I say that as a vegan.
We don't kill anywhere near that many in slaughterhouses every year.
I'm merely pointing out that 100 animals killed for necessity would certainly not feed 8 billion people on the planet.
Many foods are delicious by themselves. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, legumes. Some cooked unsalted, some raw.
And in case of those, taste can be acquired. For example unsalted rice at first tastes bad, but when I ate it few times when I was hungry I started liking it.
that's how most people eat it, unless you consider salt a seasoning
drowning food in hot sauce and ranch dressing is exclusively american cuisine
Though to be honest, the German wikipedia article paints a way more visceral picture of the systematic murders. The english version does not scare the reader, which I see as an oversight.
Edit: The German version includes the deception of the victims, to keep them calm, which is what reminded me of the article.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Gas_chambers
Warning: Horrifying: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaskammer_(Massenmord)
> In order to process the murder of thousands of people, great pains were taken to deceive the victims concerning their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration camps to the death camps were unaware of what they were facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims that they were being resettled for labor, issued them work permits, told them to bring along their tools and to exchange their German marks for foreign currency. [0]
> They made you believe that life was normal [in concentration camp Westerbork, a waystation to death camps]. A lady gave birth premature, and it looked—even though Westerbork had one of the best hospitals in Holland, they didn’t have an incubator. They looked all over Holland to find an incubator, and when they found one they said to the lady, “See how good care we take of you?” Only six months later, that same lady with the baby was sent to the gas chambers. [1]
> Kurt Bolender, an SS guard in Sobibor, testified to this fact: “Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer Hermann Michel [deputy commander of the camp] made a speech to them . . . Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of diseases . . . [2]
> Wilhelm Pfannensteil, a German physician and hygienist who visited Belzec and Treblinka, also described the particularly innocuous exterior of the gas chambers in Belzec:
"The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal delousing institution. In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a sign saying ‘Hackenholt Foundation’, above which there was a Star of David. The building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to suggest that people would be killed there. From what I saw, I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had any idea of what would happen to them." [2]
[0] http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/killing.htm...
[1] https://usflibexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/portraying-co...
[2] https://archive.org/details/BelzecSobiborTreblinka.Holocaust...
[3] Ernst Klee, Willie Dressen, and Volker Reiss, editors. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Free Press, 1988), 241.
I'd argue human factory farming practices are far worse than anything other predators do. Even cats that play with their food are better. At least that's relatively quick (a few hours at most). Humans frequently cause their prey to live their entire lives in tortuous conditions. The fact that the act of death itself is relatively painless is rather besides the point.
In the USA, my understanding is that even small farms, using humane and environmentally friendly practices, still generally need to send the animals to a larger commercial facility for slaughter and processing. According to what I've read, this is largely due to USDA and/or FDA regulations that are cost-prohibitive to implement at a smaller scale.
By all means, demonstrate it for us!
"Around a year later, the adult worm migrates to an exit site – usually a lower limb – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. The blister eventually bursts to form an intensely painful open wound, from which the worm slowly crawls over several weeks. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the infected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qNWWrDBRBqk
What a kind and selfless act!
A parasite doesn't stalk and hunt the same way a predator does prey. In this case, the larvae infect tiny fleas, which are then consumed by people and other animals drinking unfiltered water. It doesn't have a brain, as such; just a nerve ring and some sensory hairs that cue it to start eating once it is in the right environment.
Were you to provide yourself as a host to these poor and unfortunate organisms, you would doubtless attest that their impact upon you pales to insignificance compared with the misery imposed by our species.
We are not like other animals in this regard, we have the option to do better.
Or you know everything there is about infinity, other universes, how and where where "the playground" is placed (what's beyond its borders), what's the origin/meaning of life and so on?
Everything is meaningless and therefore we can do what we like? Even if it has no meaning to you, are you sure (deep down) it has no meaning for the lives you're taking (with your food choices)?
1. https://www.ciwf.org.uk/factory-farming/animal-cruelty/ 2. https://ffacoalition.org/articles/dangerous-conditions-facto...
IDK if you've ever slaughtered a sheep the non-slaughterhouse way done where most of the people live (i.e. the third world). I've done it out in rural asia. You take a long blade and pierce the heart / surrounding blood vessels straight through the chest. It takes a second or two for it to pass out. The slaughterhouse is a slight upgrade with basically no suffering at the time of death as they're instantly knocked out by electrical impulse.
If I were the sheep I would definitely pick the slaughterhouse over being shipped alive to the average end customer which is someone in the third world with a long blade.
Not in total of course, but per life taken.
Why?
I don't know how others belief systems would explain that, but from a Christian perspective, humans aren't exactly the same as animals. We're like animals in that humans and animals are all creatures, and yet distinctly non-animal in that we're the only creatures made in the image of God, and given rule over all creature to promote the flourishing of life---human, animal, and plant---for God's glory. And the biblical story is that humans went so far off-course in rebellion against their Creator God that the Son of God had to become human, die, and rise again to restore our ability to care rightly for creation.
Thus, concerns to minimize animal suffering are uniquely human concerns because we /aren't/ animals, but human; and the concern itself is proof we're different from other animals.
As for the stories humans invented to explain their grace and their horribleness I can't say much. Only that we are very creative in that regard.
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
dsp@diydsp:~/sim$ bc -l bc 1.07.1 Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details type `warranty'. 5510^9 ( 3.17*10^-8) 1743.50000000000000000000
I still like chops.
Honestly, it's a massive win for cultural progress that we have even made the suffering of people with a different skin color intelligible to most people.
Intelligibility of the suffering of other species will probably take a considerably longer amount of time.
The circle of moral consideration in the Western world started generally with land-owning white men, then (still generally speaking) widened to include white men without land, then women, non-white people, etc. The circle of moral consideration is slowly starting to cover non-human animals, though it will take hundreds of years before they are truly protected.
The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle, the people who stood against granting basic rights and basic consideration to those who enjoy them today.
That being said, it is a huge proposition to proclaim you're on the right side of history, and that others who aren't should either reconsider or live to regret it. Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do. I'll sooner bet on the grass turning purple.
No matter how much money someone makes from owning a slaughterhouse, they can't make me eat something I don't want to eat.
We can all think of a couple historical instances of radical social change which necessitated short-term economic sacrifices and paradigm shifts. Yet, the grass isn't purple.
I don't see value in pandering to hypothetical future moralists. If they one day resurrect my corpse and torture me for eternity as punishment for eating animals, maybe then I'll care. Best case scenario, this comment may provide the same vacant sense of superiority that quotes from dead racists do for us; worst case, society regresses to bigotry and our current social morality is derided as a failed experiment, and you and I will share a cell in the cybernetic hell the 7th Reich make for resurrected wrong-thinkers.
$ math ‘5510^9 (3.17*10^-8)’
1743.5000
It’s a wrapper around bc, but it’s one of my most-used scripts. Doing some quick math in the terminal without opening a repl is nice.
55 billion animals? only in the US? Jesus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
Luckily, scrapie doesn't seem to be infectious to humans.
Why do you think I need help? That seems highly presumptuous. Asking questions about the fundamental nature of suffering hardly implies a lack of compassion. Perhaps someone can help you learn how to avoid drawing illogical conclusions.
Humans constantly try to distance themselves from nature even though at the basest level, we are still unavoidably part of it, as are all biological organisms on Earth.
I've just this week read about some moms trying to reverse this in young children (in adult's its worse), the article was not in english, so i won't link it here.
Their solution was to change the disgust with play. Like you don't like pasta? Come here, you don't have to eat it, just try if it will stick to the window. The kid plays with it, and in time it may change his perception of the food enough to try a small bite, their timescale iirc was two weeks. They explained some unexplainable occurences with prenatal conditioning ... like mum ate something and then fell, and those two unrelated things got written into child's brain.
Anecdotal evidence - my son when very young was suspicious to some fruits and veggies also. My solution was to eat the vegetables & fruits while watching tv shows with him. I've eaten whole apple, and gave him very thin, see-through slices of apple to play with, to look through, to suck and to nibble on. In a week time he was eating regular pieces with me and loves the fruits now. Small/thin pieces were the key for us.
TLDR: don't force children to eat something. It will only strenghten the problem.
Humans definitely aren't meant to eat human flesh, regardless of the taste, thus your argument is invalid.
Just as we evolved to mostly eat cooked meat rather than raw meat, we can also evolve to stop eating killed meat altogether.. A more environmentally sustainable & compassionate world is critically important for our future well-being (and possibly survival).