Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.
As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.
This is why the core of the issue that nobody ever talks about is human overpopulation. The demented levels of factory farming we have is only a thing because 8 billion people need to be fed.
The demented level of factory farming had nothing to do with human overpopulation, but everything to do with human culture’s demand for animal products that are entirely unnecessary for survival. If we change our culture to eliminate animal products, we will eliminate a huge source of wasted resources and labor. Think of how much less plant agriculture would be required if we didn’t have to feed 33 billion chickens, almost two billion sheep, a billion and a half cattle, a billion pigs.
If we just grew food we can eat, instead of wasting land, effort, and resources both directly and indirectly supporting animal agra, we wouldn’t have such huge problems.
“But baaaaaaconnnnnn.” “I can’t liiiiiive without eeeeegggggs.” “Cheeseburgers taaaaaaaste too good give up” “it’s because there’s too many huuuuuumanssss”
Consuming meat is natural and vital for us as species.
Natural yes, vital no, as made perfectly evident by the fact vegetarians and vegans aren’t wasting away in the streets.
There are a lot of stories about malnourished vegans and even about vegans’ kids, malnourished to death.
There are similarly many stories of omnivores who have died of malnourishment. Is this a valid case against meat eating?
Similarly many stories of omnivores, who have died of malnourishment specifically because of their omnivorous diet, as vegans did?
A person who exclusively eats fruit is technically adhering to a vegan diet. A person who exclusively eats kraft singles is technically adhering to an omnivorous diet. There are wrong ways to do both.
The point I was trying to make with my earlier comment is that the people wasting away don’t represent the average vegan/vegetarian. They are outliers who make for good headlines.
That’s a “no true scotsman” fallacy.
“cOnSuMiNg MeAt Is nAtUrAl”
Setting aside the inherent ethnocentrism of this statement, which, in classic Western fashion, completely bulldozes the many cultures that have thrived on entirely plant-based diets for centuries, possibly millennia…
This is still a shit argument, when you realize that EVERYTHING humanity does aims to separate ourselves from “nature,” and move beyond what is “natural.”
If we actually lived according to nature, we wouldn’t have plastics, cell phones, cars, airplanes, air conditioning, and all the other myriad things that make our soft squishy lives easier.
But you keep chowing down on your “aLl-NaTuRaL” chicken wings and Mountain Dew, you fucking neanderthal.
You are giving mixed signals. Is separating ourselves from nature good or bad?
Stop clowning around, please.
Though I have opinions, I will not take the bait, as it is not relevant to my point whether humans distancing themselves from nature is “good” or “bad.”
I think my signal is pretty clear - Your “it’s natural” argument fails entirely when one picks and chooses the aspects of human life to which they apply it.
As an example - you wake up in your climate controlled house, put on your synthetic fiber clothing, jump into your Ford F150 Pickup Truck, Drive to a gas station, pick up a mountain dew in a plastic bottle, and buy a slice of pizza - in all that context, your big brained argument is that it is more natural for that pizza to have animal pepperoni and dairy cheese, vs plant-based alternatives.
Tell me, who is the clown in this situation?
It’s you. You’re the clown.
Our body still is natural by all means. And omnivorous diet is natural to our body.
Natural, sure. Vital? Something like 350,000,000 Indians would like a word with you
They have chicken.
I don’t think they do, considering they’re vegetarian. Around 24% of the country consider themselves vegetarian, while about 8% consider themselves pescatarian (the ones that eat birds and fish)
And the rest 68%?
How on earth could they be relevant to the point of whether meat is necessary for our survival?
But cheeseburgers are Delicious.
Animal agriculture is very inefficient, because of tropic levels.
Looking on Wikipedia, dressed broiler chicken carcasses have a feed conversion ratio of about 4. That is to say, a 4lb whole chicken you buy from the butchers case would have required about 12 lbs of feed over its ~2 month life.
An online calorie counter says 4lb of raw whole chicken is 3856 calories. By contrast, a 1lb bag of cornmeal has ~3300 calories. 12 lbs of cornmeal have just over 10x the calories of 1 chicken.
Even comparing the differences in yield between chickpeas and corn, we get way more calories per acre from hummus than Buffalo wings.
In the US, we get 36% of our calories from animals, but use an order of magnitude more space to raise them. We grow more acreage of feed crops than crops that get directly eaten by humans. Fully 40% of the continental US is devoted to raising livestock, which is insane.
We don’t factory farm because there’s 8 billion humans to feed. We factory farm because we want “a chicken in every pot”.
”The problem that nobody ever talks about is overpopulation"
Outright untrue, in both ways. People always talk about it, and it remains not the problem. The problem is distribution, which is largely due to greed and overconsumption. The problem is that farmers breed what they can sell, and people buy so much meat just to have access to it in case they want it eventually.
I found a third way it’s incorrect: we don’t need animal farms to feed people in the first place. We could simply eat plants instead of feeding them to animals.
Why are you people booing this man? He’s right.
Because they aren’t right. People talk about overpopulation constantly. Overpopulation isn’t the problem, distribution is. We don’t need to grow animals to feed people in the first place; that turns plants into food less efficiently than just feeding the plants to people.
You know how people who eat meat are uncomfortable about animal cruelty in farms and don’t like to think about it?
It’s the same here with people who think animal lives are completely equivalent to human lives. This is the logical conclusion they don’t like to think about. If you had mass human death to correct for overpopulation, it would solve the food demand issue – and if mass human death is no different from mass animal death, then this would be the fewest deaths of living things to solve the issue.
It’s a common thread in these comments. You see people blaming poor farmers for being poor, and not considering the higher prices for meat alternatives and vitamin supplements. Factory processed food is the cheapest, and vegan meals are as far from that as possible. People will beat around the misanthropy, but they won’t look it in the face like the population issue forces them to.
I don’t know if that really holds up. I don’t think we’re tapped out totally in ecological terms. I’m willing to be proven wrong on that (I kind of doubt I can, alternatives are kind of under-researched as a matter of principle), but if we’re not tapped out in ecological terms, then I think the main limitation on food demand would be the level of labor available for food production. i.e. more people can provide for more people. I kind of struggle to think of a scenario in which misanthropy, or, I guess lack of it, is the problem here, and not like. Mass industrialized production. I don’t wanna say capitalism is the problem cause that seems kind of tropey, and it isn’t really accurate, but it’s certainly not helping the issue, in any case.
Getting downvoted but you are right.
Pretty much all of modern problems can be traced to overpopulation.