• That Weird Vegan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    we kill 3T animals a year for food/medicine/clothing/etc. Maybe we should stop?

    edit: sorry, that was quite extreme of me to suggest we don’t kill 3T animals a year.

  • KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    Source?

    Im gonna go out on a limb and say this is udder cowshit. Rats are mammals, as are raccoons, squirrels, and whole fucking masses of little basically unfarmable varmints. You’re telling me that there’s like 12 farm cows for every wild rat on earth?

    Horse. Shit.

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    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.)

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
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        6 months 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

      • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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        6 months 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.

        I’ll point out though that even some non-factory-farmed livestock are likely suffering. Bentham’s Bulldog talks about how hens undergo severe agony:

        Egg-laying hens in conventional farms endure about 400 hours (!!!) of this kind of disabling agony. Remember, this is agony about as bad as the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, unless you’ve had an experience as bad as being severely tortured.

        (emphasis mine.)

        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 until one’s death. 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.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          6 months 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.

          • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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            6 months 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.

            Here are some more sources that nearly all livestock live in factory farms: [Our World in Data, PETA,]; there are a lot more I can find searching the web but they mostly seem to link back to the Sentience Institute’s research. OWiD’s is based on SI’s research, and I suspect PETA’s claim is based off SI’s as well. More importantly, I haven’t found any claim that the proportion is lower than 90%, or even anyone challenging SI’s figures. Do you have reason to doubt this? And if so, can you find any source? It seems plausible to me just based on the fact that factory farming is vastly more efficient than other methods, and most people aren’t picky about such things. Just as a prior, I would expect that the vast majority of livestock are found in the most efficient types of farms.

            Without any attempt to describe the methodology used for their estimates.

            I mean they literally have their calculations available right there as an easily-viewable google sheets link. And the data source is clearly stated: “these estimates use the 2022 Census of Agriculture and EPA definitions of CAFOs to estimate the number of US farmed land vertebrates who are in CAFOs (“factory farms”).”

            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?

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months 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?

      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months 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…

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      i’ve been wondering for a time whether maybe, blood sacrifices didn’t ever actually end but the factory farmings are just a modern decoy for the actual blood sacrifices …

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    Not saying at all this isn’t a problem, but I hate bullshit statements that are deliberately deceiving.

    These numbers are all by mass. Not actual number. Cows are huge. So are chickens, for birds. How this comic is laid out infers that there’s 60 cows for every 40 of every other mammal, and that isn’t even remotely close to true.

    • silasmariner@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      I think biomass is probably more important than sheer number for these comparisons. Although I would also accept ‘proportion of world’s arable land being used to sustain them’ as I suspect the ratios come out pretty similar for obvious reasons.

      • Limonene@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The problem is that the infographic says “of all the mammals on Earth”, which means individuals, not biomass. So the infographic is objectively false.

        • silasmariner@programming.dev
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          6 months ago

          Sadly it’s not objectively false, it’s merely vague. There’s no equivocation whereby it actually specifies that the unit of measure is the individual animal, rather than, say, kg. It’s just playing on your assumptions (I did assume biomass fwiw, but who cares).

          But anyway, the point made by sheer fucking biomass imbalance is surely the thing to focus on here? Now that we know what it means, and are in agreement that the wording should be clearer, the statistic is still egregious, isn’t it? Humans have taken far too much of the world for themselves IMO. Vastly diminishing returns for us, devestatingly larger impact on the environment, the more we push it.

          • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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            6 months ago

            I’m in fact under the impression that the “number must go up” plot was played on us as well. Humans are increasing in quantity ever since the industrial revolution, but instead we should be focusing on the quality of life.

            • silasmariner@programming.dev
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              6 months ago

              Couldn’t agree with you more. In particular, the way most state pensions are structured imply infinite exponential growth. It’s gonna be a tough drug to wean off of.

              • lad@programming.dev
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                6 months ago

                We’re below reproduction rate in most parts of the world, and likely will fall below in the rest of the world during this century, so we’re already in the ‘find out’ era :(

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      On top of that, it’s an annoyingly disproportionate graphic. The cow is much wider than the human so its area is much more than 60% of the area of the graphic.

      The owl might be 3cm high and the hen 6cm high, but 9cm² and 36cm² would be the rough areas, even if it weren’t for the fact that again, the hen picture is much, much wider than the owl.

      With 30% and 70%, the owl should just be a little under half as big as the hen, but it looks like about 1/4 or 1/5 of the size of the hen.

  • Gustephan@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I don’t think this is loss. I’m ready to eat crow if I’m proven wrong, but I think the real joke is the amount of time people will spend staring at this image and trying to figure out how it’s loss

  • Bosht@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Title made me think they were doing some 4 levels deep “loss” meme. It almost has it but frame 3 isn’t close.

  • graycube@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Are pets livestock, or did they miss a category of mammals? In the US there are more dogs than children.

  • topherp@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Does the wild animals include insects? What about single cell animals?