Discussion Factory farms. What's your opinion on them?

I was arguing with people about the ethicality of putting a single goldfish into anything less than 20 gallons of water with me saying that although a 5-10 gallon bowl may not result in the best quality of life for goldfish, they can still live for quite a few years provided you properly take care of it in relation to the amount of water and space in it's bowl. People kept saying I was irresponsible and dumb, so I started researching into the ethics of keeping animals locked up for one reason or another.

One thing lead to another, and I suddenly found this article on the quality life in factory farms. https://sentientmedia.org/factory-farms/

Here's an excerpt out of it:
"Pig farms are unusually cruel to the animals being raised for slaughter.


Many common practices found across pig farms are barbaric. Tail docking and tooth clipping happen and the farmers claim it’s to help the pigs. Many pigs in horrid conditions and squalor can act out due to stress and anxiety. Farmers believe that by physically modifying their pigs they are keeping them safe. In reality, they only do this to prevent the spread of disease. Pigs can become so stressed out that they’ll bite each other’s tails and feet and even resort to cannibalism. These behaviors do not occur in nature.


Many female pigs spend their lives on their sides in gestation crates, a barbaric way of keeping them stationary prisoners throughout their repeated pregnancies.


Right before giving birth, they are moved to farrowing crates. This is even worse than the gestational crate. The baby is taken away almost immediately to be raised for meat or to take the same path as its mother. It depends on sex.


One week later, the mother is forcefully impregnated and is back in the gestational crate. This process goes until she is no longer able to have babies and is slaughtered for her meat."

I personally wasn't ever a big meat eater, but this still makes me sad. Also, it reminded me of that other doujin by ShindoL, now that I think about it. Urgh. Anyways. Thoughts and comments on it? You still planning to eat real meat often in the future? If no or yes, any reason? I'm curious about nuffians' answers.

 

Of course life in factory farms isn't good, keeping a creature locked up isn't good (except maybe if the creature is facing extinction or is sick and being treated) but that doesn't mean not to consume meat, everything needs to be done in moderation

 

Yes, a gold fish or any fish should be put in a comfortable tank, with a guardian to help watch over it...



As for meat, you can still eat it. Just buy from ethic suppliers. Look for things like "Free range"

 

Don't worry, there is both a push to grow meat in labs without the suffering of animals as wells as a push to bioengineer animals to have reduced brain capacity so that animals no longer are able to feel, just eat and grow and be delicious

so in the future most domesticated animals will go near extinct except in oddities zoos to teach kids that there was once a thing called pig and chicken

 

You should really watch John Oliver’s segment on chicken farms or take a course on animal law. The things you’ll learn...

Well, I hate how animals on farms are treated, but I love meat too much to stop eating it. I know that makes me a hypocrite, but what can I do? (I’ve never had any illusions that I’m a better person than my vegetarian husband.) I’m placing my hopes on lab grown meat becoming big in the future so I’ll be able to eat meat with a clear conscience.

 

Meat is tasty... it's not the meats fault that those who raised meat and slaughtered meat are assholes. So you really shouldn't condemn the meat. It only leads to meatless, vegetarian world... A life without tasty meat wouldnt be worth living... So support juicy tasty meat, so that we will never again eat fake meat again!
Paid for by P.E.T.A(People for the Eating of Tasty Animals)

 

In all honesty, one could probably make an argument that so long as an animal isn't treated as decently as a human being, an animal isn't being treated ethically at all.

As Inv said above, there definitely are alternative suppliers. Just like there being chickens caged for prolonged periods of time, there are also free range chickens, or conventional vegetables versus their organic counterparts.
I think there is also a study in where meat is artificially created by sampling animal cells, and there are non-meat substitutes that supposedly taste exactly the same, or at least quite similar.

But ultimately, blaming the consumers like your situation above will not solve anything, because the consumers are not making the product. It's like factories producing millions of tons of plastic products every year, but people point fingers at that one guy who is using a plastic straw. Like, what do you want them to do?

 

Can't say I care that much tbh. Only to the extend as to how much the treatment of the animal affects it's produce. If I want a good quality steak, I'm ready to pay for it. And since I live in Germany where we have rather strict rules on animal husbandry I do expect them to be followed (this also goes for imported goods, I'm against free trade deals outside the EU).

 

but wouldnt that just be step 1 ?
is it ethical to burn down rainforest to palnt soy beans there before the ground turn unfertile after like 2-3 years ?
is it ethical to waste drinking water to water plantations and/or greenhouses ? is it ethiacal to destroy nature for agrar uses ?

wouldnt that make every non homegrown food unethical ?
than again i guess it wouldnt be very ethical to let 1/3 of humanity die because you decided to go for "ethical" food and need more space to grow it
ultimatily wouldnt humanity be ultimatily unethical for destroying the planet ?

i guess if you went to the end you couldnt eat anything anymore but perhaps some fruits falling from some trees ...

 

Plants are living creatures too you know? no less so than animals... and taking their fruits could be taken as similar to stealing the eggs from animals... better just stop eating all together...

 

it's a ethical thing to do? maybe not, and i'm sure as well is not "nice " for the animals in it but hey, this is something called "real world" and the world can not have 8billion people without things like that and no people, don't take it the wrong way as most of our friends here argued about "alternatives" methods but those are not enough to replace "factory farms", not even close, our entire society was build up to the current form with 8 billions people with some solid building blocks , and one of those was the capacity to feed all those people, and factory farm is without doubt one of it's pillars that sustain everything.

if you are against, fine, i don't care but if you still argue that let's close all those things down be aware that by shutting down the "factory farms" like most people like to argue about; you are pretty much admitting to genocide because again, without it the world can not sustain it's population and no, don't come over with some miraculous technology that someone invented last year that is capable of replacing the actual system of "factory farms" because this itself is a LIE, the technology itself is only the first STEP to solve this problem and it will never be the solution, how to apply this technology for the entire WORLD is the question we must ask ourselves since the transition period itself would kill millions of people or even more if not a well made plan is made for this transition and at least i have not heard anything related to this yet you could even call me biased when writing this but most of the time the people just "argue" let's close it and be done with it or let's change to something else etc but no one ever talks about how the transition between one to another would take place and if even most countries are able to "handle" this transition in the first place, hell this alone it would take DECADES to plan and do and surprise it will involve multiples generations of human race just like factory farms and human population did not simple "pop up" one year and achieved the numbers we have today this took decades and changing all of this should take at least a similar amount of time!

i'm won't start calling names like some says when talking about this "delicate" subject ,in reality NUF is above this type of "trash talk" so there was not even a need to mention so going on: we know that there is a lot of bad people in both sides but you know what? if i would choice a side, i would be the third side, the one of the human side since there is a lot of people in the current world who seems to forget about this side and fight for a lot of "stupid things" that should NOT be fought right now(the secret "word" here is NOW), and where i don't see them as wrong i don't feel they are right too, after all is "a free world,right?" so i can also have this view of their ideals but i will try to keep my reasoning focused on the food aspect and "factory farms":
there is still a lot humans suffering about in the world and maybe, at least this is my personal opinion,WE should care more about them than animals, this make me a asshole? maybe to some, but this is simple it. i love animals and dog's, hell look at my forum picture, my dog's are betters friends than most of my friends ever have been to me and yes i would fight to death to kill humans to save them in a death ring battle royale scenery , but here i'm writing about the "big picture" and ultimately in the end i would still accept all of that because again: we are still humans first, in the survival of human race should always put humans first and NO i'm not talking here about "let's destroy everything and abuse nature until it's over and doomsday knock on our door" i'm talking here about the technology level and scientific ability that we "posses" right now and unfortunately we can not stop things like "factory farms", we could stop a lot of shit that have been done to animals and nature itself without doubt and i'm all in for that , but FOOD itself is no no, we need it to sustain ourselves.
there is a reason of why human population reached 8 billions, and this is was because of things like "factory farms" and even with them, there is still a lot of "humans" without any food to eat, in some poor countries people still die of hungry, and even is some well middle or higher level "countries" we still have a % of population also dying of hungry, so for ME, i would say : GO FOR IT BUILD MORE AND MORE , so we can have the ability to feed all those people, after we are sure that everyone have their water to drink and their food to eat i would start to work on the next thing on the "to do" list.

ps: i don't consider aggressive methods of hunting in nature like for example: deep sea net fishing or whale hunting, or animal hunting a "necessary" thing to feed population, well some really "far away" places should still needs it, but we know that most people does not and most of those "foods" are treated more like a "delicacy" than a need so a good and viable "factory farms" could and should have been done already to stop those practices, since in the long run environmental damage caused by them would be far higher than the farms could ever reach.

 

I don't really see the big deal.

The world isn't fair, you gotta deal with it.

Sooner or later, lab-grown meat will be a viable alternative that will swallow up the farm industry anyways. And I don't mind either.

Humans don't tend to do things that do not benefit them.

 

The problem with "ethic suppliers" is that they aren't really what they say they are. Free range eggs really don't come from free range chickens living happily on a field in the middle of nowhere. There simply isn't enough space in the world to do that. It's just shitty owners covering the eyes of the consumers.

 

But the question is, what is moderation?

 

I ain't no city boy, so for meat I don't really have any issue since everything around here comes from the neighbourhood ranchers, and various locals with their farm animals walking around. I'm sure it's a different story in the states though, especially near cities.

 

As long as the creatures don't dwindle in number becoming near extinct I guess

 

Moderation is when you save drowning fish from rivers

 

The unethical aspect is the horrible way livestock are being treated, is what I guess I'm trying to say. The horrible living conditions and the stress they face is serious, and could be bettered by a few regulations. I personally don't really believe that eating meat itself is unethical, if I'm going to be honest. I'm just questioning the suffering when I could just eat tofu and have the same amount of nutrition.

The problem with the "starving to death argument" is that plants take a lot less resources to grow than livestock. If you've ever learned about the food pyramid in biology, you should understand a little bit. You know, the transfer of energy and whatnot. Anyways, a plant based diet will always be more sustainable than a meat based diet.

 

welcome to poultry sector I guess?
chicken, pig, fish, sheep ect oh well~

btw it remind me, there was time I read argument about cage chicken taste better than free chicken or other way around...... buahahaha!

anyway, mass consumption, times require to raise da animal, space for poultry oh wait animal farm or ranch? hmmm basically demand and supply thing~

this cat still eat it tho~
you see~ idea and practice is two different thing~ that why sometimes farmer kinda puzzled with student from college who give advise how to do things cuz impractical or tend to ignore other aspect on real application~

on this cat country there famous meme, it's not that simple ferguso... da heck is ferguso~

 

At the end of the day I still choose to eat vegetable and meat