Just wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings.
Ideally each animal product comes with the imagery like one you get now on cigarette packs (but of an animal in a cage/slaughterhouse) + appropriate cost increases for welfare.
Recent law introduction of putting 1, 2, 3 stars on animal product packages to signify how well animal was treated is great start but we can do so much better as species coexisting in this planet with every other animal.
In my eyes it all starts with education and awareness of alternative plant based diet but government enforced help would be great too.
It actually would be a great idea if the government encouraged companies (e.g. via tax cuts) to put a photo of real animals (taken on location by an approved government inspector) on the packaging of the meat product. This would create an incentive for companies to treat animals well so that the photo also turns out well and they get a nice tax cut for participating so it can be totally voluntary for companies to participate.
I think creating incentives for companies to be more transparent by offering tax cuts would be a great model for many industries and would give ethical operators a competitive advantage.
IMO, the government should put more focus on creating incentives which encourage positive behaviors because enforcing laws is difficult, expensive and their interpretation is often subjective (hence the need for lawyers).
Meat eaters are going to want the nasty images taken off of packaging, and the cheaper option is to lobby to remove them, not pay substantially more for an idyllic, pasture-raised, humane future.
Congratulations, you now have a pro-factory-farming lobbying group with actual grassroots support.
Might also have more people on your side; might not. Worth considering the adversary in any move of this nature.
Would it work like the warning labels on cigarettes in Europe with diseased lungs on them? Show what a factory farm looks like on the package and if you still want it go for it.
> Just wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings.
It should also be illegal for vegans to lie about how a vegan diet is cruelty free. Farming kills far more animals than raising livestock. Far more insects, worms, rodents, etc are killed to protect vegetation and harvest vegetation than are killed in slaughterhouses.
Every bowl of salad has more animal parts than a plate of steak.
Is it more ethical to kill one cow to provide 1000 meals for 1000 people or kill 1000 animals to feed one vegan one meal?
You are right, every meat package and every vegetable, fruit, etc should list how many animals were killed to feed you.
Also, it should show how much environmental damage the vegan diet is causing.
Also, every food item should explicitly show that humans are natural omnivores and that the vegan diet in an unnatural diet that humans cannot survive on in nature.
I am confused. The animals killed in slaughterhouses... don't they also eat vegetation before they are killed? That vegetation doesn't need to be protected from insects?
The way you described it, it sounds like a cow appears out of thin air -- poof! -- then it is killed, and 1000 people can eat with only 1 animal killed. It's the people who step on insects while they water the salad who are the true monsters, because they kill 1000 animals for 1 lunch. But how many insects does the cow step on before it grows up and gets killed?
So, here's what I wonder about this. I think most people who think about it can agree that a lot of factory farming conditions are terrible. Cramped quarters, lack of outdoor time, space, exercise, poor food, etc. So working toward eliminating those problems seems incontrovertibly good to me.
However, let's say hypothetically we're only talking about farms run with a focus on animal welfare. (And not just giving animals 10 square feet of 'pasture' so they can say they're free range, but really.) So the issues of poor living conditions are removed, and we're just talking about killing animals for meat. If people stopped eating meat altogether, most farm animals simply wouldn't be born in the first place. Farmers aren't going to raise animals if they can't eventually earn money from them, obviously, and most of these animals wouldn't exist in large numbers in the wild. So what I'm wondering is, for a farm animal is it not possible that a decent life followed by being slaughtered for food might be superior to no life at all?
Obviously if we think in terms of humans, that would be horrific; we consider killing humans unnecessarily an absolute moral wrong. If someone decided they would have a child, but only if they could murder them after some period of time, that's obviously monstrous. I'm just not sure that that analogy applies to farm animals who certainly are living creatures who feel pain, but don't have the same understanding of the world and their place in it that humans do. To me that's the rational reason why the the idea of killing humans could be considered differently from killing other animals. That said, I expect the real reason we instinctively feel that killing humans is wrong is more an evolutionary drive to protect our own species.
I do grant that it's uncomfortable to think about when the analogy to humans is drawn. For some I'm sure it's uncomfortable even without consciously making that connection. I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.
Yes, I think this is a totally valid point. Where I have come out on this (just a personal opinion) is that if the animal will have a "good" life (I know super subjective, I'll leave it to some ethicists and philosophers far smarter than me to figure out what that means) then it's logical to eat meat to create the demand so more of those animals are bred and can live "good" lives. All human lives result in death today too, I don't think we would consider parents monsters for having children because they will die someday, but we might if the children would be born into hellish conditions and the parents did it for selfish reasons and not for the child.
> I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.
Why not? Your comment makes it clear that industrial animal agriculture is wrong (not to mention ecologically disastrous), but then your last sentence makes a 180 out of nowhere. It feels extreme at first, but I'd like to assure you that reducing your consumption of these industries is possible (and sometimes even easy!).
As I said, I'm certain many of the current industrial farming practices are wrong. I'm speaking solely about the morality of killing animals for food, and questioning whether or not that alone is unethical, even if they are raised in good conditions.
Maybe I'm being a techno optimist but I really am rooting for Beyond Meat and all the plant based alternatives here. I've tried to go vegan a few times for both the ethical and environmental reasons but have never maintained and end up a 'reduceatarian.' I just think realistically the best chance for animal welfare is that plant based meats become cheaper, tastier, and healthier and just replace the majority of them, leaving only a high end segment of meat that was well treated; and then it doesn't seem morally wrong to eat since you're helping enable a net "good" life for an animal with your consumption rather than the horrible conditions most animals are raised in today.
While Beyond and Impossible meats are great alternatives, I don't think artificial meat will truly take off until "lab grown" actual meat becomes mass-produceable and sustainable.
I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.
I think there's real pressure on nutrition science to overlook the utility of eating 'non-essential' animal nutrients such as carnitine, creatine, and cholesterol.
I was a vegetarian for most of my life, and won't ever do it again. I will accept muscle tissue grown in culture, happily, but don't believe that plant-source nutrition can replace animal foods in (my) healthy diet.
I'm sympathetic to animal welfare arguments: I refuse to eat factory-farmed pigs, and avoid factory chicken, and eggs which aren't pasture-raised. I'm firmly convinced of the necessity of meat to my good health, I've A/B tested vegetarian and vegan diets to my own satisfaction, and won't be changing my mind on this.
“[F]armed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals.”
"Animal equality" is not a great brand. Sure, maybe you can get most people to agree that they should be treated more humanely. Equal is not the right word.
If it came down to me or a chicken - I sincerely hope society would prioritize me.
Uncomfortable thoughts: Let's say first world countries in the West get on board with not eating meat anymore. How do you exactly go about telling impoverished countries/peoples to stop eating meat? Would we ban meat and force them to eat some substitutes? But food is an important part of culture and we would be erasing their culture if we did that wouldn't we? Should we give some cultural groups the right to eat meat since they're less privileged? Of course I'm only speaking hypothetically, assuming that the goal is to reach 0 animals killed for human consumption.
Exporting cultural strictures rarely ends well (many historical examples, both distant and recent), so I'd say, if you can get a large number of people in the West to not eat meat, then you've reduced the suffering of animals by a tremendous amount. That alone is a perfectly fine goal. Let non-coercive cultural influence do the rest of the work, while never forcing a populace to do something against its interests or will. (After all, non-Western vegetarian cultures have influenced Western diets...)
Well, "we", as in "first world countries" can't "ban" meat in other countries without stepping on their sovereignty. "We" have done it before, for worse reasons (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... and numerous other examples), but that doesn't mean "we" should do it again.
"Mostly" is a useless metric when they're eating as much meat as they can afford, and that just happens to be not much.
The only exception I'm aware of is India and since that's religious it seems difficult to scale. Islam has animal slaughter as one of its few obligate rituals.
I don't understand why the goal should be 0 animals killed.
I personally don't feel shame in eating animals bread to be eaten. Having had grandparents practicing subsistence farming, also being born in Eastern Europe during communism and thus suffering from food shortages, from a young age I've seen chickens, pigs and lambs being slaughtered. Not a big deal, and in an environment in which food is in short supply, killing an animal for food is a reason for celebration.
People say that we've been desensitized due to being disconnected from our food source. But I think that's backwards. You rarely see vegans among subsistence farmers. Even when meat is a luxury, eggs and dairy are staple foods.
Unless there's a massive economic incentive for stopping meat production, no country will ever get "on board" with not eating meat.
The CO2 emissions story is the only argument that has any legs. But if you think about it, it's an argument for efficiency and for taxing CO2 emissions, with plenty of low hanging fruits, e.g. we should waste less food, prefer chickens and pigs over ruminants, etc.
---
Note I'm actually a vegan 3 days per week out of 7 and I prefer to go through all periods of religious fasting, which is basically hard core veganism (no traces of animal products are acceptable) before the big holidays, e.g. Lent (I'm not religious, I just like the practice).
Meat is the most efficient protein source, per calorie, with a complete profile and unfortunately there's no equivalent unless you start taking protein extracts.
Otherwise a vegan diet is a diet in which you have to eat a lot of legumes every day (lentils, kidney beans, soy) for getting 60-80 grams of protein, an inadequate level if you're looking to maintain or build muscle and going over that is hard for me without being in a caloric surplus. Also, during vegan fasting periods I take B12, Calcium supplements and I strive to eat a varied diet.
My point is, from first hand experience, a healthy diet is pretty challenging and expensive, with or without meat and for poorer populations life is hard enough as it is.
But let's say hypothetically, if we stopped our people from eating meat entirely, doesn't that collapse the involved industries? Both foreign and domestic. What does that mean for impoverished countries who rely on exporting meat to other countries?
Worth pointing out: The future is now. Just this week I bought Beyond Burgers from my grocery store (first time) and made them for my partner and me and they were really good.
Readit News
Ideally each animal product comes with the imagery like one you get now on cigarette packs (but of an animal in a cage/slaughterhouse) + appropriate cost increases for welfare.
Recent law introduction of putting 1, 2, 3 stars on animal product packages to signify how well animal was treated is great start but we can do so much better as species coexisting in this planet with every other animal.
In my eyes it all starts with education and awareness of alternative plant based diet but government enforced help would be great too.
I think creating incentives for companies to be more transparent by offering tax cuts would be a great model for many industries and would give ethical operators a competitive advantage.
IMO, the government should put more focus on creating incentives which encourage positive behaviors because enforcing laws is difficult, expensive and their interpretation is often subjective (hence the need for lawyers).
Deleted Comment
Meat eaters are going to want the nasty images taken off of packaging, and the cheaper option is to lobby to remove them, not pay substantially more for an idyllic, pasture-raised, humane future.
Congratulations, you now have a pro-factory-farming lobbying group with actual grassroots support.
Might also have more people on your side; might not. Worth considering the adversary in any move of this nature.
It should also be illegal for vegans to lie about how a vegan diet is cruelty free. Farming kills far more animals than raising livestock. Far more insects, worms, rodents, etc are killed to protect vegetation and harvest vegetation than are killed in slaughterhouses.
Every bowl of salad has more animal parts than a plate of steak.
Is it more ethical to kill one cow to provide 1000 meals for 1000 people or kill 1000 animals to feed one vegan one meal?
You are right, every meat package and every vegetable, fruit, etc should list how many animals were killed to feed you.
Also, it should show how much environmental damage the vegan diet is causing.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/10/avocado...
Also, every food item should explicitly show that humans are natural omnivores and that the vegan diet in an unnatural diet that humans cannot survive on in nature.
The way you described it, it sounds like a cow appears out of thin air -- poof! -- then it is killed, and 1000 people can eat with only 1 animal killed. It's the people who step on insects while they water the salad who are the true monsters, because they kill 1000 animals for 1 lunch. But how many insects does the cow step on before it grows up and gets killed?
However, let's say hypothetically we're only talking about farms run with a focus on animal welfare. (And not just giving animals 10 square feet of 'pasture' so they can say they're free range, but really.) So the issues of poor living conditions are removed, and we're just talking about killing animals for meat. If people stopped eating meat altogether, most farm animals simply wouldn't be born in the first place. Farmers aren't going to raise animals if they can't eventually earn money from them, obviously, and most of these animals wouldn't exist in large numbers in the wild. So what I'm wondering is, for a farm animal is it not possible that a decent life followed by being slaughtered for food might be superior to no life at all?
Obviously if we think in terms of humans, that would be horrific; we consider killing humans unnecessarily an absolute moral wrong. If someone decided they would have a child, but only if they could murder them after some period of time, that's obviously monstrous. I'm just not sure that that analogy applies to farm animals who certainly are living creatures who feel pain, but don't have the same understanding of the world and their place in it that humans do. To me that's the rational reason why the the idea of killing humans could be considered differently from killing other animals. That said, I expect the real reason we instinctively feel that killing humans is wrong is more an evolutionary drive to protect our own species.
I do grant that it's uncomfortable to think about when the analogy to humans is drawn. For some I'm sure it's uncomfortable even without consciously making that connection. I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.
Why not? Your comment makes it clear that industrial animal agriculture is wrong (not to mention ecologically disastrous), but then your last sentence makes a 180 out of nowhere. It feels extreme at first, but I'd like to assure you that reducing your consumption of these industries is possible (and sometimes even easy!).
It’s horrific in terms of animals as well.
I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.
I think there's real pressure on nutrition science to overlook the utility of eating 'non-essential' animal nutrients such as carnitine, creatine, and cholesterol.
I was a vegetarian for most of my life, and won't ever do it again. I will accept muscle tissue grown in culture, happily, but don't believe that plant-source nutrition can replace animal foods in (my) healthy diet.
I'm sympathetic to animal welfare arguments: I refuse to eat factory-farmed pigs, and avoid factory chicken, and eggs which aren't pasture-raised. I'm firmly convinced of the necessity of meat to my good health, I've A/B tested vegetarian and vegan diets to my own satisfaction, and won't be changing my mind on this.
“[F]armed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
https://xkcd.com/1338/
If it came down to me or a chicken - I sincerely hope society would prioritize me.
Dead Comment
Except for the westerners who disagree with this. They can be subjugated.
The only exception I'm aware of is India and since that's religious it seems difficult to scale. Islam has animal slaughter as one of its few obligate rituals.
I personally don't feel shame in eating animals bread to be eaten. Having had grandparents practicing subsistence farming, also being born in Eastern Europe during communism and thus suffering from food shortages, from a young age I've seen chickens, pigs and lambs being slaughtered. Not a big deal, and in an environment in which food is in short supply, killing an animal for food is a reason for celebration.
People say that we've been desensitized due to being disconnected from our food source. But I think that's backwards. You rarely see vegans among subsistence farmers. Even when meat is a luxury, eggs and dairy are staple foods.
Unless there's a massive economic incentive for stopping meat production, no country will ever get "on board" with not eating meat.
The CO2 emissions story is the only argument that has any legs. But if you think about it, it's an argument for efficiency and for taxing CO2 emissions, with plenty of low hanging fruits, e.g. we should waste less food, prefer chickens and pigs over ruminants, etc.
---
Note I'm actually a vegan 3 days per week out of 7 and I prefer to go through all periods of religious fasting, which is basically hard core veganism (no traces of animal products are acceptable) before the big holidays, e.g. Lent (I'm not religious, I just like the practice).
Meat is the most efficient protein source, per calorie, with a complete profile and unfortunately there's no equivalent unless you start taking protein extracts.
Otherwise a vegan diet is a diet in which you have to eat a lot of legumes every day (lentils, kidney beans, soy) for getting 60-80 grams of protein, an inadequate level if you're looking to maintain or build muscle and going over that is hard for me without being in a caloric surplus. Also, during vegan fasting periods I take B12, Calcium supplements and I strive to eat a varied diet.
My point is, from first hand experience, a healthy diet is pretty challenging and expensive, with or without meat and for poorer populations life is hard enough as it is.
Cultural imperialism is so last century.
It's now the main "meat" we use for tacos. I'm not a big fan of it for burgers, though.
Impossible burgers, on the other hand, are great. It's a shame they only sell to restaurants.