Comment

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.

source

Sort:hotnew top

usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Not the person you are replying to, but you are severely underestimating the number 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.

ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-f…

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

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/…/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

theguardian.com/…/uk-has-more-than-1000-livestock…

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.

vox.com/…/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-veg…

source
jsomae@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

60 % of mammals are livestock, not 60% live in factory farms

99% of US farmed animals live in factory farms, according to this random website I just found. I don’t claim to be an expert, though, and worldwide is probably lower than than 99%, but I would bet you that the vast majority of livestock is factory-farmed.

Agreed though that not all livestock are factory farmed. I should have clarified.

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.

That’s bad, though probably not anywhere near as much agony as being boiled alive for several hours. Regardless of whether you feel morally obligated to reduce wild animal suffering, you should admit that (a) from a utilitarian perspective, it’s much easier to reduce factory farm suffering, and (b) from a deontological perspective, factory farming is (collectively) our fault, whereas the food chain isn’t.

source
- SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Some website I’ve never heard of before that you term as a “random website” says “We estimate…” a bunch of times without any attempt to describe the methodology used for their estimates.
  
  So that’s bullshit.
  
  The problem with the vegan animal rights movement is you’re always going for the moonshot of ending an entire industry instead of even trying to identify and shut down farms with horrible practices or outlaw those practices. To accomplish the goal of ending an industry, you’re fudging numbers and coming out as being dishonest which means no one will trust you and you’ll accomplish nothing. If animals are indeed being boiled alive (I don’t believe you about this because you’re obviously making up shit on other things) then it will continue to happen because you’re trying to accuse an entire industry of doing things that only some in the industry might do.
  
  If you cared about the boiling animals alive thing (if it actually happens) you’d be trying to get that particular farm shut down, get laws passed to prevent that from happening. But you’re not doing that (you’re not even identifying any particular farms) so that leads me to believe either it’s not happening, or maybe you want it to continue to happen because it somehow helps your vain cause of ending all meat.
  
  source
  - jsomae@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    You’re right to question the boiling. I was thinking of death by suffocation in heated steam. Boiling is not the technically correct term.
    
    You’d be trying to get that particular farm shut down, get laws passed to prevent that from happening. But you’re not doing that
    
    who is not doing that? Me specifically or animal rights people in general? I don’t see why shutting down a particular farm would be very helpful, the scale of the problem is incredibly massive; passing laws would be much more effective. I would like to see laws passed, though, to stop these kinds of abuses. What would make you think I am not interested in that?
    
    source
    SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    PETA has killed more animals than I have LOL.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - cows_are_underrated@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I gonna intercept here for a bit. The Problem with “shutting down single farms” is, that this virtually has no effect at all. The entire conventional farming sector is quite fucked up. Everything gets optimised for the highest possible efficiency. This means, that everything that falls out of set norms will be eliminated.
    
    What I mean by this is, that, as example, piglins that didnt grow that well are simply killed by the farmers, because they can’t be sold. This happens because no farmer will give you the same money for a piglin that has half the weight of the others and is much more likely to get targeted by the rest of the group. Since its illegal to kill piglins without a reason the farmers do it by themselves and then dispose them with the piglins that die when during, or shortly after, birth. Nobody notices, and it is not possible to control this (at least not realistically). The problem is, that this whole system so fucked up that by shutting down single farms you only combat symptoms of the system and not the root cause. By this I do not want to say, that we have to shut down the entire animal farming sector, but that we have to drastically reduce the intensity of the sector to shift production to quality instead of quantity.
    
    Source for the stuff I said: I grew up on a farm (not with piglins) and had to work in a piglin farm for 4 weeks. I have seen the stuff I said first hand and I devinetively did stuff that I’m now deeply ashamed of retrospect. The stuff I saw also matches the tuff I have heard from other sources.
    
    source
    SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    I gonna intercept here for a bit. The Problem with “shutting down single farms” is, that this virtually has no effect at all. T
    
    It would save the animals you claim are being boiled alive. Why don’t you care about the suffering of these animals?
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
faintwhenfree@lemmus.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
And how many percentage of all livestock do you think is “free range” like the cows you describe?

Estimates vary from 80% to 99% are factory farmed. Which means majority of meat anyone is eating is factory farm. Unless you can verify the source of your meat yourself, you most likely are eating tortured animals.

So this whole argument that I have friends and family that care for their livestock like it’s their kids is the misrepresentation since, it maybe true that you know someone that is treating animals humane, it doesn’t represent majority.

Sauce ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-f…

source
- SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Estimates of numbers like 80% and 99% are just made up on the spot. I estimate 99% of the world knows that.
  
  source
RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

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.

Like, say, if you were to imply that anything less than the vast overwhelming majority of all meat consumed comes from factory farms? Ignorance is bliss I suppose…

source
ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Do you source 100% of your meat from the one place you visited that one time? How many pounds of meat per year do you eat?

source
- SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I buy all of my food from Food 'n Stuff… and most of my stuff.
  
  source
  - ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Weird way to dodge the question
    
    source
    SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Weird way to be judgemental.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments