Opinion: "The End of Meat Is Here" - NY Times

[belboid]

I was careful to include plenty of links to documented evidence in my quote. I took a look at some of them and it seemed real - and horrific - enough to me.

It doesn't matter if she's a PETA employee or not if what she is posting up is correct, and supported by evidence.

I’ve no problem with the other things you’ve quoted and would generally agree with the problem of ‘over-sheeping’ Most of the things she claims may we’ll be true in that piece, but the inclusion of such hyperbolic statements undermine the decent ones which leads to any discussion being dragged down cul de sacs like this.

 

[Spymaster]

I’ve no problem with the other things you’ve quoted and would generally agree with the problem of ‘over-sheeping’ Most of the things she claims may we’ll be true in that piece, but the inclusion of such hyperbolic statements undermine the decent ones which leads to any discussion being dragged down cul de sacs like this.

This is where it's always been with AR loons. Many meat eaters agree completely that industrial farming should be improved dramatically but as we can see from all of the threads on here over the years and the characters involved, there's no reasoning with some people.

 

[WouldBe]

Well they were (though grouse shooting and deer hunting also caused the great chop down)

Got any examples?

Anyway I like moors. They are fascinating places.

 

[Orang Utan]

Got any examples?

Anyway I like moors. They are fascinating places.

Read some George Monbiot

 

[WouldBe]

That's because we've bred them to produce more wool than wild sheep, just as we've bred poultry that have more breast meat. When they reach a certain weight, they are so top-heavy, they fall over into the muck they're living in. We've changed their genetics in ways that aren't good for the animal's welfare.

I've not seen or heard of that happening but can see how it could happen. It is possible to selectively breed animals that are smaller but some on here seem opposed to selective breeding. If you bread animals that were 75% smaller then unless you can ensure that meat eating drops by an equivalent amount then you would end up rearing and slaughtering more animals but you can't have that either as that would be cruel as well.

 

[editor]

I've not seen or heard of that happening but can see how it could happen. It is possible to selectively breed animals that are smaller but some on here seem opposed to selective breeding. If you bread animals that were 75% smaller then unless you can ensure that meat eating drops by an equivalent amount then you would end up rearing and slaughtering more animals but you can't have that either as that would be cruel as well.

It's all fucking cruel.

 

[WouldBe]

Read some George Monbiot

Care to narrow it down a bit?

 

[WouldBe]

It's all fucking cruel.

So the only alternative is to stop keeping animals altogether then? How do you propose you achieve that?

 

[Orang Utan]

Care to narrow it down a bit?

Google sheep farming and George Monbiot

 

[editor]

So the only alternative is to stop keeping animals altogether then? How do you propose you achieve that?

I'm really not to going to repeat myself again.

 

[WouldBe]

I'm really not to going to repeat myself again.

I can't say I've ever seen an explanation on here from anyone. All I see is 'meat is cruel'. So it doesn't matter if it's 1 animal or thousands 'its all cruel'. So as far as I can see just cutting down on meat eating doesn't cut it as the remaining will still be cruel.

 

[WouldBe]

Are you actually arguing that cows in the wild normally become pregnant again within 24 days of giving birth, and do so throughout their entire fertile life?

This sound natural to you?

Of course it's not natural but it's done for a reason so the calves are born in spring when there is a plentiful supply of food so you don't get cow / calf die of starvation if born in late autumn or winter which would definitely be cruel.

So they're actually better off being 'mutilated, abused, and skinned alive' in your opinion, yes?

Define mutilated.

Once again they aren't skinned alive. I'd like to know how you are supposed to skin a sheep with hair clippers.

As for abused if you'd bothered to read my post #462 you would see I'm against cruelty to animals. Recently 2 staffies died of starvation in dog crates even though there was plenty of dog food and treats within a few feet of them. The owner was banned from keeping animals for life. If the same was applied to farmers, instead of a slap on the wrist, abuse and cruelty would end pretty smart. It would help if supermarkets weren't allowed to dictate the price they pay so farmers didn't have to cut corners.

 

[Marty1]

This is where Tesco buy most of their chickens from:



Absolutely grim - surely Tesco can do better than this considering they make £1.85 billion in pre-tax profits.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Also:

Revealed: UK supermarket and fast food chicken linked to deforestation in Brazil | Environment | The Guardian

 

[Johnny Vodka]

I can't say I've ever seen an explanation on here from anyone. All I see is 'meat is cruel'. So it doesn't matter if it's 1 animal or thousands 'its all cruel'. So as far as I can see just cutting down on meat eating doesn't cut it as the remaining will still be cruel.

There will be issues with eating fruit/veg too - pesticides used, produce flown in from half way round the globe. Is eating a tropical fruit more ethical than eating a locally caught rabbit? To me, it's about being aware of the issues, thinking, and being willing to make adjustments, rather than just shrugging your shoulders and continuing to do whatever you do to the same degree (and taking the piss out of anyone trying to do 'better').

As much as I can, I try to stick to eating meat/fish only twice a week (been slowly cutting down), and trying to eat animals that have fairly good lives. It's very, very rarely I eat pig products now, because I've never seen free range pork in the supermarket (don't be fooled by 'outdoor bred'!).

 

[Jeff Robinson]

PETA stopped running that campaign after it was shown to be rather disingenuous. They objected to the Australian practise of removing strips of skin around the buttocks. However they didn’t realise that it is important in stopping the even more debilitating effects of flystrike.

It’s important to note however that (1) there are alternatives to mulesing to prevent or reduce the risk of flystrike (see e.g. Progress on alternatives to mulesing | Autumn 2015 | Sheep Notes newsletter | Newsletters | Support and resources | Agriculture Victoria) and (2) flystrike is only a problem in the first place because sheep have been selectively bred to have thick wool.

Selectively breeding animals to make them more exploitable is cruelty literally built into the DNA of the animal agriculture industries. The huge swollen udders of the dairy cow, the intensive laying cycles of hens, the fast-growing broiler chickens whose legs give way under the weight of their own bodies. Farmers then use these health problems that they're responsible for to justify further brutal practices like mulesing. Another 'corrective' is keeping fast growing broiler breeders on the brink of starvation to prevent them from dying of heart attacks before they reach the age of sexual maturity.

 

[WouldBe]

Google sheep farming and George Monbiot

Are you seriously recommending "Sheep wrecked"? lol rofl

 

[Orang Utan]

Are you seriously recommending "Sheep wrecked"? lol rofl

Nope, not specifically. He’s written other articles too.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

"The UK slaughters at least a billion chickens a year, equivalent to 15 birds for every person in the country. Many are fattened up on soya beans imported into the UK by Cargill, which buys from farmers in the Cerrado, a woody tropical savanna that covers an area equal in size to Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined."

Revealed: UK supermarket and fast-food chicken linked to deforestation in Brazil

Tesco, Lidl, Asda, McDonald’s and Nando’s all source chicken fed on soya from Cerrado tropical biome region

www.theguardian.com

 

[Funky_monks]

Google sheep farming and George Monbiot

Except he's a clown who writes spurious opinion pieces with no basis in science.

 

[Funky_monks]

Are you actually arguing that cows in the wild normally become pregnant again within 24 days of giving birth, and do so throughout their entire fertile life?

This sound natural to you?

Were a bull to be running with them, they would then wean in time to give birth to the new calf, and would come back into heat naturally at 60 days after calving. Primitive breeds (so closer to your wild cattle) can come bulling as little as 14 days after calving.

 

[Funky_monks]

It’s important to note however that (1) there are alternatives to mulesing to prevent or reduce the risk of flystrike (see e.g. Progress on alternatives to mulesing | Autumn 2015 | Sheep Notes newsletter | Newsletters | Support and resources | Agriculture Victoria) and (2) flystrike is only a problem in the first place because sheep have been selectively bred to have thick wool.

Selectively breeding animals to make them more exploitable is cruelty literally built into the DNA of the animal agriculture industries. The huge swollen udders of the dairy cow, the intensive laying cycles of hens, the fast-growing broiler chickens whose legs give way under the weight of their own bodies. Farmers then use these health problems that they're responsible for to justify further brutal practices like mulesing. Another 'corrective' is keeping fast growing broiler breeders on the brink of starvation to prevent them from dying of heart attacks before they reach the age of sexual maturity.

Mulesing isn't a problem unless you wear merino wool.
We don't have Merinos here, nor have we ever gone in for mulesing.

Ethically, the livestock industry that makes me most uncomfortable is dairying, for various reasons.

Those issues with broilers were certainly relevant a decade ago.


Has anybody here commenting actually ever worked with livestock or even been on a livestock farm for any period of time? I'm genuinely curious.

 

[Funky_monks]

I’ve no problem with the other things you’ve quoted and would generally agree with the problem of ‘over-sheeping’ Most of the things she claims may we’ll be true in that piece, but the inclusion of such hyperbolic statements undermine the decent ones which leads to any discussion being dragged down cul de sacs like this.

Sheep numbers in the UK have been in decline since the highland clearances, sometimes slowly, sometimes more rapidly. A recent large decline was when the headage payments were stopped in the 90s.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Mulesing isn't a problem unless you wear merino wool.
We don't have Merinos here, nor have we ever gone in for mulesing.

Ethically, the livestock industry that makes me most uncomfortable is dairying, for various reasons.

Those issues with broilers were certainly relevant a decade ago.


Has anybody here commenting actually ever worked with livestock or even been on a livestock farm for any period of time? I'm genuinely curious.

I never claimed that mulesing happens in the UK. Your claim that "Those issues with broilers were certainly relevant a decade ago" is bollocks. Are you seriously claiming that selective breeding for fast growing broilers or food restriction practices for broiler breeders are no longer practiced?

 

[Funky_monks]

I never claimed that mulesing happens in the UK. Your claim that "Those issues with broilers were certainly relevant a decade ago" is bollocks. Are you seriously claiming that selective breeding for fast growing broilers or food restriction practices for broiler breeders are no longer practiced?

Those faults were by and large bred out. Chickens have a short generation time so its easy to do.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Those faults were by and large bred out. Chickens have a short generation time so its easy to do.

This was published in the World's Poultry Science Journal last year https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1079/WPS20020004 so you're talking bollocks again.

 

[Lorca]

Has anybody here commenting actually ever worked with livestock or even been on a livestock farm for any period of time? I'm genuinely curious.

i worked on a farm for nearly seven years when i left school, albeit many years ago (probably in a very small minority of farm workers with a brummie accent, weirdly!) The farm had about 80 cows and 150 odd sheep. I went vegan almost as soon as i left and have never looked back, some of the things that went on upset me deeply.

For just one example, at college, we went to an industrial chicken unit and i saw out the corner of my eye a worker casually boot a skinny, bald chicken so hard he killed it, but it didn't matter because there were thousands more of these poor wretches. Who knows what goes on in these stinkin' hell holes that are out of sight, out of mind. We also visited a slaughterhouse as well, about which i try not to think about.

Apparently we slaughter 65 billion chickens a year, so many that their bones layer the earth, perhaps even defining the anthropocene era geologically. I've since had some rescue chickens, when i lived on skye - i'm not anthropomorphising? them but they all had unique personalities. Same with the cows, i can even remember individuals 30 years later! So i'm completely with editor and jeff on this. Reducing meat is so easy to do nowadays innit.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

Except he's a clown who writes spurious opinion pieces with no basis in science.

He is?

 

[editor]

Except he's a clown who writes spurious opinion pieces with no basis in science.

Be sure to provide evidence to support this claim. Thanks.

 

[editor]

Yet another reason to stop eating this cruel, factory farmed shit.