Cruel cultural traditions make (good) people support horrible acts. A tale as old as time.

Fortunately plant-based alternatives have been growing and improving quite fast for 10-20 years now, so I’m hopeful that even those who “could never give up meat” might stop supporting those hell holes. I was one of them, after all.

Kabecz have been charged with several offences, including killing or injuring animals; causing unnecessary suffering to an animal; failing to provide adequate medical attention for an animal when it is wounded or ill; inflicting upon an animal acute suffering, serious injury or harm, or extreme anxiety or distress that significantly impairs its health or well-being.

Just inflict the same things on “farm animals” and it’s not only socially acceptable, but the average person will gladly buy the products, and therefore fund the abuse on factory farms.

We certainly have a looong way to go to become a decent society based on that metric.

Seems like they haven’t gained traction since the reddit exodus. I wonder how the other alternatives are doing. Lemmy has a decent amount of activity at least, although I still wish more people would use it.

The problem is that commercial sheep farms compete for the lowest price, which means that those who actually care for the welfare of their animals are at an disadvantage to those who keep sheep in very bad conditions, and will be forced out of the market sooner or later. Customers and distributors usually have no clue how the animals were actually treated, they just see the price and choose the lowest, of course.

And while you might not need to kill the sheep to get the wool, they’re killed when their “productiveness” drops below profitablity anyways. In the wool industry that’s after about 5-7 years.

Just because such animal products could theoretically be produced in a humane way, that’s not what happens in practice under capitalism. The vulnerable are always exploited as much as possible for financial interests and animals have no voice, no lobby and no lawyers.

Soy cake can be used to produce textured vegetable protein (meat alternatives), tofu, tempeh, soy milk, protein powder, biofuels and bioplastics, for example.

Calling that industrial waste is just a complete joke.

The land could also be used to grow other crops for human consumption.

You’re not the animals.

I literally wrote that this isn’t about me/humans, so yes, obviously.

There are many groups that are suffering and that I’m not part of, and I still care about what’s happening to them and want the suffering to end. It seems like most lemmy users share that sentiment when it comes to oppressed humans, so I really don’t get what’s so hard to understand about that when I extend it to animals.

You might have the opinion that factory farming isn’t a social justice issue, fine. Me having a different opinion doesn’t negatively affect you in any way. Why are you so pissed at me just because I see it differently?

Don’t you also draw a line when you choose to eat plants?

I think there’s a reasonable distinction here. You would presumably also draw a line between a conscious human and a brain dead human that won’t ever be conscious again. As far as we can reasonably tell, consciousness requires a brain. Dogs and pigs have brains, so maybe we shouldn’t torture and kill them on factory farms. We can also see them suffering and measure their physical reaction to it.

Of course there’s a possibility that plants have some kind of consciousness too, but 1. that’s speculation and 2. there’s no way around farming them, as you have said yourself:

Untill humans develop the ability to photosynthesize, we are going to have to eat other species, there’s no way around it.

Farming animals will always require far more plant deaths than growing plants for human consumption. These animals have to grow for months before being slaughtered and literally eat tons of animal feed in that time.

Therefore, plant-based food minimizes both animal suffering and deaths as well as plant deaths.

I’m not convinced that plant deaths are an ethical issue in of themselves, but farming has environmental implications so it makes sense to minimize the food that needs to be grown and make the farming as environmentally friendly as reasonably possible.

I’m sorry to hear that. The thing is, you mainly hear from those who are the most vocal, and those tend to be the most angry and therefore unreasonable. And those probably had their fair share of verbal (and/or physical) abuse from meat eaters, as vegans are hated on by a much, much larger part of society than the other way around. (That doesn’t justify their hate, of course)

It’s all a self reinforcing dynamic of groups riling each other up, unfortunately.

Just goes to show how little you care about others suffering. Social justice for me but not for others (those who I consider interior).

Inflammatory prejudices are only bad when others have them. They’re definitely the hateful ones, so lets spread some hate about them.

You just compared your eating preferences which are 100% a choice to someone being born homosexual and not wanting to be killed for it

All the animals on factory farms didn’t choose to be born there and don’t want to be killed either.

It’s not about the sensitivities of humans, but the insane suffering of animals in this system of oppression.

Haha, that’s the best troll comment I’ve seen in a while. Thank you for that.

We gotta spread the word. It still seems very achievable if enough people become aware of it.

What makes you think that processing food through an animal is healthier than through a factory?

You have to compare the actual nutrients contained in the product to draw any conclusion about health effects, and the macros are fairly similar for the plant-based versions compared to a given meat product.

The average person (in developed countries) eats significantly more meat than the recommended upper limit by nutrition organizations.

If you just go by the naturalistic argument, you’d conclude that processed drinking water is worse than untreated water, and that vaccines are worse than “perfectly natural” diseases. It’s a common logical fallacy.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature

To me that’s more ethical than killing of billions of animals, and the latter is considered ethical.

I think most people would actually consider factory farming unethical, they just put the blame on the producers for treating animals like shit. And the producers are locked into a race to the bottom for competitive prices, so they’d blame the customers/market conditions.

It’s kind of funny, having the calves slaughtered to get the milk that is naturally meant for them is considered vegetarian (as long as you personally don’t eat the veal).

If they’re kept on abusive factory farms, that’s still vegetarian.

When the dairy cows gets their throats slit because milk production drops below profitablity after ~5 years, the milk is still seen as vegetarian (as long as someone else buys the meat).

No matter how much death and suffering takes place at the farm, the milk is seen as vegetarian. But at rennet, that’s where they draw the line.

I don’t know if I misunderstood you, but “making millions of people suffer horribly and needlessly for no fault of their own might just be the most ethical thing there is, you never know, so let’s not draw any conclusions about God allowing that to happen.” just seems like a rather unconvincing line of thought to me. It’s essentially just saying “God is always right, accept that”

I guess god just gave us the moral understanding that his (in)actions are insanely immoral to test our unquestioned loyalty to him, or he just likes a little trolling. Or maybe he just doesn’t exist…

From the consumers point of view, you can only choose products that are in supply, so we think our choices don’t really have an impact. People often see it as a systemic issue that’s outside of our control.

From the corporations point of view, the consumer creates the demand and if they didn’t provide the supply, another corporation would. They also see it as a systemic issue that’s outside of their control.

The corporations love nothing more than the message “just consume our stuff and don’t blame yourself for any environmental impact. You can’t be perfect anyways, so might as well book a flight, buy a gas car, or buy our beef.” It’s so comfortable for both parties because they don’t have to change anything and can just point the finger at each other for the negative consequences.

Of course it’s sometimes necessary to do something polluting. People who need a car and can only afford a used car probably won’t be able to buy an electric one. I don’t even think that’s unethical consumption. But those who can afford an electric car and choose a new gas car instead do something unethical. Ultimately many of these practical issues will be solved as green technology matures, there will be cheap-ish used electric cars in the future, for example.

For things like steak, I agree. Unfortunately it will take many years to become affordable for the average person, but when it happens, it will be awesome.

For many other categories, plant-based alternatives are already close enough for me. I recently tried the store brand plant based Schnitzel from Lidl (a supermarket/discounter chain here in Germany) and it was surprisingly tasty, given that it doesn’t even cost more than factory farmed meat by now.

There are decent burgers, nuggets, kebab, chicken and salami alternatives around as well. It’s crazy how much the taste, price and availability of these products have improved in the last 10 years alone. I don’t miss real meat by now.

I heard about studies that successfully used algae to inhibit methane-producing microbes in the short term, but I couldn’t find any studies that prove its long term efficacy yet. It’ll be interesting to see whether the microbes can adapt to the algae in the long term or not.