I remember there was a study done on how to best slaughter swine (pigs).
The methods that were investigated included: a mechanical hit on the head, suffocation in CO2, and some other measures.
What was found was not only that the suffocation method caused significant stress in the animals, but also that the meat collected this way tasted way worse than meat collected through other slaughtering methods.
this could be relevant in this case: if fish suffocate slowly to death, meat producers might have a financial incentive to change that, to be able to sell better-quality meat, possibly at a higher price. anyways, it would make for good advertisement. that is why meat-producers (fish-producers) should take this seriously.
I never understood the CO2 suffocation idea… I mean, I don’t k ow about fish, but mammals supposedly have a good detection for CO2 in their blood and it’ll set off panic alarms everywhere.
Ignoring the vegetarian discussion for a minute, if they could at least use a different gas, say nitrogen or something, it should be a lot less stressful for the animals
My slaughterhouse uses radon. The meat makes my testicle feel funny, and we throw up a lot. And I haven’t had hair in years. But it’s cheap! And so tender.
And the reason we still use CO2 slaughter instead of something like Nitrogen is because… They already have machines built for CO2 and just don’t want to pay the cost of changing practices.
It’s hard to find official statistics, but most definitely not.
It is clear, however, that in the United States today, “CO2 stunning of pigs is the major method
that is used in large slaughter plants.” According to unpublished data from the Pig Improvement
Company, the use of CO2 gas to stun pigs has increased dramatically in recent decades. In 1999,
CO2 was used to stun 2 percent of all pigs and 2.2 percent of pigs in establishments that
slaughtered more than 4,500 pigs per day. By 2020, those numbers had risen to 86.2 percent and
96.2 percent, respectively. Today, according to FSIS enforcement records, at least 32 slaughter
plants use CO2 gas slaughter systems.
Zero pain, or as minimal amount of pain as possible. Like, microseconds.
If you assume, that the operator doesn’t make any mistakes and is always 100% on point. Which they are not, as has been documented by countless of hidden cameras people have put up in slaughterhouses.
And even then, you are ignoring the immense pain and stress the animals experience the rest of their life before getting killed.
They just know people will buy the meat no matter how much the animals were abused so why would they bother? Even those who see themselves as animal lovers happily look the other way with every purchase. The industry has all the incentives to be exceptionally cruel so of course it is.
As far as I’m aware NO2 will fill a pit. In the industry I work in NO2 leaks are serious threat because the engines that are worked on are in, what is essentially, a cage that you walk down into. I’ve not experienced it myself but heard from someone who experienced it firsthand as you just start feeling sleepy. I know now that it’s because our bodies are sensitive to asphyxiation from CO2 but not NO2, so as it displaces the oxygen in our lungs you just start getting woozy and tired.
All that being said; I am not an expert. Half this is information from diesel mechanics who work with it and the other half is from random science videos. So take it with a grain of salt.
Yes. It’s crazy. That’s why the vast majority of us don’t do it.
It’s one thing to be a vegetarian for health or environmental reasons.
When you try to convince people that meat==murder, you come across as a wackadoodle.
That’s a food web. An ecosystem incorporates the environment organisms live in and how the organisms interact within that environment. The soil, climate and weather are all part of an ecosystem.
“I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
this depends on where you live, surely. i have open field farms all around me that cooperatively own a slaughterhouse. they sell meat in stores under one brand but you can go to any of the farms and get it directly.
All food is cruel. You can, at most, minimize the cruelty.
But you should know that millions of insects are killed in agriculture. Insects are indeed animals.
You can, if you want, minimize the amount of animals your presence in this world brings to an early death. But you cannot reduce it to zero no even near zero. Probably hundreds of small animals (most insects but surely many other small animals) die each day because things you do.
The line on how much do you want to minimize might be on one place for you, and that’s ok. But you have to respect other people lines as well.
There is overwhelming scientific evidence that animals feel pain and are sentient like us, and despite the pop science articles to the contrary there is no scientific evidence that plants feel pain or have sentience at all. Plants respond to stimulus in very complicated ways, that’s what we have evidence for. Don’t pretend the two are equivalent. Stop getting your ideas from sensationalist pop science garbage and read the actual studies.
There’s a difference between actively choosing to kill an animal, and having an animal die as a consequence of another action.
Driving a car means that you’ll inevitably hit an animal at some point, but the alternative (walking) is often impractical and you’ll still try your best and stop or swerve when a cat runs into the road.
Eating meat, on the other hand, is an active choice that always involves someone killing an animal. The alternative is always there and is as easy as can be: eat something else.
But you have to respect other people lines as well.
Your personal freedom stops where someone else’s freedom begins. The question is whether you consider animals to be someone or something.
The fact that you don’t see the bugs being killed in the agricultural process do not mean they do not die because of your choosing. Killing bugs is a necessary part of the making of all the food you eat. It’s not an “accident” or “undeliberated”. The word “pesticide” for instance should give you a hint. Also a lot of the cleaning process of any vegetable is meant, among other things, to get rid of any bugs present.
You also, presumably, live in a house, what do you think that happened with the thousands of bugs that used to live in that plot of land. They didn’t die by accident, they died because you wanted a cozy house instead of sleeping on the grass. The clothes you wear, all consumer products you use, your phone. Millions of bug deaths could be prevented if you decided to live caveman style. If they die is your choosing. And everyone else respect that choice. Respect yourself other people choices that imply a small margin more of animal deaths.
I’m very well aware of the impact my existence has on the planet, but I can still try and minimize that impact as much as possible, even without taking it to the extreme and ending society. It’s not all or nothing.
If you want to minimize the amount of bugs killed, not eating meat is a great way to achieve that. Instead of harvesting tons of crops to then feed to animals, you could just eat those crops yourself. You’d even end up needing less space to grow your food overall, meaning you could re-naturalize a lot of farmland and create a habitat for billions of insects.
Respect yourself other people choices
How about you respect other animals right to bodily integrity.
You pit your line respecting animals body integrity at one particular position. As you have already recognized.
Respect that other people’s position of that line are different. At the end of the day you kill 1000 animals a day, eating meat I might kill 1050 animals a day. Not that much of a difference so… Just respect, it’s not that hard not to try enforce your way of life in others for such a small difference in animal deaths. Who knows maybe due your other habits you end up killing more animals than me. Do you do international travel by any chance? Do you drive cars or mount on motorized vehicles daily?
Be aware and prepare to be heavily judged by others if you pretend to judge people on those basis.
At the end we should just make a throughout body count of animals killed, including insects, you’ll probably be surprised by the results.
Or, much easier option, just respect that other people eat meat. And don’t try to enforce your traditions on others.
I agree! so we should try to get locally grown food without pesticides and then people can stop coping. Somehow my family manages to grow food without it and if there’s a bug we just dust it off into the grass. People who freak out over a little bug or fruit that’s not totally perfect are actually part of the problem.
It’s pure cope to say “I can’t avoid causing suffering so me making a deliberate choice to cause MORE suffering to animals that are the same intelligence as my dog is actually fine.”
It’s just using logic to destroy some common militant-radical-vegan arguments.
These people kill thousands of animals each years. And get angry that you kill a thousand and one.
They get angry that you say that human beings are more important than cows. But then they act as cows are more important than ants.
At the end that line of thinking is approaching religion levels of dogmatism. Thus why I feel compelled to rebate some arguments.
Your history for instance doesn’t really hold up. A little home leisure grows doesn’t provide for a family. To provide food for humans you do need proper agriculture, and proper agriculture, even traditional one, means the destruction of animal habitats and their massive killing.
If you don’t want to eat animals, specially the bigger ones because you feel sorry for them that’s ok. I would never question your personal choices. But if you start trying to enforce your personal choices on me, and start trying to moral shame me in a religious sort of way, then is when I have to push back. I already had my cup of religious moral shaming on catholic school, I don’t need more of it.
There’s nothing inmoral about eating meat. And not eating meat doesn’t make anyone a better person.
If that were true, we wouldn’t be able to digest them. Ever tried eating a tree? Or a boulder? Those aren’t food for humans. I’m not gonna argue against moral motivations for veganism, but I will argue against factually incorrect ones.
Yes they are. They have been for eons. It’s not all they are and people should work towards meatless options and ethical meat like lab grown. But animals are definitely a food source.
Have you tried some good alternatives to meat? Like, try seitan* crumbles in a taco. With all the spices and other toppings it’s really hard to tell the difference. Also, I find it almost impossible to tell an Impossible Whopper with Cheese from a regular Whopper with Cheese, after all the glop they put on it. I know those are both bottom-of-the-barrel meat choices, but maybe branch out and try a thing or two. If you don’t like it - no biggie.
I’ve tried casually dipping my toes into the vegetarian pool with just occasional meat substitutions. Occasionally I find something that’s “No way” but more often than not, I find something that is also really tasty. It’s not meat, but it’s also tasty in a different way, so I don’t miss meat as much. I’ve found vegetarian dishes I actually like. My biggest problem however is getting enough protein in my diet when I start eating mostly veggies.
[* Seitan only if you can handle gluten. Because, it’s like 100% gluten! ]
Meat alternatives are a nice thought. I’m glad they exist for people who can accept them in place of meat. I haven’t found them to be very good substitutes yet so I’m not there. I’ve had the impossible whopper, and while it’s good, it’s not a replacement for me. Hopefully more options come over the years. I’m hopeful for lab grown meat personally since it’d still be meat, just ethically produced.
It’s crazy that people don’t like meat substitutes, but if you tell them it’s not a meat substitute, but actually a special cow from nepal with a different taste, it’s suddenly good and exotic. I hate it when it doesn’t taste like animal suffering.
I remember there was a study done on how to best slaughter swine (pigs).
The methods that were investigated included: a mechanical hit on the head, suffocation in CO2, and some other measures.
What was found was not only that the suffocation method caused significant stress in the animals, but also that the meat collected this way tasted way worse than meat collected through other slaughtering methods.
this could be relevant in this case: if fish suffocate slowly to death, meat producers might have a financial incentive to change that, to be able to sell better-quality meat, possibly at a higher price. anyways, it would make for good advertisement. that is why meat-producers (fish-producers) should take this seriously.
I never understood the CO2 suffocation idea… I mean, I don’t k ow about fish, but mammals supposedly have a good detection for CO2 in their blood and it’ll set off panic alarms everywhere.
Ignoring the vegetarian discussion for a minute, if they could at least use a different gas, say nitrogen or something, it should be a lot less stressful for the animals
“Are you insane? This gas costs a twelfth of a cent more! There’s no way we could implement this.”
My slaughterhouse uses radon. The meat makes my testicle feel funny, and we throw up a lot. And I haven’t had hair in years. But it’s cheap! And so tender.
And the reason we still use CO2 slaughter instead of something like Nitrogen is because… They already have machines built for CO2 and just don’t want to pay the cost of changing practices.
Pure greed and laziness.
Most slaughter houses use bolt guns.
Zero pain, or as minimal amount of pain as possible. Like, microseconds. Because afterwards, the entire brain has been… disorganized.
It’s hard to find official statistics, but most definitely not.
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/documents/23-05-AWI-05162023.pdf
If you assume, that the operator doesn’t make any mistakes and is always 100% on point. Which they are not, as has been documented by countless of hidden cameras people have put up in slaughterhouses.
And even then, you are ignoring the immense pain and stress the animals experience the rest of their life before getting killed.
They just know people will buy the meat no matter how much the animals were abused so why would they bother? Even those who see themselves as animal lovers happily look the other way with every purchase. The industry has all the incentives to be exceptionally cruel so of course it is.
Also co2 is easier because you can fill a pit with it, nitrogen will just float about and disperse.
As far as I’m aware NO2 will fill a pit. In the industry I work in NO2 leaks are serious threat because the engines that are worked on are in, what is essentially, a cage that you walk down into. I’ve not experienced it myself but heard from someone who experienced it firsthand as you just start feeling sleepy. I know now that it’s because our bodies are sensitive to asphyxiation from CO2 but not NO2, so as it displaces the oxygen in our lungs you just start getting woozy and tired.
All that being said; I am not an expert. Half this is information from diesel mechanics who work with it and the other half is from random science videos. So take it with a grain of salt.
It’s just heavier??
It tends to be heavier than air, it will therefore accumulate in low places.
I have a crazy idea here. Now hear me out, this is gonna sound like a wackadoodle idea, but,… how about we don’t murder the animals? Crazy, I know.
Yes. It’s crazy. That’s why the vast majority of us don’t do it.
It’s one thing to be a vegetarian for health or environmental reasons.
When you try to convince people that meat==murder, you come across as a wackadoodle.
But I’m hungry
eat non-cruel food. actual food. not animals. animals aren’t food for humans.
All animals, us included, are food for other animals, and plants.
That’s what is called an “ecosystem”.
That’s a food web. An ecosystem incorporates the environment organisms live in and how the organisms interact within that environment. The soil, climate and weather are all part of an ecosystem.
buying meat from the grocery store is not an ecosystem
city says i can’t shoot the squirrels anymore tho
There are not enough squirrels. They would be extinct quick.
Human beings are omnivores and nature doesn’t moralize.
-Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
Good old natural factory meat
This is why I primarily only eat what I shoot, or what I catch.
I only eat meat that consents. Anybody want to come over for dinner? Coincidentally, you’ll have to sign a waiver.
But on a serious note, how good is venison? Fucking delicious. You ever make chili with it? Goddamn backstrap chili. Like eating heaven.
this depends on where you live, surely. i have open field farms all around me that cooperatively own a slaughterhouse. they sell meat in stores under one brand but you can go to any of the farms and get it directly.
All food is cruel. You can, at most, minimize the cruelty.
But you should know that millions of insects are killed in agriculture. Insects are indeed animals.
You can, if you want, minimize the amount of animals your presence in this world brings to an early death. But you cannot reduce it to zero no even near zero. Probably hundreds of small animals (most insects but surely many other small animals) die each day because things you do.
The line on how much do you want to minimize might be on one place for you, and that’s ok. But you have to respect other people lines as well.
This…plants feel pain. Mushrooms may actually be sentient. Everyone draws their own lines, it doesn’t make them better or worse.
There is overwhelming scientific evidence that animals feel pain and are sentient like us, and despite the pop science articles to the contrary there is no scientific evidence that plants feel pain or have sentience at all. Plants respond to stimulus in very complicated ways, that’s what we have evidence for. Don’t pretend the two are equivalent. Stop getting your ideas from sensationalist pop science garbage and read the actual studies.
There’s a difference between actively choosing to kill an animal, and having an animal die as a consequence of another action.
Driving a car means that you’ll inevitably hit an animal at some point, but the alternative (walking) is often impractical and you’ll still try your best and stop or swerve when a cat runs into the road.
Eating meat, on the other hand, is an active choice that always involves someone killing an animal. The alternative is always there and is as easy as can be: eat something else.
Your personal freedom stops where someone else’s freedom begins. The question is whether you consider animals to be someone or something.
It’s semi-related but this meme comes to my mind:
and also this one:
sorry for the poor quality of the second one, i couldn’t find a version with more pixels.
The fact that you don’t see the bugs being killed in the agricultural process do not mean they do not die because of your choosing. Killing bugs is a necessary part of the making of all the food you eat. It’s not an “accident” or “undeliberated”. The word “pesticide” for instance should give you a hint. Also a lot of the cleaning process of any vegetable is meant, among other things, to get rid of any bugs present.
You also, presumably, live in a house, what do you think that happened with the thousands of bugs that used to live in that plot of land. They didn’t die by accident, they died because you wanted a cozy house instead of sleeping on the grass. The clothes you wear, all consumer products you use, your phone. Millions of bug deaths could be prevented if you decided to live caveman style. If they die is your choosing. And everyone else respect that choice. Respect yourself other people choices that imply a small margin more of animal deaths.
I’m very well aware of the impact my existence has on the planet, but I can still try and minimize that impact as much as possible, even without taking it to the extreme and ending society. It’s not all or nothing.
If you want to minimize the amount of bugs killed, not eating meat is a great way to achieve that. Instead of harvesting tons of crops to then feed to animals, you could just eat those crops yourself. You’d even end up needing less space to grow your food overall, meaning you could re-naturalize a lot of farmland and create a habitat for billions of insects.
How about you respect other animals right to bodily integrity.
You pit your line respecting animals body integrity at one particular position. As you have already recognized.
Respect that other people’s position of that line are different. At the end of the day you kill 1000 animals a day, eating meat I might kill 1050 animals a day. Not that much of a difference so… Just respect, it’s not that hard not to try enforce your way of life in others for such a small difference in animal deaths. Who knows maybe due your other habits you end up killing more animals than me. Do you do international travel by any chance? Do you drive cars or mount on motorized vehicles daily?
Be aware and prepare to be heavily judged by others if you pretend to judge people on those basis.
At the end we should just make a throughout body count of animals killed, including insects, you’ll probably be surprised by the results.
Or, much easier option, just respect that other people eat meat. And don’t try to enforce your traditions on others.
I agree! so we should try to get locally grown food without pesticides and then people can stop coping. Somehow my family manages to grow food without it and if there’s a bug we just dust it off into the grass. People who freak out over a little bug or fruit that’s not totally perfect are actually part of the problem.
It’s pure cope to say “I can’t avoid causing suffering so me making a deliberate choice to cause MORE suffering to animals that are the same intelligence as my dog is actually fine.”
It’s just using logic to destroy some common militant-radical-vegan arguments.
These people kill thousands of animals each years. And get angry that you kill a thousand and one.
They get angry that you say that human beings are more important than cows. But then they act as cows are more important than ants.
At the end that line of thinking is approaching religion levels of dogmatism. Thus why I feel compelled to rebate some arguments.
Your history for instance doesn’t really hold up. A little home leisure grows doesn’t provide for a family. To provide food for humans you do need proper agriculture, and proper agriculture, even traditional one, means the destruction of animal habitats and their massive killing.
If you don’t want to eat animals, specially the bigger ones because you feel sorry for them that’s ok. I would never question your personal choices. But if you start trying to enforce your personal choices on me, and start trying to moral shame me in a religious sort of way, then is when I have to push back. I already had my cup of religious moral shaming on catholic school, I don’t need more of it.
There’s nothing inmoral about eating meat. And not eating meat doesn’t make anyone a better person.
If that were true, we wouldn’t be able to digest them. Ever tried eating a tree? Or a boulder? Those aren’t food for humans. I’m not gonna argue against moral motivations for veganism, but I will argue against factually incorrect ones.
Animal flesh causes cancer and heart disease. if we were MEANT to eat animals, we wouldn’t get those diseases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqLsus9_YsQ
Yes they are. They have been for eons. It’s not all they are and people should work towards meatless options and ethical meat like lab grown. But animals are definitely a food source.
I grew up on a farm and enjoy eating meat
Have you tried some good alternatives to meat? Like, try seitan* crumbles in a taco. With all the spices and other toppings it’s really hard to tell the difference. Also, I find it almost impossible to tell an Impossible Whopper with Cheese from a regular Whopper with Cheese, after all the glop they put on it. I know those are both bottom-of-the-barrel meat choices, but maybe branch out and try a thing or two. If you don’t like it - no biggie.
I’ve tried casually dipping my toes into the vegetarian pool with just occasional meat substitutions. Occasionally I find something that’s “No way” but more often than not, I find something that is also really tasty. It’s not meat, but it’s also tasty in a different way, so I don’t miss meat as much. I’ve found vegetarian dishes I actually like. My biggest problem however is getting enough protein in my diet when I start eating mostly veggies.
[* Seitan only if you can handle gluten. Because, it’s like 100% gluten! ]
Meat alternatives are a nice thought. I’m glad they exist for people who can accept them in place of meat. I haven’t found them to be very good substitutes yet so I’m not there. I’ve had the impossible whopper, and while it’s good, it’s not a replacement for me. Hopefully more options come over the years. I’m hopeful for lab grown meat personally since it’d still be meat, just ethically produced.
It’s crazy that people don’t like meat substitutes, but if you tell them it’s not a meat substitute, but actually a special cow from nepal with a different taste, it’s suddenly good and exotic. I hate it when it doesn’t taste like animal suffering.
Slaneesh would agree.
I don’t want to cause plants pain, that’s why I eat meat
Hilarious