Whew.
The hawk and coyote have no reasonable, easily achievable alternative, and they probably aren’t aware of the suffering they cause. shiftless seemed to imply that the suffering of the animals in the OP’s video he didn’t watch is merely a necessary consequence of efficiently supplying a demand for meat.
I repost the relevant part:
[QUOTE=shiftless]
The point of the process is to feed people as cheaply as possible, not to give the animals happy lives, so the industry tries to do that task as efficiently as possible. It is an industry. A few pennies per pound can make the difference between a successful hog raising venture and a failure.
[/QUOTE]
Humans don’t have to eat meat to survive, and even if we choose to, we are smart enough to find an economic and humane balance.
So how about cluing me in on the real hidden costs of meat, or at least pointing out what part of my post is ignorant. Whole chickens at the store costs like $1, maybe $2, a pound. This weekend at the farmers market they ran $5.99 a pound. That isn’t a minor difference.
I have read with interest your thread on raising chickens. Good for you for raising chickens humanely and good for you that you have found a market that can afford them. Surely you don’t think that everyone can afford to eat meat at those prices or even that your type of farming can provide the huge number of chickens eaten in the US today.
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were *literally *retarded. Your spelling is very good!
Some of the cost is to the animals, yes, when their lives are full of things like conditions so crowded that they have to have pieces chopped off their bodies so that they don’t get chewed off, or so that they don’t use them to harm other animals. Then there are the things you should be concerned about even if you don’t give a shit about the pain of another living thing. Things like…
1.) Sludge pits full of noxious, toxic animal waste.
2.) Animals being pumped full of antibiotics constantly, whether they’re sick or not, so that they can survive living in such unnaturally crowded conditions, contributing strongly to the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
3.) Assembly-line slaughterhouses that are constantly pushed to move faster than can possibly be safe and hygenic.
Except that you’ve already stated that there *is *no economic and humane balance other than “don’t eat *any *sweet fuzzy animals, no matter how well you treat them or how cleanly you slaughter them.”
I have absolutely no respect for the views espoused by shiftless.
However the view adopting a vegetarian diet will eliminate animal suffering is also incorrect.
Have you ever seen a wheat field after harvest?
A combine leaves a path of destruction in its wake-ground nesting- birds, voles, mice,opossums, rabbits, gophers, snakes and even fawns are killed.
Nor does it address the fact that not all land is suitable for crop production.
I agree that we must eat meat mindfully and be aware of the conditions by which it is processed but I think it’s simplistic to believe that becoming a vegetarian or vegan means that no animals died for in order that you might eat.
Dude, that’s their thinking, not mine.
[QUOTE=Shot From Guns]
Except that you’ve already stated that there *is *no economic and humane balance other than “don’t eat *any *sweet fuzzy animals, no matter how well you treat them or how cleanly you slaughter them.”
[/QUOTE]
Incorrect. I choose not to eat meat and that’s my balance. I never suggested this was the only balance available.
Squids are smart as hell but… pretty please? Calamari rings are so tasty… 
Can we say it’s OK to eat stuff that isn’t smart enough to organize and fight back ?
I dream of a day when Solyent Orange is made of French people. I look forward to the day of affordable tasty French food.
You’ll have to fight our cheeses first, American pigdog !
We burning your truffles!
Heheheh.
Shot From Guns outlines some of the most basic problems with CAFO meat.
The sludge ponds, also known euphemistically, as manure lagoons are part and parcel of confinement house hog farming.
A pig farm can produce as much excrement as a small city but unlike a small city, there are no waste management facilities for said farms
Leaking lagoons contaminate ground water and pose substantial risks to human health.
Although Smithfield Foods has denied any connection, the outbreak of swine flu in
Veracruz Mexico has been traced to the manure lagoons outside of the La Gloria area.
47% of the meat tested in our grocery stores carries antibiotic resistant staph.
Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of staph infections, is now resistant to oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin.
In a recent study, chicks were fed tetracycline in their feed ( a standard practice).
Within two weeks, their feces tested positive for tetracycline resistant bacteria.
The feces of the confinement house workers also tested positive.
We’re creating superbugs and it is estimated that approximately 18,000 Americans die yearly from drug resistant infections.
http://www.keepantibioticsworking.com/new/basics.php
These are just two of the issues that involve factory farmed meat.
My only answer to that is maybe we as a nation eat far too much meat.
You know, I don’t eat meat at every meal or even daily.
Personally, I think $5.99 per pound for pasture raised chickens is absurd.
I sell mine for much less at the farmers market. I also offer ‘farmers cut’s’-chicken that have brusied wings or brokens legs- for even less if you ask.
Nope, you quite clearly think that your analogy was actually the sort of thing that was making a clever point instead of just being laughably sad. Like I said, sorry, I just didn’t notice the mental disability at first! 
Oh, for the fun of it, I just looked up meat prices from the CSA program I belong to, which is pricier than most because it includes free home delivery.
Chicken breasts, boneless, skinless, pound: $4.25
Chicken legs & thighs, pound: $2.40
Chicken, ground, pound: $3.80
Chicken, whole, order each, priced by #, 4-5# average, Pasture-raised: $3.65
Bacon, pound: $5.50
Pork, chops, pound: $4.50
Pork, Italian sausage, bulk, pound: $3.25
Pork, ribs, spare, pound: $4.80
Pork, tenderloin, pound: $6.00
Beef, flank steak, pound: $8.40
Beef, ground, pound: $5.50
Beef, hanger steak, pound: $11.99
Elk, bacon, pound: $9.00
Elk, brats, pound: $6.65
Elk, ground, pound: $5.10
Elk, minute steaks, pound: $9.00
Elk, patties, pound: $5.50
I’m not sure where you think we disagree. I’m not saying animals shouldn’t be treated humanely or that we shouldn’t take care of the food the we produce. I’m saying there isn’t currently any incentive to do so, quite the opposite. The incentive is to produce more food for more people as quickly and cheaply as possible. Dairy has similar issues. Non-meat agriculture has issues too, with water over usage, mono-culture, questions about genetically modified plants and more. Don’t get me started on oil production.
There are 300 million people in the USA. We raise and kill over 8 billion chickens each year (about 1/2 bird per person per week), 100 million hogs and God knows how many cows, goats, sheep, turkeys, rabbits, maybe even dogs. The scale of it is overwhelming. So either people are going to have to eat a lot less meat, a lot more people are going to have to raise livestock or we are going to have to put up with those people who are willing and able to do the job on a massive scale. Or people can just go hungry. I think we should require meat producers to be more humane and to address many other issues but those things would cause prices to go up quite a bit more than people realize.
You know, there are very few species of boors as irritating as an insufferable, self-righteous vegetarian who uses the same sort of unreasoning polemic characteristic of religious fundamentalism to go on at length about how other people ought to eat.
Everybody wishes these people would take the time to enjoy a nice hot cup of cruelty STFU, most of all vegetarians who manage to make their own dietary choices without somehow putting their head right up their ass and annoying everyone within earshot with a bunch of wooly-minded dogmatic claptrap.
Christ, for most of my life I had two parallel peer groups: Primary: Commercial Drive hippies (local flavour of bohemians) and Secondary: Chinese Buddhists & Taoists. Everyone I knew was vegetarian, and this represented a wide spectrum - reasonable people just after a healthy diet, people who just found the idea of eating meat “squicky,” strict ethical vegans, and people who held sincere religious beliefs about the consumption of flesh being a literal barrier to enlightenment, and very occasionally smug pricks who missed no opportunity to imply their moral superiority over other people based on whatever they chose to abstain from.
Of course, eventually I became vegetarian myself - partly because I was persuaded by the memes I was constantly exposed to, but mostly because in my circumstance it just made things simpler. (With groceries, choosing restaurants, etc.) The zealots have always got on my tits because this sort of personality is unbearable. However, I can understand the emotion because I took that as my own. (Tried to be as-vegan-as-possible for a couple years, but it didn’t take.)
I did inherit a very strong aversion to the idea of eating meat. Repulsion. I recall once ordering a “veggie omelette” in a greasy spoon diner, barely looking up from my book as I tucked in, and getting a substantial bit down before I realized that I had been served a “Western omelette,” and had therefore just eaten little bits of pig. Gross! So gross, that I was soon in the bathroom, vomiting it back up. Not by using any bulimic technique, but just because my stomach flip-flopped enough to eject it, based on the strong emotional upset I felt from contemplating the fact that I was digesting animal flesh after quite a few years of avoiding it.
However, my diet was insufficient - and not through ignorance, because I had loads of books about how to have a good balanced vegetarian diet. But the fact is that it was too much work. I could not keep weight on - though I certainly tried.
When my weight had been <100lbs (I’m 5’4") for a while, I decided that perhaps I ought to revisit meat-eating, because I didn’t live with a bunch of vegetarians anymore, and I had to admit that it wasn’t working out for me. I know that it’s possible to have a healthy vegetarian diet - I’ve seen people do it, but it takes some dedication. More often, the folks I knew would just eat what they usually liked, replacing meat with tofu, tvp, and (if lucky) tempeh. (Which was more-or-less what I did.) Not adequate at all.
The simple thing is, it’s much easier to have a balanced diet that includes meat. We are natural omnivores. Trying to persuade the general population to give up meat altogether is a fool’s errand, because human beings are natural meat eaters.
That said, there is room for evangelism. A meat-centric diet is no better than one that goes to the other extreme. I would rather be the skinny anemic that obstain from meat altogether than the fat, heart-sick puffer who has ham steak and hash browns for breakfast, a Kingburger and fries for lunch, and a steak and a baked potato for dinner six days a week. But a varied, healthy diet with a moderate meat content is better than that, and if your consumer choices are made to favour humanitarian practices, that’s even better.
But when you’re putting yourself out there challenging people with deep insights like “Would ya still be so keen on meat if it was you on the menu?” you should probably step back a bit and examine your assumptions, because at this point most sapient creatures will perceive you to be a numbskull, and you’re not even scoring points with the merely sentient, who get along just as well with us omnivores, anyway.
Jesus, is “self-righteous” the absolute default stance when an obviously proud meat eater encounters a vegetarian in the wild? I’ve been none of self-righteous or condescending in this or any other thread. You confuse advocacy of vegetarianism as an attempt to impose my will on others. If you swim upthread a bit, you’ll see I accept that people eat meat. My recent post that caused many a panty-twist, was addressing shiftless’ description of people who accept the type of torture of livestock evident in the OP because it avails cheap(er) meat, not those who merely eat meat, and, of course, was a huge hunk of hyperbole.
[QUOTE=Shot From Guns]
Nope, you quite clearly think that your analogy was actually the sort of thing that was making a clever point instead of just being laughably sad. Like I said, sorry, I just didn’t notice the mental disability at first!
[/QUOTE]
I will always default to your overwhelming intellect, even when you’re incorrect, as now. It’s just that great.
:rolleyes:
Are you kidding? They taste like rubber bands. At least pigs are delicious, you Frog. 
Looking for the link where the “aware of their fates” hogs busted loose from the disassembly line and made a bee line for the blood trough on the lowest level, not to mourn the deaths of their brethren, but to hog out on their blood.
They are sometimes charming, but they are mostly stupid animals.
I apologize if I sounded unduly harsh, shiftless.
Obviously this is a push button issue for me.
I certainly don’t have all the answers but I am absolutely convinced that we can’t continue CAFO farming. Even if you don’t care about the animals/poultry involved ( and I’m not implying that you personally are onboard with the horrendous conditions in which said animals are raised), the cost in terms of the environment and human health are just too high.
I also don’t think it’s necessary to eat meat at every meal.
To quote Pollen 'Eat less, pay more."
My farmers market clients aren’t members of a wealthy elite by any means but they do know how to cook.
One 4 pound chicken can provide several meals for a family of four if they know how to work the bird.
Where do you think frog legs come from?