> Ventilator shutdown involves locking a flock or herd of animals in a building and turning off the ventilation systems. As the temperature rises and gases inside the building accumulate, the animals suffocate to death, usually over a period of many hours.

Rising "gases" is CO2. Suffocation by co2 is one of the worse death because that’s how the body knows he needs to inhale. Most of the other gases will kill you without you noticing. but forcing a subject to breath co2 is absolute torture.

Images talk by themselfs I guess, here’s 4 hour of the process which is legal in most of the world beware, not a fun video : https://www.farmtransparency.org/videos?id=2d2a5ec62b

UK replaced CO2 with other gaz[0] and the pigs dies as a sleep. The price difference is a needle.

0: butane or nitrogen IIRC but someone more knowledgeable may correct me.

https://edepot.wur.nl/546026

> The principle of gas stunning or Controlled Atmosphere Stunning (CAS) is that animals are exposed to a high concentration of CO2, CO2 mixed with inert gases, or inert gases only

> Carbon dioxide especially at high concentrations (above 40%) is pungent and painful to inhale and leads to a highly aversive response involving very loud and high-pitched vocalisations and vigorous attempts to escape from the gondola and the exposure to the gas, including scratching other pigs vigorously with the claws of the front legs and trampling of pigs that have become recumbent. Furthermore, during the induction phase animals will show increased breathing and gasping associated with signs of breathlessness (“air hunger”). Induction of unconsciousness with CO2 stunning does not immediately induce unconsciousness and the process is associated with fear, pain and respiratory distress (Verhoeven et al., 2016; Beausoleil and Mellor, 2015), lasting from the start of exposure to CO2 until loss of consciousness

I don't mind the killing, but it should be quick, efficient, and as painless as possible for the animal involved.

Why?

This is certainly possible if we, humans, really wanted to. So I assume you just don't believe society will ever decide to do it. This is unnecessarily negative outlook IMO - the first step to change something is to believe change is possible.

I have never eaten meat in my life. But I am surrounded by meat eaters. Even polite, rational, calm discussion about reducing meat consumption doesn't last more than a minute. It is as though people are more addicted to meat than alcohol and somehow it is drilled into their heads that humans need meat for protein and strength, though there are tons of vegetarians who lead healthy lives.

You don't need to take my word for it - try talking to someone about reducing their meat consumption and see how the conversation goes.

It's a silly story: I recently wrote a program to create my diet from the week based on local grocery store nutrition labels and prices for a couple hundred items, subject to constraints for calories, macronutrients (supporting my goals in the gym) and micronutrients (hit all RDIs for vitamins and minerals plus some speculative stuff). Meat is never included in the generated output because it's too expensive relative to what it offers from a nutrient perspective. All of my daily needs can be met for cheap and with minimal prep on a diet consisting basically of rice, beans, eggs, soy milk, oat milk, pea protein, Brussel sprouts, carrots, and apple juice, which works out to <$15/day for ~3000 calories; <$10/day if I remove some personalized constraints which adds lentils and substitutes cow milk in place of plant milks. Prior to my program, I was spending $20+/day buying groceries mindlessly or on takeout.

I've basically become a vegetarian out of sheer frugality and laziness (I don't like cooking and I don't like solving a puzzle to hit my macros each day). I imagine many people could be convinced to be weekday vegetarians from this angle, but it did take me several months to work through nutrition science books/videos to arrive at this point. (Shout out RP Strength.)

The other issue with my diet is that it is not optimized for taste or variety. I don't mind this (condiments go a long way and I'm pretty focused on my fitness goals), but I think I'm an outlier in this respect.

Anyway, all this to say I see an economic angle for hope, except that all messaging to the public on nutrition science is awful and confusing which leads to consumption decisions not based in any logical framework, and I doubt that behavior will change anytime soon unless we go through another economic shock.

None of this is rocket science, it is fairly straightforward to understand. Reducing meat consumption makes sense economically, ethically, environmentally etc. But, people like their hamburgers and their sea food and their KFC...

Saying "we aren't gonna reduce our meat consumption" is negativity. Saying "we aren't gonna stop eating meat" would be realistic. But there are plenty of ways we could reduce it. For example, there is a growing trend (in larger cities at least) to reduce one's meat consumption (sometimes completely - there are more vegetarians year by year). Another thing would be reducing subsidies that go towards producing meat - they skew the market in a way that promotes meat. That would be a unpopular change, which is why nobody does it, but it would make sense considering just environmental impact (carbon credits are an even different but related topic).

I'm not going to convince anyone to stop eating meat, who am I to tell them how to live (and I understand why that would be annoying). But changing my personal habits is absolutely within my power, and that may even convince someone to do the same (just like my decision to stop eating meat was because I learned my friend does it.

On the question of reducing subsidies for the meat industry - are you aware how powerful the meat industry is? Even the almighty Oprah at the height of her fame and reach couldn't do anything, got sued by the beef industry. There are a few states that have ag-gag laws, do you really think there is political will to repeal these?

In my town, a single mango costs $3.49. Sure it would be nice to subsidize fruits and veggies, but animal industry lobbying is way more powerful than mango/watermelon lobbying.

I appreciate your positivity, I suppose our experience on this issue has just been polar opposite.

Just saying you are vegan is unheardable and makes turns people on defence mode.

People don’t change their ways very easily. I know I have to fight rolling my eyes whenever someone suggests the the solution is simple: eat less meat.

This is the point I am also trying to make. At least short term, I do not see meat consumption going down. Maybe younger folks growing up today might understand climate change and the meat industry's contribution to it more than their parents/grandparents and be willing to make changes to their diet, but changes like this take a lot of time, if they happen at all.

In the meantime, anything we can do to lessen the cruelty to factory farmed animals (for ethical reasons) and anything we can do to reduce harm caused by meat industry on the environment, however small, is worth pursuing

If the GP said we will never stop eating meat I would agree. But saying we can't even reduce it is a bit extreme - we successfully reduced many other things (without banning them, just by coercing people - for example cigarettes).

I guess the point is you and others feel so strongly about ways to reduce suffering but couldn't care less about life.