Civil rights for animals.

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United States of America Metis
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Metis »

Many make an ecological argument for not eating meat. They claim that eating grain directly rather than feeding it to livestock and then eating the livestock saves energy. In part, this is correct. As you go up a trophic level you generally lose 90% of the energy stored in the previous level.

However, the ecological argument against meat eating has it problems. The major one regarding animals like cattle is that a great number of them are fed things that humans can't eat, like grass, ensilage or chopped alfalfa. Even farmed pigs are fed things humans can't readily digest, find unpalatable or throw away (several large pig farms use sterilized edible garbage thrown out from city restaurants for feed). Wild deer browse leaves and also predate grain and garden crops. Sockeye salmon are filter feeders, eating oceanic plankton that humans would expend far too much energy to obtain, even if they could make it palatable. And so on.

Then, we need to take into consideration transportation and the fuel that growing edible plant material requires. Plant material has much less energy per unit volume and thus takes up more space than meat does. Thus, the fuel costs for transportation are higher. Much of the grain grown for livestock production is used locally too, which saves even more transportation fuel.

A sustainable meat source that feeds on plant and algal biomass that humans can't eat or can't readily obtain is ecologically sound.
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United States of America Mvp618
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Mvp618 »

Unfortunately most meat produced in western societies is not done in a sustainable fashion. The trend in meat consumption has been a steady increase, and that unfortunately leads to means of production to satiate that increase. Factory farming is not a sustainable method of producing meat products. Factory farming is responsible for a large methane and carbon dioxide release, which are the two greenhouse gasses most responsible for climate change. This all being said, the agricultural industry responsible for the production of produce is arguably just as bad for the environment. I still try to go out of my way to avoid meat one or twice a week.
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Great Britain Panmaster
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Panmaster »

Does this mean no more beating cows & sheep to death with the butt of a blunderbuss?
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

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Re: Civil rights for animals.

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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Gendarme »

I'm surprised you're suddenly acting like everything is fine and we need to focus our attention on saving the animals from manslaughter. Priorities should be as such (or at least similar):

1) you/your family member/your relative/your friend
2) your useful pet (e.g. dog)/your neighbour/your countryman
3) your useless pet (e.g. guinea-pig)
4) a human who doesn't qualify as any of the above
5) an animal who doesn't qualify as any of the above
6) a plant/a bacteria/a stone/a bucket of shit

Now, we're heading towards an economic depression, which can very well start civil wars (especially in countries like Sweden with 500% immigrants). There are wars, there's terrorism, there's slavery, tyranny, poverty, famine, murder all around the world, and in our countries too - and it has been this way for a long time, and will continue to be (and probably get worse) as far as I can tell. Humanity as a whole probably hasn't even achieved anything. Does the average human really live an easier and happier life than the average wild ape? I certainly live an easier life, but happier? not so sure - however, we are all far above the average human.

Of all the shit going on, the last thing we should care about is the poor cow having a bad life and then dying, never getting to enjoy the short time on earth (#yolo etc.). It is sad that people have never cared, or at least never realised that they should care and not trust "Mr Prime minister" to take care of all evil in the world (highly ironic).

If we're going to discuss cattle, let's at least discuss the consequences of the massive amounts of antibiotics given to them, and the fact that the meat is not as healthy for consumption because the animals are eating corn instead of grass, which is what wild animals had been eating for the past eternity (e.g too much Omega-6, to little Omega-3).
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

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Garja wrote: ↑
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I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Gendarme »

The climate change argument really manages to find its way into every damn topic. From Donald Trump to vegetarianism. Disgusting.
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Netherland Antilles Laurence Drake
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Laurence Drake »

Gendarme wrote:The climate change argument really manages to find its way into every damn topic. From Donald Trump to vegetarianism. Disgusting.

Because climate change has important consequences? I've also noticed you've stopped replying to your thread.
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United States of America Metis
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Metis »

Gendarme wrote:Does the average human really live an easier and happier life than the average wild ape? I certainly live an easier life, but happier?


This could be the subject of a thread in and of itself as its one of the "big questions" that's been asked by philosophers since human civilization began. To put it in a nutshell, though, most came to the conclusion that a happy person is one who fits well into his place in life, whatever that may be.

This means that a happy bull is living the natural life of a bull, with plenty of milk to drink when it is a calf, protection from wolves and mountain lions until it's large enough to protect itself, as much food as it desires, fellow young bulls to butt heads with and exert dominance over, lots of heifers to breed with and a death only after it produces offspring to carry on its genetic lineage. It's in the last part of the "bull's happy life" in which the farmed bull differs from that of its wild ancestors. Farmed bulls usually receive a quick, painless death instead of being harried by wolves and eaten alive after spending a winter starving because they couldn't find any grass.

Regarding what cattle are fed. I live in an agrarian community and have raised cattle, not to mention that there are feedlots all over the place here (my next-door neighbor feeds 500 head right outside town and there is a substantial-sized operation about ten miles away), so I can see on a daily basis what they are fed.

Out here, the cattle are usually pastured for most of their lives. They are initially put out on grass or wheat and then later onto corn or milo stubble as they mature and the crops are harvested. When they are moved into the feed lots they are first fed either hay, alfalfa, ensilage or crop residue supplemented with molasses. It's usually only just before slaughter that they are switched to a more grain-intensive diet to fatten them up to the extent of marbling that the consumer demands.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Gendarme »

Laurence Drake wrote:
Gendarme wrote:The climate change argument really manages to find its way into every damn topic. From Donald Trump to vegetarianism. Disgusting.

Because climate change has important consequences? I've also noticed you've stopped replying to your thread.

The discussion was mainly between me and Jerom, because nobody else really joined the discussion fully, and since he stopped replying the thread died. I generally ignore your posts on all threads because you are almost never serious, but if you think I have failed to reply to something I should have, let me know.
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New Zealand JakeyBoyTH
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by JakeyBoyTH »

Dolan wrote:On the contrary, I think human rights should be revoked.

And anyone who wants to enjoy this status should pass some tests, including an intelligence test. Human rights shouldn't be simply given to any redneck who doesn't give a shit about respecting yours. It should be a status that you should fight for obtaining in every generation. I think we went too far with human rights, some people are hiding behind this concept to protect all sorts of paraphilias as well as to blackmail richer societies in order to gain citizenship and live on the welfare of another country.

Automatic human rights promote moral complacency and an escalation of entitlements (people who based on their current status of "protected human" demand more and more rights in different areas, to satisfy their own personal irritations and sense of entitlement).

On the subject at hand, I think there can be no question of animal rights, because, with the exception of domesticated animals, they're not even part of our societies. And even if they were, they don't have the capacity to reciprocate, so they couldn't exercise those rights. They would also not be aware that they have such rights. So it would all be yet another display of human self-centeredness and caprice. How could the rights of a species originate with another species? And also, how could their enforcement depend on another species' whim? That's a clear sign of species conceitedness, it's like you as a human see yourself as the source of all rights that need to be bestowed on this planet. Whether or not those other species want them or are even aware of them. Not to mention that they cannot respect your "human rights", if the occasion arises. So it would be clearly just an exercise in human pretentiousness.

And all this can be cured by revoking human rights and requiring humans to pass some tests before gaining the status of protected individual. Not every mouthbreather deserves human rights, otherwise we are headed towards idiocracy, where the big number of idiots decide who should rule and what policies should institutions have.


This has got to be a troll post. Who decides how much one life is to another and what is the norm? This is pretty much discrimination.
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United States of America Metis
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Metis »

If humans were autotrophs, capable of attaining energy directly from the sun or chemical compounds and then using it to power the assembly of organic molecules, the animal-eating debate would be moot. However, we are heterotrophs and need to consume organic material to survive. Do we per se have to consume meat? Well, no but as I have pointed out meat can be a part of a sustainable protein source. Meat adds to the amount of food we can produce and also has traditionally allowed humans to survive in places and conditions that precluded the growing of crops. In fact, widespread agriculture is a very new thing in the lifespan of our species and has only been possible for the past 10,000 years or so because the earth is now in an interglacial period.

Our proto-primate ancestors fed on insects, worms and whatever else was small enough for them to catch. All primates today will eat meat when given the chance, even "vegetarian" ones. Our closest relatives will definitely eat meat. In fact, they have been seen organizing hunting parties to trap and kill other primates. It's going to be a very long time before we have the ability to synthesize all of the edible organic material we need to survive. Until then we will eat other life forms or the substances they produce.

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Netherland Antilles Laurence Drake
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Laurence Drake »

Gendarme wrote:
Laurence Drake wrote:
Gendarme wrote:The climate change argument really manages to find its way into every damn topic. From Donald Trump to vegetarianism. Disgusting.

Because climate change has important consequences? I've also noticed you've stopped replying to your thread.

The discussion was mainly between me and Jerom, because nobody else really joined the discussion fully, and since he stopped replying the thread died. I generally ignore your posts on all threads because you are almost never serious, but if you think I have failed to reply to something I should have, let me know.

What are you talking about? All of my posts are serious. They just aren't glum and pensive like yours.
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United States of America Metis
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Metis »

Could humans ever divorce themselves entirely from the natural food web? What would happen if we did? Well, I personally think that the perceived Man-nature dichotomy would grow even greater.

Far from preserving the natural world as some sort of a museum piece, I think that if Man were to completely remove himself from the natural food web by synthesizing all that he needed, he might then someday consider nature redundant and do away from it. By trying to remove humans from reliance on the natural world and thus "save" it, the eco-SJW-ultravegans of today might, if they got their way, in fact condemn nature to die in the far future. This idea, of course isn't a new one and is portrayed in the movie Silent Running. When Man realizes that he is a part of nature, he will strive to protect it.

As we approach Thanksgiving here in America, it reminds me that the old peoples, rather than thanking a nonexistent god, instead thanked the food itself. When paleolithic peoples killed a cave bear they would place its skull in a position of honor at the table because they realized that by its dying it had sustained them. So instead of thanking an imaginary "spirit in the sky," instead thank the farmers who grew the crops, the millers and packers who transformed the raw foodstuff into produce, the truckers who transported the produce, the grocers who gathered it all into one convenient place and the breadwinners and cooks of the family for buying the food and preparing the meal.

If you believe that you are going to a "better place" when you die, then why bother preserving the world you live in?

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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by deleted_user »

Metis wrote: As you go up a trophic level you generally lose 10% of the energy stored in the previous level.


As little as 10% of the energy is passed onto the next tropic level, you mean. We lose 90% of it. Now that's pretty terribly inefficient if you ask me. Yes, there are drawbacks to switching to a more plant based diet but I find it hard to believe those subtle things such as an increased volume for transportation will negate a 90% increase in energy efficiency; not to mention the livestock industry is a significant contributor to greenhouse gases (but we already know your opinion on global warming).
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by howlingwolfpaw »

there is a lot of transportation to support the meat industry, they have to ship food in, waste out, transport animals, plus Most animal feed is GMOs and has a whole slop of things with that.
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Netherland Antilles Laurence Drake
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Laurence Drake »

but its fine because it gets transported by the animals anyway
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United States of America Metis
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Metis »

deleted_user wrote:
Metis wrote: As you go up a trophic level you generally lose 10% of the energy stored in the previous level.


As little as 10% of the energy is passed onto the next tropic level, you mean. We lose 90% of it.


Correct, I forgot to reverse numbers when I edited my post to present the statement differently. In general, and in a very simplified food chain, only about 10% of the energy in the biomass of one trophic level can be converted to biomass at the next level. However, this is only a general statement geared to get introductory ecology students thinking about energy budgets. Things are far more complex in actual food webs.

For instance, cattle eat grass but they don't actually digest most of the plant directly; it's the microbes in their gut that do most of the digesting. The cattle then digest and assimilate molecules left over by the microbes, as well as the microbes themselves. The microbial community of a cow's gut itself is a highly complex food web. For instance, one study found 21 microbial phyla in a cow's gut community. A phylum in a large encompassing group of related organisms. For instance, all fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds (plus a few other esoteric taxa) belong to the phylum Chordata. Think of the cow's gut community as a marine ecosystem, complete with all of its algae, plants, worms, molluscs, crustaceans, fish, mammals, birds, etc. and you won't be far off in terms of species diversity. Even we humans have more in terms of numbers of bacterial cells living in and on us than we do our own cells -- every macro-organism is an ecosystem.

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16116

It makes absolutely no sense to totally dispense with eating meat based purely on an ecological standpoint because, as I've previously stated, livestock can assimilate energy from types of biomass that humans either can't digest, can't readily obtain or find unpalatable and then convert it into handy high-energy food sources that we can and will eat. You could choke down grass and leaves every waking moment of every day but you would still starve to death. You could also live on worms but few humans are going to do so, given the choice of a ham and eggs breakfast.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by howlingwolfpaw »

as one on a plant based diet and almost totally vegan i do not expect there ever to be a time when all do not eat it, but for animal rights they need to be treated better. for the animals health and well being and for the consumer. With this and ending subsidies meat will reflect its true cost at around 80-90$ per lb and that will then curb consumption.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by Metis »

Speaking of things ecological, I've been composting kitchen scraps with earthworms for a few months now. Thus far, I've gotten about 40 pounds of nice compost from an input of kitchen garbage, dry yard waste and old newspapers. My worm community has tripled in size too. When the weather warms I'm going to let them loose to be free range worms in an outdoor compost pile.

Howling, I think that you misplaced a decimal point. Total cash costs in 2015 averaged $83.15 per 100 pounds of beef produced, not one pound.
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Re: Civil rights for animals.

Post by howlingwolfpaw »

im talking hypthetical cost if you remove subsidies to the beef industry, directly or indirectly like GMO food production. I dont remember exactly where I got that number from but it was derived mathematically as what beef should actually cost.

Worm composint is great, we actually got one of those rotary tumblers but not sure if we need to do more to get it started as it soon became a wet mess. but we will see.

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