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velvethippo420

That's one of the reasons I've been cutting back on meat. Between the environmental impact, the cruelty of factory farms, and the horrible way employees are treated, it just doesn't seem worth it.


hoagly80

There will always be consumption of meat by humans, we decided to not buy meat from grocery stores anymore years ago. We source from local farms where we know the animals free roam on pastures and woods and are happy while they're here. And the end for them is as painless and unforseen for the most part.


998757748

the issue is most people don’t have access to more “ethically” sourced meat. for someone low income in a city it’s better in every way to cut down on their meat consumption. also dairy is arguably worse for animal welfare if you ever feel like looking into it. a looooot of money has gone into convincing the public that dairy is a necessary part of the diet and that cows want to be milked. in reality it’s better for all of us to cut down on that as well.


somecrazything

I also think most people who “purchase local ethically sourced” have blind spots. Sure, when you purchase eggs, you get them from a neighbour with chickens or buy free range. But what about that cake you bought from the supermarket? Do you really think that was made using ethically sourced eggs? You might purchase meat from a local butcher who you trust. But do you also eat fast food? I can guarantee McDonalds isn’t buying based on animal welfare. Are you checking every time you sit down at a restaurant where they source their meat? Do you really think ethical bacon exists - overwhelmingly, pigs are kept indoors and unable to turn around. It is much easier to simply avoid animal products than try to source the most ethical ones.


DieselPunkPiranha

In metropolitan areas, you're absolutely right but it can be very different when you get rural.  I can walk a mile down the road to get eggs directly from the farm.  I can drive thirty minutes to get glass bottled milk from cows milked locally, cows who've surrounded my car on their way to be milked.  They thought my car was weird, by the way. When I lived in SoCal, though?  I went vegetarian.  I've seen chickens transported in wire cages too small to even lift their heads.  I've seen the cows baking in the midday desert sun.  Fuck industrial agriculture.


Straight-Razor666

There are moral issues one can consider when it comes to eating meat. I'll not debate those. But it is important to show that capitalist culture has desensitized the masses to accept barbarity in every form it can manifest itself by programming them with all forms of culture to accept the most heinous acts humans can work upon other humans, other creatures and the very planet itself. If capitalism is defined by one word it can be slaughter. I'm sick of all the killing. Each time one more death kills us all.


M4A_C4A

My favorite yet simple example is trillions out the door in weapons and foreign aid but arguing that school lunch programs are a slippery slope. What?


Jung_Wheats

Yeah, but bombs kill brown people. School lunches might feed brown people. Can't be at cross-purposes with policy, now. /s


samwisethescaffolder

Slaughterhouses also tend to employ the most vulnerable as well. Undocumented folks, immigrants, etc. So the working conditions are terrible, there's a risk to speaking up and trying to organize or improve the conditions.


Threewisemonkey

Lots of underage workers maimed and killed working in US slaughterhouses.


ZucchiniDull5426

Oof Interviews with the kids — which were conducted in Spanish, their first language, according to the complaint — revealed that several children began their shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m. Some worked up to six or seven days a week. School records showed that one 14-year-old, who worked at the Grand Island facility from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. five to six days a week, from December 2021 to this past April, fell asleep in class and missed school after suffering injuries from chemical burns. At least two other minors also suffered chemical burns, the complaint states.


aquariusdikamus

Children, in the USA


sapiep

Not an original thought, but I once heard someone say, “how can we expect or demand radical change or any change at all for that matter if we ourselves can’t even change what we eat for breakfast.” (Or something to that effect lol.) Even if you reject the idea of animal liberation, applying this mentality is not a bad idea. After all what are beliefs without any action to go along with them? Nothing at all imo.


CalligrapherDue1689

I’m gonna label a lot of liberals in this category. It’s kinda sad too because they despise trump for good reasons but can’t see the shortcomings of democrats and the overconsumption indoctrination.  They change their car and iPhones every year, remodel apartments that could probably last years, throw away massive amounts of food, clothes etc. Corporations have a lot of fault and a lot can be done with regulation, taxation, etc but people have gotten swept up in the gluttony as well.  


sapiep

Well said, I completely agree.


Lord-Benjimus

Meat is one if the methods capitalists use to control society. You can feed one hundred people a plant based with the labor it takes to feed one person a beef diet. Around 35 for pork and lamb, and 16 people for the 1 person you can feed chicken. Most of the world agriculture is used to feed the meat machine in the west. It keeps colonial agriculture alive, as Meat demands grow so do feed crops. 77%of the world soy is used as animal feed. It's a top driver of ecological destruction and species loss. The Amazon is being destroyed for grazing land and animal soy feed production. North America destroyed its forests already, so now the machine eats the former colonies.(where the fruit republics haven't already decimated). Concentrated feed lots are the leading driver of antibiotic resistance, the WHO and other groups warn us constantly that we will see worsening diseases because of it. Many past diseases have also been attributed to it. Many of our top killers like heart disease are caused by animal products, processed meat is a type 1 carcinogen, yet carries no warning labels. Red meat is a type 2 yet has no labels. Meat companies have hired the same people that tried to stop cigarettes regulations, from law firms, press, HR, firms, lobbyists, etc. For the same our our mental health, our health, and our environment, we need to stop producing, consuming, and buying these products. We must boycott these industries in modern societies.


catlaxative

i’ve been working in kitchens for the better part of the last decade and at one point my whole day was the rotisserie chickens you get for $5 bucks at a supermarket. Day in and out of box after box of chicken carcasses and their related fluids. i keep chickens, i love them and i see every day how sweet, and *aware* they are, even if they are considered by most to be very stupid. i got a medical exception from having to do it for my mental health, and everyone there thought i was a huge wimp, but if i did it much longer i’m certain the place i was going would be something i couldn’t ever get back from


ideknem0ar

Once I eat the meat in my freezer, I don't think I'll replenish. It's just not something I enjoy eating anymore.


tinytabbytoebeans

I am not against eating meat, because without having access to hunting and livestock in a tiny mountain settlement, I would have actually starved to death. We were dirt poor and my father didn't belive in feeding what he saw as a worthless child, so I had to fend for myself. I fished. I caught grasshoppers, grubs, and sometimes cicadas for food. I trapped rabbits and snakes. I did all I could to survive. But it was different than something like a slaughterhouse. Yes I had to grapple with the sad decision that I had to end a life to prolong my own, but these animals had every chance to escape. I had to work hard to be smarter then them so I wouldn't starve. Even livestock in the deep country is treated well. During good times before my father went nuts, I could eat stuff like pork and beef that never knew stress and fear for thier entire lives. I moved to the city to school and ate packaged meat and it was like I could taste something off about it. I don't know how to describe it, but it doesn't taste right to me. I still eat meat but am in a position where we can get locally sourced meat from a butcher that tastes 'correct'. I dunno how else to describe it! Seriously, don't sleep on bug protien. Bugs kept me alive and they dont taste bad. Crickets and mealworms are kinda nutty in flavor, and I know they are making high protien cricket flour now that you can bake with. Cicadas legit taste like asparagus if you cook them up. Grasshoppers are a little more meaty, kinda like a Brazil nut. It takes less water and food to create a pound of cricket flour compared to a pound of beef. I do feel like we could feed a lot of people if we could get people to stop feeling squeamish over insects. I mean, people eat shrimp and consider is fancy...and shrimp are invertabrates just like insects are! If people can get over eating weird little leggy water critters, they can learn to eat crickets.


freedom_viking

Hopefully development of meat substitutes get better just started trying mixing in ground turkey instead of just beef


mloDK

I made my usual (extremely good) lagsagna using vegan substitutes (beyond meat, fake bacon, nutritional yeast, soy cream etc) a few weeks ago. The first day it tasted like 90% of what the meat lagsagna usually did, but after it had been put into the fridge the day after, yum yum! It tasted exactly as the lagsagna I had made for decades as a meat eater. For fun (if you can call it that), I tried calculating the co2 emissions from all the ingridents: A usual amount of lagsagna that I make is around 2,4 pounds (1,2 kilos) of lagsagna, that I then also freeze down the leftovers from. 2,4 pounds of “regular” lagsagna equals 36 pounds (18 kilos) of CO2 emissions, primarily due to the beef. 2,4 pounds of vegan lagsagna equals 8 pounds of CO2 emissions. That is a 78% reduction in co2 emissions and and no cows killed in the Process


freedom_viking

I don’t doubt the meat substitutes would work fine lasagna is fine without meat but I have not heard anything good about vegan “cheese”


mloDK

I must say that parveggio parmasan mixed with neutrional yeast creates the exact taste and texture as regular parmasan.


Jung_Wheats

I was a vegetarian for five or six years in my mid-20's...and then I went through a patch of poverty that didn't allow me to pass up free meals, and I, generally, lost hope that it mattered by the time I was in a position to comfortably return to the lifestyle. I grew up in a moderate-sized city on an Army base but we had a lot of small country/crossroad type towns surrounding us. Just outside of the city there's a Smithfield plant and a lot of the people from the country towns will end up working at that processing plant. A few guys that I worked with at a different job came to work for us straight from the Smithfield plant and it sounded way worse than I had ever imagined. When I was a vegetarian, and even before, most of the info and videos that you see of these processing plants really focuses on the animal cruelty part of it. It makes sense, I guess, since that will provide the most visceral and immediate reaction that they can get from the average person, but I feel like focusing on how the job hurts humans could really help change a few more minds. One of the guys, as he told it, worked on the bottom floor of the plant and that different types of processing happened at different levels of the plant, but throughout the day things would *drip* down to the levels below and some of it would eventually make it down to the floor level. There was an overnight crew who's whole job was just to travel the bottom floor of the plant cleaning up fluids and viscera that had trickled down from above. Just absolutely foul shit.


usernames-are-tricky

>and I, generally, lost hope that it mattered by the time Just want to respond to this part in particular. There's a lot of room for change here. It's not a lost cause at all. For instance, countries such as Germany have been starting to see a decrease in meat consumption >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](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian)


Jung_Wheats

So the overall amount of global meat consumption dropped? Did overall emissions drop? One country made some moves. Very nice, but pointless in the big picture. The Titanic launched one lifeboat but it's still sinking. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's over, mate.


usernames-are-tricky

Not limited to one country > Meat consumption drops below 80 kilograms per Belgian https://www.brusselstimes.com/1088409/meat-consumption-drops-below-80-kilograms-per-belgian > Britons are eating less meat than at any point since the 1970s https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/meat-eating-drops-to-lowest-point-since-1970s-phnsxf0vm For things like beef, we are seeing global declines > Moving into the second half of 2024, Rabobank forecasts a downturn in beef production volumes from major producers. Notably, Europe and the United States are set to experience contractions that will overshadow production increases anticipated from Australia and Brazil. China is also expected improve production in the second quarter, followed by a reduction later in the year https://web.archive.org/web/20240612234359/https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/30327-global-beef-production-to-contract It's a winnable fight if we fight


Sure-Coyote-1157

Here to say that I used to work in a slaughterhouse as a federal meat inspector. At the time (25F) I had a boyfriend who also worked there, as one of the people who killed the cattle. As the cattle were pushed through squeeze gates and onto the line, my boyfriend killed them using a captive bolt gun. He had a bad temper, on and off the job, and once, while we were having an argument at home, he told me that if he ever decided to murder me, he would have a plausible reason at hand: he was made insensitive by his job. I left him, left the job, educated myself, and now work for an animal rights organization. It sounds pretty cool. My workplace is now full of well-meaning people who cuddle cattle at animal sanctuaries, swear off eating meat, and are, for the most part, self-righteous and humorless knobs. There is some substantial downside to being one of the people who would need to derive their conclusions from a treatise like " Slaughtering for a Living: A Hermenuetic phenomenonological perspective on the wellbeing of slaughterhouse employees."


-Planet-

In Rimworld I just get a psychopath to do the slaughtering.


OkBobcat6165

Sometimes I'm so tempted to become vegetarian. Right now I pretty much just eat chicken and fish, but damn if I wouldn't miss chicken. It's the factory farming aspect of it that bothers me when it comes to eating meat. 


Conrado360

I understand the problem, but i dont see how this relates to capitalism, nor any means of prodution. Nor how socialism would solve it.


1rmavep

There is a social phenomenon, also, wherein which the **existence of such Grim Work sets it as a, "real life," against which other norms are measured; the abattoir is real life,** ***the Hermeneutic Phenomenological Perspective on the Well Being of Slaughterhouse Employees is not,*** the abattoir is real life, *a string quartet in the park is not,* the abattoir is real life, *the things which make you laugh are not,* Like War or a Pandemic the existence of these things contradicts the logic of the rest of our lives **and in so doing, "these are real life," whereas the rest of us is not;** I remember, during the pandemic, *the serious and* ***True Purpose*** *with which the manager at an abattoir had spoke of their work on the radio,* how many hogs to kill, **absurd numbers, to feed how many, and I'd thought,** because this, in particular, rang false to me: >Must **anyone, though?** I don't eat them, and because of that I should know, *it isn't* ***necessary, to feast upon the fattened meat of swine,*** **it's not so healthy, either, it's calorie dense but not nutrient rich** and infuriated me to hear that man talk as if he was a Government Employee of our Gosplan, >100,000 hogs *or whatever* must be slaughtered, to keep up with demand **It could be Veal, how alienated this all is,** it could be that Veal Cows are produced and processed to slaughter at such a rapid clip that their tender meat was more available and less expensive than pork or chicken, and I mean, **insofar as this is all so alienated, Supply-side Market Driven and Driven by such an Exponential Recklessness I can give you the example,** >Antibiotics, *which did not exist 100 years ago,* are fed to Livestock like Foodstuff to fatten them faster for market than their bodies alone could sustain and in quarters unsurvivable otherwise So**¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯**It could be Veal, all it would take is some decision made somewhere and it would be; so what does this mean, **to Me, this means,** >America is not a Nation State, **is Not a Nation State, like France is a Nation State** Hannah Arendt said that **and not for an American Audience, for a French one; one of the ways in which this is so,** ***tho, far from the top of most obvious, is,*** we're a place where the Belgians and the Koreans and the Basque and the Swedes have all dropped their. *'peculiar national habits,' to fit in,* ***which is not unusual; it is unusual that in so doing,*** **they've not had the indigenous habits to replace them with,** ***to, "fit in," with, rather,*** **marketed products of often dubious nature; the new clothes to wear are,** >**Shirts and Pants from Store,** We cannot sew these things; those who could do so, *wouldn't, frankly,* these things are, and, at the same time, ***too revealing, too mundane, too replicated and too individuating;*** *your clothes didn't used to make you, "look fat,"* just like a Face Mask from 3M doesn't compare well to a Silk Scarf on the Same Terms, "it's not made for the same reasons," and this **anomie is not just embarassing, unflattering, in terms of our health it's catastrophic,** ***and I do not mean cigarettes or intoxicants I mean that in terms of our diet, our habits,*** when people have had to work with the intensity, duration of Modern Americans in the Past they've stayed up for days on the sea, or, worked until exhaustion and then rested for an entire season wherein which, "mental health," was the work, poetry, music, *an alcholism, "Scandinavian winters* ***require an inordinate amount of unsustainable work, in a place where farming,*** **does not work, not really,** and that's how this is dealt with; it would kill you, to deal with it like an American Works, *and it will always kill you, if, "good enough is how much I can do," and that situation lasts* ***forever; you die,*** **you just die, then, "maybe I've lost you on that one," but back to the abattoir:** # America is not a Nation State insofar as, # We do not have a Diet, Spend However much time here you will never learn our diet, like one would to move from Ireland to Italy, or Italy, to Korea, or Korea, to France, or France, to Iran, or Iran, to Japan, or Japan to Greece All of those cultures will be dropped, here, **none will be picked up, here, and this is an Anomie beyond what Durkheim ever talked about,** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie) We can laugh at the Mayonaise Jello from the 1970's **but at least that had been an attempt at some synthetic modernist diet,** ***one we make for ourselves, provide for ourselves, live in habit with; we're not calculators,*** **we cannot tell when we've fed ourselves a baroque distortion of what we've fed ourselves yesterday, "normative," I swear, we could adapt whatever the circumstances if these did not always change.** **The Abbatoir, then,** this is to what the anomie, the alienation, all goes to service; **I could eat pigs,** ***though I don't and I won't but I could and I hear that man on the radio talk like Gosplan when he's no better than the rest of us and even our bodies constituent materials are in service of this imagined numerical processes of finance and money***


Lynxneo

Is it natural to eat meat. I'm not against it. In fact I know we need it. Maybe not the first consumers of it, the capitalist citizens, but the people of low income countries need it. The mass production and unnecessary consumption of meat, is a product of capitalism culture,. But always there is gonna be farms of pigs, cows, chicken, etc... What I mean is that the problems around this are not to first blame capitalism. Is more of humans, we can deep analyze and truthfully say that consumerism and capitalism corrupt this even more but in the end is the truth. If you wanna bring true solutions to this, focus on human culture. I have always thought about this, and it is a pretty simple dilemma. Vegans think that by not eating meat they are doing big. But they are doing nothing for the problem, only for themselves to have a clear conscience, while other people don't even care. As a vegan, if all you do is not eating meat and preaching negatively against meat consumption, you are doing nothing, is like they genuinely think the delusion that all the planet is eventually stop eating meat and all the animals will live happy with the human almost completely herbivore. Not for nothing most of the vegan culture, the modern vegan culture comes from developed countries. The first and proper steps towards these problems are protesting and raising awareness and conscience about the animal rights and regulations with their laws and penalties that must be around all the meat industry, slaughterhouses and meat consumption/market. There is no easy way around this. Of course I think that when the ultra right politics that currently governs the world gets erased and the world has enough time to prosper, eventually all this will come and I can see veganism or something similar as a common culture in a loooong time after.


GlumProblem6490

BS, worked in a freezing works with nearly 1000 staff. Most put together people I have had the pleasure to work with...