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

https://lemmy.world/post/8401294

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.

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.”

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.

So what? We evolved to be able to eat a wide variety of diets. I don’t judge my homie erectus ancestors for doing what they needed to survive. It’s pretty plain that the person you’re replying to is referring to modern society’s obsession with producing as much meat as we do, not the concept of eating meat as a whole.

It’s fairly apparent that the person you’re replying to is referring to modern society’s obsession with producing as much meat as we do, not the concept of eating meat as a whole.

Complete and utter bullshit. Don’t move goalposts because you don’t want to concede a point. They explicitly said:

I truly believe that future generations will look back on eating meat as a barbaric mistake

That doesn’t even remotely imply there is a quantity of meat consumption that is morally acceptable.

Right, that’s what they explicitly said, but speech also includes implications on occasion. That’s why we’re typically able to convey thoughts and opinions without writing hundreds of pages to account for every possible interpretation of what we say.

For example, killing people is wrong. I don’t need to include the idea that self defense is obviously exempt, and that euthanasia is a grey area for some people for you to assume that I already understand that in certain circumstances, a thing I’m against is morally allowable.

Right, they explicitly said that, and then they explicitly said

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.

It sounds like what they are describing is modern society’s obsession with producing as much meat as we do

It’s me; I’m the person. I will clarify my stance. But focusing on my individual personal motivations and disregarding my overarching observations seems a little goal post manipulatey too. Even if my personal motivations fail to meet your scrutiny, the facts I present still remain: we are harming our planet, we are harming animals, and we are harming ourselves by eating meat. Which seems counterproductive at best and ripe for improvement. We can and should advance beyond this unnecessary and harmful indulgence. At the very least, we should consume a very small fraction of what we currently do.

Though I am a vegetarian, I used to eat meat. I acknowledge that it’s delicious, and I miss it sometimes. But I don’t eat it because I’ve determined that it would be logically inconsistent of me to do so.

In a vacuum I don’t think the “wrongest” part about meat is the moral/ethical implications of killing an animal to eat it. But I’m not talking about subsistence meat consumption here. Because that’s not how we eat meat on a human race scale anymore. We churn it out at disgusting scale. Imparting suffering and pollution into the world. We eat it primarily because we like it. And we eat too much of it because we are gluttonous. If your uncle shoots a buck with his bow and arrow, and make some summer sausage of it, I’m not really perturbed by that. I don’t love it, but I’m fine with it. Now, if your uncle gasses 10,000 chickens too fat and atrophied to stand, and heaps them into a pile and burns them, because the flock has an outbreak that exists solely do to our habitual over crowding of hellish enclosures, now we’ve got problems.

That being said, my personal chief concern is environmental. The scale at which we produce meat, and the methods we use to produce it, are completely untenable and are inconsistent with continued life on this planet. In 50 years we will have another 3 billion or so people on the planet, and we’re already operating way beyond our means with our current population. We need to change our habits or die.

My third priority is health considerations. This is probably my weakest argument, because eating meat isn’t imperically unhealthy. But again, we as humans don’t just eat meat from time to time, most of us are eating it every god damned day. We’re going to a wing joint and hoovering up 15 chickens worth of wings without even thinking about it. But even if people stop packing their colons with gristle and turning their blood to paste with double bacon cheeseburgers with bacon and a fried egg, they’ll find some other garbage to eat. We don’t value healthy living in my country which is a whole nother issue beyond the meat thing.

I strongly agree on all points. In particular the inhumanity of the way animals are treated in contemporary mass ranches is troubling. DFW’s “Consider the Lobster” resonates with me.

The reason I called out the above comment is because slamming to the absolutist rails is regressive. What makes a difference isn’t going to the extremes but bringing people into the fold. It is particularly effective to highlight the issues you have and then say “you don’t need to stop eating all meat”. Most people won’t. If your points are well received then a takeaway of “choose to not eat meat more often” is much more impactful rather than “oh well nothing I can do since I am going to continue eating meat”.