Can we end factory farming?

[Moriarte]

And thus I propose making chicken holy.

 

[Ryika]

The discussion was never about genocide despite your attempts to troll it into that. To apply a genocidal aspect to reducing numbers in future livestock breeding, is absurd and highly disrespectful towards those who've faced actual genocide

If you can't win with arguments, try moral condemnation!

The word is perfectly applicable in the case that was brought up. If lab-grown meat becomes viable and people stop eating chickens, factory farms will shut down in massive numbers, and in the process, the lines of descent of millions of chickens will be lost and left without a future. That's literally genocide by the very definition of the word, except of course that the word is usually only used for humans.

If there comes a time when there's no profits or it's no longer possible for other reasons, there will of course be no need to increase livestock welfare for there is no livestock. Chickens would probably still be around as pets and with the welfare concerns we apply to keeping animals as pets. Whether that is a realistic future scenario or not is another thing. At any rate, it's irrelevant to the debate.

How is it not relevant to the "debate"? It's all I've written about in this thread. You're just trying to drag it into some general discussion about animal welfare, but that scenario where lab-grown meat makes factory farming mostly obsolete is literally what I made my first response to:

Lab grown meat is around the corner. It will improve food safety, dramatically impact the environment (for good), improve access to high quality, cheap protein and end the suffering of a lot of farmed animals. Start ups are pushing the concept forward and the cost for lab grown burgers has already fallen something like 1000-fold.

So yes, we can end factory farming and relatively soon. I believe it will take a few decades before all cuts of meat can be replicated more cheaply than grown through animals but it will happen. And long before that point any meats that are consumed in minced form will be pushed out of the market except for very highly priced niche brands.

 

[The_J]

Man, cut it.
I think you made your point, now it's just annoying.

Tell me more about lab-grown meat. I'm guessing it's cloned meat, grown in a lab, without any animal involved, yes?

Sort of.
Last year I heard a talk from the University of Maastricht, which is also involved in that type of research. They are growing the "meat" (well, cell accumulation, does not really fully yet resemble meat) in a petri dish or liquid culture, not sure anymore. It does still involve animals though. They starting material for each culture needs to be a few cells of a living animal. They're then reprogrammed to pluripotent stem cells (I think), and then are grown into the final product.
It's still horribly expensive though, and apparently does not yet taste great. I think they said the first burger (eaten with big media attention last year) was 100k. They're also still looking into which othe additives it needs to actually get the proper taste, because that's more than just cell growth.
Saying that lab grown meat is around the corner is therefore also an exaggeration. That will for sure take another 50 years (it's always 50 years, if someone predicts the future, apparently, but anyways...) to be on an industrial scale.

 

[Snerk]

If you can't win with arguments, try moral condemnation!

By all means, keep digging your grave if you insist on it.

The word is perfectly applicable in the case that was brought up. If lab-grown meat becomes viable and people stop eating chickens, factory farms will shut down in massive numbers, and in the process, the lines of descent of millions of chickens will be lost and left without a future. That's literally genocide by the very definition of the word, except of course that the word is usually only used for humans.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/genocide

"The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group."

I.e. not reducing numbers in future livestock breeding.

How is it not relevant to the "debate"? It's all I've written about in this thread. You're just trying to drag it into some general discussion about animal welfare, but that scenario where lab-grown meat makes factory farming mostly obsolete is literally what I made my first response to:

Read OP and thread topic please. Animal welfare and environmental concerns related to factory farming is at the heart of the matter.

 

[BenitoChavez]

If factory farming ends, the question is what happens to all the livestock currently alive?

Preventing them from breeding would result in a drastic reduction in the population of those species. If the chicken population is reduced by 90+% is that not something we should be concerned about?

We (humans in general) keep endangered species lists so we associate some value to the diversity of species that exist and the total number of members of those species. Would placing chickens on one of these lists be an acceptable end if it meant ending factory farming?

 

[Snerk]

If you're concerned about maintaining biodiversity then factory farming isn't a solution, it's a problem.

 

[Ryika]

Read OP and thread topic please. Animal welfare and environmental concerns related to factory farming is at the heart of the matter.

You're funny. First you push yourself into my part of the discussion just to morally shame me, then you deny the impending chicken genocide, and now you're claiming that because a part of the op was about animal welfare and environmental concerns, my post must have addressed those issues, even though I clearly did not comment on those at all, and instead focused on the other side of the coin, the intentional (or accepted) destruction of the genetic heritage of the factory farm chickens in the case where lab-bred meat becomes a viable alternative on the free market. You want me to give my opinion on "regulations", which is a completely different part of this topic from the one I was talking about. That's just rude.

 

[Snerk]

You're funny. First you push yourself into my part of the discussion just to morally shame me, then you deny the impending chicken genocide, and now you're claiming that because a part of the op was about animal welfare and environmental concerns, my post must have addressed those issues, even though I clearly did not comment on those at all, and instead focused on the other side of the coin, the intentional (or accepted) destruction of the genetic heritage of the factory farm chickens in the case where lab-bred meat becomes a viable alternative on the free market. You want me to give my opinion on "regulations", which is a completely different part of this topic from the one I was talking about. That's just rude.

If your intention was to rationally philosophise over moral concerns regarding a possible dismantling/reduction of the vast populations of livestock by scaling down the breeding in the future, then you could have done so. Though I personally think it's a hard position to argue as it's quite contradictory. But you chose to constantly reiterate some genocide nonsense instead. Don't blame me.
I apologise if you found it rude. But you were being quite blunt, so I was too.

 

[El_Machinae]

To further the point, these are experts on cetaceans that are forwarding the idea that there should be some consideration of rights. Now I, as an interested non-expert, would include apes, parrots, and (maybe) pigs in my consideration. With regards to sapients vs. non-sapients, I believe that the suffering of non-sapients matters and as humans we should give consideration to them wrt how we treat them. Sapient organisms are on a different scale, and experience a level of suffering on a completely different scale.

And remember, we've always considered humans to be cognitively 'special', and a huge part of that specialness was our earlier descriptions of sapience. To find other species that have sapience akin to ours is a fairly big deal. These conversations weren't being considered in truly scientific circles 40 years ago.

Here is part of my underlying moral consideration. I think that choosing to not eat farmed meat is a morally important choice, especially given the subsidies, the suffering, and the environmental degradation. I will discuss @Ryika 's considerations at the end of my peanut gallery comments.

Want to end factory farming? Join New Harvest! They're the leading organization involved in exposing lab-grown meat to the consumer and funding new efforts at perfecting the process. They donate to research projects, hold seminars, and have discussion groups.

I really like that you included this link. I have 'liked' them on Facebook and will watch out for the results of their conference. I, personally, am skeptical of lab-grown meat. But it's not like I am against the idea in any serious way. I would still want to factor in things like subsidies and environmental degradation into my future purchases.

Just vote with your wallet and buy free ranged meats
The industrial practices of the South and Republicans states wont change, especially under Republican controls, with de-regulations

I, El_Machinae, 100% endorse this. I think this is the correct path to take, in that it's the easiest change to make that matters. Now, I would prefer people choose vegetarian choices over meat, because I think it is cleaner. But I don't think that we can sufficiently replace animal products in our diets. Even for moral reasons, because those choices have opportunity cost. At Sobeys (Canada), I can pay a premium for free range eggs or 'humanely raised' chicken. I then balance my food choices with these as options. Luckily, with 'free range' eggs, there are a variety of suppliers, so I can occasionally spot check to see which one bothers me the least. But the damage from cheap meats is so pronounced that I think that we need to make this choice whenever possible.
****************
As to the concern that refusing to eat chickens will lead to a chicken genocide. This claim seems to be true, and outside of show-chickens and pet-chickens and zoo-chickens, the number of factory-farmed chickens will drastically reduce. It won't be an extinction, but ehn, I get the point.

Here is my moral answer: it's in two parts. The first is in terms of the counter-factual, "What would happen if we continued factory farming?". First off, humans are causing a ferocious extinction rate. Factory farming is a large, large part of this. There are many, many species that are continually being battered down, and would somewhat recover if there was a reprieve or even a withdrawal from their ecosystems and a reduction of net pollution. So, it's a balance. Do we accelerate the extinctions in order to maintain the large number of living factory-farmed animals?

The second is regarding sapience (mentioned above). There is no doubt that chickens are sentient. They can experience stress, fear, pleasure, pain, terror, anger. They even have a system of short-term and long-term thinking. So, if they deserve moral consideration, they absolutely deserve it on this scale. Hurting a chicken is immoral. It's immoral because it feels pain. If someone hurts a chicken, then we then engage in the complex moral calculation as to whether it's 'worth it'. Importantly, it's almost never 'worth it' from the chicken's perspective.

There's also really insufficient reason to think that they're sapient. This is a ginormous difference, the ability to consider their personhood in a metacognitive way. I am non-expert on this front (as mentioned), but I have a strong background in neuroscience, neuroanatomy, and (partially) psychology. Not Gladwell's 10,000 hours, but sufficient to be a professional in two of those fields and damned useful in the third. Because it's not clear that they're sapient, we actually don't know how they value their future, except insofar as it is measured on a scale involving sentience. We know that chickens will cognitively value future pleasure or future pain. They will take steps to avoid pain and seek pleasure that they can predict. They will even engage in trade-off ratios. But we cannot say that they value future existence. And especially not their future genetic lineage.

It's not a function of scale. Unlike with people, or maybe other animals (I am waiting for more data on apes and cetaceans, but I hold it as a strong possibility), you literally cannot ask "would you prefer to take these slipping pills and die, rather than continue in these conditions?" From the non-sapient's condition, it's a meaningless question. "What's South of the South pole?", type of meaningless.

They would prefer to not suffer. Every time we ask, the answer is clear. They would prefer to not suffer. And so we spend a ferocious amount of subsidy and environmental degradation (with its concomitant poverty and future poverty) maximizing the number of entities that experience this suffering, because we're a combination of 'needing food' and 'callous'. Nearly everyone here is on the wrong side of this scale.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

From an evolutionary perspective, the main purpose in life is after all, to create offspring that can create offspring, that can create offspring, (etc)

This is so dumb. Evolution is not teleological. Evolution does not have a purpose, just like air or water or the solar system doesn't have a purpose, they just exist and do their thang. Is it a planet's "purpose" to orbit? The idea that evolution has procreation as its purpose is something only a human could come up with.

One could just as well say that higher birthrates are a side-effect of evolution and the goal is to reach a perfectly adapted end-form, then it becomes obvious just how ridiculous it is to attach value judgements to those biological processes.

Humans are part of nature, and symbiotic or parasitic relationships are a perfectly natural part of evolution. The chickens have (not consciously of course, and not with "intent") given up their freedom in favor of being farmed by humans, and as a reward for it, they're now one of the most successful species in the world.

One of the most successful species according to whose standard exactly? Oh yeah, right..

If factory farming ends, the question is what happens to all the livestock currently alive?

Preventing them from breeding would result in a drastic reduction in the population of those species. If the chicken population is reduced by 90+% is that not something we should be concerned about?

We (humans in general) keep endangered species lists so we associate some value to the diversity of species that exist and the total number of members of those species. Would placing chickens on one of these lists be an acceptable end if it meant ending factory farming?

Likely the end of factory farming would be a good thing for diodiversity, since instead of using only the most profitable lines of chickens, people will go back to having local species as pets or just for eggs.

 

[Synobun]

Tell me more about lab-grown meat. I'm guessing it's cloned meat, grown in a lab, without any animal involved, yes?

There are animals involved, but the statistics are dramatically improved in regards to animal welfare and the impact on the environment. The energy demands of growing meat still remains pretty high at 55% the energy costs of normal livestock, but actual greenhouse gas emissions are 5~% the amount and the acreage requirements is reduced by 99~%. Study information here.

The burger that I mention below to @The_J has a good animal ratio. One biopsy sample (painless) from a cow can accommodate 20,000 tons of cultured meat. That ratio will be different for different formulas, especially once you get into the question of growing specific cuts, but it's still extremely more considerate of animal welfare and the needs of our species.

Aren't they having problems with the taste of lab-grown meat though? It may seem like a minor issue, but when talking about food, how something tastes can have a huge impact on whether or not the general public accepts it.

Yes. It's not completely identical to the 'real thing' yet.

Sort of.
Last year I heard a talk from the University of Maastricht, which is also involved in that type of research. They are growing the "meat" (well, cell accumulation, does not really fully yet resemble meat) in a petri dish or liquid culture, not sure anymore. It does still involve animals though. They starting material for each culture needs to be a few cells of a living animal. They're then reprogrammed to pluripotent stem cells (I think), and then are grown into the final product.
It's still horribly expensive though, and apparently does not yet taste great. I think they said the first burger (eaten with big media attention last year) was 100k. They're also still looking into which othe additives it needs to actually get the proper taste, because that's more than just cell growth.
Saying that lab grown meat is around the corner is therefore also an exaggeration. That will for sure take another 50 years (it's always 50 years, if someone predicts the future, apparently, but anyways...) to be on an industrial scale.

Are you sure that this talk was last year? The $100k burger was a few years ago. Verstrate's burger (at Maastrich) formula is, I believe, geared for a 2020 release at less than $20/pound for production. That's an old estimate though and I could not find a more recent one. Granted, his burger is a minced-meat alternative instead of a genuine steak cut. 50 years is probably accurate for specialty cuts.

I came across a Wired article they released last week about this. Seems like more of a slam piece than anything else, but it does talk about a different approach being utilized in America. Lab grown foie gras. Bleh.

 

[Synobun]

I really like that you included this link. I have 'liked' them on Facebook and will watch out for the results of their conference. I, personally, am skeptical of lab-grown meat. But it's not like I am against the idea in any serious way. I would still want to factor in things like subsidies and environmental degradation into my future purchases.

Is it the energy costs that put you off? That'll probably be the compromise. Higher energy costs in exchange for reduced impact on land requirement and gas emissions (and less need to stuff billions of creatures into cages).

 

[Ryika]

This is so dumb. Evolution is not teleological. Evolution does not have a purpose, just like air or water or the solar system doesn't have a purpose, they just exist and do their thang. Is it a planet's "purpose" to orbit? The idea that evolution has procreation as its purpose is something only a human could come up with.

It's funny that you call what I said dumb, but then you're not able to understand the difference between what I said ("From an evolutionary perspective, the main purpose in life is after all, to create offspring that can create offspring") and the thing you think I said ("The purpose of evolution is to make animals create offspring.").

Aside from the fact that you've gone off-track with that "purpose of evolution"-stuff, you should have spent a second to think about the way I phrased it. I very specifically stated "From an evolutionary perspective", not "In an evolutionary system" or something like that. That literally means, I use my brain to put myself into the position of the evolutionary purpose, and try to come up with a purpose that I would ascribe onto the animals if I were in that position, and that's making babies that can stay alive. Obviously, that's a thought exercise to better visualize the process because humans run on purpose, and it's perfectly fine to ascribe a "purpose" on things if it's just to figure out how it works, and it's also clear that outside of that perspective, such a purpose does not exist, but it is still what is driving genes to spread and manage to stay in the genetic pool. Making babies is so much more important under evolution than "living a happy life", that we can assume that chickens have evolved to be willing to sustain a life that is not all fun and dandy, if it means they can make sure their offspring also gets to live.

Now, those were a lot of words to explain to you what should have been obvious, had you had the decency to properly think about my post instead of burping out the first few thoughts that came to your mind. Next time, read carefully, and think before you post!

One could just as well say that higher birthrates are a side-effect of evolution and the goal is to reach a perfectly adapted end-form, then it becomes obvious just how ridiculous it is to attach value judgements to those biological processes.

There is no such thing as a "perfectly adapted end-form".

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Aren't they having problems with the taste of lab-grown meat though? It may seem like a minor issue, but when talking about food, how something tastes can have a huge impact on whether or not the general public accepts it.

I haven't heard that but I don't doubt it. It's just a matter of time. And I'm sure pink slime tastes terrible until it gets loaded with flavorings and preservatives and whatever goes into it to make a Big Mac. Basically, people eat garbage trash food all the time. Sometimes it has to be dressed up, sometimes they just eat it even though it objectively tastes like garbage.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

It's funny that you call what I said dumb, but then you're not able to understand the difference between what I said ("From an evolutionary perspective, the main purpose in life is after all, to create offspring that can create offspring") and the thing you think I said ("The purpose of evolution is to make animals create offspring.").

Aside from the fact that you've gone off-track with that "purpose of evolution"-stuff, you should have spent a second to think about the way I phrased it. I very specifically stated "From an evolutionary perspective", not "In an evolutionary system" or something like that. That literally means, I use my brain to put myself into the position of the evolutionary purpose, and try to come up with a purpose that I would ascribe onto the animals if I were in that position, and that's making babies that can stay alive. Obviously, that's a thought exercise to better visualize the process because humans run on purpose, and it's perfectly fine to ascribe a "purpose" on things if it's just to figure out how it works, and it's also clear that outside of that perspective, such a purpose does not exist, but it is still what is driving genes to spread and manage to stay in the genetic pool. Making babies is so much more important under evolution than "living a happy life", that we can assume that chickens have evolved to be willing to sustain a life that is not all fun and dandy, if it means they can make sure their offspring also gets to live.

Now, those were a lot of words to explain to you what should have been obvious, had you had the decency to properly think about my post instead of burping out the first few thoughts that came to your mind. Next time, read carefully, and think before you post!

"From an evolutionary perspective, the main purpose in life is after all, to create offspring that can create offspring" I'll try to examine that sentence

1) "from an evolutionary perspective" evolution does not have a perspective. you are talking from a human perspective. you already presume that one can, through self-reflection, figure out the "perspective" that evolution has, somehow get in its place through your thought-experiment, when it is literally nothing but a system of thought created by a human being. does gravity also get to have a perspective on chicken genocide?

2) "main purpose in life" with this you are already implying that life is teleological, that it should have a purpose

3) "to create offspring" this is just a wrong reading of evolution, so even in that framework you would be only partially correct. it is not so much about creating, it is much more about the preservation and maintaining of a unit, be that unit a nest of ants or a hoard of gorillas, or an entire species. through the animal kingdom there are hundreds of species where individuals willingly do not procreate, for a multitude of reasons, they either let others do it or take a supportive role.

That literally means, I use my brain to put myself into the position of the evolutionary purpose, and try to come up with a purpose that I would ascribe onto the animals if I were in that position, and that's making babies that can stay alive.

you put yourself in the position of the evolutionary purpose, which you just five minutes ago claimed did not exist and was, in fact, a misreading of mine. grand.

look, I get that you were talking hypothetically, but if there is in fact no purpose to evolution then all the implications are null.

That we can assume that chickens have evolved to be willing to sustain a life that is not all fun and dandy, if it means they can make sure their offspring also gets to live.

so right here you are literally doing exactly what you critisized in snerk's post - making some kind of value judgement for the chickens


"From an evolutionary perspective, the main purpose in life is after all, to adapt perfectly to an environmental niche in order to continue and thrive as a species"

what about this sentence? how is this sentence more or less valid than yours is?

 

[Narz]

Why do you think it's better to maintain vast population of livestock with poor living conditions over maintaining small population of livestock with proper living conditions?

He's clearly not serious, just bored and trolling

 

[Ryika]

1) "from an evolutionary perspective" evolution does not have a perspective. you are talking from a human perspective. you already presume that one can, through self-reflection, figure out the "perspective" that evolution has, somehow get in its place through your thought-experiment, when it is literally nothing but a system of thought created by a human being. does gravity also get to have a perspective on chicken genocide?

Yes, that is, as I already explained, exactly what I'm doing, what's your problem with that? Project ourselves onto them is all we can do, people love to do it from the emotional angle, the angle of evolutionary considerations is a fun different view of the whole scenario.

"From an evolutionary perspective, the main purpose in life is after all, to adapt perfectly to an environmental niche in order to continue and thrive as a species"

what about this sentence? how is this sentence more or less valid than yours is?

It's not valid at all.

a.) You literally cannot adapt perfectly into a niche, because the moment you do, you've tipped the balance of the ecosystem and have set in motion further changes that have already made you an imperfect fit for the environment.
b.) Under evolution, it is a terrible strategy to "try to fit" into a niche anyway, because the smallest change in the environment can lead to that niche no longer being viable, and poof, dead you are, and all of your friends are too. Instead, you want to be adaptable, and be able to survive as many of the potential changes that might occur in your environment as possible - ask the dinosaurs who didn't yet have feathers about what happens if you don't. Or ask an ice bear who's wondering where all the glaciers went while he's paddling through a huge sea of water, and then the rat that's eating the burger that somebody has thrown away behind your house. One of the two will still thrive in a few hundred years.
c.) An animal does not "evolve", evolution happens over many generations, so even if we are able to project a more reasonable goal for "life" under evolution, then that would mean nothing for the animals. All animals do is to engage in a permanent baby-making battle in which the genes that are better able to survive in the environment that they find themselves in, emerge victorious.

He's clearly not serious, just bored and trolling

I'm not trolling, you're just so fixated on your perspective of well-being and suffering that you can't fathom that there might be other perspectives from which we can look at the situation.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

valessa is a woman I think

 

[El_Machinae]

Is it the energy costs that put you off? That'll probably be the compromise. Higher energy costs in exchange for reduced impact on land requirement and gas emissions (and less need to stuff billions of creatures into cages).

It's not so much a 'put off', as a being skeptical as a solution. We will see, right? I mean, all I am saying is that it will not change what I deem to be the optimal choice for me, today, to take. I am not specifically concerned about energy, because I view 'energy usage' to be a good thing. It's fossil carbon and environmental degradation that I care about more. We currently destroy fuel in order to get food, this won't change. And 'energy' will be a factor in its cost, so ehn, that will be a function of pricing.

Yes, that is, as I already explained, exactly what I'm doing, what's your problem with that? Project ourselves onto them is all we can do, people love to do it from the emotional angle, the angle of evolutionary considerations is a fun different view of the whole scenario.

I see what the issue is. You're taking a question with regards to the evolutionary force behind it, "which way will evolution go?", but then using that to supplant motivations onto the chicken itself. Except, motivation is a cognitive question.

Here's the thing from an evolutionary perspective. No matter what happens, evolution gets its way. Any niche in an ecosystem we free up from pivoting away from factory farming will be re-conquered from another wing of Evolution's game. The chicken and every other lifeform is related. You're discussing the importance of a descendant in making it to the next cycle of agony. But, we know that evolution doesn't work this way (see: bee hives). And no matter what happens next, the niche will be filled. With a descendant, a cousin, a distant cousin. Doesn't matter. You seem to be engaging in a bit of a bait-and-switch, switching one variable for another midway through your calculation.

Now, is there some evolutionary reason you're taking this position? Are you trying to maximize the number of your offspring without taking into consideration the quality of their lives? Of course not. But if I were to impose suffering on you, at net loss to humanity's future, in order to gain this evolutionary 'benefit' that you envision for chickens, I would be poorly considered. By observers, by myself, and by you.

Evolution doesn't have sentience. Chickens do. My post earlier was more compre-hen-sive.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

My post earlier was more compre-hen-sive.

Poppy-cock.