InsertNameHere's recent activity

  2. Comment on The best way to help bees? Don’t become a beekeeper like I did. in ~enviro

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    For a short summary: ...

    For a short summary:

    But what I didn’t know was that by keeping bees I would only be helping one species of bee – the domesticated honeybee, which doesn’t really need saving – and possibly harming others.

    ...

    If you want to help a variety of bees, the best way is to plant flowers that bloom sequentially from early spring to late autumn – even if you only have a window box or pots on a patio. Avoid gardening with chemicals, and leave areas undisturbed where solitary bees and bumblebees can nest. But don’t take up beekeeping

    35 votes

  4. Comment on Consider the lobster in ~food

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    If you want to read in a non-pdf format, the article is also archived here:...

    If you want to read in a non-pdf format, the article is also archived here:

    http://www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobsterd996.html?printable=true

    or

    http://www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html (though this link still makes you have to go through page by page)

    5 votes

  6. Comment on What should kids know about factory farming? in ~food

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    However, one should ask what purpose that serves in practice. For one, it would create a false sense of what the meat industry looks like. Keep in mind that in the US ~98.7% of animals are factory...

    However, one should ask what purpose that serves in practice. For one, it would create a false sense of what the meat industry looks like. Keep in mind that in the US ~98.7% of animals are factory farmed and the figure is similarly high globally

    15 votes

  8. Comment on US federal grants will replace tunnels beneath roads that let water pass but not fish in ~enviro

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    Ah that makes sense now, thank you for that!

    Ah that makes sense now, thank you for that!

  9. Comment on US federal grants will replace tunnels beneath roads that let water pass but not fish in ~enviro

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    Is the complicated part here mainly that putting something blocking fish might also lead to a backup in debris, in turn stopping water flow? Or is it that whatever's blocking fish flow can wear...

    Is the complicated part here mainly that putting something blocking fish might also lead to a backup in debris, in turn stopping water flow? Or is it that whatever's blocking fish flow can wear away if the ground it's connected to wears away? Both? Wasn't completely clear to me from the article

    1 vote

  10. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    Perhaps not in the area you are (maybe the diseases circulating there have sufficient vaccines at the moment?), but there are plenty of articles out there talking about how it's been in widespread...

    Perhaps not in the area you are (maybe the diseases circulating there have sufficient vaccines at the moment?), but there are plenty of articles out there talking about how it's been in widespread use over the past decades.

    There's someone who even wrote an entire PhD thesis on it:

    Oral exposure with herd-derived animal materials has been widely used in swine production
    over the years     to stimulate herd immunity as a method to control and prevent diseases

    [...]

    Despite wide use of controlled oral exposure over in swine the past 40 years, there is a
    general lack of scientific information available supporting this intervention other than E. coli
    and Transmissible Gastroenteritis (TGE) virus control. This lack of scientific data and mixed
    results in the field when attempting to control other pathogens has generated much
    controversy among practicing veterinarians

    https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/f250c158-3e9a-4059-b78d-87bd76bf566a/content

    Here's another article looking at another timeframe where it was common in the US

    The most common practice used to initiate herd immunity in US pig farms during the 2013–2017 epidemic when no PEDV vaccines were available, was use of whole-herd feedback using a load-close-expose protocol

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168170220301209

    5 votes

  11. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    It is indeed significantly higher in GHG emissions because ruminants produce large volumes of methane from digestion https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local/

    It is indeed significantly higher in GHG emissions because ruminants produce large volumes of methane from digestion

    The most important insight from this study: there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents). While peas emits just 1 kilogram per kg.

    Overall, animal-based foods tend to have a higher footprint than plant-based. Lamb and cheese both emit more than 20 kilograms CO2-equivalents per kilogram. Poultry and pork have lower footprints but are still higher than most plant-based foods, at 6 and 7 kg CO2-equivalents, respectively.

    [...]

    Whether you buy it from the farmer next door or from far away, it is not the location that makes the carbon footprint of your dinner large, but the fact that it is beef.

    https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local/

    3 votes

  12. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

    InsertNameHere
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    I agree this thread is unusually hostile, but I see the hostility originating from the opposite direction than you might. It's hard to look at what goes on in the meat industry. It's...

    I agree this thread is unusually hostile, but I see the hostility originating from the opposite direction than you might. It's hard to look at what goes on in the meat industry. It's uncomfortable. Most people feel things they'd rather not, so there is a large temptation (not even consciously or intentionally) to apply some of our feelings to the messenger talking about it.

    It takes no one with bad intent for that to happen. Statements merely asking people to reflect on contradictions between action and belief can become seen as deeply personal attacks. The result is harsh claims directed back; that someone is just trying to shame them or be morally superior when that's not their intent

    To respond to some of the other claims, it's worth noting that factory farming is the vast vast majority. Even with labels like "free-range", they are extremely likely to come from factory farms. [1] In the US it represents well over 99% of animal agriculture as per the article here from earlier

    Globally the picture is quite similar at around 90%. [2] Keep in mind that this includes lower-income countries that produce at lower quantities/densities due to lower consumption. Higher-income countries are going to be even higher

    The kinds of consumption reductions you need to make anything but factory farming exist are likely much higher than you may think. For instance, the US would need a 4x reduction in beef consumption just to use grass-fed only production just to have enough land to do it. That'd also come away with 8% higher methane emissions due to longer grazing times and kill ~23 million more cattle due to lower slaughter weights [3]. If we wanted to get rid of those other impacts, we'd need further reductions.

    Advocacy for reductions alone is unlikely to achieve that level of drop. Whatever position is being advocated will likely be compromised on. If one compromises from a position of compromise, it's not likely to get very far. If one advocates for a stronger position, you're more likely to see the compromise position be a large reduction rather than something like a say 5% reduction

    [1] Free-range just requires technically having access to the outside light which companies will interpret to just mean "they can have the tiniest sliver with no roof but everything can still be extremely crowded". Here's one Tyson employee calling the "free range" label meaningless. Even at that those loose requirements aren't even followed all the time. Here's one example of a "certified free range " operation that turned out to not be free range at all, here's another, another, and so on

    [2] https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates

    [3] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

    13 votes

  13. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    I think that's a misinterpretation of what they are saying. They aren't saying they won't debate/argue with people, instead they are saying that it feels frustrating because they feel often like...

    I think that's a misinterpretation of what they are saying. They aren't saying they won't debate/argue with people, instead they are saying that it feels frustrating because they feel often like they're wasting their time doing so. That they're frustrated when people agree about its horror but also who won't agree to do anything about it (which they are saying feels like time wasted). That's what more what they are getting at

    8 votes

  14. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    While plant farms still aren't always great for workers, there is still plenty of harm unique to meat production that we'd be able to entirely remove. For instance, inherent to animal farming that...
    • Exemplary

    While plant farms still aren't always great for workers, there is still plenty of harm unique to meat production that we'd be able to entirely remove.

    For instance, inherent to animal farming that isn't really there for crop farming: giving PTSD to slaughterhouse workers

    For an anecdote from a worker

    Soon, though, I realised there was no point pretending that it was just another job

    [...]

    As I spent day after day in that large, windowless box, my chest felt increasingly heavy and a grey fog descended over me. At night, my mind would taunt me with nightmares, replaying some of the horrors I'd witnessed throughout the day.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683

    For a denser but more academic/scientific source

    There is evidence that slaughterhouse employment is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. SHWs [slaughterhouse workers] have described suffering from trauma, intense shock, paranoia, anxiety, guilt and shame (Victor & Barnard, 2016), and stress (Kristensen, 1991). There was evidence of higher rates of depression (Emhan et al., 2012; Horton & Lipscomb, 2011; Hutz et al., 2013; Lander et al., 2016; Lipscomb et al., 2007), anxiety (Emhan et al., 2012; Hutz et al., 2013; Leibler et al., 2017), psychosis (Emhan et al., 2012), and feelings of lower self-worth at work (Baran et al., 2016). Of particular note was that the symptomatology appeared to vary by job role. Employees working directly with the animals (e.g., on the kill floor or handling the carcasses) were those who showed the highest prevalence rates of aggression, anxiety, and depression (Hutz et al., 2013; Richards et al., 2013).

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380211030243

    Injury rates are also higher even compared to other dangerous injuries

    Together, poultry slaughtering and processing companies reported more severe injuries to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) than many industries that are popularly recognized as hazardous, such as sawmills, industrial building construction, and oil and gas well drilling

    https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/09/04/when-were-dead-and-buried-our-bones-will-keep-hurting/workers-rights-under-threat

    9 votes

  15. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

    InsertNameHere
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    For anyone curious, you can watch it at watchdominion.org. Certainly a very eye-opening documentary

    For anyone curious, you can watch it at watchdominion.org. Certainly a very eye-opening documentary

    6 votes

  16. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    For some poll stats here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53787329 Side note: I should note I cut out a mention (using a [...]) of one of the polls the article said had a similar...

    For some poll stats here:

    Black Americans are almost three times as likely to be vegan and vegetarian than other Americans

    [...] a 2015 poll by the Vegetarian Resource Group, that found 8% of black people were strictly vegetarian, compared to 3.4% overall.

    Recently, a January poll by Gallup found that 31% of non-white Americans had reduced their meat consumption in the past year, compared to only 19% of white Americans.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53787329

    Side note: I should note I cut out a mention (using a [...]) of one of the polls the article said had a similar breakdown to the Vegetarian Resource Group because I couldn't find the actual stat they cite mentioned in the linked poll. I think the BBC might have linked to the wrong poll? Everything else seems to check out, so still a good article overall

    9 votes

  17. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    Though even at that it's hardly even "optimal", the article notes it still is risky and introduces other diseases that you don't mean to. I would also wonder about the risk of getting prion...

    Though even at that it's hardly even "optimal", the article notes it still is risky and introduces other diseases that you don't mean to. I would also wonder about the risk of getting prion diseases because doing this exact practice for cattle is mainly how mad cow disease comes about

    Cattle are believed to have been infected from being fed meat and bone meal (MBM) that contained the remains of other cattle who spontaneously developed the disease or scrapie-infected sheep products.[3] The outbreak increased throughout the United Kingdom due to the practice of feeding meat-and-bone meal to young calves of dairy cows.[3][8]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy

    Though I should mention that there is also atypical mad cow disease where it shows up randomly but that isn't the main way it comes about

    10 votes

  18. Comment on The pork industry’s forced cannibalism, explained in ~food

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    TL;DR for the title: The article itself goes into more depth about all the horrific things in the pork industry such as these

    TL;DR for the title:

    Employees [from this investigation] can be seen removing the intestines of dead, disease-infected piglets and mixing them with piglet feces in a blender — a mixture to be fed to the adult breeding pigs — causing one worker to gag.

    The practice, called “feedback,” is common in the pork business (or “controlled oral exposure” in industry jargon).

    The article itself goes into more depth about all the horrific things in the pork industry such as these

    The pork industry has pushed pigs to their biological limits, leading to many bizarre practices beyond feedback, many of which are inhumane. To name one example recently in the news: There are horse farms that impregnate horses, extract their blood for a serum, abort their pregnancies, and then sell the serum to pig farms to induce puberty in young female pigs and produce larger litters. Holden Farms, like most pig breeding farms, confine pregnant pigs in gestation crates, cages so small they can’t turn around for practically their entire lives.

    16 votes