[HN Gopher] Factory Farming Is a Blight
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Factory Farming Is a Blight
Author : speckx
Score : 35 points
Date : 2025-11-03 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.palladiummag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.palladiummag.com)
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| There are all sorts of ugly industrialized systems required to
| support our world of 8 billion people.
|
| It's incredibly difficult to square them with how we want to
| perceive life. Your brain immediately wants to slip into a
| counterfactual fantasy, "Meat isn't required, we could all be
| vegetarian" etc.
|
| I don't have an answer to it. Factory farming _is_ a nightmare
| beyond most horror. It 's hard enough to even make a list of all
| these ugly areas. I think the necessity of plastics is another,
| lesser example.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > required
|
| Source? Keep in mind factory farms are subsidized by corn
| subsidies (used for feed) and by not paying for externalities,
| namely the antibiotic-resistance they breed due to their
| overuse of medication to keep animals alive in such oppressive
| environments. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a far greater
| threat to that world of 8 billion people than slightly higher
| meat prices.
|
| > counterfactual fantasy
|
| 20-40% of India is vegetarian, and factory farms barely existed
| before the 1950s, and become widespread even later. Far from a
| fantasy, it did and does work.
|
| There's nothing lazier than looking at a system, and declaring,
| without evidence, that no other way could work. Especially when
| there are counterexamples _in living memory_.
| xenospn wrote:
| Source is millions of people (including me) that are alive
| and well without touching any kind of animal based food
| products whatsoever.
| dTal wrote:
| You seem to be agreeing violently with parent?
| dTal wrote:
| Meat _isn 't_ required. We _could_ all be vegetarian.
|
| The impact to quality of life could be minimal. Right now,
| today, there exist plant-based burgers (Beyond) and even steaks
| (Juicy Marbles) that are in every way superior to the average
| offal-based "meat" you get from the average fast food joint.
| Granted that you can't replicate the very nicest of fine cuts
| with plants - yet - but how often are you really eating rare
| sirloin for lunch anyway? Right now the plant based
| alternatives are more expensive than animal meats, but this is
| an economic artifact that would evaporate in a hypothetical
| world where meat consumption was de-normalized (and meat
| subsidies halted!).
|
| Perhaps you mean it's counterfactual because you don't think
| it's a social norm that has a hope of being challenged. I think
| that's defeatist. Vegetarianism is practiced globally. You must
| begin from the following perspective: this is an indulgence,
| not a necessity for survival or even a requirement for a happy
| life. Raising an entire animal only to slaughter it for
| consumption is wanton extravagance of both physical and moral
| resource. Its practitioners deserve no subsidy, financial or
| social. Most people would be quite put off their meat if forced
| to viscerally confront the reality, but are carefully insulated
| from it - usually by simple distance and pleasant marketing,
| but in some places by actual legislation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
|
| In short, like most of the evils of world today, it's not a
| necessary evil. Just a lazy, can't-be-bothered-to-change,
| would-upset-the-current-economic-order evil.
| yesfitz wrote:
| Why do you say that a vegetarian/vegan population is a fantasy?
| shayway wrote:
| There's a wide range between factory farming and vegetarianism.
| Moderate, humane farming and lower-but-not-zero meat
| consumption is a perfectly realistic alternative to the
| extremes.
| savanaly wrote:
| If there's one social transformation I long to see in my life
| time which seems actually achievable and believable it would be
| for plant-based eating to become hip and cool, sort of like how
| smoking or being anti-gay became uncool, among Gen-Z and later.
| As the article highlights, current sentiment is totally against
| factory farming, it feels like people just need the right
| affordances to express that distaste in the marketplace. Right
| now if you confine yourself to vegan food you're going to get
| something very bland in the majority of eateries. I think that
| may be because the previous wave of vegan eaters were doing so
| for health reasons and so wanted to avoid excess fat and salt.
| Deep fried, richly seasoned mushrooms on the menu at your local
| bar and grill soon, god willing!
| korse wrote:
| But deep fried, richly seasoned mushrooms pair so well with
| steak and a cigar...
| niek_pas wrote:
| Why is it that any discussion on the horrors of meat-eating
| and factory farming inevitably invites this kind of morally
| nihilistic hedonism. Just because you like doing a thing does
| not make that thing justifiable. It's that simple.
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