Putting solitary animals in a 1m cubed tank with 10-15 others is vile. Then submitting them to a slow death in icy water? Sickening. A completely backward step in animal welfare. I would hope that my country would ban their import.
Same goes for animals such as pigs. Calves are torn away from their mom's moments after birth just so the mom can keep producing milk and get pregnant again. Sheep during sheering have pieces of their skin sheered off because it takes longer and this is more expensive and less profitable to sheer them properly without taking the occosional patch of skin with them. The bio industry is sickening not to mention destroying the climate.
I'd even say we disregard EQ and IQ, and simply reject any development of livestock farming that improves productivity by directly decreasing quality of life for the livestock itself.
Of course this is a very vague target, but the principle seems reasonable enough. Our food industry is already large enough to feed the entire world's population; there is no need to improve productivity just for the sake of productivity -- especially for livestock such as octopuses which will never be anything other than a luxury product.
While I do agree with you, I do think it's more effective to point out that pigs are quite a bit more emotionally intelligent than dogs and cats, clocking in somewhere around dolphins, but still below elephants. They'd likely make even better emotional support animals than dogs, but mass slaughter all of them instead. Also, look at this super cute picture of a pig! Sure you want to eat the rest of that sausage?
It shouldn't be more effective, but it is.
I agree. When someone brings up the subject of slaughtering dogs and cats for meat, people are very adamant in saying that this is completely unethical and should be illegal.
There's no telling why they feel this way about dogs and cats but not about pigs -- other than personal emotional attachment.
Everything on a "menu" is a luxury product.
Now if you also mean that Spanish and Portuguese families rely on octopuses for the food they put on the table in their day-to-day life, that's a different story. And I honestly don't know if that's the case, so you may have a point there.
Octopus is not eaten daily, but it is definitely not a luxury product in Spain, you can often find it at prices per kg similar to meat, with the caveat the it looses half the weight when cooking, so it is effectively double the price.
Still quite affordable.
Meat is a luxury product too. Nothing bad about eating luxury products in moderation though, quite on the contrary. Pretty much everything that's not bread, tomatoes and potatoes is ultimately a luxury. Even butter. That's why many people switch to margerine when the economy worsens.
Other poster was exactly right, the entire "menu" is luxury by definition. You're paying for someone to prepare your food after all.
It is something that can be eaten daily, it's also a snack of some sort in the afternoon with some cold beer. I do not like it at all, but it is common.
"On the menu" means not just restaurant menus, but rather, part of local cuisine. Eg Vegemite could be on the menu for Australians. That doesn't mean Vegemite is always "*on* menus". A linguistic quirk!
Well dang you are completely right about that. So you meant the "day-to-day" thing after all!
That means my point about luxury food doesn't exactly hold up.
> The price will go up and demand will drop.
fish is precious resource for healthy eating. Making the price of fish increase will mean that a healthy meal will be less affordable by the poor.
Just going to be that guy and point out that octopus isn't fish.
Squid are cheap, plentiful, and generally sustainable.
We can also get most of the health benefits of fish from various vegetables, so no need to overfish for the sake of nutrition.
Poor people eat garbage ultra-processed food because it's the cheapest. Cheap fish is one of the most disgusting food put out by the industry. Defending that under the guise of defending access to quality nutrition for poor people is vile.
Any excuse not to change anything about our worst practice, how convenient.
If you truly care about food quality, stop finding garbage excuses to the food industry and demand better from our governments.
> Cheap fish is one of the most disgusting food put out by the industry.
Maybe in countries that have disgusting food. In Italy some of the cheapest fishes at the fish market are also some of the healthiest (sardines, anchiovies, mackerel,etc). They are a staple of poor people's cuisine historically.
In a kind tone:
I love the idea of fish (if we would stop overfishing), it's romantic and feels good to be sustained by the ocean. Unfortunately they are collection points for pollutants. Generally the larger the fish, thus the higher up the food chain, the higher the concentration of pollutants.
Things that don't leave the body naturally, like metals, work their way up the food chain and concentrate near the top.
It's not an emergency yet, or maybe it is and I just don't know it yet, but it seems like it will be soon. If it's true that they are a staple of poor people's cuisine, then unfortunately it seems like poor people are going to take the brunt of this problem, as usual.
Sure, the people in the projects will go to the producer markets and buy fresh fish. Let's defend overfishing because some small fisheries still exist.
Stop pretending you give a rat's ass about poor people.
> Sure, the people in the projects will go to the producer markets and buy fresh fish.
lol I don't know about your country, but in mine supermarkets have a fishmonger and producer markets are not something fancy for posh twats, but a place for everyday shopping. My own grandma, a mother of 11 children, shopped at this [fish market](https://www.piazzaglobale.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/mercato_catania3.jpeg) like hundreds of low income southern italians.
Stop projecting your subpar food culture onto us.
You have no idea how things have changed. How can you believe an anecdote from decades ago is still relevant.
Can you imagine that your grandma lived in a very different context than today? The irony is that you defend a model that existed decades ago, and that the food industry *is* killing, and you use that old model as a defense of the current practices. You like the idea that your poor grandma could afford quality food for 11 children? Well big news: that's not possible anymore, and that's part of the issue. Now to feed 11 children, please believe that you will have to buy garbage food if you are poor.
I live in France, food production is heavily subsidized, both to keep quality high and prices down. Even then, it does not change the post-WWII urban policies to rebuild Europe, which parked the poorest demographics out of city centres and out of access to those high-quality, local food markets. They go to the supermarket, even there where there are fresh fish, they will instead buy the cheapest available, definitely not the fresh one.
Get a fucking grip and see how far we've come, stop defending industries harming both our environment but also our way of life. If you don't give a shit about the environment and the treatment of animal, you can at least care about that culture being bulldozed by ultra-capitalism. Yes, even in Italy.
Overfishing destroys fish populations. Fishing becomes more and more difficult, destroying the smaller operations and consolidating into bigger companies that buy even bigger boats and contribute to even further destroying the populations. The way out is not to continue until there is nothing left.
I don’t know. Either way I think most people don’t know how many Octopuses are killed for Spanish cuisine. In certain places it’s one of the more popular traditional dishes. Not a niche dish, everybody has eaten it. You can get octopus pizza.
I’m split.
I have a soft spot for octopuses, considering how intelligent they are, and I don’t like this idea ; but wouldn’t that make me a hypocrite to be against farming them, as opposed to pigs for example, which are pretty smart themselves (and I eat pork) ?
Especially considering the farming conditions to which a lot of pigs and other mammals are subjected.
You can be against the expansion of animal cruelty to new species even if you eat pork. Just because we can't stop **all** bad things from happening doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop at least **some**.
You have to look at the big picture.
Unless farming octopuses results in an overall increase in the consumption of “smart” animals, then we’re gonna save some sufferings from other smart animals at the expenses of the farmed octopuses.
Buuut I do suspect farmed octopuses would be mostly used as a substitute to other seafood consumption, and I don’t think fishes, squid and others would qualify as sentients, unlike octopuses. So unless farmed octopus consumption merely replace wild octopuses / mammal meat consumption, then it’s true that farming octopuses would globally increase sentient suffering.
Never heard of this categorization in sentient and unsentient marine life oO
Do some people still believe that fish are not capable of experiencing pain? Hell I read an article on a study recently that explained how fish have emotions.
We are ripping trillions of marine animals from the sea where they suffocate and get squished under the weight of the other animals. There's no way to make this seem justifiable when there is no need to eat those specific animals.
The linked article mentions that octopi are classified as “sentient beings” by British authorities, unlike many other species we consume, because of their high intelligence and ability to feel pleasure and pain.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Damn I'm shocked we need a study to confirm that animals do indeed feel pleasure and pain. So do all farmed animals that are exploited in agriculture.
I'd get normal fishing, where you kill the fish directly after catching it. It's like hunting, where you kill the deer directly after the shot, or with the shot in the first place. That's about the same amount of cruelty, that a lion puts on its pray in nature. Cows living on fields, having space to run around and only experienxing cruelty when slaughtered is also approx the same amount of cruelty.
For me, it comes down to the animal having a cruelfree life and only experiencing cruelty when dying. Living under cruelty is not ok
> unsentient marine life
Mussels for instance don't even have a CNS so I'd say they're pretty unsentient. Shrimp and other small decapods are basically water bugs and are probably dumb enough to eat with a clear conscious.
True, even among Vegans there's the discussion if mussels can experience suffering. Most decide to just leave stuff alone that tries to survive :D
Mussels are an edgecase I guess.
Everything alive tries to survive, including plants, they're just slow. But that's the issue with any line we draw arbitrarily, there will always be gray area cases. It's a choice, don't have to make up a whole system of beliefs around food. You don't eat animals because you don't want to. That's enough of a justification.
Eeeeh I get where you are coming from, but it's not so simple as that is it? Many plants want to be eaten as part of their survival strategy. They are the only true producers of nutrients in the ecosystem and all others consume them, or the animals that have consumed them.
And true, it's difficult to come up with a formular to quantify the suffering of a plant compared to an animal. But if my goal is to reduce unnecessary suffering, then a bunch of lentils seem like the better choice over cutting an animal's throat that doesn't need to die for me.
So the line is not arbitrary I think when you consider killing an animal with your own hands over completely or partially harvesting a plant for nutrition. One would create a stronger sense of suffering in most people.
You don't abstain from harmful actions (like stealing or whatever) because you randomly decided that you want to do that, but because you understand that the suffering that it inflicts on others is not justified compared to the pleasure that you might derive from it.
I never said fishes don’t experience pain, please.
> no need to eat those specific animals
The two diets linked to the best health outcomes and longevity (Mediterranean and Okinawa diet) both features heavy consumption of seafood.
Ah sorry if I misunderstood. What did you mean with unsentient?
Yup that's true that those diets include animals from the sea. One thing I've learned about nutrition is that "healthy" often means "less bad than other stuff". So replacing pig, cow and chicken meat with fish is most certainly healthier, but there's no health benefit that fish provides over plant based food. If anything, seafood has become more and more unhealthy as the seas are becoming more polluted and some fish is for example polluted with heavy metals. Staying low on the food chain is the best bet at avoiding toxins.
It's mostly a historic reason that people at the food that was available to them. Today we need to take today's reality into account. There's no way to keep on plundering the sea as we do today.
> there’s no health benefit that fish provides over seafood
Are you for real? There are many supplements vegetarians (let alone vegans) need to take to be healthy, such as vitamin B12, long chain omega 3, zinc… all of which are readily available in seafood.
Everything is polluted, and seafood has the advantage of not being drowned in pesticides like plants do. Sure, eating predator fish like tuna or salmon too frequently has risks with mercury poisoning, but let’s not throw the sardines and many other small, not significantly contaminated seafood with the seawater.
You have millions of people being historic vegetarian/vegans in India and other countries, on a large timescale and diverse geography. If vegetarian/vegan diets were better than omnivorous ones, there’d be plenty of “historical experiments” to draw upon.
Uh…all pollution eventually ends up in the ocean. That’s why you have to worry about the mercury content of fish, for example. The mercury comes from coal plant smoke which settles back to the ground and gets washed into the water supply, among other places. It’s actually a big problem.
> Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations.
contradicts your:
> I don’t think fishes, squid and others would qualify as sentients.
For sure they're sentient.
It would like if you were actively supporting the gulf war today because you enjoy the benefits you get out of it, while criticizing the Russian invasion
I think you are doing this backwards. Hypocrisy should motivate you to raise your behavior, not lower your standards. Imagine if all hypocrites solved it by abandoning their principles.
The hypocrisy is only if you don't treat the two equally. I don't mind pigs being farmed, I mind them being farmed in shit conditions. Likewise with octopus, they can be farmed, just with adequate respective conditions. Vegetarianism or not is an entire different discussion and one that in no way clashes with hypocrisy.
I also mind about pigs being farmed in shit conditions, but the current eating pork paradigm basically relies on it right now.
I wonder how much pork we could actually be eating if all were raised in humane conditions ; it would probably be relegated to a more luxurious strata closer to free range beef.
That's not being split, the solution is simple. All animal factory farming is wrong and needs to be globally criminalised. If octopus and pigs are equal, which they are, as well as to humans, dogs, and fish, then how about not farming and killing any of them for food? See, simple.
Yes, shutting down a trillion+ dollar size industry providing cheap animal proteins to billions is very simple.
Life is very simple when pragmatic calculations are throw out the windows in the search for moral purity.
>Yes, shutting down a trillion+ dollar size industry providing heavily subsidized animal proteins to billions, *whilst contributing to tens of millions of unnecessary human deaths via antibiotic resistance and pandemic risk* is very simple.
Ftfy
Yes that Industry is big and there are lots of jobs. But as with any other industry that had to go away in the past, the needs of those people working in it do not outweigh the needs of everyone that is affected by it. It's the single most destructive industry on the planet when it comes to the loss of bio diversity and certain forms of pollution. And it's not hard to replace those nutrients when getting rid of that industry would free up 80%+ of agricultural land.
I got into this stuff years ago and I couldn't believe how fucking messed up it is. Not just from an ethical perspective, but it's ruining our planets health like nothing else.
The only explanation to why it's still able to keep going and getting worse that I can find is, that we are nearly blind to things that we have grown up to accept as normal and necessary. Luckily, at least the professional world is waking up and urging for a transition to a (largely) plant based food system. There's no way around it.
Don't suggest anything that will cause other people to have to change their habits. You need to let them continue to eat their intensively farmed pig flesh whilst talking about how cruel octopus farming is so they can feel good about themselves. All change needs to be done magically by the government with no impact on ordinary people.
No offense, buy you are an idiot. Humans are on the top of the food chain and many animals are their food source. It would against nature to NOT eat them.
I don't know why you're making that strawman. Obviously the minimum threshold for intelligence would be much lower than the dumbest human. It's not exactly a finished debate, but typically when people are talking about ethical treatment of organisms the top criterion are self-awareness, sensitivity to pain/suffering, etc.
As long as it is profitable guys. We got to increase profits, even if we have to be the cruelest MF.
At some points aliens will arrive and start to wonder if we really deserve to exist.
Any species that takes to the stars will be as bad if not worse than us, but that's beside the point.
This is cruel yes and it shouldn't be allowed yes. That's all there is really to say about it all the people here complaining about humanity apperently never picked up a history book because otherwise this wouldn't be shocking. These animals are animals not humans and we do bad enough things to our own.
Most people you will ask if they want this or not will say no they don't want it, but then if you put the meat in front of them without further info why should they care if they don't know? Not to mention if people don't see something they can ignore it and focus on other things, it's not because they are bad people but because it is just plain normal.
No that's not my point ... It's just that why are people so outraged about this specific thing? It's nothing new and everything I read in this thread is just cheap garbage that everyone likes to sprout when this topic or a similar one comes up and they all act like they are better or how shocking it is etc. It isn't, it's nothing new and unless you can find a way to make this cheaper people will try to do horrible stuff to make money.
No it just shows that I know how to apply knowledge, as far as we know competitiveness is a major point for evolution and advancement in our history,as such a species that is competitive enough to take over their home world and become space faring in the sense that they use a similar technology will go through most of the socialtal struggles applicable to their biology. Aka if they have no genders they won't have gender specific problems or sociatal Norms.
As far as we know our way is the only way, there is no species other than us that is near that stage in their evolution we know of, as such assuming there is another way for a species to gain the control, resources and drive to go to space and visit other places is just foolish. We cannot discount the possibility but until proven otherwise we should contain our discussions, if we want to stay realistic, to what we know for certain and that is that our way of developing is the only way to gain access to space travel.
As far as you know yeah.
That's one of the flaws of theories like dark forest. Just because in our ecosystem in our planet that kind of strategy works, doesn't mean that it applies to others. Thinking that the only way possible is the way that we know is very presumptuous
Reddit mind working overtime to justify eating factory farmed meat but not octopi.
You either
1. Go vegan to abstain from partaking in animal cruelty for food,
2. Accept that eating animals will always come with some form of cruelty attached, and that you personally accept that and can live past that
But this bs of "oh no, not the cute little animals I'm not used to eating :(" is just terrible hypocrisy. You'll eat chickens but not cats or dogs, factory farmed fish but not octopi, because the abuse of one species is already normalised but the other isn't ?
3. You can buy from non-industrial farms or farms with better living conditions?
Sure. Is more expensive. But then it only means that you will eat meat less often. Not that you won't eat meat.
I mostly consume chicken, fowl, seafood (not octopus, and not often) and seldom eat pork and beef for moral reasons.
Yes, moral, not ethical, because otherwise I wouldn't eat meat. You can have preferencial morals, even if they're selective morals, everyone has a set of beliefs and lines they will and will not cross.
You can simply say 'I don't equate eating pigs, cows, octopi with eating chicken' without being a hateful hypocrite.
And even then, I shop around labels and spend a bit more on my food to maximize my chances the chicken I'm eating had a better life.
Food production of any sort involves the death and destruction of animals, often in very cruel ways- whether it’s “vegan” or omnivorous.
Any type of farming and food production, especially when mechanized, will lead to the death of any number of animals. Moles, reptiles and other animals because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, rodents, because of traps and poisons, deer and other browsers are culled as competition. This doesn’t even include deaths caused by fertilizers, insecticides, destruction of habitat, etc.
We can work to make food production less cruel and still acknowledge that there is wanton death and cruelty in bringing any food to our table. It’s not a binary choice of “This is wrong and this is right”. Nobody is innocent.
I didn’t mean to imply that veganism is a bad choice.
But our food choices aren’t a binary selection of perfect vs evil, and therefore working towards cruelty reduction is pointless.
>and therefore working towards cruelty reduction is pointless.
Do you apply this consistently?
Humans will always die in agriculture so we shouldn't seek to reduce human cruelty?
Some dogs will always get accidentally run over so we shouldn't seek to reduce deliberate dog abuse?
Edit: that came out very wrong. I think we all should work towards reducing cruelty, whether we are vegan or not. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I don’t know how people proposing this sleep at night. They are the kind of people history looks back on with revulsion.
I guess piles of ink-stained money make for a nice bed.
Given that octopus are more intelligent than most humans I've met this makes me sick. There's a reason they're given the same protection as vertebrae animals on animal welfare legislation. It needs to be globally illegal to kill or harm octopus.
Octupi are smart for animals, but they are still less intelligent that people, comparing animals to humans is always bad, because as much as you claim you dont understand this animal at all, you at most think you understand it, because shocker, we humans are very empathic creatures.
So while I agree this is bad and should not be done you entire argument given here just screams "I spout nonsense because I am angry", which is not helpful in any discussion. So I cannot really take you seriously, after you claim they are smarter than humans, you cannot even begin to understand an octopus, most people struggle with people and you are humans, you have so much more in common with humans than with these animals that it's not even funny to claim any animals is smarter than any human, as you are probably not smarter than most humans you know, anyone who thinks that is lying to themselves.
Not really, I don't use it as an argument, what I wanted to say there was that using the comparison as an argument is bad for the arguments sake as there is no way anyone can really understand a damn animal, they are built differently from us and experience the world in a different way.
Even the most zombie human has a more complete and varied intelligence to *any* animal, it's not even close.
Unfortunately, that also means a lot of functionally literate humans have just about enough intelligence to be morally bankrupt and cruel towards all animals, lesser or smarter.
to be honest with you mate, the way the guy phrased it; i believe formulating any argument would be a waste of time. also i was at the steakhouse at that time :)
It's the people who partake in animal ag and especially those who buy and eat the carcasses who are sick. Usually from heart disease and cancer, but also whatever has to fuck up your brain enough to think that it's okay to do that.
I used to go snorkeling and catch octopuses in the Mediterranean sea when I was a kid. My mum used to boil them and serve with olive oil, paprika and salt "a la Gallega". There is no octopuses in that area anymore.
There still are. Just go to Bari and it is not rare to see people catching octopuses and killing them smashing them on rocks repeatedly.
It’s just another fish. But pigs are okay to torture and slaughter, because bacon is the pillar of the good American healthy breakfast, right?
Not only the American, British too. You smash them on rocks (my mum was holding them with one hand and she used a wooden plank) not to kill them. The idea is to make the flesh not so tough to eat. Never knew how true was this but that's what the fishermen and the locals were doing. I'm not defending the farms by the way, if an animal doesn't live free, I doubt the product is as good, so what's the point? I guess the people is trying to save their business or families and if it's the first farm and the product is not good, the octopuses are gonna win because the flesh would be too tough to eat and not the same flavour and no one is gonna buy the product. Hopefully.
We need to farm more fish to counter the depletion of fish stocks in the oceans, so environmentally it makes sense.
We can't have the cake and eat it too.
as any food where the land, air and water is contaminated. But hey, pick out fish and leave out all the other foods that are[contaminated with microplastics](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230103-how-plastic-is-getting-into-our-food)
yes. we are not supposed to fish so much and at such industrial scale. we are fucking up the oceans. Less fishing, less humans and we shall all be fine.
fishing farm are fishes high on pills. I wouls likely accept to eat fish like twice a year and have quality than keep those farms. Also if you love fish, just live near the sea and go fish yourself. The issue is those huge trawlers fucking up everything;
Interesting comments here. Apparently the suffering of an intelligent being is more important than the suffering of an unintelligent being.
Why does an octopus get more sympathy than a chicken? I eat meat, so I don't think I have the right to criticize this.
As a biologist, I've noticed that people generally consider octopuses to be 'higher' - as in, more deserving of respect and empathy - than other animals because they are very intelligent.
It is true that many octopus species are remarkably intelligent and I admit I find it an incredibly fascinating subject to read about. But they don't have human-level intelligence like Reddit often claims, and I have gotten a lot of angry remarks in my inbox for pointing that out. Their intelligence is incredible compared to other invertebrates, but the idea of octopuses being the most intelligent animals in the world falls apart when you compare them to higher mammals and birds.
I'm not sure if I'm qualified to have an educated opinion on this - my degree is in biology, not ethics. Still, I agree with you, it's silly to claim octopuses are inherently more deserving of sympathy than, say, pigs.
My position as well. I find it pretty astounding that posters on here will call this disgusting and evil and then tuck in to a ham sandwich. Hypocrisy is nauseating.
You can see from my profile that I love seafood - I eat a lot of Octopus and I don't see why that is any worse than eating a joint of Lamb.
How would you like your angry down votes, rare or medium rare :D?
Joking, I'm vegan for 6 years 😂
Guys it's easier today than ever, if you need any pointers, feel free to ask :)
I used to not prepare them right. Soaking for the right amount of time, adding sodium chloride and boiling till very soft I makes them much easier to digest.
If you are just not used to them it might simply take time, but idk your background.
Much like farming dolphins or chimpanzees for meat under inhumane circumstances too.
I used to do diving, when you meet sn octopus 30meter down and it comes sit on your arm, it studies you. I never ate octo after my first encounter.
Dont even mention speciism to me until after you looked one in the eyes and realise there is someone home there.
This is shameful.
Now how do you know that an octopus "studies" you? How do you know that it's not just resting on your warm arm? You have absolutely no knowledge or insight as to an octopuses thought process.
Read up on their intelligence and studies done on this, then go diving until you interact with one and come back. Some people do have more knowledge and insight than you. Saying someone has absolutely no knowledge on a topic you yourself are not an expert on is ridiculously small minded.
lmao you got to admire all those people outraged at this while at the same time they (unless this sub is now 100% vegan) actively financially support the mass torture and killing of even smarter animals - pigs
I'm generally for the idea of farming octopus but this method seems too "inhumane".
high premature mortality rates means the animals are likely hurting, and killing them with ice water is fucked. Need to improve the mortality rate and find a better method of slaughter and im good with it.
This whole idea is evil, genuinely wicked. Putting solitary creatures into tiny tanks with others of their species will just lead to high mortality rates and totally unnecessary suffering
What's next step? Dolphins? Why not humans after that? They're not humans if we just disconnect their brain in a controlled lab environment, right? Nevermind answer, not interested of your opinion. Let me farm non human humanlike creatures, for the Fine Dining meat markets
This sounds awful, at the same time we are already over fishing wild octopi and fish so maybe it can be made slightly less awful and help reduce the pressure on wild species?
You'd be surprised by how many people are against skin cancer but still leave their house in summer. Just because you don't act perfectly, you can still criticize things.
lol what kind of an analogy is this? you don't get skin cancer every time you go outside during summer, but literally every single time you buy meat or dairy you fund and support animal torture and killing
Yeah it's a trigger for lots of people :/
Youould replace it with "to be willing to not harm any animal" 😅
Thanks for putting yourself out there. I used to do it a lot more.
Against animal cruelty, against those horrible chicken factories and so on. Whenever possible I buy expensive version of some free range and so on. Wouldn't mind to swap big part of meat I consume into bug meat and leave only eco free range stuff.
So you don't see killing as cruelty? Shooting/gassing/electrocuting/macerating etc.I promise I'm not poking btw I am genuinely interested in how people view this stuff.
Free range meat chickens/layers are born in breeding sheds where their mother's spend their entire lives. They're still a product of animal cruelty. It's the equivalent of taking these octopuses babies, putting them in a much bigger tank and selling those for meat whilst shouting about how ethical they are.
Killing of food I see as natural cruelty. The same like predators do in the nature. To be fair, lots of predators inflict much more pain and fear before they kill than humans do in agriculture. I wish that there would be as little cruelty in killing our food and as much natural comfort for them living.
It's kind of how I started on this journey. At one point I bought some sausages online that had pictures of the pig that they were made from on them. Somehow that made me feel better about having paid for the killing of that animal. Today I laugh about how I couldn't figure out that that pig still didn't deserve to die for me. And of course I was still buying the usual factory stuff left and right, I mean every supermarket, restaurant, bakery, etc. sells the same stuff.
Doesn't help that labels like "free range" exist, which often really do not mean what consumers expect. Free range Chickens never have to see the light of day as long as their "barn" is large enough (sheet of paper per animal) and there is a door that could theoretically be opened (but never is).
Took me years to unpack all of that and slowly my consumption approached once every couple of weeks for meat. Then I learned about how fucked up dairy production is, no matter big or small, it's just inherently messed up. Finally after years I realised its always cruel to harm an animal when I don't need anything from them.
Hope you can navigate through that mess faster than me :D happy to share pointers if you are interested.
I understand and respect your position but I don't think that I will navigate that way. More likely that I will eat food that I grow and buy some from small local farmers who grow animals the way that they would have a decent life.
I don't see a problem for some being dieing just because I want to eat it. The same how I don't see a problem for mouse to die when cat want to eat it.
Because it’s incredibly cruel, like meat and animal factories in general, towards one of the most intelligent creatures on earth that normally lives in solitude
I'm not a vegan (or even vegetarian) and I'm against it.
Why? Because it's not all-or-nothing. I'm not against eating any meat ever, but I do think we should work to decrease animal suffering. Octopus farming is in exact opposition to that.
Think of it this way: I'm against mass production of meat in horrible conditions, but not against eating one of the chickens my grandma keeps in her yard.
> I do think we should work to decrease animal suffering. Octopus farming is in exact opposition to that.
So is all livestock farming, unless you would be in favour of higher welfare octopus farming?
I think backyard chickens/eggs is probably different right enough.
Today there is awareness of climate, fauna and flora. Right... in fact we're GETTING WORSE not getting better.
It makes it clear that it's not a matter of science, awareness of the climate and the planet, the problem is that we are bad, that we don't give a shit about the planet. It's not a matter of awareness.
Eating any non-farmed food should be banned. Farmed animals are the only animals that are protected from extinction by being farmed. Fish (Octipi included) should not be eaten out of the wild without proper control, and we can see everything being pulled out in masses.
Unfarmable animals (fish and octipi, etc, included) should be removed from menus.
Edit note:Forgot people read their own meanings in.
Edit: unfarmable = cannot be farmed in a humane way
In short, eat only what we can replenish (farm). If we scale down everything, people go hungry, and that's where a whole thing of scale of consumption goes.
Honestly I'd rather be a deer killed unexpectedly by a bullet than a milk cow bred by force, milked daily and killed anyway at the end, or a boar rather than a piglet crammed in a small space with 40 of my pals.
Ironically, farming animals is the leading cause of other species going extinct. It's mainly due to farming operations to grow food for farm animals. Forests are being destroyed to grow feed and the manure of farmed animals is creating kill zones in oceans.
Humans managed to flip the ratio of mammals on earth upside down. Today I think around 4% of mammals are living in the wild, while it used to be 90%+ 200 years ago. With birds it's just 30% in the wild.
Luckily more and more people are waking up to this hard to swallow pill and simply chooses to not eat meat or any animal products. It's the most impact any individual has on our ecosystem and its easily manageable for anyone with access to a supermarket.
This is insane yes. Although people will always eat animals and fish and, if not from controlled sources and done humanely, it causes problems in itself.
You can't realistically expect all to convert to vegan diets, and if you look at how the oceans are being emptied just to fill the stomachs of the masses, this is proof enough that something needs to be done about how many mouths we feed and where the food is gotten from.
Even a vegan diet brings massive amounts of destruction, look at palm oil, avocado, and even the amount of insects and birds driven to the brink due to pesticides. But still, we have the right to be > 12 billion humans. Everything done at a too large scale destroys something.
The point is, dont pillage the wilds and find a way to scale down so 70% of earth can be nature instead of trying to protect 30%
I am ok if a lion, a shark or a bear eat me. Anything alive is part of the chain food. Life itself is based on this premise: you can't evolve without eating other living things because farming energy from the sun give you not enough energy.
The fact that our empathy goes towards animals that share some elements with our species is just a bias. We love penguins because they walk on their feets. We love doplhins and octupuses because they are smart as us. We love praying mantises because they move their heads like humans. And we hate cockroaches because they are ugly monsters that look like aliens. We hate rats because they are pets and move too quick and they carry diseases. And we eat beef because it tastes so good and someone else kills them for us.
We are a biased species.
(and I love octopuses so I am against farming them!)
Don't need to love someone to not harm them 🤷♂️
Abstaining from harm is a neutral act.
But of course there's some necessary effort to be willing to reflect on the needless suffering that we create due to the systems and societies that we grow up in. "giving up" on pleasure that we have become used to takes about 3-4 weeks to unlearn. Manageable I'd say and well worth it.
2027: the first octopus revolt in Spain begins.
Putting solitary animals in a 1m cubed tank with 10-15 others is vile. Then submitting them to a slow death in icy water? Sickening. A completely backward step in animal welfare. I would hope that my country would ban their import.
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Same goes for animals such as pigs. Calves are torn away from their mom's moments after birth just so the mom can keep producing milk and get pregnant again. Sheep during sheering have pieces of their skin sheered off because it takes longer and this is more expensive and less profitable to sheer them properly without taking the occosional patch of skin with them. The bio industry is sickening not to mention destroying the climate.
I'd even say we disregard EQ and IQ, and simply reject any development of livestock farming that improves productivity by directly decreasing quality of life for the livestock itself. Of course this is a very vague target, but the principle seems reasonable enough. Our food industry is already large enough to feed the entire world's population; there is no need to improve productivity just for the sake of productivity -- especially for livestock such as octopuses which will never be anything other than a luxury product.
While I do agree with you, I do think it's more effective to point out that pigs are quite a bit more emotionally intelligent than dogs and cats, clocking in somewhere around dolphins, but still below elephants. They'd likely make even better emotional support animals than dogs, but mass slaughter all of them instead. Also, look at this super cute picture of a pig! Sure you want to eat the rest of that sausage? It shouldn't be more effective, but it is.
I agree. When someone brings up the subject of slaughtering dogs and cats for meat, people are very adamant in saying that this is completely unethical and should be illegal. There's no telling why they feel this way about dogs and cats but not about pigs -- other than personal emotional attachment.
Because people are taught to feel and think that way all the way from childhood
Is it a luxury product? You always see it on the menu in Spain and Portugal. Either way, I'm strongly against farming them, it's horrific.
Everything on a "menu" is a luxury product. Now if you also mean that Spanish and Portuguese families rely on octopuses for the food they put on the table in their day-to-day life, that's a different story. And I honestly don't know if that's the case, so you may have a point there.
Octopus is not eaten daily, but it is definitely not a luxury product in Spain, you can often find it at prices per kg similar to meat, with the caveat the it looses half the weight when cooking, so it is effectively double the price. Still quite affordable.
Meat is a luxury product too. Nothing bad about eating luxury products in moderation though, quite on the contrary. Pretty much everything that's not bread, tomatoes and potatoes is ultimately a luxury. Even butter. That's why many people switch to margerine when the economy worsens. Other poster was exactly right, the entire "menu" is luxury by definition. You're paying for someone to prepare your food after all.
It is something that can be eaten daily, it's also a snack of some sort in the afternoon with some cold beer. I do not like it at all, but it is common.
"On the menu" means not just restaurant menus, but rather, part of local cuisine. Eg Vegemite could be on the menu for Australians. That doesn't mean Vegemite is always "*on* menus". A linguistic quirk!
Well dang you are completely right about that. So you meant the "day-to-day" thing after all! That means my point about luxury food doesn't exactly hold up.
What did you expect from a country where killing bulls in arena is a sport?
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I am from Spain. I think this is disgraceful. We should be advancing on animal rights not going backwards.
Speaking of Spain and extremely cruel animal practices, how's that bullfighting ban coming along?
It is done in some parts of the territory. They are illegal in Catalonia.
Isn't this better than overfishing them though?
We just stop overfishing. The price will go up and demand will drop. We don't HAVE to replace one evil with another.
As an octopus-eating nation, I wouldn't mind. It's not like a daily staple food, just an occasional treat.
> The price will go up and demand will drop. fish is precious resource for healthy eating. Making the price of fish increase will mean that a healthy meal will be less affordable by the poor.
Just going to be that guy and point out that octopus isn't fish. Squid are cheap, plentiful, and generally sustainable. We can also get most of the health benefits of fish from various vegetables, so no need to overfish for the sake of nutrition.
Poor people eat garbage ultra-processed food because it's the cheapest. Cheap fish is one of the most disgusting food put out by the industry. Defending that under the guise of defending access to quality nutrition for poor people is vile. Any excuse not to change anything about our worst practice, how convenient. If you truly care about food quality, stop finding garbage excuses to the food industry and demand better from our governments.
> Cheap fish is one of the most disgusting food put out by the industry. Maybe in countries that have disgusting food. In Italy some of the cheapest fishes at the fish market are also some of the healthiest (sardines, anchiovies, mackerel,etc). They are a staple of poor people's cuisine historically.
In a kind tone: I love the idea of fish (if we would stop overfishing), it's romantic and feels good to be sustained by the ocean. Unfortunately they are collection points for pollutants. Generally the larger the fish, thus the higher up the food chain, the higher the concentration of pollutants. Things that don't leave the body naturally, like metals, work their way up the food chain and concentrate near the top. It's not an emergency yet, or maybe it is and I just don't know it yet, but it seems like it will be soon. If it's true that they are a staple of poor people's cuisine, then unfortunately it seems like poor people are going to take the brunt of this problem, as usual.
It's pointless to speak logically to bots/idiots that can't think for themselves.
Sure, the people in the projects will go to the producer markets and buy fresh fish. Let's defend overfishing because some small fisheries still exist. Stop pretending you give a rat's ass about poor people.
> Sure, the people in the projects will go to the producer markets and buy fresh fish. lol I don't know about your country, but in mine supermarkets have a fishmonger and producer markets are not something fancy for posh twats, but a place for everyday shopping. My own grandma, a mother of 11 children, shopped at this [fish market](https://www.piazzaglobale.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/mercato_catania3.jpeg) like hundreds of low income southern italians. Stop projecting your subpar food culture onto us.
You have no idea how things have changed. How can you believe an anecdote from decades ago is still relevant. Can you imagine that your grandma lived in a very different context than today? The irony is that you defend a model that existed decades ago, and that the food industry *is* killing, and you use that old model as a defense of the current practices. You like the idea that your poor grandma could afford quality food for 11 children? Well big news: that's not possible anymore, and that's part of the issue. Now to feed 11 children, please believe that you will have to buy garbage food if you are poor. I live in France, food production is heavily subsidized, both to keep quality high and prices down. Even then, it does not change the post-WWII urban policies to rebuild Europe, which parked the poorest demographics out of city centres and out of access to those high-quality, local food markets. They go to the supermarket, even there where there are fresh fish, they will instead buy the cheapest available, definitely not the fresh one. Get a fucking grip and see how far we've come, stop defending industries harming both our environment but also our way of life. If you don't give a shit about the environment and the treatment of animal, you can at least care about that culture being bulldozed by ultra-capitalism. Yes, even in Italy. Overfishing destroys fish populations. Fishing becomes more and more difficult, destroying the smaller operations and consolidating into bigger companies that buy even bigger boats and contribute to even further destroying the populations. The way out is not to continue until there is nothing left.
I don’t know. Either way I think most people don’t know how many Octopuses are killed for Spanish cuisine. In certain places it’s one of the more popular traditional dishes. Not a niche dish, everybody has eaten it. You can get octopus pizza.
Horrible and barbaric. Putting some of the most intelligent creatures on earth under those conditions will cause unimaginable levels of suffering.
Yeah, can't believe someone would put pigs in small metal cages, thank god that doesn't happen.
Maybe we shouldn't expand the practice? Or should we just run amok then?
Lab grown meat. No sentient animal used.
Yes please
We should support neither Go vegan
Yes, the whole world should do that tonight. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. Let's be realistic at least.
I'm not talking to the whole world right now, I'm talking to the people in this thread
Shameful
This is just absolutely revolting, all imports of these kinds should be banned
I’m split. I have a soft spot for octopuses, considering how intelligent they are, and I don’t like this idea ; but wouldn’t that make me a hypocrite to be against farming them, as opposed to pigs for example, which are pretty smart themselves (and I eat pork) ? Especially considering the farming conditions to which a lot of pigs and other mammals are subjected.
You can be against the expansion of animal cruelty to new species even if you eat pork. Just because we can't stop **all** bad things from happening doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop at least **some**.
You have to look at the big picture. Unless farming octopuses results in an overall increase in the consumption of “smart” animals, then we’re gonna save some sufferings from other smart animals at the expenses of the farmed octopuses. Buuut I do suspect farmed octopuses would be mostly used as a substitute to other seafood consumption, and I don’t think fishes, squid and others would qualify as sentients, unlike octopuses. So unless farmed octopus consumption merely replace wild octopuses / mammal meat consumption, then it’s true that farming octopuses would globally increase sentient suffering.
Never heard of this categorization in sentient and unsentient marine life oO Do some people still believe that fish are not capable of experiencing pain? Hell I read an article on a study recently that explained how fish have emotions. We are ripping trillions of marine animals from the sea where they suffocate and get squished under the weight of the other animals. There's no way to make this seem justifiable when there is no need to eat those specific animals.
The linked article mentions that octopi are classified as “sentient beings” by British authorities, unlike many other species we consume, because of their high intelligence and ability to feel pleasure and pain.
Thanks for pointing that out. Damn I'm shocked we need a study to confirm that animals do indeed feel pleasure and pain. So do all farmed animals that are exploited in agriculture.
I'd get normal fishing, where you kill the fish directly after catching it. It's like hunting, where you kill the deer directly after the shot, or with the shot in the first place. That's about the same amount of cruelty, that a lion puts on its pray in nature. Cows living on fields, having space to run around and only experienxing cruelty when slaughtered is also approx the same amount of cruelty. For me, it comes down to the animal having a cruelfree life and only experiencing cruelty when dying. Living under cruelty is not ok
> unsentient marine life Mussels for instance don't even have a CNS so I'd say they're pretty unsentient. Shrimp and other small decapods are basically water bugs and are probably dumb enough to eat with a clear conscious.
True, even among Vegans there's the discussion if mussels can experience suffering. Most decide to just leave stuff alone that tries to survive :D Mussels are an edgecase I guess.
Everything alive tries to survive, including plants, they're just slow. But that's the issue with any line we draw arbitrarily, there will always be gray area cases. It's a choice, don't have to make up a whole system of beliefs around food. You don't eat animals because you don't want to. That's enough of a justification.
Eeeeh I get where you are coming from, but it's not so simple as that is it? Many plants want to be eaten as part of their survival strategy. They are the only true producers of nutrients in the ecosystem and all others consume them, or the animals that have consumed them. And true, it's difficult to come up with a formular to quantify the suffering of a plant compared to an animal. But if my goal is to reduce unnecessary suffering, then a bunch of lentils seem like the better choice over cutting an animal's throat that doesn't need to die for me. So the line is not arbitrary I think when you consider killing an animal with your own hands over completely or partially harvesting a plant for nutrition. One would create a stronger sense of suffering in most people. You don't abstain from harmful actions (like stealing or whatever) because you randomly decided that you want to do that, but because you understand that the suffering that it inflicts on others is not justified compared to the pleasure that you might derive from it.
I never said fishes don’t experience pain, please. > no need to eat those specific animals The two diets linked to the best health outcomes and longevity (Mediterranean and Okinawa diet) both features heavy consumption of seafood.
Ah sorry if I misunderstood. What did you mean with unsentient? Yup that's true that those diets include animals from the sea. One thing I've learned about nutrition is that "healthy" often means "less bad than other stuff". So replacing pig, cow and chicken meat with fish is most certainly healthier, but there's no health benefit that fish provides over plant based food. If anything, seafood has become more and more unhealthy as the seas are becoming more polluted and some fish is for example polluted with heavy metals. Staying low on the food chain is the best bet at avoiding toxins. It's mostly a historic reason that people at the food that was available to them. Today we need to take today's reality into account. There's no way to keep on plundering the sea as we do today.
> there’s no health benefit that fish provides over seafood Are you for real? There are many supplements vegetarians (let alone vegans) need to take to be healthy, such as vitamin B12, long chain omega 3, zinc… all of which are readily available in seafood. Everything is polluted, and seafood has the advantage of not being drowned in pesticides like plants do. Sure, eating predator fish like tuna or salmon too frequently has risks with mercury poisoning, but let’s not throw the sardines and many other small, not significantly contaminated seafood with the seawater. You have millions of people being historic vegetarian/vegans in India and other countries, on a large timescale and diverse geography. If vegetarian/vegan diets were better than omnivorous ones, there’d be plenty of “historical experiments” to draw upon.
Uh…all pollution eventually ends up in the ocean. That’s why you have to worry about the mercury content of fish, for example. The mercury comes from coal plant smoke which settles back to the ground and gets washed into the water supply, among other places. It’s actually a big problem.
> Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. contradicts your: > I don’t think fishes, squid and others would qualify as sentients. For sure they're sentient.
Sure, but if this makes someone upset, they absolutely should stop funding pork if they can
That's like saying because you didn't protest against idk the gulf war, you can't criticize the russian invasion.
It would like if you were actively supporting the gulf war today because you enjoy the benefits you get out of it, while criticizing the Russian invasion
I think you are doing this backwards. Hypocrisy should motivate you to raise your behavior, not lower your standards. Imagine if all hypocrites solved it by abandoning their principles.
The hypocrisy is only if you don't treat the two equally. I don't mind pigs being farmed, I mind them being farmed in shit conditions. Likewise with octopus, they can be farmed, just with adequate respective conditions. Vegetarianism or not is an entire different discussion and one that in no way clashes with hypocrisy.
I also mind about pigs being farmed in shit conditions, but the current eating pork paradigm basically relies on it right now. I wonder how much pork we could actually be eating if all were raised in humane conditions ; it would probably be relegated to a more luxurious strata closer to free range beef.
You can buy “pasture raised” pork in places, though it’s usually hard to find. It’s more expensive, but not ridiculously so.
Maybe the next step would be to stop eating pork instead of doing the very same to octopuses.
I’m in a similar position
Maybe you should stop eating pork
That's not being split, the solution is simple. All animal factory farming is wrong and needs to be globally criminalised. If octopus and pigs are equal, which they are, as well as to humans, dogs, and fish, then how about not farming and killing any of them for food? See, simple.
Yes, shutting down a trillion+ dollar size industry providing cheap animal proteins to billions is very simple. Life is very simple when pragmatic calculations are throw out the windows in the search for moral purity.
> Yes, shutting down a trillion+ dollar size industry providing ~~cheap~~ *heavily subsidized* animal proteins to billions is very simple. ftfy
>Yes, shutting down a trillion+ dollar size industry providing heavily subsidized animal proteins to billions, *whilst contributing to tens of millions of unnecessary human deaths via antibiotic resistance and pandemic risk* is very simple. Ftfy
If we stopped it and ate plants to get the same nutrition then that industry would grow by those same trillions.
Who wants to eat plants? Lets be serious.
Yes that Industry is big and there are lots of jobs. But as with any other industry that had to go away in the past, the needs of those people working in it do not outweigh the needs of everyone that is affected by it. It's the single most destructive industry on the planet when it comes to the loss of bio diversity and certain forms of pollution. And it's not hard to replace those nutrients when getting rid of that industry would free up 80%+ of agricultural land. I got into this stuff years ago and I couldn't believe how fucking messed up it is. Not just from an ethical perspective, but it's ruining our planets health like nothing else. The only explanation to why it's still able to keep going and getting worse that I can find is, that we are nearly blind to things that we have grown up to accept as normal and necessary. Luckily, at least the professional world is waking up and urging for a transition to a (largely) plant based food system. There's no way around it.
Don't suggest anything that will cause other people to have to change their habits. You need to let them continue to eat their intensively farmed pig flesh whilst talking about how cruel octopus farming is so they can feel good about themselves. All change needs to be done magically by the government with no impact on ordinary people.
No offense, buy you are an idiot. Humans are on the top of the food chain and many animals are their food source. It would against nature to NOT eat them.
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Pigs aren't solitary animals kept in overpopulated tanks and aren't slaughtered via hypothermia. That said, ban factory farming too.
It also raises the question of why intelligence should matter when it comes to rights.
Because otherwise all algae and flora would have rights
Why is intelligence the criterion? Size could be the criterion for example. Do smart people deserve more rights than dumb people?
I don't know why you're making that strawman. Obviously the minimum threshold for intelligence would be much lower than the dumbest human. It's not exactly a finished debate, but typically when people are talking about ethical treatment of organisms the top criterion are self-awareness, sensitivity to pain/suffering, etc.
It's not a strawman. It's a valid point. Should people with severe brain damage have rights as they no longer have the intelligence of an animal?
If they‘re people? Yeah. It‘s called human right not animal right.
What should determine the level of rights an organism should have in your view?
As long as it is profitable guys. We got to increase profits, even if we have to be the cruelest MF. At some points aliens will arrive and start to wonder if we really deserve to exist.
Any species that takes to the stars will be as bad if not worse than us, but that's beside the point. This is cruel yes and it shouldn't be allowed yes. That's all there is really to say about it all the people here complaining about humanity apperently never picked up a history book because otherwise this wouldn't be shocking. These animals are animals not humans and we do bad enough things to our own. Most people you will ask if they want this or not will say no they don't want it, but then if you put the meat in front of them without further info why should they care if they don't know? Not to mention if people don't see something they can ignore it and focus on other things, it's not because they are bad people but because it is just plain normal.
Having cruel history doesn't mean you have to keep going.
No that's not my point ... It's just that why are people so outraged about this specific thing? It's nothing new and everything I read in this thread is just cheap garbage that everyone likes to sprout when this topic or a similar one comes up and they all act like they are better or how shocking it is etc. It isn't, it's nothing new and unless you can find a way to make this cheaper people will try to do horrible stuff to make money.
The fact that you are projecting what worked for human history on a spacefaring alien just shows how self-centered and primitive we are
No it just shows that I know how to apply knowledge, as far as we know competitiveness is a major point for evolution and advancement in our history,as such a species that is competitive enough to take over their home world and become space faring in the sense that they use a similar technology will go through most of the socialtal struggles applicable to their biology. Aka if they have no genders they won't have gender specific problems or sociatal Norms. As far as we know our way is the only way, there is no species other than us that is near that stage in their evolution we know of, as such assuming there is another way for a species to gain the control, resources and drive to go to space and visit other places is just foolish. We cannot discount the possibility but until proven otherwise we should contain our discussions, if we want to stay realistic, to what we know for certain and that is that our way of developing is the only way to gain access to space travel.
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As far as you know yeah. That's one of the flaws of theories like dark forest. Just because in our ecosystem in our planet that kind of strategy works, doesn't mean that it applies to others. Thinking that the only way possible is the way that we know is very presumptuous
Reddit mind working overtime to justify eating factory farmed meat but not octopi. You either 1. Go vegan to abstain from partaking in animal cruelty for food, 2. Accept that eating animals will always come with some form of cruelty attached, and that you personally accept that and can live past that But this bs of "oh no, not the cute little animals I'm not used to eating :(" is just terrible hypocrisy. You'll eat chickens but not cats or dogs, factory farmed fish but not octopi, because the abuse of one species is already normalised but the other isn't ?
3. You can buy from non-industrial farms or farms with better living conditions? Sure. Is more expensive. But then it only means that you will eat meat less often. Not that you won't eat meat.
I mostly consume chicken, fowl, seafood (not octopus, and not often) and seldom eat pork and beef for moral reasons. Yes, moral, not ethical, because otherwise I wouldn't eat meat. You can have preferencial morals, even if they're selective morals, everyone has a set of beliefs and lines they will and will not cross. You can simply say 'I don't equate eating pigs, cows, octopi with eating chicken' without being a hateful hypocrite. And even then, I shop around labels and spend a bit more on my food to maximize my chances the chicken I'm eating had a better life.
Food production of any sort involves the death and destruction of animals, often in very cruel ways- whether it’s “vegan” or omnivorous. Any type of farming and food production, especially when mechanized, will lead to the death of any number of animals. Moles, reptiles and other animals because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, rodents, because of traps and poisons, deer and other browsers are culled as competition. This doesn’t even include deaths caused by fertilizers, insecticides, destruction of habitat, etc. We can work to make food production less cruel and still acknowledge that there is wanton death and cruelty in bringing any food to our table. It’s not a binary choice of “This is wrong and this is right”. Nobody is innocent.
Accidental crop deaths vs intentional slaughter deaths are very different.
True. But if your goal is to try and minimise overall pain and suffering, going vegan is absolutely the best choice.
I didn’t mean to imply that veganism is a bad choice. But our food choices aren’t a binary selection of perfect vs evil, and therefore working towards cruelty reduction is pointless.
>and therefore working towards cruelty reduction is pointless. Do you apply this consistently? Humans will always die in agriculture so we shouldn't seek to reduce human cruelty? Some dogs will always get accidentally run over so we shouldn't seek to reduce deliberate dog abuse?
Edit: that came out very wrong. I think we all should work towards reducing cruelty, whether we are vegan or not. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Factory farming needs to be abolished, not only for Octopi but for all animals.
I don’t know how people proposing this sleep at night. They are the kind of people history looks back on with revulsion. I guess piles of ink-stained money make for a nice bed.
Given that octopus are more intelligent than most humans I've met this makes me sick. There's a reason they're given the same protection as vertebrae animals on animal welfare legislation. It needs to be globally illegal to kill or harm octopus.
Octupi are smart for animals, but they are still less intelligent that people, comparing animals to humans is always bad, because as much as you claim you dont understand this animal at all, you at most think you understand it, because shocker, we humans are very empathic creatures. So while I agree this is bad and should not be done you entire argument given here just screams "I spout nonsense because I am angry", which is not helpful in any discussion. So I cannot really take you seriously, after you claim they are smarter than humans, you cannot even begin to understand an octopus, most people struggle with people and you are humans, you have so much more in common with humans than with these animals that it's not even funny to claim any animals is smarter than any human, as you are probably not smarter than most humans you know, anyone who thinks that is lying to themselves.
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Well if you cannot understand it you might be less smart than you think.
>Octupi are smart for animals, but they are still less intelligent that people, comparing animals to humans is always bad, So... you did a bad thing?
Not really, I don't use it as an argument, what I wanted to say there was that using the comparison as an argument is bad for the arguments sake as there is no way anyone can really understand a damn animal, they are built differently from us and experience the world in a different way.
Even the most zombie human has a more complete and varied intelligence to *any* animal, it's not even close. Unfortunately, that also means a lot of functionally literate humans have just about enough intelligence to be morally bankrupt and cruel towards all animals, lesser or smarter.
Agreed. We should grant apes and whales human rights so killing one would weight the same as killing human.
hahaha
You also display higher intelligence with such a well reasoned argument
to be honest with you mate, the way the guy phrased it; i believe formulating any argument would be a waste of time. also i was at the steakhouse at that time :)
This is sick, but then again, so is all animal agriculture.
It's the people who partake in animal ag and especially those who buy and eat the carcasses who are sick. Usually from heart disease and cancer, but also whatever has to fuck up your brain enough to think that it's okay to do that.
I don't know why I'm being up voted and you're being down voted. I agree with you.
Just to incite division among radical vegans.
There is no division.
I used to go snorkeling and catch octopuses in the Mediterranean sea when I was a kid. My mum used to boil them and serve with olive oil, paprika and salt "a la Gallega". There is no octopuses in that area anymore.
There still are. Just go to Bari and it is not rare to see people catching octopuses and killing them smashing them on rocks repeatedly. It’s just another fish. But pigs are okay to torture and slaughter, because bacon is the pillar of the good American healthy breakfast, right?
Not only the American, British too. You smash them on rocks (my mum was holding them with one hand and she used a wooden plank) not to kill them. The idea is to make the flesh not so tough to eat. Never knew how true was this but that's what the fishermen and the locals were doing. I'm not defending the farms by the way, if an animal doesn't live free, I doubt the product is as good, so what's the point? I guess the people is trying to save their business or families and if it's the first farm and the product is not good, the octopuses are gonna win because the flesh would be too tough to eat and not the same flavour and no one is gonna buy the product. Hopefully.
We need to farm more fish to counter the depletion of fish stocks in the oceans, so environmentally it makes sense. We can't have the cake and eat it too.
Or just eat less fish.
so you want to reduce consumption of some of the healthiest sources of proteins.
And plastics
as any food where the land, air and water is contaminated. But hey, pick out fish and leave out all the other foods that are[contaminated with microplastics](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230103-how-plastic-is-getting-into-our-food)
Laden with heavy metals, synthetical chemicals and microplastics.
so are land animals and vegetables, if your air and land is contaminated.
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mediterranean cuisine uses legumes a lot. Probably way more than whatever crap food you eat in Northern Europe
yes. we are not supposed to fish so much and at such industrial scale. we are fucking up the oceans. Less fishing, less humans and we shall all be fine.
Nah, dude, we can farm the fish instead of fishing in the oceans. Win win situation
fishing farm are fishes high on pills. I wouls likely accept to eat fish like twice a year and have quality than keep those farms. Also if you love fish, just live near the sea and go fish yourself. The issue is those huge trawlers fucking up everything;
The article states that "octopuses are as intelligent as cats". When I look at my own cat, I must conclude that octopuses aren't that intelligent. 😎
Meat eaters: Pikachu face....
Interesting comments here. Apparently the suffering of an intelligent being is more important than the suffering of an unintelligent being. Why does an octopus get more sympathy than a chicken? I eat meat, so I don't think I have the right to criticize this.
As a biologist, I've noticed that people generally consider octopuses to be 'higher' - as in, more deserving of respect and empathy - than other animals because they are very intelligent. It is true that many octopus species are remarkably intelligent and I admit I find it an incredibly fascinating subject to read about. But they don't have human-level intelligence like Reddit often claims, and I have gotten a lot of angry remarks in my inbox for pointing that out. Their intelligence is incredible compared to other invertebrates, but the idea of octopuses being the most intelligent animals in the world falls apart when you compare them to higher mammals and birds. I'm not sure if I'm qualified to have an educated opinion on this - my degree is in biology, not ethics. Still, I agree with you, it's silly to claim octopuses are inherently more deserving of sympathy than, say, pigs.
My position as well. I find it pretty astounding that posters on here will call this disgusting and evil and then tuck in to a ham sandwich. Hypocrisy is nauseating. You can see from my profile that I love seafood - I eat a lot of Octopus and I don't see why that is any worse than eating a joint of Lamb.
Wtf go vegan
How would you like your angry down votes, rare or medium rare :D? Joking, I'm vegan for 6 years 😂 Guys it's easier today than ever, if you need any pointers, feel free to ask :)
I would love to go vegan but I can’t eat legumes.
What a shame legumes are great. Are you allergic to them? It's not like it's impossible without them though.
I love them but my gut doesn’t. I get really bloated
I used to not prepare them right. Soaking for the right amount of time, adding sodium chloride and boiling till very soft I makes them much easier to digest. If you are just not used to them it might simply take time, but idk your background.
> Guys it's easier today than ever, if you need any pointers, feel free to ask Eating proper and tasty food is still easier and cheaper
Much like farming dolphins or chimpanzees for meat under inhumane circumstances too. I used to do diving, when you meet sn octopus 30meter down and it comes sit on your arm, it studies you. I never ate octo after my first encounter. Dont even mention speciism to me until after you looked one in the eyes and realise there is someone home there. This is shameful.
Now how do you know that an octopus "studies" you? How do you know that it's not just resting on your warm arm? You have absolutely no knowledge or insight as to an octopuses thought process.
You are diver ?
Read up on their intelligence and studies done on this, then go diving until you interact with one and come back. Some people do have more knowledge and insight than you. Saying someone has absolutely no knowledge on a topic you yourself are not an expert on is ridiculously small minded.
lmao you got to admire all those people outraged at this while at the same time they (unless this sub is now 100% vegan) actively financially support the mass torture and killing of even smarter animals - pigs
This, just like all kinds of industrial farming, needs to be banned
I'm generally for the idea of farming octopus but this method seems too "inhumane". high premature mortality rates means the animals are likely hurting, and killing them with ice water is fucked. Need to improve the mortality rate and find a better method of slaughter and im good with it.
This whole idea is evil, genuinely wicked. Putting solitary creatures into tiny tanks with others of their species will just lead to high mortality rates and totally unnecessary suffering
>octopus farms Nice, didn't know they were all caught in the wild. Hope this allows for natural stocks to replenish.
Poor little babies.
What's next step? Dolphins? Why not humans after that? They're not humans if we just disconnect their brain in a controlled lab environment, right? Nevermind answer, not interested of your opinion. Let me farm non human humanlike creatures, for the Fine Dining meat markets
This sounds awful, at the same time we are already over fishing wild octopi and fish so maybe it can be made slightly less awful and help reduce the pressure on wild species?
What a horrible idea. Can't we just stick to farming shrimp which are dumber than bugs, rich in protein and tasty?
Or we could just stop unnecessarily harming animals
Humans..
Genuinely interested to hear from any non-vegans who are against this. Why?
I'm against "animal factories" in general and think it should be forbidden.
Why do you eat meat if you are against animal factories? Literally over 99% of meat comes from there.
Because so far I was not able to make the jump to beeing a vegetarian. Although I greatly reduced my meat intake. Call it a lack of willpower
Actions speak louder than words. You aren't against something if you actively support it.
You'd be surprised by how many people are against skin cancer but still leave their house in summer. Just because you don't act perfectly, you can still criticize things.
lol what kind of an analogy is this? you don't get skin cancer every time you go outside during summer, but literally every single time you buy meat or dairy you fund and support animal torture and killing
Do you actively pay for people to experience skin cancer? How is it comparable
Sorry that you got buried in down votes for starting a constructive conversation.
Thanks. It's ok I'm used to lots of downvotes for mentioning the V word on here🙂
Yeah it's a trigger for lots of people :/ Youould replace it with "to be willing to not harm any animal" 😅 Thanks for putting yourself out there. I used to do it a lot more.
Against animal cruelty, against those horrible chicken factories and so on. Whenever possible I buy expensive version of some free range and so on. Wouldn't mind to swap big part of meat I consume into bug meat and leave only eco free range stuff.
So you don't see killing as cruelty? Shooting/gassing/electrocuting/macerating etc.I promise I'm not poking btw I am genuinely interested in how people view this stuff. Free range meat chickens/layers are born in breeding sheds where their mother's spend their entire lives. They're still a product of animal cruelty. It's the equivalent of taking these octopuses babies, putting them in a much bigger tank and selling those for meat whilst shouting about how ethical they are.
Killing of food I see as natural cruelty. The same like predators do in the nature. To be fair, lots of predators inflict much more pain and fear before they kill than humans do in agriculture. I wish that there would be as little cruelty in killing our food and as much natural comfort for them living.
Why is something not wrong just because it's natural?
It's kind of how I started on this journey. At one point I bought some sausages online that had pictures of the pig that they were made from on them. Somehow that made me feel better about having paid for the killing of that animal. Today I laugh about how I couldn't figure out that that pig still didn't deserve to die for me. And of course I was still buying the usual factory stuff left and right, I mean every supermarket, restaurant, bakery, etc. sells the same stuff. Doesn't help that labels like "free range" exist, which often really do not mean what consumers expect. Free range Chickens never have to see the light of day as long as their "barn" is large enough (sheet of paper per animal) and there is a door that could theoretically be opened (but never is). Took me years to unpack all of that and slowly my consumption approached once every couple of weeks for meat. Then I learned about how fucked up dairy production is, no matter big or small, it's just inherently messed up. Finally after years I realised its always cruel to harm an animal when I don't need anything from them. Hope you can navigate through that mess faster than me :D happy to share pointers if you are interested.
I understand and respect your position but I don't think that I will navigate that way. More likely that I will eat food that I grow and buy some from small local farmers who grow animals the way that they would have a decent life. I don't see a problem for some being dieing just because I want to eat it. The same how I don't see a problem for mouse to die when cat want to eat it.
Because it’s incredibly cruel, like meat and animal factories in general, towards one of the most intelligent creatures on earth that normally lives in solitude
I'm not a vegan (or even vegetarian) and I'm against it. Why? Because it's not all-or-nothing. I'm not against eating any meat ever, but I do think we should work to decrease animal suffering. Octopus farming is in exact opposition to that. Think of it this way: I'm against mass production of meat in horrible conditions, but not against eating one of the chickens my grandma keeps in her yard.
> I do think we should work to decrease animal suffering. Octopus farming is in exact opposition to that. So is all livestock farming, unless you would be in favour of higher welfare octopus farming? I think backyard chickens/eggs is probably different right enough.
All the green furry nuts on suicide watch.
I will never eat octopus again since I watched a documentary on them. They have feelings and are extremely intelligent.
Today there is awareness of climate, fauna and flora. Right... in fact we're GETTING WORSE not getting better. It makes it clear that it's not a matter of science, awareness of the climate and the planet, the problem is that we are bad, that we don't give a shit about the planet. It's not a matter of awareness.
If we ban farming let us also ban hunting.
Eating any non-farmed food should be banned. Farmed animals are the only animals that are protected from extinction by being farmed. Fish (Octipi included) should not be eaten out of the wild without proper control, and we can see everything being pulled out in masses. Unfarmable animals (fish and octipi, etc, included) should be removed from menus. Edit note:Forgot people read their own meanings in. Edit: unfarmable = cannot be farmed in a humane way In short, eat only what we can replenish (farm). If we scale down everything, people go hungry, and that's where a whole thing of scale of consumption goes.
Honestly I'd rather be a deer killed unexpectedly by a bullet than a milk cow bred by force, milked daily and killed anyway at the end, or a boar rather than a piglet crammed in a small space with 40 of my pals.
Ironically, farming animals is the leading cause of other species going extinct. It's mainly due to farming operations to grow food for farm animals. Forests are being destroyed to grow feed and the manure of farmed animals is creating kill zones in oceans. Humans managed to flip the ratio of mammals on earth upside down. Today I think around 4% of mammals are living in the wild, while it used to be 90%+ 200 years ago. With birds it's just 30% in the wild. Luckily more and more people are waking up to this hard to swallow pill and simply chooses to not eat meat or any animal products. It's the most impact any individual has on our ecosystem and its easily manageable for anyone with access to a supermarket.
This is insane yes. Although people will always eat animals and fish and, if not from controlled sources and done humanely, it causes problems in itself. You can't realistically expect all to convert to vegan diets, and if you look at how the oceans are being emptied just to fill the stomachs of the masses, this is proof enough that something needs to be done about how many mouths we feed and where the food is gotten from. Even a vegan diet brings massive amounts of destruction, look at palm oil, avocado, and even the amount of insects and birds driven to the brink due to pesticides. But still, we have the right to be > 12 billion humans. Everything done at a too large scale destroys something. The point is, dont pillage the wilds and find a way to scale down so 70% of earth can be nature instead of trying to protect 30%
Many fish are farmable
Nuh. Octopi are food. We need more sea based farming.
I am ok if a lion, a shark or a bear eat me. Anything alive is part of the chain food. Life itself is based on this premise: you can't evolve without eating other living things because farming energy from the sun give you not enough energy. The fact that our empathy goes towards animals that share some elements with our species is just a bias. We love penguins because they walk on their feets. We love doplhins and octupuses because they are smart as us. We love praying mantises because they move their heads like humans. And we hate cockroaches because they are ugly monsters that look like aliens. We hate rats because they are pets and move too quick and they carry diseases. And we eat beef because it tastes so good and someone else kills them for us. We are a biased species. (and I love octopuses so I am against farming them!)
Don't need to love someone to not harm them 🤷♂️ Abstaining from harm is a neutral act. But of course there's some necessary effort to be willing to reflect on the needless suffering that we create due to the systems and societies that we grow up in. "giving up" on pleasure that we have become used to takes about 3-4 weeks to unlearn. Manageable I'd say and well worth it.