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It's just loss. (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (35 children)

Livestock have to live through horrible agony, like the worst kind of torture. This means (by biomass, which some people correlate indirectly with moral worth), at least 60% of mammals on Earth undergo horrible torture. Bentham's Bulldog, "Factory Farming is Literally Torture."

Excess pigs were roasted to death. Specifically, these pigs were killed by having hot steam enter the barn, at around 150 degrees, leading to them choking, suffocating, and roasting to death. It’s hard to see how an industry that chokes and burns beings to death can be said to be anything other than nightmarish, especially given that pigs are smarter than dogs.

Ozy Brennan: the subjective experience of animal's suffering 10/10 intense agony is likely the same as the subjective experience of a human suffering such agony. (~6 paragraph article, well worth a read.)

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago (18 children)

It says 60% of mammals are livestock, not 60% live in factory farms. I've been around cows in normal (non-factory) farms, and they seem fine. Way better off than wild animals that starve, die of disease, freeze to death, etc.

I have family members that have livestock and if something bad happens to them it's like someone hurt their child.

A seal in the 4% living in the wild may be eaten alive by a killer whale or torn to shreds by a great white shark.

We aren't going to prevent all animals from suffering, because how could we do that? Kill off all of the predators? Then there would be animal overpopulation and animals dying of starvation and disease.

Maybe we just focus on ending factory farms because that seems doable. But that effort won't be successful with obvious hyperbole claiming all livestock is treated like animals in the most horrible factory farms. Some people have actually been to farms that aren't like that you know.

People aren't stupid and if you misrepresent the facts, no one will believe anything else you're saying no matter how emotional you are when misrepresenting the facts.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Not the person you are replying to, but that is severely underestimating the amount of factory farming. They are the dominant method of production

Based on the EPA's definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (i.e factory farm) and USDA census data:

All fish raised in fish farms were considered to be factory-farmed. More than 98% of hens and pigs. For chickens and turkeys, the share was more than 99%. Cows were a bit more likely to be raised outside in fields, with greater space and freedom. Nonetheless, 75% were still fed in concentrated feeding operations for at least 45 days a year.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed

And even those that are not considered factory farmed don't always look how one may think, for instance non-factory farmed cows still use plenty of grain feed

Currently, 'grass-finished' beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

None of this is not limited to the US by any means. For instance in the UK:

There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/18/uk-has-more-than-1000-livestock-mega-farms-investigation-reveals

Factory farming is unfortunately what scales well. If we want less factory farming we need the industry itself to be smaller. That is no impossible goal. Germany, for instance, has seen its overall meat consumption fall over the last decade

In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian

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