Mastodawn

jeffw Nov 17, 2023

The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop bird flu

The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop bird flu - Lemmy.World

> Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak. As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.

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Hylactor Nov 18, 2023

If humans don’t commit suicide first through war or environmental abuse, I truly believe that future generations will look back on eating meat as a barbaric mistake. They’ll tell stories about how we caused epidemics and pandemics, wasted valuable resources and land, polluted air, land, and sea, and abided the suffering of billions of animals, all so we could feed our children dinosaur shaped meat nuggets and buy cheap hamburgers that we were too lazy to even get out of our cars to purchase.

“And then, evan ad global warming spiraled out of control, they wasted arable land and dwindling water supplies on subsidized corn to feed to the subsidized beef and poultry stock. The ones that didn’t get culled or spoil before even hitting a plate contributed to a dietary culture of heart disease. Also, the animals regularly suffered immensely, which they were aware of but preferred not to consider.”

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MooseBoys Nov 18, 2023

future generations will look back on eating meat as a barbaric mistake

Primates, including humans, evolved to be omnivorous. In the 200,000 year history of the homo sapiens species, only the most recent 3% have had the benefit of agriculture. Even then, only 0.1% have had the benefit of the industrial revolution which could in theory provide enough calories and nutrients for all humans with a purely herbivorous diet.

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starman2112 Nov 19, 2023

We didn’t evolve to be omnivorous, we evolved to be capable of thriving on a wide variety of diets. This is why two regions with wildly different foods available can still be inhabited by humans–something like 25% of people in India don’t eat meat. That’s hundreds of millions, roughly the same as the population of the USA. Meanwhile up north you got populations that eat almost nothing but seal.

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Narauko

Ok, I’ll be the one to point it out.

“We didn’t evolve to be omnivorous (from Latin omnis ‘all’ and vora, from vorare ‘to eat or devour’), we evolved to be capable of thriving on a wide variety (omni) of diets (vore)”.

Just because portions of human populations do not behaviorally practice omnivorey, doesn’t mean their bodies are not omnivorous. You can feed a black or brown bear a balanced vegan diet, same with dogs, rodents, etc, and they can survive and thrive, but that doesn’t mean bears are no longer omnivores.