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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • The problem is that commercial sheep farms compete for the lowest price, which means that those who actually care for the welfare of their animals are at an disadvantage to those who keep sheep in very bad conditions, and will be forced out of the market sooner or later. Customers and distributors usually have no clue how the animals were actually treated, they just see the price and choose the lowest, of course.

    And while you might not need to kill the sheep to get the wool, they’re killed when their “productiveness” drops below profitablity anyways. In the wool industry that’s after about 5-7 years.

    Just because such animal products could theoretically be produced in a humane way, that’s not what happens in practice under capitalism. The vulnerable are always exploited as much as possible for financial interests and animals have no voice, no lobby and no lawyers.



  • What makes you think that processing food through an animal is healthier than through a factory?

    You have to compare the actual nutrients contained in the product to draw any conclusion about health effects, and the macros are fairly similar for the plant-based versions compared to a given meat product.

    The average person (in developed countries) eats significantly more meat than the recommended upper limit by nutrition organizations.

    If you just go by the naturalistic argument, you’d conclude that processed drinking water is worse than untreated water, and that vaccines are worse than “perfectly natural” diseases. It’s a common logical fallacy.

    https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature


  • To me that’s more ethical than killing of billions of animals, and the latter is considered ethical.

    I think most people would actually consider factory farming unethical, they just put the blame on the producers for treating animals like shit. And the producers are locked into a race to the bottom for competitive prices, so they’d blame the customers/market conditions.


  • DarthFrodo@lemmy.worldtoCool Guides@lemmy.caA cool guide to Epicurean paradox
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    2 months ago

    I don’t know if I misunderstood you, but “making millions of people suffer horribly and needlessly for no fault of their own might just be the most ethical thing there is, you never know, so let’s not draw any conclusions about God allowing that to happen.” just seems like a rather unconvincing line of thought to me. It’s essentially just saying “God is always right, accept that”

    I guess god just gave us the moral understanding that his (in)actions are insanely immoral to test our unquestioned loyalty to him, or he just likes a little trolling. Or maybe he just doesn’t exist…


  • From the consumers point of view, you can only choose products that are in supply, so we think our choices don’t really have an impact. People often see it as a systemic issue that’s outside of our control.

    From the corporations point of view, the consumer creates the demand and if they didn’t provide the supply, another corporation would. They also see it as a systemic issue that’s outside of their control.

    The corporations love nothing more than the message “just consume our stuff and don’t blame yourself for any environmental impact. You can’t be perfect anyways, so might as well book a flight, buy a gas car, or buy our beef.” It’s so comfortable for both parties because they don’t have to change anything and can just point the finger at each other for the negative consequences.

    Of course it’s sometimes necessary to do something polluting. People who need a car and can only afford a used car probably won’t be able to buy an electric one. I don’t even think that’s unethical consumption. But those who can afford an electric car and choose a new gas car instead do something unethical. Ultimately many of these practical issues will be solved as green technology matures, there will be cheap-ish used electric cars in the future, for example.



    1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering

    I don’t know, life before the industrial revolution was pretty shit for regular people too.

    I’d rather not have to worry about my family (and friends) starving to death during the next famine. 40-60% of children in medival europe died before adulthood. I can’t even imagine the psychological suffering caused by this alone. Then there was frequent war and disease outbreaks, basically no healthcare, and so on…

    I’m not saying that everything’s great nowadays, we urgently need to fix many issues. But many things were way, way worse before modern civilization.


  • Now, your claim is that Russia started the civil war as a pretext to invade and that the separatists are just Russian proxies. On the other hand, the Russian narrative would claim the same thing about the Euromaidan coup.

    I guess most the 400.000 - 800.000 Euromaidan protestors were CIA agents in Russias view then?

    It’s well known that many people in Eastern European countries don’t trust Russia one bit after their experiences in the USSR. Of course there’s enormous pushback when politicians in power try to strengthen ties with Putin (and cut ties to EU countries), it would be really weird if there weren’t. The same would happen in Poland and many other Eastern European countries who were staunchly anti Putin long before the invasion, even though they don’t have an immediate threat from a shared border with Russia.

    In my opinion, if people really cared so much about the Ukrainian people, then we should’ve been providing them with foreign aid for domestic development, long before any of this started.

    Before the war, people weren’t really aware of the situation in Ukraine and there were 100 other problems that seemed more urgent, so there just wasn’t any political pressure to do something.

    As far as I can see, it’s just about US/Ukrainian state interests vs Russian state interests

    Western countries just stood by in the first days and did nothing, as they had no hopes for Ukraine surviving for more than a few days. If the Ukrainian public weren’t willing to push back, they would’ve had no chance to stop the Russian advances and their government would’ve collapsed in days, just as both Russia and the West predicted.

    It would be a better use of funds to accept territorial concessions

    Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fled from the occupied territories, and accepting that they will never get their relatives and homes back will be unthinkable for a large part of them, especially after the reports of forced relocations from occupied regions into Russia (including thousands of children) and all the suffering that Putin has brought upon Ukrainians. Maybe they will reach the point of making concessions if they see no hope of retaking the territory. Ultimately this has to be decided by the Ukrainian people.






  • DarthFrodo@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlFunny how that happens
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    4 months ago

    But the majority of us loves our animals

    And when the milk production drops, the vast majority of dairy cows get their throat slit and their bodies sold for profit. I surely wouldn’t treat those that I love that way, but I guess animal farmers just have a very different concept of “loving animals” compared to people who have pets, for example.



  • We’ve already come a long way on price, thankfully. When I go to local supermarkets or discounters (Lidl, Kaufland, Aldi, Penny,…), the store brand meat alternatives are already as cheap as their factory farmed products. Same for the milk alternatives, soy yoghurts, and so on. So price parity has already been reached in many cases, at least here in Germany.

    I guess now the issue is that many of the discounter alternatives don’t taste the same as meat yet (although they’re getting better), and the premium plant-based products taste great, but are still more expensive than the cheapest meat products.


  • Serious question, what could possibly convince them?

    We all learnt about the atrocious living conditions on factory farms long ago. We all know that the meat industry is terrible for the environment and climate. We learnt about the avian flu being spread on cattle farms, with owners hiding the cases from the authorities, with 0 regard for public safety. We all know that migrants and children are systemically exploited by slaughterhouses, many get PTSD or become alcoholics, some get severely injured or die because of accidents.

    Yet after all of that, meat eaters still happily give their money to these places every time they go to a supermarket or restaurant.

    The meat industry got people so hooked on animal products that they can get away with basically anything, change my mind.