Can we end factory farming?

[Lexicus]

The one problem I see with factory farming is that the quality of the product is low. Where it can be avoided, it should. But let us not be blind to the causes, it is a product of increased urbanization. In a world where most people refuse to give up eating stuff imported from the otehr side of the world, or prefer to buy something slightly cheaper online than from some local store, it's not going to be reversed. The world would have to change first. Can it?

Isn't identifying it as a product of urbanization the same as saying to change it, people will need to be willing to stop living in cities?

 

[warpus]

Of all the social justice issues in the modern world IMO factory farming is the worst. We're literally torturing billions of creatures so we can eat cheap milk and dairy products. It's one of the number one polluters and a huge waste of grain feeding these miserable beasts.

People are able to get so riled up nowadays and rally behind causes but this one is serious on many levels and you don't see it addressed much except by vegans.

How do you propose this happens, though?

 

[Zelig]

How do you propose this happens, though?

Well my preference would be to tax food to capture the costs of all the negative externalities.

 

[warpus]

Seems to me that if we got rid of all factory farms, there wouldn't be enough food to feed everyone. I could be completely wrong about that. If I'm not though, the solution to get rid of them would have to include replacements of some sort.

 

[El_Machinae]

How do you propose this happens, though?

Asking you to massively reduce your factory-farmed animal product consumption.

 

[Yeekim]

We could tax pork farms and subsidize cricket farms, I guess.

 

[Farm Boy]

The one problem I see with factory farming is that the quality of the product is low. Where it can be avoided, it should. But let us not be blind to the causes, it is a product of increased urbanization. In a world where most people refuse to give up eating stuff imported from the otehr side of the world, or prefer to buy something slightly cheaper online than from some local store, it's not going to be reversed. The world would have to change first. Can it?

I don't know. Increased tolerance for traditionally non-urban activity in heavily urban space? It's possible. Some places seem to kind of dip their toes in it. But I don't people will much tolerate livestock, I'm hard pressed to imagine they'll put up with native wild insects. At least, not if they carry disease, which they do. Or bite, which they do. Or kids are allergic to them, which they are. Wildlife is tolerable up until the point it eats or stings. It's possible though, maybe.

 

[Snerk]

Seems to me that if we got rid of all factory farms, there wouldn't be enough food to feed everyone. I could be completely wrong about that. If I'm not though, the solution to get rid of them would have to include replacements of some sort.

Depends how you look at it. If we set it up as a calorie equation then we would not need a replacement, we would in fact get a calorie surplus. As we feed animals calories and get fewer total calories out in the finished product meat.
From a more realistic market economic standpoint we would probably indeed need a replacement to make up for the decreased amount of meat on the total supply. The alternative is to change eating habits of people, and that is proving very hard indeed. In vitro grown meat is probably our best hope in the future.

 

[warpus]

Asking you to massively reduce your factory-farmed animal product consumption.

I'm just one person, my shopping habits aren't going to change anything, though. If I saw tens/hundreds of millions of people doing this, then yeah, that'd be something I could get behind and alter my lifestyle for. But that isn't happening.

Depends how you look at it. If we set it up as a calorie equation then we would not need a replacement, we would in fact get a calorie surplus. As we feed animals calories and get fewer total calories out in the finished product meat.
From a more realistic market economic standpoint we would probably indeed need a replacement to make up for the decreased amount of meat on the total supply. The alternative is to change eating habits of people, and that is proving very hard indeed. In vitro grown meat is probably our best hope in the future.

If factory grown meat tasted the same and was priced similar to regular meat, I would switch. But is it a given that these fake meat factories would be any better than the existing real meat ones?

 

[BenitoChavez]

Seems to me that if we got rid of all factory farms, there wouldn't be enough food to feed everyone. I could be completely wrong about that. If I'm not though, the solution to get rid of them would have to include replacements of some sort.

Apparently food waste is a big problem. If the entire process from farm to consumer was more efficient we would have way more than enough food to feed everyone.

 

[El_Machinae]

Altered behaviour would trigger market forces. We cannot predict that 'there wouldn't be enough food' when we're currently wasting calories and fuel growing meat.

That's what I figured but I wanted to make sure. Although it seems to me humans wouldn't let all the land grow wild again. It is more likely that we would re-purpose it to some other human based activity. Humans tend to view previously occupied lands and wilderness as either "waste" or "potential".

I tend to see it as 'a natural resource to use (even consume) wisely'.

But I want to point out that there are many dimensions to the issue with factory farming, and they're independent of each other. We have a hard time with adding factors when it comes to morality. Two independent reasons should add to each other, but people who are experience dissonance will combine the reasons why it doesn't apply to their case.

We're experiencing a huge extinction event, and part of that is conversion of land-use. Factory farming contributes because we need a lot of grain to grow a cow, and so we increasingly convert land that could stand as a buffer system in extinctions. Slowing (or even reversing) this trend would slow the current anthropomorphic extinction rate.

Extinctions are like bankruptcies in an economy. A low-boil of bankruptcies is expect, or even fine. A higher rate might be tolerable. But there's a tipping point where things just get worse.

A second factor is that we use an incredible amount of fossil carbon in order to grow meat. Look at a liter of diesel. By some approximations, that's the amount of fuel used to provide you with one day's food. That's a lot, and it's (obviously) unsustainable. More importantly, it's one of the greatest drivers of climate change (which also has a series of independent reasons to be slowed).

Factory farming animals is one-two hit on our ecology and on our environment.

I'm just one person, my shopping habits aren't going to change anything, though. If I saw tens/hundreds of millions of people doing this, then yeah, that'd be something I could get behind and alter my lifestyle for. But that isn't happening.

I know. You're loathe to modify your behaviour regarding environmental issues until you find you are following everyone else first. Or you're forced by legislation.

 

[Samson]

Factory farming of animals is the way of producing meat, milk and eggs that uses the least land and is the best for the environment. If you want to end it you have to pick either mass veganism (or something very close) or more environmental degradation.

Industrial arable agriculture (is that still factory farming?) is the way of producing calories that uses the least land and is the best for the environment. If you want to end it you have to kill most people in the world.

 

[Azem.Ocram]

https://www.sciencealert.com/adding-seaweed-to-cattle-feed-could-reduce-methane-production-by-70

It is entirely possible to make factory farmed meat healthier to eat and to reduce its methane production by introducing algae into the diet of the livestock. Algae is carbon neutral to carbon negative and reduces flatulence of cows.

However, The Amazon Rainforest is suffering deforestation in part from the increased demand for arable land to grow crops to feed cows. There are sustainable ways to produce meat but factory farming is never best. The best is for animals to graze on pastures where crops cannot easily be grown.

 

[warpus]

One of the problems is that everyone wants growth growth growth, all the time, forever. So every day we have more and more people to feed, and more and more middle class people wanting to eat more and more elaborate foods.

Even if all of North America started eating carrots only, we'd still be nowhere near fixing this problem.

 

[Zelig]

Even if all of North America started eating carrots only, we'd still be nowhere near fixing this problem.

Are you sure? That's a pretty extreme claim.

 

[warpus]

Are you sure? That's a pretty extreme claim.

There's what, over 7 billion people on this planet? And North America has what, 7% of all that?

Plus you've got to look at trends and not just the current situation. Where is the world's fastest rising middle class? Not in North America. There's lots and lots of people just joining the middle class, or about to, and they all want to eat middle class food and drive middle class cars.

If we eliminate the consumption of meat in North America, that's a good start, but I'd bet by the time we are finished weening those people off meat, there'll be an even larger number of new people eating meat in Asia.

 

[innonimatu]

Isn't identifying it as a product of urbanization the same as saying to change it, people will need to be willing to stop living in cities?

Not if the size of the city allows for it to be supplied by its hinterland. It is possible to live in a city without losing contact with the places where it gets its supplies from, and understanding the issues the city raises. But for that to happen those must not be so far away as to be "invisible".

 

[Zkribbler]

Here's an article predicting that "clean meats" will begin appearing in restaurants this year and on store shelves in 2021. Burgers will begin ~ $11.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/01/health/clean-in-vitro-meat-food/index.html

Taste = the same.
Evil fats out; healthy omega-3 fatty acids in.
No cross-contamination, which sickens 48 million people per year and kills 3,000.
Clean meat production could result in 78% to 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions, use 7% to 45% less energy, 99% less land, and 82% to 96% less water than traditional methods.

 

[Synobun]

That's one of the better articles I've seen about in-vitro meat. Thanks for posting it!

 

[Ryika]

$11 for a Hamburger? Who's supposed to buy THAT?

Kind of randomly, I googled whether Muslims would consider lab-grown meat to be halal, and the overall opinion seems to be that yes, if the cells from which it was grown were halal, and the process is halal, then the lab-grown meat would also be halal. Didn't expect that.