, "better" is purely your preference not some
| objective truth. And in this case, some people prefer to
| kill and eat animals.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Few other predators take the same trouble to ensure their
| prey is beyond suffering before beginning to eat.
|
| I'd argue human factory farming practices are far worse than
| anything other predators do. Even cats that play with their
| food are better. At least that's relatively quick (a few
| hours at most). Humans frequently cause their prey to live
| their entire lives in tortuous conditions. The fact that the
| act of death itself is relatively painless is rather besides
| the point.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's probably worth separating slaughter and processing
| from raising.
|
| In the USA, my understanding is that even small farms,
| using humane and environmentally friendly practices, still
| generally need to send the animals to a larger commercial
| facility for slaughter and processing. According to what
| I've read, this is largely due to USDA and/or FDA
| regulations that are cost-prohibitive to implement at a
| smaller scale.
| jessaustin wrote:
| This is a perfect example of how American capitalism
| abhors competition. I have used smaller, non-approved
| slaughterhouses and there's nothing wrong with them. If
| enough small slaughterhouses prospered to make the market
| for meat competitive, our masters would change the
| regulations again. Both farmers and consumers are at the
| mercy of Smithfield, Tyson, JBS, Cargill. While
| regulators refuse to enforce the law, we will remain so.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Not to mention that humans _induce the creation_ of these
| lifelong sufferers. Animals in the wild do no such thing
| (or at least nowhere near the scale that humans do and
| certainly with nothing close to the cognitive abilities of
| the animals we do it to).
| chasil wrote:
| May I suggest that you acquire a dracunculiasis parasite to
| verify your perpsective?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think there's a scale issue here. For such a parasite,
| the host body is an environment rather than prey. It's
| analogous to our species' depressingly poor record of
| considering negative externalities.
| chasil wrote:
| If that's the case, then you should be able to easily
| manage the scale of this event in your life.
|
| By all means, demonstrate it for us!
|
| "Around a year later, the adult worm migrates to an exit
| site - usually a lower limb - and induces an intensely
| painful blister on the skin. The blister eventually
| bursts to form an intensely painful open wound, from
| which the worm slowly crawls over several weeks. The
| wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence,
| disabling the infected person for the three to ten weeks
| it takes the worm to emerge."
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Invalid inference. In fact, I pointed out that our
| species also has a tendency toward environmental
| destruction.
| nradov wrote:
| As a scuba diver, I have seen California sea lions killing
| ocean sunfish (mola molas) for what appears to be pure sport.
| The sea lions tear the fish's fins off and play with the body
| like a living frisbee. Then when they get bored they let the
| maimed fish sink to the bottom to be eaten alive by crabs.
| Occasionally you'll see like a dozen of those half-dead molas
| clustered together on the seafloor, pathetically flopping
| around as the crabs close in.
|
| Nature, red in tooth and claw.
| ninjaa wrote:
| ate a bowl of steamed veggies this morning
| wnkrshm wrote:
| It happened with equal systematic design for our own species,
| for which this article prompted me to spend ten minutes to read
| through this [0] again.
|
| Though to be honest, the German wikipedia article paints a way
| more visceral picture of the systematic murders. The english
| version does not scare the reader, which I see as an oversight.
|
| Edit: The German version includes the deception of the victims,
| to keep them calm, which is what reminded me of the article.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Gas_chambers
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I couldn't find that deception, but machine translation from
| German to English is almost impeccable nowadays, and there's
| a lot more in the german sub-article
|
| Warning: Horrifying:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaskammer_(Massenmord)
| wnkrshm wrote:
| For completeness sake what I meant by deception:
|
| > In order to process the murder of thousands of people,
| great pains were taken to deceive the victims concerning
| their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration
| camps to the death camps were unaware of what they were
| facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims
| that they were being resettled for labor, issued them work
| permits, told them to bring along their tools and to
| exchange their German marks for foreign currency. [0]
|
| > They made you believe that life was normal [in
| concentration camp Westerbork, a waystation to death
| camps]. A lady gave birth premature, and it looked--even
| though Westerbork had one of the best hospitals in Holland,
| they didn't have an incubator. They looked all over Holland
| to find an incubator, and when they found one they said to
| the lady, "See how good care we take of you?" Only six
| months later, that same lady with the baby was sent to the
| gas chambers. [1]
|
| > Kurt Bolender, an SS guard in Sobibor, testified to this
| fact: "Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharfuhrer Hermann
| Michel [deputy commander of the camp] made a speech to them
| . . . Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent
| to work. But before this they would have to take baths and
| undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of
| diseases . . . [2]
|
| > Wilhelm Pfannensteil, a German physician and hygienist
| who visited Belzec and Treblinka, also described the
| particularly innocuous exterior of the gas chambers in
| Belzec:
|
| "The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal
| delousing institution. In front of the building there were
| pots of geraniums and a sign saying 'Hackenholt
| Foundation', above which there was a Star of David. The
| building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to
| suggest that people would be killed there. From what I saw,
| I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had
| any idea of what would happen to them." [2]
|
| [0] http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/killin
| g.htm...
|
| [1]
| https://usflibexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/portraying-
| co...
|
| [2] https://archive.org/details/BelzecSobiborTreblinka.Holo
| caust...
|
| [3] Ernst Klee, Willie Dressen, and Volker Reiss, editors.
| "The Good Old Days": The Holocaust as Seen by Its
| Perpetrators and Bystanders (Free Press, 1988), 241.
| DeWilde wrote:
| All species that consume other life forms are, we are just more
| efficient.
| [deleted]
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| If we can digest it and gain nutrition from it, then we are
| meant to eat it. We didn't design ourselves.
| CelestialTeapot wrote:
| Well, nobody designed us. We're a product of evolution. Had
| we been designed, and the designer was not a cruel monster,
| I'm sure they could have thought of a way for all beings to
| feed themselves without the monumental suffering that exists
| in the world.
| eru wrote:
| Not sure many people would approve of eg eating their kids?
| chasil wrote:
| This is true of everything excepting contagious prions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
|
| Luckily, scrapie doesn't seem to be infectious to humans.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Other animals do the same. Dolphins and whales will create
| bubble nets and dive into them scooping up fish or krill until
| they're completely full. Seabirds then swoop in in droves and
| devour any fish left as they panic and jump into the air. Lions
| and other predators _would_ run killing floors if their prey
| weren 't so unbelievably fast with dangerous hooves and
| antlers. We just do it so efficiently that it's disgusting, and
| we do it for profit rather than subsistence.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| profit is just an intermediary of subsistence.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Not really, because if we were doing it for subsistence we
| wouldn't be doing it like this at all. It's incredibly
| inefficient even aside from the ethical considerations. The
| only thing that overcomes that thermodynamic inefficiency
| is _preference_ , and that has nothing to do with
| subsistence.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| if you didn't have a farm system to pull from, how many
| animals would you slaughter to subsist? Where would you
| raise the animal? what things would you give up for
| proper animal husbandry? I'd argue it is incredibly
| efficient!
| ethanbond wrote:
| It is incredibly efficient if you start with the
| assumption that raised meat is the required way to feed
| people. It's not, obviously, and less so every day.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I'd argue that meat _should_ be the preferred method of
| feeding people given the nutrients in it.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Yep. It was the supply of cheap meat that drove demand.
| Before large scale animal husbandry, it was super
| expensive to butcher healthy animals, and comparatively
| cheap to keep them around for milk and cheese. Pigs and
| chickens are an exception because they eat everything and
| they thrive pretty easily.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The scale and necessity are not sidenotes - those are the
| substance of the problem. Killing 100 animals out of
| necessity? Fine. Killing 1 animal for more abstract-than-
| subsistence needs (connection with nature, culture, etc)?
| Still seems dramatically less bad than killing billions of
| animals mechanically and without necessity.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think the thing you are missing is the number of people
| in existence.
|
| I say that as a vegan.
| GoldenRacer wrote:
| Does factoring in population size really change things
| that much? 55 billion animals being killed in the US
| every year divided by the US population of 330 million is
| 167 animals killed per capita per year. So the average
| American is paying slaughter houses (somewhat indirectly)
| to kill an animal nearly every other day. That frequency
| doesn't seem a little excessive to you?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Just so we're clear, 45 billion of those "55 billion
| animals" are shellfish. Another 5 or so are fish.
|
| We don't kill anywhere _near_ that many in
| slaughterhouses every year.
|
| I'm merely pointing out that 100 animals killed for
| necessity would certainly not feed 8 billion people on
| the planet.
| CelestialTeapot wrote:
| There would be far less suffering if we all lived on a plant-
| based diet. As well it would help in the fight against climate
| change, reducing environmental impacts.
| LocalH wrote:
| That's not at all a given. What about people whose tongues
| reject most vegetables before the signal can even make it to
| the brain?
| knutzui wrote:
| I'm don't understand this sentence. What signal are you
| talking about and how do tongues reject vegetables?
| LocalH wrote:
| I'm referring to those for whom the initial response to
| the flavor of most vegetables is disgust. I'm talking
| about the signal between your taste buds and your brain,
| which like all signals the body uses to communicate, has
| a processing delay.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| You're kind of slow and thats okay , just like the animals
| you don't deserve pain either
| LocalH wrote:
| That sounds like quite the bad faith comment there. I
| will still refrain from downvoting or flagging you in the
| interest of impartiality.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Only if you pretend insects and rodents don't count as living
| beings.
| knutzui wrote:
| That's incorrect. A reduction in suffering is preferable
| even if it doesn't result in the absence of it.
| nradov wrote:
| Why is a reduction in suffering preferable? How do you
| even measure suffering? Are you certain that plants and
| fungi don't suffer? This all seems highly subjective.
| CelestialTeapot wrote:
| More than 50 billion animals (land and sea) are killed
| each year for food in the United States, alone. Farmed
| animals must be fed to bring them to slaughter. If there
| was a reduction in farmed animals being eaten for food,
| far less agricultural land would be needed to feed people
| directly. Yes, wild animals in farmed land still would be
| killed, but far fewer. Not having or understanding
| compassion for living creatures is not something I can
| help you with. Cheers.
| LocalH wrote:
| If it became technically possible to force all animals to
| eat a synthetic, fortified, vegetable-based diet even if
| they are carnivorous, would you endorse the idea?
|
| Humans constantly try to distance themselves from nature
| even though at the basest level, we are still unavoidably
| part of it, as are all biological organisms on Earth.
| nradov wrote:
| In the US at least we have sufficient agricultural land.
|
| Why do you think I need help? That seems highly
| presumptuous. Asking questions about the fundamental
| nature of suffering hardly implies a lack of compassion.
| Perhaps someone can help you learn how to avoid drawing
| illogical conclusions.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And then ripping their delicious burnt flesh of their bones
| with our teeth.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's delicious. Try preparing meat yourself
| without any seasoning. It's eadible but that's the best you
| can say about it. We have to do additional work to make it
| delicious.
| ambicapter wrote:
| What? I've eaten plenty of meat without seasoning before. I
| question your cooking procedures if it doesn't taste good
| (or maybe you just don't like meat, that's a possibility
| too).
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's possible that it's something about my tastebuds
| bacause I really can't relate to people saying meat
| tastes good. For me salt tastes good, pepper tastes good,
| rosmary tastes good. Without them meat is as appealing as
| anything vultures dine on.
|
| And even in well prepared meat the first bite is
| something I need to suffer through before I can start
| enjoying the meal.
|
| To me it tastes exactly what it is. A piece of animal
| that died. And I have no moral qualms. It just tastes bad
| to me.
| at-w wrote:
| Most things we eat are chosen because they taste good in
| combination with other things, and better than the sum of
| the individual ingredients eaten separately. Eating a
| stick of butter probably isn't appetizing, but neither
| would your examples of eating pure salt or unprocessed
| pepper unless you have particularly odd tastes.
| jker wrote:
| A medium rare New York strip is, to me, delicious, and it
| doesn't need anything, not even salt. I don't eat such
| things anymore, but still: delicious.
| realo wrote:
| Huh? A very high quality cut of beef, when well prepared,
| does not need any seasoning at all.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >Try preparing meat yourself without any seasoning
|
| that's how most people eat it, unless you consider salt a
| seasoning
|
| drowning food in hot sauce and ranch dressing is
| exclusively american cuisine
| diydsp wrote:
| There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year. And every year, 55 *
| 10^9 animals are killed (in the U.S.). That means at a
| frequency of 1.743kHz, life is extinguished, day and night.
| Just image a single wince of pain coming from getting punched
| unconscious. And then in the semi-hazy state, throat is slit as
| life grinds to halt, skin is removed. But it doesn't happen
| just once... it happens so often that if there was a single
| faint tick of clock each time, it would blur together into a
| high-pitched whine in the center of the most sensitive portion
| of hearing (between 1kHz and 4 kHz). 24 hours per day, every
| day of the year!
|
| dsp@diydsp:~/sim$ bc -l bc 1.07.1 Copyright 1991-1994, 1997,
| 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012-2017 Free Software
| Foundation, Inc. This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO
| WARRANTY. For details type `warranty'. 55 _10^9_ ( 3.17*10^-8)
| 1743.50000000000000000000
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| If you throw this script into your PATH, you can write:
| $ math '5510^9 (3.17*10^-8)' 1743.5000
|
| https://github.com/shawwn/scrap/blob/master/math
|
| It's a wrapper around bc, but it's one of my most-used
| scripts. Doing some quick math in the terminal without
| opening a repl is nice.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| What a macabre calculation, and as poetic as it is, so
| befitting its own passage in a Harlan Ellison novel, I feel
| nothing as I read it.
|
| I still like chops.
| puchatek wrote:
| It's not weird that you like the taste of meat. But being
| unable to empathize with the sentient animals that we kill
| so thoughtlessly, and at such a scale, even when you're
| confronted with that fact in this poetic yet concise
| fashion is more than a little callous.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Happy thanksgiving!
| la64710 wrote:
| https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/dissatisfied-with-
| yo...
|
| Veggies is good
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I like to drink tomato juice and pretend it's blood, and
| eat gumi bears and pretend they're little fetuses, to get
| all the blood sucking baby eating urges out of my system.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that has me laughing, so very "just after Halloween".
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Me too, but I only order lamb when at a sit-down restaurant
| where I can enjoy it and finish it all. And I default to
| chicken over red meat because cows are more complex
| creatures. Delicious though.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > I feel nothing as I read it.
|
| Honestly, it's a massive win for cultural progress that we
| have even made the suffering of people with a different
| skin color intelligible to most people.
|
| Intelligibility of the suffering of other species will
| probably take a considerably longer amount of time.
| sweetheart wrote:
| When people proudly proclaim that they simply do not care
| for the suffering of animals, I wonder if they realize
| that they sound like the millions of people who were on
| the wrong side of history.
|
| The circle of moral consideration in the Western world
| started generally with land-owning white men, then (still
| generally speaking) widened to include white men without
| land, then women, non-white people, etc. The circle of
| moral consideration is slowly starting to cover non-human
| animals, though it will take hundreds of years before
| they are truly protected.
|
| The folks who say they do not care about animals join the
| company of everyone who has historically opposed the
| widening of that circle, the people who stood against
| granting basic rights and basic consideration to those
| who enjoy them today.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| I'll agree with the thought of "The folks who say they do
| not care about animals join the company of everyone who
| has historically opposed the widening of that circle", I
| do benefit from the status quo.
|
| That being said, it is a huge proposition to proclaim
| you're on the right side of history, and that others who
| aren't should either reconsider or live to regret it.
| Especially when the change you champion will only happen
| when those that make money from meat no longer do. I'll
| sooner bet on the grass turning purple.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It has much more to do with people's consumption patterns
| and ethical norms than it does that people make money
| from meat.
|
| No matter how much money someone makes from owning a
| slaughterhouse, they can't make me eat something I don't
| want to eat.
| sweetheart wrote:
| > Especially when the change you champion will only
| happen when those that make money from meat no longer do.
|
| We can all think of a couple historical instances of
| radical social change which necessitated short-term
| economic sacrifices and paradigm shifts. Yet, the grass
| isn't purple.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| "If I didn't buy those slaves somebody else would. That's
| just the way the world works kid."
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I don't think it's so simple. I love animals and will
| sometimes go out of my way to rescue or assist an insect,
| but I also have an aggressive side and enjoy eating meat.
| Veganism makes perfect sense to me, but so does
| predation.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| So did tribal conflict and "mine against yours" on the
| basis of looks and skin-color. I don't see how this is
| contrary to my point.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What I mean is that I don't think conflict is due to an
| inability to appreciate suffering as your first post
| suggested. It's fully intelligible to most people and in
| some respects to other animals, but empathy is
| situational and selective. So I don't think
| intelligibility is the only factor.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If we weren't meant to eat animals they wouldn't be so darned
| tasty.
|
| The argument that animals suffer so we can eat them tells me
| that sentimentality has its limits.
| ben_w wrote:
| It is said, and I don't care to find out if this is correct,
| that those who have tasted human flesh say it is similar to
| pork.
|
| Humans definitely aren't meant to eat human flesh, regardless
| of the taste, thus your argument is invalid.
| mandarax8 wrote:
| I think he meant it from an evolutionary standpoint, if it
| wasn't good for us it would be so tasty. We're animals too
| so we inevitably taste similar.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| You can watch Jeffrey Dahmer documentaries and hear him say
| how it tastes.
| ben_w wrote:
| I literally wrote that I don't care to find out. The
| topic is revolting to me.
| sungam wrote:
| This is an incredibly effective - presumably accidental -
| clickbait headline by agweb!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why presumably accidental? The article is written in the same
| style. It's not a styleI care for, but the writer knew what
| they were doing.
| Havoc wrote:
| Surprised a single cig is enough. I would have thought you'd need
| something a little more chemically powerful frankly
| angry_octet wrote:
| You're not a current or former smoker to say that. Nicotine is
| incredibly powerful.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| If I may take a moment to appreciate the art of the headline:
|
| On one hand, this headline is so densely obscure, I had no idea
| what the article would be about until I started reading it.
|
| On the other, it is absolutely dazzling, in the truest,
| entrancingly disorienting sense of the word. The cocktail of
| eyebrow-raising lexical connotations it whips up is sublime.
| [deleted]
| mungoman2 wrote:
| Came here to comment on the headline but you a better job at
| it!
|
| Clickbait for sure, but it really delivered
| asdfman123 wrote:
| They had a little too much fun with this headline
| tomcam wrote:
| I mean, do you know what I'm willing to do for a Mountain Dew
| with real sugar?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Wow, that is how you turn a single paragraph of information and a
| single photo into a whole article! Repeat youself, write about
| what a quote is about to say, then zoom in on the same image and
| show it again!
| techtitan2000 wrote:
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Pretty macabre.
| goatingaround wrote:
| I just imagined Judas Priest as a goat shepherd. Shepherding his
| flock of influencers.
| eternalban wrote:
| "a wise man or a trained goat"
|
| This somewhat sums up a cynical view of mass movements in human
| history.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| For some reason, this article really resonated with me. Every
| time a group commits an atrocity against another, there's always
| someone in the abused group that facilitates the horror for a
| small payment or benefit. I read about it in the Holocaust and
| I'm would not be surprised if it happened in Rwanda, Cambodia and
| other places.
|
| To hear that it happens in the animal kingdom too kinda crushed
| me a little bit.
| raldi wrote:
| In the Netherlands, I hear, they have a term "first sheep across
| the bridge".
|
| Apparently if you bring a flock to a bridge, they all hesitate
| until one finally tentatively steps onto it, and then they all
| go.
|
| You can see the obvious analogies to first-mover human behavior.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| When I was a teen, my next door neighbor raised sheep and I
| helped with various tasks for pocket money and sheep are indeed
| sheep. The large gate could be wide open, but they wouldn't go
| through until you got one past the line, then the rest would
| follow.
| krylon wrote:
| At traffic lights, it's very common when one person starts
| crossing the street while the lights are still red, for others
| to follow immediately. It takes surprisingly much conscious
| effort to resist the instinct and look at the traffic lights
| first.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's not it.
|
| Sometimes this happens because people are on their phones or
| otherwise zoning out, and only realize it's safe to cross
| when somebody else starts doing it.
|
| But I think the big reason this happens is because, if
| someone else starts crossing the road, then it must be
| because either nobody is coming, or because the drivers on
| the road have already indicated their willingness to yield to
| the pedestrians. In the latter case, it makes sense to cross
| directly behind somebody else who is crossing, because a
| yielding driver provides a short window of opportunity for
| crossing safely.
|
| In general, watching somebody do something that you thought
| was risky tends to be a subconscious prompt at the thing was
| perhaps not as risky as you thought. It's a little more
| subtle than "animal brain bad, look at the lights you dummy".
| ectopod wrote:
| Or there is a car coming and it isn't slowing down but
| there is just enough time for me to nip across in front of
| it. Maybe this doesn't happen in countries with jaywalking
| laws, but it does happen here.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I was weirdly proud of when I got a jaywalking ticket in
| Edmonton, ca on a business trip.
|
| No cars visible, looked both ways, crossed.
|
| Suddenly 3 cops surround me.
|
| I didn't use the crossing.
|
| I just couldn't take it seriously in my mind.
|
| What a stupid law. But I'm in their country, acted
| respectful, paid the fine.
|
| But man.
|
| North America has ceded sovereignty of their streets
| fully, completely to the automobile.
| tom_ wrote:
| Is 1988 your birth year?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How many traffic laws and safety practices did the three
| cops break to surround and arrest you in the middle of
| the road? Oh, but that's their job. Not yours.
| lupire wrote:
| cwillu wrote:
| Wrong country.
| [deleted]
| smeyer wrote:
| There's also a benefit in visibility. Even if you fix
| everything else constant (same number of cars, at the same
| distance, etc.), it's safer to cross the street when
| someone else is already crossing than it is when no one
| else is crossing. It makes sense that someone being willing
| to cross at a red could push others over into deciding to
| cross.
| forinti wrote:
| At the cinema, when there are multiple exits, everyone goes
| through the door the first person went through.
| robnado wrote:
| Nowadays, these goats would be called influencers.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| I was gonna say, there's plenty of modern analogues in the
| human meatspace.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The term 'Judas goat' goat is also used in political
| organizing, albeit casually rather than technically. That's
| where I first heard of it.
| [deleted]
| astrea wrote:
| Does anyone actually listen to influencers?
| Havoc wrote:
| Absolutely - it's no coincidence that brands throw brand
| deals at them. It works better than classic ads if the ad is
| effectively narrated by someone you've got a parasocial
| relationship with
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| A lot of what is going on just looks, for instance, like
| "musicians talking about their tools" (selling guitar pedals)
| or "hikers talking about how they got the weight down to do a
| through hike" (selling fancy bags) or "how to bunny hop a
| mountain bike" (selling $6k bikes).
|
| I can feel its pull on me: especially around the bike, as I
| would like to be off the ground more but don't -really- wanna
| drop twice what I paid for my first car on one.
| kibwen wrote:
| The entire industry of cryptocurrency scams would evaporate
| without, for example, complicit scammers shilling dogecoin on
| Twitter. That's an influencer.
| lbriner wrote:
| Are you kidding? 1000s and 1000s of young people are
| completely enamoured with all types of fashion, make-up,
| gaming and fitness Influencers.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| They get tons of views but it's more difficult to know how
| much of that translates into sales, but this has long been
| a problem with advertising. There was recently an
| influencer who tried to sell her own line of shirts
| directly and went on an angry rant because of low sales
| despite having a large number of followers.
| the_af wrote:
| It depends on the actual definition of "influencer" (I mean,
| I certainly don't follow vapid TV or YouTube celebrities),
| but I do listen. In the niches I follow on YouTube, I
| certainly pay attention to the channels I enjoy and sometimes
| buy the products they recommend.
| alexnew wrote:
| Judas goats were also used on the Galapagos where they were used
| to attract the invasive wild goats on the island out in the open
| where they could be killed.
| https://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/killing-goats-galapagos/
| prettyeyes83 wrote:
| there's a nice podcast episode from radiolab about the goats on
| galapagos!
|
| https://radiolab.org/episodes/galapagos-2206
| dexwiz wrote:
| I remember listening to that and it really struck me how much
| a single species could change an environment. I wonder how
| many ecosystems we praise as natural are actually warped by
| human introduction of species in the last few thousand
| millennia.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The whole desertification of the middle east can be blamed
| on goat herding of nomadic farmers.
| zeristor wrote:
| There's the BBC Horizon programme from 2006 "The Woman Who Thinks
| Like a Cow" about Temple Grandin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00791tq
|
| Who went to great lengths to make it easier for Cows to be
| slaughtered, perhaps I missed something, it talks about her
| efforts to empathise with the cow, at what might disturb it as it
| is moved into the slaughter house.
|
| It just seemed quite jarring about being so empathetic to cows,
| yet making it easier to be slaughtered, a strange disconnect. I
| eat meat, and indeed spent summers on the family pig farm, but
| this documentary just seemed very strange, yet no I know of
| thought it was strange.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| People assume that empathy is something that nice people do. It
| isn't. It's just another tool. Back when I cared about liberal
| politics [0] one of the points I constantly made was that we
| needed to be sympathetic and understand conservative worries
| even if ultimately we didn't care. I had managed to get dozens
| of hard right people to consider ditching the GOP when
| attacking the party in a way that their base understood.
|
| [0] Having OWS raided in the middle of the night with
| flashbangs and killdozers made me seriously reconsider who you
| support politically. Thanks Obama!
| retrac wrote:
| I don't find it jarring or disconnected. In many worldviews,
| the most problematic aspect of meat is the pain and discomfort
| inflicted during the rearing and slaughter process. I've met
| hunters who will tell you they're far more at-ease with eating
| meat from an animal they killed in the wild (thus knowing it
| did not live in a cage and died instantly) than they are with
| factory farming.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "instantly"
|
| Modern hunt is all about instant killing, but traditional
| hunting techniques (ie prior to firearms) were all about
| exhausting the prey by chasing it on foot for hours.
|
| Probably still better than factory farming, but very
| stressful for the animal.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Other like-minded people are some of the former
| vegetarian/vegan run butcher shops [0]. Basic premise is they
| only wanted to eat meat if it was from somewhere with animal
| well-being and conservationism as a focus, and they came to
| the conclusion that the best way to do that was to source the
| meat themselves.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/dining/butchers-meat-
| vege...
| sweetheart wrote:
| > Basic premise is they only wanted to eat meat if it was
| from somewhere with animal well-being and conservationism
| as a focus
|
| When meat is being served, you know animal welfare is not
| being considered. One cannot claim to value the welfare of
| a being before killing it prematurely and unnecessarily.
| That is a simple fact.
|
| EDIT: I'd love if someone could reply and provide an
| analogous situation where we can safely say that we value
| someone's wellbeing before causing them fatal harm, outside
| of mercy killings.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Without defining welfare, you aren't really making a
| point.
|
| I'd argue the following:
|
| Imagine that tomorrow a new species pops out, they are
| technologically superior to humans in every way - they
| are generally more capable, and they completely dominate
| any attempt at rebellion we put up.
|
| Afterwards - they offer us a choice between two options:
|
| Option 1: They eliminate us entirely. We compete with
| resources with them, and they don't like it. They will
| hunt us down with not with malice - but something much
| worse: complete apathy. They will kill us on sight,
| destroy our environment, mindlessly slaughter us as they
| form the planet in the shape of their liking.
|
| Option 2: They happen to find us quite tasty. They will
| _still_ do the above, but they will also set aside
| preserves where they keep a large number of us fit and
| fed and generally allow us to do as we please. We can
| have children, hold ceremonies and holidays, continue to
| exist and live. The downside? Every now and then they
| will harvest a fair number of us to eat - because they
| find us quite tasty.
|
| Which option would you take?
|
| Because frankly - I might well choose options number 2.
|
| Further - I'd suggest quite strongly that this is the set
| of options humans have currently given to basically every
| large animal that our habitat overlaps with (and that's
| most of them). We are _rapidly_ exterminating basically
| every species that competes for resources with us.
|
| If we stop eating cows - there aren't going to be many
| cows left. Full stop. Ex: Between the 1500s and the late
| 1800s, we dropped the total number of wild bison in the
| US from >30million to ~400. 4 fucking hundred. Today
| we're "preserving" them, so the number is back to around
| 500,000. Of those 500,000 - only about 11,000 are "wild"
| in any sense of the word, and most exist in national
| parks.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Option 2 isn't exactly reflective of how most animals are
| kept. If you were rewrite it to have similar conditions,
| it would be a far less rosy picture of rape, young being
| taken away at birth (because they and our milk is
| delicious to aliens), hands being docked at birth so
| humans don't cause trouble/start fights, etc. Not exactly
| a fun picture I would want to opt descendants into.
|
| It also ignores that, in your parallel, we are the
| aliens. The aliens could make an option 3:: don't eat
| humans. And all they lose is something they find tasty.
| sweetheart wrote:
| The fact that some people need to have it explained to
| them that just because you _could_ cause someone more
| harm doesn't justify causing them a lesser amount of harm
| is just mind blowing.
| sweetheart wrote:
| You are more than capable of figuring out why the
| scenario you laid out has very little, if anything, to do
| with how we treat animals. I have responded the comment
| you just wrote _literally_ hundreds of times. I am so
| tired of it. You can figure it out, you seem smart.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I think this is a matter of having different values. One
| can easily hold animal life at a lower value than their
| own dietary preferences and cultural practices, while
| also wanting to minimize the animal suffering involved.
| In fact some religions command particular practices
| around slaughter that are intended to be a quick as
| possible.
|
| You could come up with plenty of analogies. Self defense
| is an easy first place to look. You can hold the value
| the health and wellbeing of all other people as equal to
| your own right up until the point that they directly
| threaten you with fatal harm.
| sweetheart wrote:
| > Self defense is an easy first place to look.
|
| There are some extremely relevant and notable moral
| differences between someone defending their own life from
| a threat, and raising a lamb in a cage so small that it
| cannot turn around, forcing it to drink it's own urine in
| a desperate attempt to recycle the little iron it has in
| it's system (gotta keep the meat anemic and tender!),
| before stunning it with a bolt gun and slitting it's
| throat. All because you enjoy the taste.
|
| It is not a case of having different values. It is a case
| of being socialized from a young age to disregard the
| wellbeing of certain animals. The values are
| fundamentally the same.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| You're arguing against a stew man. I responded to a
| prompt about cases where one might make an argument about
| not causing suffering up until the point of taking lethal
| action with respect to people.
|
| In fact I was making a case for considering animal
| welfare as a meat eater.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Plenty of things are a matter of having different values.
| Eating meat, going to church, drinking alcohol, owning
| slaves, stealing from each other, killing, making idols
| of things in heaven. Some of these, despite being
| technically allowed by religious customs (like how the
| Quran sets better conditions for slaves than what they
| generally saw at the time, and even encourages their
| release, but still allows for the practice) are bad
| despite the religious institution having previously been
| an improvement. And the others, like making idols,
| doesn't really matter if you're outside the religion.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm merely using religious values as an example for why
| someone might eat meat but also be concerned with animal
| welfare, and that there exist worldviews where the two
| are compatible.
|
| For myself I'm content in asserting that animals are not
| human and there's no reason to afford them the same
| rights as humans. If I assume that I have the same
| faculties for reason but need to come to a conclusion
| behind a veil of ignorance, I would still be ok with a
| world in which people eat some meat.
| Dove wrote:
| The thing is, the death of the cow _is_ necessary. It is
| necessary for the life of the cow. The alternative is not
| for the cow to go on living -- feeding and protecting and
| caring for cows costs money! -- the alternative is for
| the cow to have never been born. The death of the cow and
| its sale as meat is how it pays its keep. It is why the
| cow has a life at all.
|
| Is that a horrible deal? Not even all humans think so.
| You might hear, for example, a soldier say that his job
| is to die for his country. Mind you, he doesn't sign up
| to die as a certainty -- it's probabilistic, and there is
| a moral difference there. But plenty have said, at the
| end of the day, that their death is their job. And been
| okay with that.
|
| Now, humans, when they agree to die, like to die for big,
| noble causes. Something bigger than themselves. Religion!
| Politics! Or even something as small as a family. It has
| sometimes seemed tragic to me to consider the breeding
| animal: she will have generation after generation of
| children, and they will all die young. This would indeed
| be an unbearable situation for a human -- but for an
| animal? They don't crave the sort of impact on history
| that humans do. They don't think about the future. They
| don't think about death. They are creatures of the
| present and of comfort. So it seems to me that swapping a
| human in for a cow or a rabbit or a chicken in a "What
| would you die for?" question is unrealistically
| anthropomorphic.
|
| To care for a human's well-being _does_ mean you
| guarantee the human has a legacy, a place in history. To
| care for a cow 's... I'm really not convinced cows care
| about that. Could you ask a cow, "Would you rather have a
| stressful life in the wild, or a peaceful life on a
| ranch, given that the latter might be shorter?" I don't
| think a cow could even process that question. I think it
| wants to live comfortably today; I'm not convinced it has
| any concept of tomorrow at all.
|
| But it _could_ live longer?
|
| It _could_ , but someone has to pay for it. The cow on
| its own effort, paying its own way in the wild, lives a
| short and hard life. And the cow at a ranch is still
| paying its own way -- just in the form of meat -- and it
| gets a lot for it, between temperature controlled
| environments and food and treats and medical care. The
| cow as a _pet_ , could live in that same human supported
| environment for a long time, and perhaps pays its way in
| love. Or as a religious symbol or something. That does
| happen. But there are a limited number of such jobs.
| Humans only need so many pet cows.
|
| Does every cow deserve to be a pet?
|
| I think this is really the crux of the philosophical
| difference: do you _have_ to do everything for others
| that you _can_? I myself think that to answer that
| question in the affirmative is naive and hellish -- that
| questions of obligation and love and compassion are a lot
| more complex than that. But that is beyond the scope of
| this comment.
|
| I, myself, think there is absolutely nothing wrong with
| cows on ranches living lives of relative happiness and
| abundance, and in the end paying their way in meat. I
| think that's fair. I think the cows are happy. I think
| they're certainly better off than if the humans weren't
| involved. I think it's _completely_ _obvious_ that the
| ranchers care for them, perhaps even love them, and I see
| nothing wrong or contradictory about the entire
| situation.
|
| And to be terribly blunt -- I think being horrified at
| the situation has much more to do with the human than it
| does with the cow. Vegans have a reputation as
| obnoxiously performatively moral. Trying too hard to look
| better than others, the perspective having more to do
| with self-interest than with compassion. I don't know if
| that's true in every case, but I do know that people who
| are closest to _actual_ _barnyard_ _animals_ don 't have
| a problem with the situation. I can relate. I am a city
| girl, and I used to worry about whether slaughtering
| chickens was fair to them -- until I met one. At which
| point I immediately said, "Oh, I get it -- you're food."
|
| Maybe not everyone will feel that way. But I do think a
| lot of the vegan litany of concerns about animal cruelty
| fade pretty hard when you talk to a farmer about why
| things are that way. And I do think a lot of the issues
| turn on an anthropormiphism that isn't realistic, and
| that goes away when you observe the animals going through
| their lives. Does that cover all of the issues and
| differences? Probably not, but I think it covers the most
| driving ones.
|
| It goes the other way, too. People who are close to
| animal death -- either because they raise animals or
| because they hunt them -- even if they are comfortable
| with eating meat, tend to regard that animal life and
| sacrifice as a sacred thing. City folks don't care one
| way or another about throwing out meat, whereas country
| folks might opine, "it is a sin to waste".
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say with that is that there's
| more than one way of expressing the sentiment that life
| is sacred.
|
| A lot of the vegan objection to farm life is that farms
| are cruel. And to be sure, some are. I think you could
| find common cause with a lot of non-vegans, if you wanted
| to improve conditions either through law or education or
| certification or some other means. But I also think this
| is beside the issue, as farms are not _necessarily_
| cruel, and some very plainly aren 't cruel at all. I
| don't think it is fair to say that those who eat meat
| necessarily don't regard animal welfare -- I think it is
| just that they see it and express it differently than you
| do. To me, well-cared-for farm animals are a lovely
| thing, I find the fact that they are given life to be a
| blessing and a goodness in the world, and I don't find
| the death in the bargain to be unfair or cruel -- on the
| contrary, I think an animal's contributing to human
| thriving is a much nobler meaning in life than almost any
| animal could hope for. To me, the perspective that says
| it is better not to live than to live and die seems very
| hollow, and the perspective that says all human energy is
| obligated to go into making animals pets seems backwards
| and devoid of any sense of proportion. I think we have
| better things to do, and that animals helping us do those
| things is ennobling for everyone.
|
| Anyway. Your mileage may vary. I'm sure it does. But
| perhaps that helps provide some perspective.
| retrac wrote:
| The same moral paradox exists elsewhere. Consider prisons
| and capital punishment. Can a person believe in capital
| punishment while simultaneously believing condemned
| prisoners still have certain rights and that prisons
| should be humane places, even on death row? Even
| countries that have executions do not usually sanction
| the physical torture of prisoners condemned to death, in
| large part because such cruelty is repugnant and
| unnecessary. (Some may say capital punishment would count
| as repugnant and unnecessary too, of course. But the
| point stands.)
| michael1999 wrote:
| Dr Grandin is autistic. That jarring sense is you being normal.
| Normal people who feel empathy for something have a hard time
| killing it.
|
| This plays out in ugly ways in that business -- they either
| hire psychos who enjoy being cruel _because_ then know that the
| animals suffer, or the people doing the work convince
| themselves that the animals are too "dumb" to understand what's
| happening, and are incapable of suffering. Grandin complains
| that workers often undo her changes after the fact (e.g.
| removing a piece of metal that blocks a view of the killing
| bolt) because they don't understand that the changes aren't to
| make _their_ jobs easier, and the workers are either
| constitutionally incapable of understanding how those changes
| serve the cows, or that the cows deserve any consideration at
| all.
|
| Any fisherman will tell you that fish can't suffer.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How do you know they're normal?
|
| "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -Hunter S.
| Thompson
| zasdffaa wrote:
| She was trying IIRC to prevent them suffering nearly so much
| before slaughter which seems like a better thing.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| She's also a proponent of mechanically-separated meat ("pink
| slime") -- the animal was killed, so isn't it more respectful
| to use as much of it as possible?
|
| Related aside: I used to raise beef cattle, and the amount of
| products cow "stuff"/byproducts goes into is amazing. There's
| nearly nothing simply thrown out (except blood, I suppose).
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Blood is used for blood meal, which is used as a
| fertilizer.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Great point! I forgot about that.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| Was pretty sure that blood is used for something, but still
| had to websearch for it in spite of working at a
| slaughterhouse. Linked the result (0).
|
| Killing itself is actually a very interesting process. Cow
| is led through a series of corridors to a single-cow pen
| resembling their feeding spots in a cowshed. It puts it's
| head trough a familiar U-shaped opening (or has to be
| pushed a little by remotely controllable hind side
| wall/gate). There it get's calmed down by a slaughterman
| with a license to kill. He then grabs a big, ceiling
| mounted, pneumatic bolt gun and skillfully shoots the cow
| in a specific spot on the forehead (bolt retracts after the
| shot). This stuns the cow and it literally falls to the
| ground with it's legs straightened out(1).
|
| After stunning, the whole single pen rotates on the back-
| front (in relation to cow position) axis, by 90 degrees.
| What was the side wall becomes floor and what was the floor
| becomes the wall (it's L-shaped). There the difficult part
| starts. A man in the other room has only seconds to tie a
| chain to a hind leg and lift the cow before the cow starts
| kicking. The smoother the process, the more time there is.
| Halfway trough the lifting it is paused to stab the cow in
| the main artery, so the cow can momentarily bleed out and
| as a consequence die.
|
| This other room is a place of carnage with floor covered in
| blood, most of it flowing trough floor grates into big
| tanks on the floor below. It would be pretty problematic to
| have the cow aproach by itself if there was only one room
| with floor covered in blood. Cows still smell what's
| happening but this L-shaped flipper helps keep a
| resemblance of normality.
|
| 0: https://www.theearthawards.org/red-recycling-how-
| abattoirs-p...
|
| 1: There is a phrase in Polish "Wyciagnac kopyta" meaning
| "to die", which literally means "to straighten out one's
| hooves". Used mostly in books or by older people. I saw it
| used in books for many years before I witnessed it in
| reality at work. I guess the people of the past were much
| more aware of where the meat comes from.
| elil17 wrote:
| Is there anyone who thinks we shouldn't use the entire
| animal if we do kill it? As I understood it, most of the
| backlash against "pink slime" (lean finely textured beef)*
| came from the misconception that it was artificial or low
| quality. In reality, it's just had all the fat removed and
| been ground particularly fine.
|
| *mechanically separated meat is something different,
| composed primarily of non-meat carcass material.
| Mechanically separated beef is not allowed for human
| consumption due to the risk of made cow disease.
| Mechanically separated pork is still part of hot dogs and
| similar meat products.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| My point was about suffering + killing of the animal.
| What happens after was irrelevant. 'pink slime' was
| irrelevant, and 'disrespectful' was a absurd term. But
| they move attention from the issue of suffering +
| killing.
|
| FTR once you killed an animal it makes no sense not to
| use it fully so I agree with you - but that wasn't my
| point, had nothing to do with it.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| No, they don't. They highlight the issue of killing. The
| animal is being killed, so it makes moral and practical
| sense to exploit the carcass as much as possible.
|
| I'm not sure why this is hard to grasp, unless your
| entire premise is that killing animals for human use is
| innately immoral and unacceptable. To that, I simply
| disagree.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Using the carcass 100% or 0% after death will not affect
| by a jot the fact the animal was killed, nor erase in the
| slightest any suffering it went through. If an animal
| died in agony then how the carcass was used does not
| erase any of that suffering. That's my point you seem
| unable to grasp.
|
| FYI I do not necessarily see killing an animal as wrong,
| though you want me to as that would fit me into a neat
| cliche of vegan or hippy or whatever you can file me away
| under (or so ISTM). People aren't necessarily that
| simple.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Who says there was terrible suffering? Modern
| slaughterhouses minimize this possibility (Grandin's
| legacy), and 'bespoke' slaughtering effectively
| eliminates it in my direct experience. One day it's
| munching away on some sweet feed and then BANG
| cow/pig/etc. heaven.
|
| The same is true with ethical hunting -- I'd far rather
| take a well-constructed bullet to the boiler room and
| quickly fade out than have predators ripping me up while
| I'm still alive.
|
| The point of fully exploiting the carcass is recognizing
| that a life was taken, regardless of suffering, and
| choosing to make as much use of it as possible. Nothing
| I've written is intended to minimize suffering or other
| inhumane treatment.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| > Who says there was terrible suffering?
|
| jesus. Nobody. I said 'if'
|
| > Modern slaughterhouses minimize this possibility
| (Grandin's legacy),
|
| EXACTLY MY POINT IN THE ORIGINAL POST!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33657818
|
| > -- I'd far rather take a well-constructed bullet to the
| boiler room and quickly fade out than
|
| I'd want the same.
|
| > The point of fully exploiting the carcass is
| recognizing that a life was taken, regardless of
| suffering, and choosing to make as much use of it as
| possible
|
| While economically that makes sense, that is a
| money/efficiency issue not an ethical one. So I agree
| fiscally but say that has no ethical bearing.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| > She's also a proponent of mechanically-separated meat
|
| how is that relevant?
|
| > the animal was killed, so isn't it more respectful to use
| as much of it as possible
|
| 'respectful' - using that word about an animal you've
| killed is self-deceit. The animal is dead, and when it was
| alive it had no concept of 'respect'. Deluded talk.
|
| I also don't get the point of your related aside. My post
| was about animal suffering, not use of the carcass so it
| looks like you're changing the subject.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I'm not sure I can adequately express how I feel about
| morally exploiting animals (because that's what it is:
| beef cattle exist to be slaughtered and their bodies
| exploited, that is their entire purpose and why they
| exist) to someone who at least appears to be vegan.
|
| Similarly, as a hunter what I consider "respectful" you
| appear to consider "deluded." Arguing over that seems
| like arguing over religion and isn't something I'm
| interested in doing today. Have a great Friday!
| late2part wrote:
| Apophasis much?
| lupire wrote:
| A cow has no fear of of death, only of suffering.
| [deleted]
| itronitron wrote:
| effective altruism?
| ransom1538 wrote:
| No joke. I am framing this: https://fj-corp-pub.s3.us-
| east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/i...
| blockinator wrote:
| > A living cow, pig, or sheep entered the killing floor on top of
| the slaughterhouse and met with a sledgehammer or captive-bolt,
| and descended each floor in bits of appreciating value, i.e.,
| eventually exiting the bottom floor as packaged bacon or a side
| of ribs.
|
| regarding the bacon - is that really correct? I thought bacon-
| making was a longer, more involved process that would probably
| have been done off-site (brining,curing,smoking,etc).
| voxic11 wrote:
| Its involved but seems like it can be done pretty quickly
| https://nassaufoods.com/resources/basic-manufacturing-of-bac...
| swamp40 wrote:
| I think there is a bit of poetic license there.
| paunchy wrote:
| It's called pipelining. If you have 5 floors of space to work
| with, there's no reason you couldn't run a 48 or 72 hour bacon-
| making process on a portion of the pork running through the
| facility.
| Infernal wrote:
| I believe bacon just describes the cut. In my area of the US,
| you can buy a package of uncured bacon right alongside the
| usual cured varieties. I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine
| the slaughterhouses described here wouldn't be doing any
| processing outside of the slaughtering, butchering, and
| packing.
| peteradio wrote:
| FYI, the cut is pork belly. Uncured bacon is still processed
| in roughly the same manner as cured bacon but without direct
| use of nitrates. It is dubious to call it uncured however.
| songeater wrote:
| a reason why this is necessary (and cited in TFA why sheep in
| particular needed this):
|
| https://nypost.com/2022/11/17/sheep-filmed-walking-in-circle...
| gumby wrote:
| You can see this if you watch the huge mobs of sheep being
| moved in Australia: if one of them trips, the one behind will
| also jump when it gets to the same point, and the next one will
| do the same, until one of them fails to notice and it stops. So
| you look across and see a small standing wave spontaneously
| develop in the flock, that then eventually spontaneously damps.
| sam1r wrote:
| Wow. This truly cannot be connected, but so glad you posted
| this.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "It strains credulity to envision the surreal parade of a lone
| goat leading sheep across a meatpacking facility, coaxing the
| flock up concrete ramps" What kind of reality-detached schoolwork
| essay writing is this? No, it doesn't. Anyone who's actually
| lived with farm animals, especially sheep, will go "yeah, that's
| how sheep work? Why the literary pretentiousnes, whose pants are
| you trying to get in?"
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Sheep don't wear pants!
| [deleted]
| neilv wrote:
| For anyone who doesn't know, Judas was the betrayer symbol maybe
| most familiar to US people then:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot
|
| Another facet of this reference is that Jesus was called "the
| Good Shepherd", and there were analogies of protecting and
| leading his flock in a caring and benevolent way, rescuing a lamb
| who was lost, etc.:
|
| https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=good+shepherd&iax=images&ia=...
|
| Judas, an apostle (kind of an apprentice) of the Good Shepherd,
| when a slaughterhouse goat leading literal sheep to their deaths,
| sounds like a very Bad Shepherd.
| zeristor wrote:
| Erm, I hate to break it to you.
|
| Shepherds work in the life stock industry, a Shepherd that
| doesn't bring sheep to slaughter is eventually going to have
| too many sheep.
| lurquer wrote:
| Not always.
|
| Some flocks are for wool.
| Retric wrote:
| Generally the same sheep is used for wool and slaughtered
| for meat. Old sheep produce subpar wool, just like old
| humans hair is thinner etc. You also don't want to keep
| feeding an animal that's likely to die before you can
| harvest the wool.
|
| Warning video at bottom of page is graphic:
| https://www.woolfacts.com/wool-and-animal-
| welfare/slaughterh...
| neilv wrote:
| Sunday School didn't delve into that. :)
| [deleted]
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Heh:
|
| > Assembly ship, also known as a Judas goat, a bomber aircraft
| used by the U.S. Air Force in World War II to lead formations.
|
| Imagine being the pilot. Funny name.
|
| (I tried pasting the link too, but apparently the back button
| no longer remembers input text on iPad. If only there was a
| kill buffer. Regardless, it's via the bottom of that page ->
| Judas goat -> disambiguation.)
| neilv wrote:
| This had 3-4 upvotes quickly, then got to -1. It's about the
| meaning of the name, and I thought in the same vein as the
| article.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Judas was the betrayer symbol maybe most familiar to US
| people then:
|
| Probably still so now. Judas is the betrayer par excellence in
| American culture.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even more than Benedict Arnold, I'd say. And certainly Judas
| is more well-known world-wide (c.f. Dante).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Thought it would be Benedict Arnold for the US. Is Judas not
| considered a betrayer in Christian communities outside the
| US? Seems weird to connect Judas uniquely to American
| culture.
| neilv wrote:
| I have some idea of the US where and when the original
| article is talking about, but can't speak of elsewhere.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Not sure where you read the "unique" statement in my
| comment, but it was never meant to be implied.
|
| American culture is very Christian influenced, even now.
|
| e: I would be curious if the name "Judas" or its equivalent
| is a common synonym for traitor outside of english,
| however.
| gpderetta wrote:
| It is in Italian.
| ben_w wrote:
| I still find it weird that his story arc made it past the
| editors, such as they were, and I'm not sure if I mean the
| people who decided what was/wasn't canon back in the day
| and/or the English translators from King James edition
| onwards.
|
| It's a massive plot hole in the NT, that a person whose
| mission can only be fulfilled by a death/resurrection cycle
| (to the extent of making sure none of his other allies
| prevented the death, nor making even a cursory attempt at
| defence in either of the two trials) would regard Judas as a
| betrayer.
|
| And yet, he is named as such even before the deed. Although,
| looking at this text, I assume a wild mistranslation happened
| somewhere and that the original word which became "betray"
| had a much more general sense of causing harm rather than
| violating trust or confidence:
|
| > After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into
| him. Jesus said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to
| do."
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It probably made it past the "editors" because the Judas
| betrayal actually happened (Christ myth theories aside),
| whereas the death/resurrection cycle... not so much.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Not much of a plot hole. Judas betrayed for greed. He
| fulfilled the resurrection through his evil, which does not
| make him good. In any random Hollywood movie, the villain
| would not be redeemed by accidentally helping the hero in
| the course of their schemes.
| sam36 wrote:
| Perhaps I am just dumb... but I'm not following anything
| you are saying. If Christ had to die to be a sacrifice, how
| is someone turning him in make it a "plot hole"?? Who else
| would it occur, just by chance?
| ben_w wrote:
| The problem isn't that Judas turned him in, it's that
| this is somehow a bad thing.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| The fulfillment of the process wasn't bad, but Judas was.
| It's not like he was in on the whole plan.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| By your logic, the predator in To Catch A Predator is not
| doing a bad thing.
| [deleted]
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