[HN Gopher] Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be ...
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Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning
again
Author : pepys
Score : 131 points
Date : 2025-01-05 03:28 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| https://archive.ph/AUxP6
| bobxmax wrote:
| > Tahlequah is using much of her energy to cling to the dead
| calf, which weighs about 300 pounds, and she is unable to forage
| for food, scientists said during a news briefing on Thursday.
| They said that her closely knit pod was supporting her. Other
| female orcas, especially her sister, have been observed to be
| consistently at her side.
|
| Utterly tragic. It's also singularly evil the devastation humans
| have brought to some of the hyperintelligent species on the
| planet.
| codeproject wrote:
| can't agree more !!!
| cloverich wrote:
| I always have mixed feelings about this. It's sad. But how is
| her pod supporting her exactly? Are they bringing her food? If
| so is that food the dead offspring of other animals? I feel
| these kinds of stories often have a kind of selective empathy
| for the focused animal. Ultimately nature is extraordinarily
| cruel absent humans; imo humans are the only hope for something
| better, if such a thing even makes sense.
| foota wrote:
| I'm not a vegetarian etc., but you could argue that humans
| are both the only hope for something different, but also the
| only species capable of a particular sort of cruelty that
| comes from the society we live in for animals and other
| people.
|
| That is, animals may kill to eat, but humans slaughter
| animals to get tastier/more convenient/etc., food.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Not so fast:
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-killer-
| wha...
| bmitc wrote:
| The shark is often killed already prior to the liver
| being eaten. If it isn't, then it would certainly die
| very soon after. The shark liver is one of the most
| calorie dense things in the animal kingdom and accounts
| for a quarter of the shark's weight. Orcas eat it because
| it's fairly easy for them to kill sharks and the calorie
| intake. Orcas are much bigger, faster, stronger, and
| smarter than sharks. They do it for survival.
|
| Not to mention that the rest of the shark is perfectly
| recycled by the ecosystem.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I've never heard of anyone eating live cow. And if I go
| shoot a cow and walk away, all parts will be perfectly
| recycled by the ecosystem.
|
| I don't really understand how what you said relates to
| taste, convenience, or cruelty.
| bmitc wrote:
| What options does an orca have? How is it cruel that they
| eat a shark? Have you ever even seen the cow, chicken,
| pig, etc. farms that are in use today? It's not like
| these animals are living in fairy-tale meadows all their
| life before they're killed.
|
| And no, if everyone ate cows that way, they would not be
| perfectly recycled by the ecosystem. These out of context
| arguments are never useful because they sideline the
| facts, the scale and population of humans being the
| relevant ones here.
| bmitc wrote:
| > imo humans are the only hope for something better, if such
| a thing even makes sense.
|
| Humans are the number one cause of environmental destruction
| and animal and plant suffering on Earth that is completely
| out of whack with what it takes for humans to live. All of
| the "hope for something better" you refer to are for humans
| to solve less than 1% that we have ourselves caused in the
| first place.
| tw04 wrote:
| And yet nature has historically found balance. Humans, on a
| large scale, seem incapable of doing the same. At this point
| humans have become a perpetual extinction event with no end
| in sight.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Humans might accelerate changes, but everything in nature
| is always in flux. Even without humans, there is no reason
| a cosmic or terrestrial event can't change the way things
| are, or an insect plague, or a virus or bacteria, etc.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I've recently taken up hunting, mostly because my rural
| family prioritizes it.
|
| The natural world is full of unimaginable cruelty. Wolves
| will take down young deer and eat them alive while parents
| watch. Bears will pin down whatever they can catch and who
| cares if it is alive. On and on, the amount of bloodshed
| required to support an omnivore/carnivore is simply bananas.
| Killer whales are hyper-intelligent aquatic nightmares, imho,
| that thankfully have not decided to eat humans.
|
| We, humans, made the following bargain with nature, at least
| until recently: We will drive away the predators that keep
| you in constant alert and savage your children, and in
| exchange we will determine how and when you die (quickly, but
| perhaps also fearfully).
|
| I agree - we can carefully manage the wilderness for our own
| benefit, and that may take away the randomized killings. But
| there is _no_ version of a carnivore or meat-eating omnivore
| that does not involve killing and savagery and disregard for
| the life that has been reduced to just a link in the grass-
| to-meat or plankton-to-meat foodchain.
|
| I've come to terms with that and continue to eat meat.
| Cpoll wrote:
| > We will drive away the predators that keep you in
| constant alert and savage your children, and in exchange we
| will determine how and when you die (quickly, but perhaps
| also fearfully).
|
| Maybe once in the past, or in places that still graze their
| animals. I don't think the average factory farm situation
| can be framed as mutually beneficial for the animals.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I interpreted that as being about deer more so than
| livestock. If humans didn't harvest deer to manage the
| population, there would be mass starvation deaths every
| winter.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| And wasting disease - that's not a pretty way to go.
| AnonHP wrote:
| > But there is _no_ version of a carnivore or meat-eating
| omnivore that does not involve killing and savagery
|
| Absolute statements are not useful in this context.
| Vultures are obligate scavengers who eat the flesh of
| already dead animals as a practice. The dead animal could
| be due to death from natural causes (diseases, old age,
| injury, poisoning, starvation) or hunting by other animals.
| So there are some versions.
|
| Also, as a couple of examples, the animal world is not one
| that has consent to sexual intercourse or empathy in
| killing an offspring who's not their own. So your (or our)
| morals cannot be absolute for one purpose (killing an
| animal to eat the flesh) while being considerate for other
| aspects. In other words, we don't gain much by pointing to
| the non-human world as a justification or excuse for our
| actions.
| j_bum wrote:
| Great counterpoint, re: vultures.
|
| But, life on earth evolved with predators in the mix. I'd
| be curious to know what life would look like without the
| presence of predators during evolution. Or, which set of
| life would be more evolutionarily successful: creatures
| from evolution w/ predators vs. creatures evolution w/o
| predators. Sounds like a great topic for Primer [0].
|
| Last, to push back, I don't think the parent comment was
| using the brutality of nature as an _excuse_ for their
| actions. They said it helped them understand /come to
| terms with their hunting behavior, of which is totally
| natural.
|
| [0] https://youtube.com/@primerblobs?si=-bsFlBllNDvEfY-g
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Focusing on edge cases doesn't change the overall
| tendency of nature being savage and cruel. Even
| herbivores like cows or horses will sometimes eat small
| animals given the chance. Even the humble mold, fungus,
| and bacteria will happily eat you alive given the chance.
|
| Surviving in nature is outcompeting others, regardless of
| how fair it seems to our current culture.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _empathy in killing an offspring who's not their own_
|
| As well as their own: "numerous studies support the
| correlation between postpartum depression (PPD) and lack
| of social support or indicators of possible infant health
| and development problems. PPD may be an adaptation that
| informs mothers that they are suffering or have suffered
| a fitness cost, which motivates them to reduce or
| eliminate investment in offspring under certain
| circumstances, and that may help them negotiate greater
| levels of investment from other [1].
|
| More broadly, "the analytical rumination (AR) hypothesis
| proposes that depression is an adaptation that evolved as
| a response to complex problems and whose function is to
| minimize disruption of rumination and sustain analysis of
| complex problems" [2].
|
| [1] https://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/documents/316/Hagen_
| 1999_Th...
|
| [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2734449/
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Interpret my statement as a contrast to the disconnect
| the usual person has from bloodshed and killing, vs one
| who experiences it first hand or is aware of it.
|
| Not to justify humans eating meat or killing, just to say
| "wow, there's a lot of it". That's the stage I'm at.
|
| I thought that would be obvious when I went on to talk
| about how things are "better" because we kill them
| quickly vs wolves who disregard the feelings of their
| food, which I think is a good thing. Humans attempt (for
| the most part), to inflict minimal suffering when
| killing. We probably also drive off predators. We also
| try to abstain from killing young animals (at least
| before industrialized farming).
|
| One can care about the anthropomorphized "feelings" of
| animals whether or not they are subject to any of our
| "morals".
| jongjong wrote:
| Oddly enough, I started thinking more like this.
|
| I think it's because I've felt discriminated against myself
| and thinking about ways in which I myself discriminate
| against certain animals such as cows, pigs and chickens helps
| me to put it into perspective.
|
| That said, my moral framework is consistent because it's
| based on intelligence. I will not eat dolphin or killer
| whale.
|
| Among humans, I often find myself tolerating intelligent
| jerks, for the same reason.
|
| I started penalizing for evil more strongly in recent years
| though. Before that, I subconsciously assumed that there was
| an inverse correlation between intelligence and evil, but it
| has come to my awareness that it's not the case. Reality is
| that, as intelligence goes up, evil, if present, gets better
| at hiding.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Yes, it made me think about animals panicking so much before
| slaughter that they often have heart attacks. And dairy cows who
| have their babies slaughtered who cry for weeks. Maybe these are
| apocryphal stories, but we are very much trained to believe we
| shouldn't anthropomorphise animals. I hope that we are able to
| grow meat in a way without suffering as soon as possible.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| The scientist M. Temple Grandin is known for her great
| contributions in the field of mitigating pre-slaughter animal
| panic.
|
| She is autistic. Her methodology included walking the chutes
| used to direct cattle to slaughter and working out in great
| detaiL mods that would reduce their stress. I've heard her
| interviewed a few times. She's extraordinary.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| [flagged]
| xp84 wrote:
| [flagged]
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Societies have the ethics they can afford to have. Lions
| aren't really in a position to do anything else. I'm not
| vegan but...I get it.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Lions are quite dumb, Humans are very smart and can be
| vegan or vegetarian because of civilization and economic
| specialization.
|
| Unrelatedly, elephants are quite a bit smarter than lions
| and herbivorous, as are many primates!
| mulmen wrote:
| Orcas are considered to be very intelligent but they hunt
| and kill for sport.
| kacesensitive wrote:
| The intelligence gap between lion and orca is much
| slimmer than orca and human.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Have you met the average person? I would highly contest
| this claim.
|
| Let an average person alone in nature and they'll starve
| within a month
| mulmen wrote:
| That's longer than an Orca will live in a Wal Mart.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If we're swapping biomes I think that the naked human
| would starve in the open ocean in three days. If he
| didn't drown in three hours.
| mulmen wrote:
| Open ocean sure but I can see orcas from my house. The
| average person is still going to know to swim to land and
| forage for food, even if they fail. But orcas won't have
| the first idea how to navigate self checkout.
|
| Why is the human naked? Does the Orca get pants?
|
| What are we talking about?
| dotancohen wrote:
| The Orca gets pants, but as the setting is Walmart his
| crack must still be visible.
| kacesensitive wrote:
| I've seen plenty of orcas in Walmart
| b5n wrote:
| Do you and a lion possess the same degree of executive
| function?
|
| Plant based diets are:
|
| - more affordable
|
| - better for the environment
|
| - healthier
|
| - avoid/reduce cruelty (livestock and human)
|
| If you want to eat meat, fine, but the comment you
| replied to is innocuous and not "guilt-tripping" anyone.
| em-bee wrote:
| on a global scale more affordable may be true.
| unfortunately on an individual level in many places it is
| not. where i am meat is cheaper than the nuts and other
| vegetables needed to replace it, and those here that
| can't even afford meat from time to time end up with a
| rather poor diet.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| There's no such thing as "going against evolution."
| Vegetarianism is as much a valid part of evolution as any
| other behavior any animal exhibits.
|
| I think if lions regularly bred into existence billions
| of antelope, confined and tortured them for the entirety
| of their existence, and _then_ ate them, yes, a lot of
| people would view that as pretty evil, even while
| acknowledging such a creature is probably incapable of
| the moral calculus that (some) humans are.
| realce wrote:
| > going against every bit of our human evolution, without
| guilt-tripping the rest of us for doing what nature
| designed us to do
|
| If nature designed for this, then why do people feel any
| guilt at all?
| mulmen wrote:
| To prevent over-hunting to the point that prey becomes
| extinct? I'm not having a hard time imagining how shame
| could be an evolutionary advantage.
| wruza wrote:
| Do they? It's city dwellers who never seen prey and feel
| guilt. Regular hunters just skin the carcass and think
| where to store it. Guilt is a social emotion that leaks
| into areas which are not clearly separated in an
| experiencing mind.
| realce wrote:
| > do they? Yes, it's plainly obvious that some people
| feel some guilt for eating meat.
|
| Regular hunters != industrial-level slaughtering. There
| are plenty of "regular hunters" who only eat meat they
| kill themselves. This is like saying if I cut down a
| single tree on my property I should also support the
| clear-cutting of the rainforest.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| For a long time humans did not breed animals for the sake
| of eating them, they used to hunt (just like a lion). No
| one was guilt-tripping anyone in those days (I hope), as
| we had to survive (not thrive).
|
| The situation has changed completely in the modern world.
| We have created meat factories, forcefully torturing
| millions of animals daily, and have somehow agreed upon
| what animals to kill and not to kill.
|
| A lion will kill anything that moves (as long as it is
| not poisonous), are you willing to kill (and eat) any
| animal under the sky?
|
| What about pets? Do you think they suffer any kind of
| pain and suffering ? If yes, that's the same way any
| other animal you eat (regardless of intelligence) feels
| when being slaughtered.
|
| One more question to think about: A young child (in a
| modern urban world) will be more comfortable plucking and
| eating fruits from a tree ? OR killing a pig -> draining
| blood -> cutting it into pieces -> cooking it to eat it ?
| vasco wrote:
| People don't care about people as long as they are out of
| sight and you're trying to get them to care for non
| humans that are even further from sight.
| vivekd wrote:
| Having seem children play I think many in would be quite
| comfortable killing a pig and draining it's blood if they
| could. You see children chasing pigeons - and I don't
| think it's just to hug them if they catch one.
|
| I say this without commenting in favor of either side of
| this debate which I am undecided on and reading with
| interest.
|
| But I think it's important not to shy away from the
| reality that cruelty and the desire to kill are very much
| a part of human nature from the beginning. And that
| applies no matter where or how we are brought up.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| Sure, but what about eating?
|
| What you mention is a typical destructive behavior
| noticed in kids and a tendency of violence/killing which
| even adults have. Key point here is: will they also eat
| the bird after killing it? Is the killing done here for
| the sake of eating ? or for the sake of
| enjoyment/destruction (whatever other reason).
| em-bee wrote:
| i spent part of my childhood on a farm. i watched rabbits
| and pigs being slaughtered. and of course we ate them.
|
| recently our neighbors slaughtered a goat that my kids
| had seen alive just before, and we all ate it. we also
| eat the chicken from the kids grandparents village home
| that they saw being slaughtered there.
|
| kids killing animals for no reason are an exception, as
| are kids refusing to eat animals that they saw alive.
|
| if they weren't we'd all have become vegetarians
| centuries or even millennia ago.
|
| (slightly related: it bothers me that some people think
| kids should be protected from experiencing how meat is
| produced. if you eat it, you should know where it came
| from)
| wruza wrote:
| _A lion will kill anything that moves_
|
| That's a common self-indulgence. Many predators in fact
| couldn't care less if prey is still twitching or whining,
| as long as it doesn't run away.
| serf wrote:
| >Are lions evil?
|
| lions aren't consciously deciding against a rationally
| plausible alternative, they are eating what is available.
|
| similarly human cannibalization stories generally center
| around the concept that the people driven to such actions
| are given no sensible alternatives (airplane crash in a
| snow mountain comes to mind) -- so we don't presume they
| were evil, we presume they were desperate.
|
| lions lack the intelligence and forethought to see the
| consequences of long term decisions. We as humans have
| gauged and measured the effects of ranching on our
| environment, the effects of meat consumption on our
| physiology, etc.
|
| so, to answer your question : If the lion was able to
| empathize and relate to the suffering of the prey, if the
| lion was able to relate its' actions to the destruction
| of its' environment, if the lion had sensible
| alternatives that avoided long term consequences while
| still satiating hunger, if the lion could accurately
| forecast the future and STILL decide upon the destructive
| course of action...
|
| ...yes, an argument could be made that _that_ lion might
| be evil.
| wruza wrote:
| Life and predators are absolutely evil, because their
| mode of operation is not in any way related to ethics or
| doing what's good. And what's good is usually opposite to
| what's convenient or naturally-obviously available to
| survive.
|
| That said, you personally don't add much to this global
| effing mess that the life is by eating some low mass meat
| per year. You also don't subtract much by avoiding it.
| One predator out-eats you 20-50x easily on meat. And many
| humans can't or barely can afford meat.
|
| The ethical problem has systemic and economic roots and
| doesn't relate to personal ideology. Being vegan but
| doing nothing systemic is pretty useless imo. The whole
| privilege of going vegan bases on living in a society
| that does all that to animals as a consequence and a
| requirement of its function.
| bmitc wrote:
| It's the scale at which we do it at that is very
| disturbing. If you haven't, I recommend watching
| _Samsara_. Humans are pretty disturbing.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| you mean the guilt that nature designed us to have?
| simgt wrote:
| As others have said, there is no such thing as going
| against evolution. Unless you want to put paracetamol,
| central heating, microwaves ovens, sneakers and
| smartphones in that bucket too. Or even all of our modern
| food, given that the crops have been selected by our
| civilisation for centuries.
|
| Usually the same ones who argue that we're separate from
| nature when it's about building motorways and single
| family homes to park two SUVs, are also the ones
| explaining that we should be more like lions in a
| savannah. Seems inconsistent, at best.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Guilt-tripping? We've got reasoning abilities and in the
| main can act on our decisions. Nobody guilt-trips any
| sentient being since they can't be guilty if under
| duress. If after all this we still do whatever it is we
| do that we conclude is reprehensible, we should not blame
| someone else for reminding us of the logic we ignored.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Ah, so you want to be a lion? But I bet you don't want to
| be treated like an animal. So which is it? Are you an
| animal or are you human?
| xp84 wrote:
| I have some possibly shocking news for you. Humans _are_
| animals. Pretending we 're very special and that
| everything we do is automatically "bad" is silly. Some
| things that are very good for humans overall is bad for
| competing species. Everything in moderation, of course,
| but I'm not shedding a tear for cowkind that they get
| slaughtered a lot. Cows would undoubtedly set up a system
| much like this if they were smart carnivores and we were
| dumb herbivores. (And many of them would hand-wring
| (hoof-wring?) about it due to that smartness. It's just
| part of the package.)
| samuelbalogh wrote:
| > going against every bit of our human evolution
|
| you're saying this typing on a _computer_ - how does that
| fit into human evolution?
|
| IMO humans evolve in an ethical standpoint as well and
| tend to want to cause the least amount of suffering
| possible as we evolve. That is why we have medicine,
| don't usually own slaves, don't hit children, and don't
| abuse animals.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Practicality. To put it bluntly, the majority of humans do
| not think it is immoral in principle to kill and eat an
| animal. After all, that's how biological life just is. At
| an individual level, you can choose to think it's wrong but
| you do have to simply accept the fact that not everyone
| agrees, and very likely there will always be someone who
| disagrees.
|
| To most people, killing an animal for food is not a problem
| conceptually. Causing undue and unnecessary suffering _is_
| a problem for pretty much everyone with a functioning moral
| system.
|
| But given that mass farming will _not_ be stopping
| tomorrow, would you rather the animals suffer more? Or is
| less suffering better? Should we actively torture the
| animals on the way to slaughter or maybe not?
|
| All that aside, if we stopped farming tomorrow, a billion
| or two people would have to stop eating. So we do the least
| worst thing and give the cow a pat on the head before we
| grind it up.
|
| That said, most people would probably prefer if no animals
| were killed at all. Once cultured meat starts producing at
| the required scale, industry farming will probably end very
| quickly.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Cultured meat is a long, long ways away, unfortunately. I
| suspect economic, environmental, and ethical factors will
| push people away from meat long before cultured meat
| replaces it.
|
| Well put argument though!
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| > The majority of humans do not think it is immoral in
| principle to kill and eat an animal
|
| This is wrong, the majority of humans may think that way
| because they don't have to kill any animal personally,
| they are disconnected from the "killing" part of the
| whole equation. Let's see how many people eat and kill
| animals (i.e. hunting) once we remove meat factories.
|
| Another counterargument is: pets. Somehow all meat eaters
| gasp on the idea of eating their pet, so they are not
| morally okay to eat an animal (as you claimed).
|
| > Or is less suffering better?
|
| Ask yourself, how would you like to die? After listening
| to music you love? getting massages? OR being hurled up a
| thousand other humans in a small room? The fact is you
| are dying, your neck will be cut off, and it doesn't
| matter what you did before it, how is listening to
| peaceful music before dying less of a suffering?
|
| It is like saying that concentration camps should have
| been more "humane", they should have cared more for
| prisoners before killing them to reduce their suffering.
| Death matters the most for any living creature, all of us
| (humans + animals) are primed to avoid it. So, we need to
| take a path where we are reducing overall deaths, not a
| path where we are reducing pre-death suffering.
|
| What you can say is, "I don't care about suffering; I
| just need meat." That would be a more logically correct
| statement than claiming that you care about reducing
| their suffering.
| vasco wrote:
| > Another counterargument is: pets. Somehow all meat
| eaters gasp on the idea of eating their pet, so they are
| not morally okay to eat an animal (as you claimed).
|
| You seem to think humans are rational if-this-then-that
| machines but we're perfectly irrational enough to hold
| two dissenting views at the same time very closely. It
| doesn't prove much that people like their pets, serial
| killers also like their own families.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| Should we move towards irrationality or rationality? If
| being rational is marginally better we should move
| towards that. We want less serial killers in the society.
|
| So pointing out the fact about pets is to force meat
| eaters to consider their irrationality face to face.
|
| We have done this throughout our evolution. Some people
| notice the irrational things in our behavior and try to
| reason with other humans why doing these irrational
| things is wrong and should be stopped (slavery, racism,
| etc).
|
| That's what I am doing, and anyone should do. Just
| accepting the fact that humans are irrational is just
| accepting the status quo.
| vasco wrote:
| I hope to have the discernment to tell the difference
| between the irrational things I cannot change from the
| ones I can, and I don't think I'm changing this, so I
| accept it.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Few people believed slavery, a mechanism that stood for
| millennia, would end. Yet..
| vasco wrote:
| I also think eventually we won't eat animals, just not in
| my lifetime. Practicality doesn't need to be blind to
| morality and might also be wrong (it might be faster than
| I think).
| GiorgioG wrote:
| If I had to kill animals to eat meat, I would have zero
| problem doing so. You're free to make your own choices,
| but you're not going to change anyone's stance on eating
| meat with your arguments. Get off your high horse.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| the key word is "had". I would eat any animal any day if
| I "had" to and had no other food source.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| No I mean I would have no problem killing an animal if I
| was unable to buy meat at a grocery store.
| erikerikson wrote:
| My pet chickens and ducks had happy, idyllic, safe lives
| until I humanely slaughtered, butchered, and ate them. I
| have also slaughtered and eaten lamb and fish.
|
| I care about suffering so I minimize it, maximize well
| being, and eat meat because it tastes delicious and is
| calorically and nutritionally dense. I also eat more
| vegetables than the average person, many of which come
| out of the garden I work.
|
| I have been afforded a much less idyllic life than is
| sustainable but I still hope for a quick, inexpensive
| death for myself.
| em-bee wrote:
| _the majority of humans may think that way because they
| don 't have to kill any animal personally, they are
| disconnected from the "killing" part of the whole
| equation._
|
| until a century or two ago this was simply not true.
| everyone grew up with animals around them and for sure
| watched them being slaughtered.
|
| people being bothered by that have always been the
| exception.
| vasco wrote:
| > That said, most people would probably prefer if no
| animals were killed at all. Once cultured meat starts
| producing at the required scale, industry farming will
| probably end very quickly.
|
| Most people can only afford cheap food, which means after
| the novelty period, regular meat will be something
| reserved for only the very wealthy.
| wruza wrote:
| I think this less-more thing is synthetic and pointless.
| One person stops eating meat, it just reduces the demand
| and there's one less cow that suffers, but not in a sense
| that it becomes happy now. It just stops existing (best
| case). Is that a win? Hard to tell, cause the question is
| highly philosophical. Is to not exist better than to
| exist and suffer? Is suffering of 10M worse than
| suffering of 100K? Is 100K _actually less_ suffering? One
| can imagine being a farm cow and being told that there's
| 90% less of them than a decade ago, so they must feel
| 90-ish% better. Complete nonsense. There's no "total
| suffering" cause suffering instances are separate in this
| case and are unable to grasp the scale.
|
| _That said, most people would probably prefer if no
| animals were killed at all._
|
| Yeah I guess that at least skips the murky philosophical
| waters and has some actual impact rather than patting
| everyone and everything involved on various parts of an
| upper body.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > One person stops eating meat, it just reduces the
| demand and there's one less cow that suffers, but not in
| a sense that it becomes happy now. It just stops existing
| (best case). Is that a win?
|
| I've heard this phrased as "meat is murder, but
| vegetarianism is genocide".
|
| If humans were to stop eating meat, certain species of
| animal would go extinct.
| NewJazz wrote:
| That's not true. We would still need food for dogs and
| cats. And even if not, then we could still keep cows
| around just for the vibes. We don't eat Tule Elk
| (anymore). It is still around. In fact it is still around
| precisely because we decided to stop hunting it to
| extinction.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Temple Grandin designed more efficient killing machines to
| streamline and reduce the costs of industrial scale
| slaughter.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Extraordinary? She invented a machine to hug cows before they
| get bolted in the head.
|
| We'd be better off not making animal slaughter the core of
| the American diet.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| So here is a person who has reduced suffering for animals.
| And your idea is...what?
| Daub wrote:
| As someone who has worked on farms i can verify that such
| things happen. I personally witnessed sheep behaving exactly as
| decided in The Silence of the Lambs. Our sheep were famously
| noisy and certainly were used to being moved around in lorries
| but when the abattoir lorry turned up you could almost smell
| their fear. I also witnessed a cow storm through four fences in
| order to be reunited with her calf.
|
| The irony: The farm was run by vegetarians and as the only meat
| eater it became my responsibility to oversee any time an animal
| was taken to slaughter. This simultaneously put me off meat
| eating and vegetarians.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Why are the cows taken away from the calves, especially dairy
| cows? Just curious.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Because you want to get the milk.
| cowfriend wrote:
| Almost this. The better answer is because we want to get
| ALL the milk.
|
| So instead of letting the mother cow nurse her calf for
| the first few months and then start taking her milk for
| our use, the more "modern" practice is to separate the
| calf immediately.
|
| Which means if you are drinking milk, you are drinking it
| from seriously depressed cows.
|
| I wonder how this contributes to our culture's growing
| mood of depression?
|
| see i.e.
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-
| ask...
|
| or just google dairy cows separate from calves
| csomar wrote:
| The real crime is that alternatives are expensive due to
| how our new economy is structured. I personally prefer
| oatmilk (oatside) to dairy milk. However, it's too damn
| expensive that I find myself only drinking it from time
| to time. Now how is a vegetarian milk more expensive than
| a full cycle of cow milk (cows are too burdening to
| maintain) you might ask?!?
|
| My guess is that we are seeing something along the lines
| of EVs. Instead of making these healthier alternatives
| mainstream, they are being sold as a status symbol for
| the rich and making them unaffordable to the common man.
|
| Here waiting for my chinese oat milk.
| vasco wrote:
| > Now how is a vegetarian milk more expensive than a full
| cycle of cow milk (cows are too burdening to maintain)
| you might ask?!?
|
| Not enough scale because little demand compared to
| regular milk.
| ValentineC wrote:
| What's baffling is that the supply chain for non-dairy
| milk is so much simpler, since all non-dairy milk can be
| packaged as UHT which doesn't need any form of
| refrigeration until open.
| mulmen wrote:
| Their margin is your opportunity. If you think oat milk
| is overpriced then simply start making and selling it at
| a lower price.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| I don't think non-dairy milks are artificially expensive
| so much as cow milk is artificially cheap. At least in
| the US. Federal dairy subsidies and all that.
| ValentineC wrote:
| Oat/almond milk suppliers are definitely pricing them
| artificially expensive.
|
| Here in Singapore, where soy milk has been around for
| decades, soy milk in both fresh and UHT forms tend to be
| much cheaper than dairy.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| If Singapore _doesn 't_ have dairy subsidies and/or
| imports a lot of dairy... that's probably why. You're
| paying the "real" price while US consumers are paying the
| "discount" price.
|
| Also, soy milk's been around for decades in the US too! I
| drank a lot as a kid. My mom would keep these little
| single-serving cartons in her purse for us, like
| juicebox-sized.
| dotancohen wrote:
| How much does 1 liter of almond or oat milk substitute
| cost in Singapore? How much does one liter of milk cost?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| So still a near perfect metaphor for EV Vs ICE. I
| actually thought this is what they meant at first.
| bythreads wrote:
| Milk is a byproduct of producing meat, and its a fallacy
| to see it in isolation.
|
| Plantmilks are firstorder product.
|
| This means that clinate impact of most plantmilks are
| higher than milks, excepting oat and ryemilk.
|
| On a cost note - : making oat milk is literally just
| blending some oats and let them soak a day or 2, filter
| the water and done, perhaps do that if cost is an issue?
|
| On a sidenote, if you drink soy, almond or worse ricemilk
| you're actually doing something worse for the
| climate/environment
| maeil wrote:
| This completely ignores second order effects, which lead
| to the opposite conclusion.
|
| If milk is a byproduct of producing meat that can be sold
| for money, this means milk subsidizes the price of meat.
| Even if the effect is small, this is almost certainly
| enough to make it worse for the environment than e.g. soy
| milk, as the difference between raising cattle and
| growing soy is orders of magnitudes.
| troyvit wrote:
| This is what drives me crazy about oat milk. Oats grow
| everywhere. Almonds, on the other hand, take a gallon of
| water per almond to make[1]. Despite this, at my store
| anyway, almond milk is about $2.89/half gallon while oat
| milk is at least $4/half gallon. What in our economy
| makes this feasible?
|
| [1] https://bastyr.edu/about/news/ugly-truth-about-
| almonds
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >What in our economy makes this feasible?
|
| What do you mean "feasible"? It's profitable to sell
| something for more than it costs to make. If the only
| companies that offer Oat milk for sale price it at $4 a
| gallon, that's the price you have to pay to get it.
|
| Meanwhile there are laws around the pricing of Milk, and
| in my neck of the woods that includes a MINIMUM price.
|
| People wave their hands like "the market" is magic. As
| long as some consumers are willing to pay $4 a gallon for
| oat milk, companies will not reduce the price, and plenty
| of people are willing to pay MORE for oat milk than for
| cow milk.
|
| If you wonder why nobody starts a company that undercuts
| the $4 oat milk, the simple answer is that the second you
| are done spending $1 million on a factory to make cheap
| oat milk, the producers already in the market drop their
| price and your business fails. This is why Google Fiber
| for example struggled. There is no technical reason
| prices are high. There's just no competition because the
| current producers are so massive and have such giant war
| chests that they can just kill your brand new competitive
| business, and soon your business will be dead and they
| can slowly ratchet up prices again.
|
| There's also the fact that homemade oat milk is trivial
| to produce, results in a great product, and is cheaper
| than even that mythical competitive industry would
| produce.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > if you drink soy, almond or worse ricemilk you're
| actually doing something worse for the
| climate/environment
|
| In what way? Data seems to suggest otherwise but maybe
| I'm misunderstanding
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Do It Yourself! You _can_ beat milk price:
|
| You already got the oat. Got a blender? Grind those
| little flakes with water and a spoon of your favorite
| oil. Et voila !
|
| Pro tips:
|
| - filter for extra smoothness but no need if you intent
| to mix with whole oat flakes
|
| - 1h in the fridge and mix again for double extra
| smoothness
|
| - pinch of salt or cinnamon or cacao... yummi
|
| - bored of oat? Check your supermarket shelf for other
| ideas. (Soy need to be cooked then blend then filter).
| maeil wrote:
| As mentioned, the subsidies are the biggest player.
|
| What you mentioned does probably play a role as well,
| with much more $/revenue being spent on marketing for
| non-animal milk than cow milk. None of the big milk
| players are trying to present themselves as a hip startup
| like Oatly is. Wouldn't be surprised if the latter was
| even VC backed.
|
| But again, good ole' communist subsidies are the number
| one cause.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Back in my ancestral village the practice was to let cow
| nurse her calf and get the remaining for the owner's
| family. This kinda ensured co-existence. The modern dairy
| industry has all evil practices baked into its
| operations. It is the thing that keeps me from going
| vegetarian. Even with going off meat, I would still harm
| the livestock by consuming dairy. A lot of vegetarians
| (at least those who virtue signal) do not understand
| this.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| One way to reduce that practice is to simply reduce one
| consumption of meat/milk, no need to be fully gandhi to
| improve some cow's life. You anyway can't save the world
| alone.
|
| There's a ton of mushrooms and fabaceae, very cheap
| nutritious and as much delicious if you learn to cook
| them well (like meat). My favorite is Tempeh which
| combine both! And quite cheap if you make it yourself.
|
| http://tempeh.info/
| bamboozled wrote:
| I like the stuff, but interestingly, I found it easiest
| to buy in Indonesia, Australia and the USA. Outside of
| that, it's hard to get or very expensive.
| ornornor wrote:
| You can make your own! It's deleicious and very cheap if
| you make it yourself.
| maeil wrote:
| Plenty of tofu dishes in Korea and part of China. Almost
| never vegan, but often vegetarian.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, almost every broth or dish at an
| East/southeast restaurant uses shrimp/fish sauce or other
| animal product like beef/chicken stock.
|
| They usually prep it in advance, so it's rare to find one
| that has an actually vegan dish they don't custom make
| even if it says tofu.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| What if no one was strictly vegan or vegetarian but
| everyone refused to buy food created by inhumane
| suffering and tortured conditions. Can't make it illegal
| but can make it very unfashionable. Just need more people
| to see things people see on a farm, then you gotta be a
| psycho to not care. Just no one properly lived on a farm
| next to animals these days when most people move to
| megapolises...
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > Just need more people to see things people see on a
| farm
|
| There's many "educational farms" to show kids live farms
| animals and sometimes pick the eggs and milk a cow. I'm
| very confused about them: it's good to let urban kids
| see-smell-touch real farms animals. However they have
| nothing in common with modern farming, even the not-
| inhumane ones.
|
| BUT telling a 6yo toddler "look that cute cow, this is
| where your morning milk is from" will engrave it deep in
| the way they see farming. One day or another they will
| learn about factory farming but what you learn at 16yo
| doesn't "engrave" as easy and deep as at 6. I mean yes
| you quickly understand that education farms are not the
| reality but it require a big mental shift to overcome the
| _feeling_ that the milk you drink in the morning is from
| an inhumane famr, especially when everyone around keeps
| doing it (I don 't blame them, it's cheap, easy,
| convenient, traditional, delicious, practical...).
|
| Some schools or parents brings their child in _real_
| farms which is a bit better, but it still doesn 't depict
| the reality for 99% of consumption (think gelatin
| candies, croissants, cakes, ice creams...).
|
| For the courageous -- DONT SHOW THAT TO YOUR TODDLER
| (yet) -- 8 hours of pigs in a typical/normal gas chamber
| that probably will end up in soap/jelly/bacon. :
| https://www.farmtransparency.org/videos?id=hg8cyu393v
| Panoramix wrote:
| When I was a small child in a rural environment, my uncle
| slaughtered a lamb for eating. It was a bloody messy
| hell. It was an eye opener but it didn't have the impact
| you think it had, if anything it desensitizes you. My
| uncle also showed respect and gratefulness to the animals
| and I also understood why we don't waste animal products.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Ok I admit all I write is only guess... in fact what you
| said makes me relate to some of my mother stories about
| her childhood. Thanks for remind me that.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I grew up doing a lot of diving, I'd put myself into the
| ocean, there were sharks and other dangers, but I caught
| my own fish and I never ever felt bad about it. I could
| selective take what I needed, I'd never take a mother /
| pregnant fish if I could help it. I could tell most of
| the time.
|
| You also get to see how the wild world works, and most
| fish would prefer to be taken by a skilled spear
| fisherman than have their face mauled off by a squid, at
| least as far as I could tell.
|
| Unfortunately we live in a world with 9 billion people on
| it, which means we don't have the room to grow and
| harvest all our own food. In my opinion, that's the
| issue. Sourcing all our food "ethically" is basically not
| possible.
|
| I'd much prefer to be producing and hunting my own food.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I know someone who is hard core vegetarian because of
| impression from childhood, it all depends.
|
| Maybe you see a normal farm and get to know the animals
| then see an actual factory where it is industrialized...
| AnonHP wrote:
| > It is the thing that keeps me from going vegetarian.
| Even with going off meat, I would still harm the
| livestock by consuming dairy.
|
| You could go vegan.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Veal.
| ornornor wrote:
| That's how we get all their milk, how we get meat (the calf
| isn't kept around for more than a few weeks/months), and
| rennet to make cheese (it's the digestion liquid that's in
| their stomach while they eat milk, must kill the animal to
| extract it)
|
| Same with eggs, they don't exist in a vacuum. To get eggs
| you have to have chickens, and to have chickens you must
| grind male chicks alive as they hatch because they don't
| produce eggs. And hens aren't supposed make eggs year round
| but we make them anyway with artificial lights etc, which
| drastically shortens their lifespan.
| voisin wrote:
| > And hens aren't supposed make eggs year round but we
| make them anyway with artificial lights etc, which
| drastically shortens their lifespan.
|
| I kept a flock of 25-30 hens on my property for a few
| years. Other than moulting they produce eggs ease round.
| The production slows drastically in the dark winter
| months for the older hens (1 for 3 days, say) but some
| continue to produce nearly daily (I think the cycle is
| something like 26-28 hours). The only time we had
| artificial light for them was on days when it was so cold
| we kept their coop door shut and turned on the interior
| light.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| the way eggs are industrially farmed is generally not
| like this
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think they are addressing the claim "hens aren't
| supposed make eggs year round"
| throwaway_5633 wrote:
| Worse I'm afraid, chickens will give most eggs in their
| first year and are killed after, because they become
| unprofitable. I know an ecological farmer that charges a
| bit more for eggs and is able to keep them alive for 2
| years, but that's the max. They can easily live for 10
| years plus.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _to have chickens you must grind male chicks alive as
| they hatch because they don't produce eggs_
|
| Bit of a leap there.
| ornornor wrote:
| How so? What do you think breeders who sell hens do with
| male chicks?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Some places sex the eggs. Germany, France, Switzerland
| and many other places completely do without so it is
| hardly mandatory.
|
| Other places use male chickens for meat, despite them
| being sub-optimal.
|
| I think the grinding of male chicks is an interesting
| case because it's actually pretty low on the suffering
| and distress spectrum, but high on the visceral reaction
| scale
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _grinding of male chicks is an interesting case because
| it 's actually pretty low on the suffering and distress
| spectrum, but high on the visceral reaction scale_
|
| And nothing requires they be ground alive versus _e.g._
| introduced into a nitrogen atmosphere and then minced.
| (Or simply neutered, raised and sold as capon.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| or feed them live to an alligator farm or zoo
| addicted wrote:
| Why would the calves be kept near the cows?
|
| They're not gonna feed the milk that their mothers are
| producing for them, because that would mean less milk to
| sell and less milk for people to consume.
|
| And so why keep the calves in the milking side of the
| facility when you can move them to the fattening side for
| meat/leather or to get them to age so you can forcibly
| impregnate them every year for their milk, depending on
| their gender.
| addicted wrote:
| It's ironic how accepted vegetarians, who have a dietary
| preference, are in society, and how hated vegans, who have an
| ethical argument against unnecessary killing of sentient
| animals, are in society.
|
| I only turned vegan a couple of years ago as something
| clicked and I was able to make the connection between the
| food I was eating and the animals who were being killed,
| almost certainly unnecessarily, for that food. But before
| then I disliked vegans a lot, and was completely fine with
| vegetarians. I'm honestly unable to reconcile my thinking.
|
| It's kind of like how I don't understand how I strongly
| believed in god before I lost faith. Now the idea that I ever
| could, or ever did, believe in a personal god seems
| unbelievable to me.
|
| Human psychology is ridiculously interesting.
| hellojesus wrote:
| My assumption is that the weight of including vegans
| socially is too much to bear for some. On the extreme end,
| you can't use store pasta because it was made in a facility
| that processes eggs and dairy. But even on the lighter end,
| social eating modification is pretty extreme: don't use
| butter when cooking, or eggs, or honey, etc. It's a lot
| easier to accommodate vegetarians than vegans.
|
| Though I do have a vegan friend that always brings her own
| food to gatherings, and it does make things far easier.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| butter is one of the most easily substituted things
| around and most vegans i know don't care about honey.
|
| definitely more restrictive but i think the dairy/cheese
| thing is the big one
|
| people also feel that vegans are judging them morally and
| people are very defensive about their eating habit, hence
| the dislike
| leetcrew wrote:
| depends what you're trying to do. there are plenty of
| alternatives for spreading on toast or frying/sauteing.
| but it's still a pretty central ingredient for western
| cuisine. I have no idea how I'd make a vegan roux, just
| for example. my guess is that would break the illusion of
| whipped margarine pretty quickly.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I've made plenty of vegan rouxs, but I also don't have
| much experience making non-vegan roux... so hard for me
| to give an honest comparison.
|
| Margarine burns more easily but this hasn't been a
| problem for me, so I imagine you are talking mostly about
| flavor difference or?
| throwaway3287 wrote:
| The problem with veganism is that, unless you grow your own
| food, it does not change the fact that an immense amount of
| pain and suffering is inflicted on other beings in the
| production and transportation of the food you eat. It's
| pure virtue signaling. If they genuinely cared about
| minimizing suffering, they'd be Jains, not vegans.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I think you didn't understand veganism: the goal is not
| to remove all suffering but to reduce it by finding ways
| that are still practicable, without major economic,
| pleasure or whatever downside. All vegans kill insects
| when they walk in the wood but stoping walking altogether
| would make their life miserable. On the other hand,
| eating plants and mushroom is quite enjoyable when you
| get used to it. And it certainly remove a bug part of
| suffering inflicted. Think Pareto.
|
| I don't think jainism can be applied without changing
| your life altogether and removing many thinks you used
| to.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| uhhhh explain?
|
| is there some extreme amount of suffering that goes into
| the production of root vegetables because afaik that's
| the only distinction between jainism and veganism?
| barbazoo wrote:
| Maybe the temporary foreign worker living in economic
| servitude to the farm that guarantees their job. /s
|
| For many, perfect is the enemy of the good. Either you
| remove all suffering or you're a hypocrite. Meanwhile us
| that genuinely care about our impact on the environment
| make incremental changes to reduce our negative impact.
| y-curious wrote:
| The problem I have always had with veganism, as someone who
| has had stints of vegetarianism, is the absurdity of
| certain restrictions. Milk, I can agree, is bad because of
| how it's derived. Honey and eggs (sourced ethically) are a
| restriction I cannot stand behind. I think the dislike of
| self-labeled vegans is aligned with someone publicizing an
| extreme decision.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| eggs could easily have multiple arguments for it, honey
| i've personally never met someone who was vegan who
| didn't have honey
| y-curious wrote:
| At the risk of this devolving into a typical online
| veganism argument: why are eggs bad? Say I keep 3
| chickens in a coop in my backyard. They're going to
| produce unfertilized eggs that will just go to waste
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 1. I have personally never met someone who _only_ eats
| backyard eggs. The conditions of commercial egg producers
| are well documented.
|
| 2. You are still essentially using another living being
| for resources. Why keep the chickens in the first place?
| They are only going to waste because you bought the
| chickens in the first place, probably also from an
| industrial breeder, essentially subsidizing the industry.
|
| 3. If your way of producing eggs is more ethical, you
| could sell your backyard eggs to displace the (pretty
| awful) commercial producers rather than eating them
| yourself.
|
| I agree that the case against exclusively consuming your
| own backyard eggs is weaker, but I also don't think we
| are describing a considerable proportion of actual egg
| consumers in the West.
| leetcrew wrote:
| 1. how? healthy chickens lay an egg every 1-2 days. a
| small number of chickens produce more than enough for an
| entire household. everyone I know who keeps chickens
| gives most of the eggs away.
|
| 2. chickens are the ultimate garbage disposal. you can
| feed them any excess food from your household and they
| turn it into fresh eggs.
|
| 3. see 1. the volume of eggs gets out of control fast,
| but not quite on the scale that it's viable for random
| people to build an FDA compliant business out of it. it's
| hard to get rid of all of them, even for free.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 1 -> Sure, but are they declining the omelette when
| they're out for brunch?
|
| 2 -> I think the subsidy point still stands.
|
| 3 -> Totally agreed but I think your point about giving
| away eggs applies just as much, any eggs you eat rather
| than give away are just going to be an additional egg
| from the chicken CAFOs or at best case a fractional
| additional egg from the CAFOs.
|
| But I certainly agree that this is among the instances
| where the case is weaker.
| collingreen wrote:
| There is a summary of veganism that follows the principle
| that we shouldn't take sentient things and change their
| lives for our own ends. There are several important bits
| and nuances but the overarching point is to not have a
| world view where you see anything and prioritize what you
| can get out of it, regardless of the suffering you cause.
| Sometimes you hear it summarized as "they arent here for
| us".
|
| It is an interesting philosophical bit and it combines
| pretty standard modern morality with a pointed concept of
| not discriminating by species and instead trying to use
| the ability to suffer as when you decide if you should
| exploit something. In this paradigm the reasons not to
| rape or enslave people are the same as the reasons not to
| rape or enslave other animals.
|
| This still has plenty of inconsistencies and weird bits,
| both theoretically and practically. Silly questions like
| eating braindead people stymie both sides until you get
| into the weeds about stuff like dignity. Would the
| theoretical cows in the hitchhikers guide that WANT to be
| eaten be ok to eat? Is it ok to have second hand animal
| products, especially if they are high quality and will
| prevent additional exploitation/consumption?
|
| One of the most sticky conundrums I personally chew on is
| if this means we should actively try to prevent
| suffering, not just choose to personally try to avoid
| causing it. If the former, that means trying to make
| other people change their beliefs and behave in a way
| that is pretty objectively worse for them in society,
| which starts to edge toward causing suffering if you
| squint. It is easy to fall into trying to reason about
| which suffering is worse which is a terrible minefield
| where everybody loses. It's easy to SAY I value something
| no longer being tortured over my taste preference but is
| there a logical framework for that that can ever be
| objective and applied to harder problems? If it is only
| subjective then what makes it better than any other
| decision - people decide to eat pigs but not dogs every
| day but there is no more OR LESS reason behind that than
| the claim above. There might be answers but I haven't
| found them to be easy to pin down which is especially
| interesting because of how strongly I feel that not
| caring any hurting things is bad.
|
| tl;dr being vegan sucks
| bnt123 wrote:
| I think we can agree humans tend to see reducing
| suffering as a good thing, and that people who we believe
| have caused suffering are viewed with disdain. With that
| in mind, here's a framework: "given two choices, is there
| a choice that 1) reduces suffering, and 2) is not
| prohibitively expensive (or in some other way too
| difficult to make)". "Too difficult" or "too expensive"
| is obviously subjective, but I don't think having
| objective definitions is necessary here.
|
| An analogy that I like to illustrate this is: going
| shopping for clothes vs going shopping for food. Both
| tend to have ethics attached to them, e.g. with child
| labor for production of clothing, and slaughtering of
| animals for production of food. If you walk into a store
| to buy new clothes, and there are 2 sections of the
| store, 1 for clothes that were produced using child
| labor, and 1 for clothes that weren't, and both sections
| had clothes of the same price and quality, the decision
| of which section to shop in is very logical. This is how
| I see going shopping for food- you have sections for food
| that were produced using factory farming, and sections
| for food that weren't. Both sources of food are the same
| price and quality. So the decision to make about which
| source of food to buy is, again, a logical one. It's also
| a decision that most people in the developed world have
| to make every week, at least people who live in cities
| and do their shopping at grocery stores.
|
| While we unfortunately don't have visibility into whether
| our clothing is produced with child labor, many of us do
| know if our food comes from factory farms. In the US, the
| estimate is that over 95% of meat sold in grocery stores
| is factory-farmed. Why make the decision to buy that if
| you could easily avoid it?
| yesfitz wrote:
| To keep it from devolving, I invite you to search for
| existing arguments in a search engine of your choice.
|
| However, in a show of good-faith, here are 2 answers to
| your question:
|
| 1. Male chicks of laying varieties are ground in a
| macerator shortly after hatching.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling In your
| fantasy, you could get around this by getting a rooster
| and breeding your own hens for eggs, but then what will
| _you_ do with the non-laying males? What about hens who
| stop laying? Keep in mind, their natural lifespan is 5-10
| years.
|
| 2. Hens have been bred to produce exponentially more eggs
| than in the wild. Wild hens lay around 10-20 eggs per
| year. Domestic hens lay around 250. This development can
| lead to osteoporosis.
| collingreen wrote:
| As an anecdote, I'm nearly vegan and don't have honey.
|
| I think it's interesting how easy it is to criticize
| veganism as extreme when, to me (and in many anecdotes
| here and in the rest of the world) it is actually the
| result of trying to reconcile all my actions behind the
| same non-controversial principles.
|
| Maybe "rigid" vs loose/flexible would be a better
| description but that isn't how it feels to people; vegans
| just existing conjures feelings of disdain and dismissals
| of extremism (I felt that way before as well, just like
| some other commenters on here).
|
| In a general sense, people absolutely hate being told to
| change or that they have been wrong about something. It
| puts our backs up immediately and it fires up an
| emotional storm to start invalidating what they imply
| about us.
|
| We're fascinating as humans.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Actually there's many people defining vegan that eat eggs
| (me) and honey (many vegans). Vegans aren't as extremist
| as people see them or as common dictionaries define them.
| Most _don't_ define themselves by << I don't consume any
| animal product whatsoever >>, of if they do it's just a
| simplification.
|
| For the think you feel absurds:
|
| - honey is usually done by placing queen in a room she
| _can't_ escape. Also the honey is stolen of the bees.
| They didn't choose to be here and they don't work in the
| purpose of human eating it. Live it in the nest and they
| won't make so much honey. Less bees will die of exhaust
| also. I got a neighbor that participate in << honey in
| the village >> program. She's not vegan or vegetarian in
| any way. Once she saw what's happening she decided to not
| harvest. It's still a delicious product with many
| nutritious benefits and the bees doesn't suffer as much
| as other livestocks so many vegans choose to eat it
| (again veganism is not about perfection or absolutism)
|
| - I don't know what eggs production you consider ethical.
| In my country, the best quality eggs you can fin in the
| supermarkets comes from chickens that were born in the
| exact same factory farms as factory chickens In the case
| of personal backyard poultry it really depends what's
| your ethical stance. I often see people that have them in
| a cage not so big, with no grass (chickens destroy the
| grass!), no trees, etc... that's better that a factory
| but it's still a miserable cage life. When I go in a
| farmers market and see someone selling "fallibly farms
| backyard eggs" I have no way to asses how they live.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > I don't know what eggs production you consider ethical.
| In my country, the best quality eggs you can fin in the
| supermarkets comes from chickens that were born in the
| exact same factory farms as factory chickens In the case
| of personal backyard poultry it really depends what's
| your ethical stance. I often see people that have them in
| a cage not so big, with no grass (chickens destroy the
| grass!), no trees, etc... that's better that a factory
| but it's still a miserable cage life. When I go in a
| farmers market and see someone selling "fallibly farms
| backyard eggs" I have no way to asses how they live.
|
| Many jurisdictions have well defined categories. In BC
| for instance [1], free range and organic ensure the
| animals get to spend a significant amount of time
| outdoors.
|
| Where I live there are small farms you can observe and
| buy eggs from directly. It's totally possible it just
| takes some looking into and some effort.
|
| [1] https://bcegg.com/eggs-101/egg-labels-101/
| yesfitz wrote:
| You are incorrect.
|
| Vegans _absolutely_ define themselves by not consuming
| any animal products, myself included.
|
| "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks
| to exclude--as far as is possible and practicable--all
| forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for
| food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension,
| promotes the development and use of animal-free
| alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the
| environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of
| dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly
| from animals."[1]
|
| I don't know your individual circumstances, but based on
| your justifications in your post, you are not a vegan.
|
| You can still be a vegetarian, an animal-lover, and a
| good person, but not vegan.
|
| It is not extremist to have strongly-held ethical
| principles, and I hope this refutation is helpful to
| anyone reading both posts.
|
| 1: https://www.vegansociety.com/about-us/further-
| information/ke...
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that thought. I strongly adhere to the
| vegan society definition. I think "as far as is possible
| and practicable" should be followed by "and beneficial to
| the overall goal", which is obvious but would make the
| phrase too cumbersome.
|
| Let me share my situation with eggs: in the family I'm
| the one that leaded the shift, from flexitarian to
| vegetarian to (99%) vegan. My GF likes the principle and
| is willing to shift but also needs more time to change
| her habits, one by one. One of the very last habits are
| eggs, and she's not ready to stop it yet, but do avoid
| buying them in any form. So she bring three chickens in a
| ~30m2 parc with a tree and plants etc... It's still a
| cage and I'm not proud. The chickens are a more rustic
| race than the eggs producers breed because she figured
| out they suffer less by not being breed-ingineer eggs
| factories, so they lay during 2/3 weeks every 6/12 month.
| When that happens and she won't be home for a while, I
| eat the eggs. Last time was around May I think. Someone
| in this thread suggest to give the eggs to a neighbor so
| they buy less from the store, that is a great idea I will
| definitely consider. Removing the chickens would create a
| mess in my relationship with GF, wish is not "practical"
| and could even in the end make her consuming more animals
| product because of a defensive psychological mode in
| reaction.
|
| To the extremism and if people consider me (or others)
| vegan or not, here's a few thoughts:
|
| - a colleague a once told me I'll never be a vegan
| because I "have" animals, which is a form of exploitation
| for my pleasure. There's also many "vegans" that do have
| cats and dogs (in captivity) and buy food for them. Is it
| beneficial to the veganism goal to exclude each other's
| on the last percent of our animal consumption? I don't
| like them buying meat for their cats but telling them so
| wouldn't help veganism progress.
|
| - what about a "Muslim" that have a beer once per year ?
| An "altruist" that buy a (child made) Bangladesh apparel
| ? A "monogamous" that do adultery once? I don't think
| they should be excluded from the definition they believe
| in because of a tiny deviation or not-yet-perfection.
| They should be listen and companion instead.
|
| - what about vegans that use soaps in public places? Buy
| stuff colored in red without knowing the provenance? Buy
| glossy lemons?
|
| The limit of "practical" is fuzzy and IMHO debating it
| doesn't really serve the overall goal. I'm very happy to
| be in the same boat as you, my friend, even if we don't
| share the same room.
| freedomben wrote:
| This is just from my personal experience, but as someone
| who is very sympathetic to the moral/ethical arguments from
| vegans but is not vegan themselves (though did try it out
| for a bit, lost a dangerous amount of weight and developed
| an intolerance to potatoes which further reduces available
| food to absurd levels sine potatoes are in tons of vegan
| food), is that it's the minority of vocal/aggressive vegans
| that have largely (though certainly not entirely) caused
| the poor reception.
|
| My reasoning: People don't like to be judged (at all, but
| especially when the data behind the judgment is not so
| clear cut correct), and even just being in the presence of
| vegans can make some people feel judged. Even if the vegan
| says nothing, people can _feel_ like they 're being judged
| (to be clear, this is _not_ the vegan 's fault!). Now, add
| a small but vocal and aggressive minority of vegans who
| will explicitly judge/criticize, and you have a recipe for
| contention. It shouldn't be this way IMHO, but it's human
| nature.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I don't really care about either of them - people can eat
| what they want, it doesn't effect me any.
|
| But vegans of European descent are, from my anecdotal
| experience, the most likely to moralize towards me on the
| atrocities I am committing by eating meat.
|
| (I have worked with a many many people who are vegans due
| to their religion. I have never had ANY of them try to
| lecture me on this subject.)
| rednafi wrote:
| It's the same as how soldiers were trained to de-
| anthropomorphize their enemies.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> we are very much trained to believe we shouldn't
| anthropomorphise animals_
|
| We shouldn't anthropomorphize animals. Instead, the point here
| is that emotions are not anthropic; humans do not have a
| monopoly on emotions.
|
| Which is to say, we should be sure not to think that "grief"
| means the same thing for an orca that it means to a human; yet
| naturally animals do grieve in their own ways. (Heck, "grief"
| doesn't even mean the same thing for all humans!)
| cowfriend wrote:
| yeah, the funny thing about the anthropomorphism debate is
| that supposedly the thing that makes humans different from
| (other) animals is our "advanced" brain, i.e. language,
| civilization, etc.
|
| in other words, all the ways we have to manage emotions, and
| all of our "non-emotional" functioning.
|
| So we have somehow evolved to be able to better manage
| emotions.
|
| Ok, so if we grant all of that, then haven't we just said
| that emotions are common to animals? So then how is it
| anthropomorphising to say that animals have the traits which
| we've just said define animals, whereas what makes humans
| special is that we have 'risen above' mere emotion?
| Shorel wrote:
| Not really common to 'animals' in general, for example
| reptiles only have the very basic instincts of eat,
| reproduce, fight.
|
| Insects don't have emotions, they barely have hyper
| specialized sensors as brains.
|
| However, emotions efficiently direct behaviours in mammals.
| They enact immediate and persistent responses.
|
| We can say without much doubt that emotions in mammals are
| similar to our own emotions.
|
| The big unknowns are animals further away from us, which
| are demonstrably intelligent, like birds and octopuses.
| sitkack wrote:
| How do you know insects don't have emotions? Bees have
| been shown playing. Spiders have REM sleep.
| bmitc wrote:
| And in the context of orcas specifically, their emotional
| processing centers in their brain dwarf that of humans, even
| when taking the relative brain sizes into account. So by
| scientific accounting, it's likely their emotional
| intelligence is far more advanced than ours.
| neom wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=rat+not+eating+after+death+o...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277240852...
| .
|
| I've kept rats for a long time, I don't know why, but I do know
| they change behaviour for a period of time once one dies.
| sitkack wrote:
| Video of scientists getting a laugh response from tickled
| rats.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/eavesdrop-on-
| ultras...
| encoderer wrote:
| Love animals but "grown meat" has proven to be very gross.
| bamboozled wrote:
| In my opinion, this is why hunting is ethically superior.
| Almost nothing dies peacefully in the wild, it's either massive
| long term suffering, or being mauled by dogs, bears or big
| cats, strangled by pythons etc.
|
| A skilled hunter can choose an adult animal without kids and
| take it fairly humanely.
|
| Sadly, we all have to die somehow.
|
| Hunters and fisherman generally have great respect for nature
| and the environment, which is important.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's why I can't wait for lab grown meat becoming a thing. I
| love meat and my understanding is that its healthy and
| necessary product but i also have nothing but respect to
| vegetarians.
| kbelder wrote:
| I've wondered why, instead of trying to lab grow meat (which
| I think is decades off, due to various problems), we just
| don't try to breed dumber, unfeeling, cows.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| https://freefromharm.org/animal-farmer-turned-vegan/jackie-s...
| bamboozled wrote:
| I believe this is nice, but how do regular people actually find
| the time to care about this stuff?
|
| If you have kids, bills, a job, listen to crap from politicians
| all day, where do you find the time to be this empathetic.
|
| My kids school gives them milk as part of lunch, my kid likes
| milk now. You have to live in a very special world to get
| around this.
|
| I was a vegetarian for a while, I was mostly starving hungry
| and I had to spend hours a day cooking and eating to feel full.
| It's a shit situation but yeah, it's the way it is for many
| people.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| The western idea of making things better for animals often
| involves abstinence. Which is unpalatable if you are a meat
| eater.
|
| The messaging should be to reduce your meat consumption. By
| reported national averages, I eat 25% of the meat eaten by
| the average Australian. And I don't feel that I'm missing
| out.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Yeah, we eat vegetarian / vegan every second night.
| mongol wrote:
| > listen to crap from politicians all day
|
| This part I recently decided I will stop doing. It will not
| be easy and I may fail, but I think my mood requires it.
| bamboozled wrote:
| It's pretty bleak, I agree. I'm concerned regular people
| are going to be more and more trampled on in the near
| future.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| It's easy, first step just stop watching the news. There is
| no FOMO or if you really need your dosage keep it to end of
| the week roundup.
|
| Because in reality there is nothing you can do.
|
| You can't have a shot of vodka with Putin and ask him to
| stop war.
|
| You can't stop Twitter and Elon from raging, nor can you
| can't Isreal.
|
| What you can stop is giving these puppets headspace time
| and hold compassion to those who are involved in the
| conflicts.
| mindslight wrote:
| Don't you want to watch _before_ the end of the week
| roundup? To know if you need to lay low?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Either, I wake up dead, wake up conscripted or wake up in
| to another shite day of the same of what happened
| yesterday.
|
| Anything else? I'm sure I will be told by my peers.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> I was mostly starving hungry_
|
| What? Vegetarian doesn't necessarily mean you lose all
| sources of animal protein, there's no real reason to be
| starving on the diet.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I guess it's not eating flesh, but it's still causing a lot
| of harm is what I'm hearing.
|
| In our family, we eat vegetarian every second night.
| Basically vegan 3/4 nights a week. However I do find myself
| running to the fridge for cheese or a whey protein shake
| for desert quite often.
| maxbond wrote:
| It's pretty common for would-be vegetarians to be
| "carbotarians" and fail to feed themselves properly because
| they simply don't know any better and eat primarily bread
| and pasta. I also had this experience of being a ravenous
| carbotarian, but my roommates were all vegetarians and
| taught me. If you don't know vegetarians, look to athletes
| and home chefs for advice.
|
| Tl;Dr combine a grain with a legume at least once a day to
| obtain a full protein. Beans and rice is a good staple, for
| example (but to reduce exposure to arsenic you should
| parboil the rice[1] as well as rotate through some other
| staples). Put peanut butter or peanut protein powder in
| stir fries, put hummus in your sandwiches, eat eggs, etc.
| And, I know it sounds obvious, but it's a reminder I
| needed, do actually eat vegetables.
|
| It's not difficult but if you've eaten meat your whole life
| you may need to change some habits, because you have more
| room to get away with a poor diet if you're eating meat.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-this-rice-
| cookin...
| jhanschoo wrote:
| As the other commenter, some differential resistance that's
| within your capacity should be sufficient. Eating
| proportionately less sends a signal to the supply chain,
| which adapts to such signals. Comparatively, you can imagine
| being vegetarian to be extremely easy in, say, India; because
| the supply chain is built to support such a diet. (Of course,
| vegetarianism in India is likely to still mete lot of animal
| suffering as well.)
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > listen to crap from politicians all day, where do you find
| the time to be this empathetic.
|
| Swap those two.
|
| Stop listening to politicians. It's not empathy you require,
| it's compassion. Empathy is very tiring.
| perfmode wrote:
| A first step is to no longer eat meat for pleasure or for
| recreation. If needed, just eat it for nutrition.
|
| Could you imagine if the whole world took this incremental
| step?
| javaskrrt wrote:
| reading this made me want to cry. my heart goes out to the momma
| whale.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Birth article in Sept - https://archive.ph/uZ5mx
| bmitc wrote:
| It's such a travesty what we've done to the Southern Resident
| Orca population. We decimated their numbers with captures and
| killings, cutoff their food supply, and poisoned them via their
| environment and food supply. These are effectively war crimes
| committed by humans against the orcas, but even for an animal
| that likely meets and possibly even exceeds our emotional
| intelligence, articles like this are about as good as they can
| hope for from us.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Anthropomorphism? In my science?! Yes please!
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Let's get some more cetapodomorphism in our human psych
| discussions.
| TomMasz wrote:
| This is one more reason that Orcas should not be kept in
| captivity.
| throwaway3287 wrote:
| > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Sammi wrote:
| I don't find the comment to be without substance. It's a
| concise and concrete critique.
| collingreen wrote:
| It's dismissive without substance. The point is discussing
| if the whale feels grief. A blanket dismissal of all
| animals feeling anything "just because" is not a critique.
| If there is some reason science should dismiss everything
| like this as valueless and not worth even considering then
| I don't know it yet and a comment talking about that would
| be constructive.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > A blanket dismissal of all animals feeling anything
| "just because" is not a critique.
|
| The idea that animals feel human emotions (much less
| "grief") is based only on the fact that orcas look pretty
| to the human eye.
|
| Would you be willing to entertain "grieving" ants? (Ants
| are the only animals beside humans to have successfully
| built a civilization. Can't say they are unintelligent.)
| urda wrote:
| Gift link https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/us/mother-orca-
| tahlequah-...
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