It is not that hard to live on a plant-based diet, even if you slip some of the time. My plant-based friends and family members (and I am plant-based when I am with them) have all chosen the path because of practices like this.
I don't understand how people can deny the suffering when so many slaughterhouse or factory farming expose videos exist. Literal screaming from these animals. It's evil.
I'm not a vegetarian either, but I do only buy meat that is pasture farmed. I'm lucky to live in an area that provides this, though the cost is obviously higher.
Ideally the transition to lab grown products will be quick, but even if they end up being the cheapest option I imagine there will be a persistent cultural aversion, both through naturalism fallacy and the 'back in my day' factor.
When pocket-book collides with abstraction, pocket-book wins for most population other than the kind of economically comfortable well-educated who inhabit these spaces.
Lab grown meat and dairy can’t come soon enough. Greener, cleaner, safer, humane/guilt free/morally superior, and best of all, for meat lovers you can fine tune the meat to come out exactly how you want it. Perfect wagyu steak, bluefin tuna, pork belly, chicken ranging from fat free breast to oily dark meat for all sorts of dishes, you name it. The only barrier is the the famous meat producing regions of the world and their associated lobbies pushing back. But as with everything that is superior in the long term, it’ll prevail if anything eventually due to economics (mass production and distribution) and superior quality, even bringing over those who don’t care about the welfare aspect.
Timely post, we’re staying at a place in rural Fukushima Japan, I asked for no beef as we don’t usually eat red meat and that usually covers it for us, instead they served us….horse 😐🫠
Well - leaving aside the virtue-signaling of people posting they are veggie and vegan (I don't personally like meat myself and basically am a non-ideological veggie) anectdote of urbane upper-income college educated metropolitans is just about 100% besides the point: broader populatio, people broadly like to eat meat and they're going to. And people also broadly like to eat as cheaply as they can.
It is therefore more than slightly ridiculous Noah you wrote this: "20% is a significant increase; it’s possible that the American public, wearied by several years of inflation, is less inclined to care about pig torture than they were when the polls I cited above were taken."
20% price increase is large and given the market demonstrated backlash on price increases of which beef (for reasons not related to this specific subject of humane(r) pig-farming says very evidently it is wish-casting wishful thinking to not price in that in end this is a luxury subject and if polling was done with explicit numbers attached one would - like the area of climate - get quite different numbers - and one needs to think in realistic terms on the paths then rather than wish-cassting (noting I am in no way favorable to the industrial-pig farming methods used, however upper-income urbane metropolitans need to collectively start thinking hard on any subject where there is going to be significant price impact on and have a hard realistic view of what popular backash will be when airy "I don't like that in the abstract" collides with "I have to pay 20%+ more for my bacon."
I rather distrust the label "factory farms" (particularly when one sees commercial aquaculture lumped into the category, nonsensically as the other alternative is free-catch) the specific case of pig-raising operations seems clearly rather nasty. That said idealising non-commercial agri is also romantic nonsense.
"Virtue-signaling" is a silly accusation. These people are expressing a moral stance. If people said that a child abuser was a horrible person, would you accuse them of virtue signaling?
Posting about one's personal consumption habits is the very height of Virtue Signalling where the sole utility is to say Look at Me I am a Good Person and a Virtuous Person and I don't "understand" (aka approve of and I look down on) why the unwashe Heathen don't act like me.
This is exactly the ongoing habit of the college urbane metropolitans - a kind of new age Victorianism.
Or as your own comment shows, virtue signaling by collapsing "eating meat with indifference" lumped into child-abuse.
Several commenters here have written about lab grown products solving the whole issue of eating other animals. And that makes perfect sense. But I guess it would ultimately result in the extinction of cows, pigs and chickens as species, right? I guess we could keep some protected so each species still propagates. And maybe it doesn't matter; if pigs have a horrible life from start to finish they'd rather not exist at all? But now I'm getting into the philosophy of pigs, which is pretty unfamiliar terrain.
Probably somewhat hypocritically, pork is the only protein I don't eat. As you point out the combination of smartest and worst treated animals is too much. You mention the economics of not eating pork, that if more people are like me it just makes pork cheaper and more price conscious people will just switch from beef to pork, which does negate the impact I guess. Well, i wasn't going for a social protest, just some peace of mind.
Good job and I feel embarrassed not to have known the extent of this abomination. I try to stick to wild game as much as possible at home. Would much prefer ordering impossible burger in a restaurant if it were available. Lab grown meat will hopefully come.
One of the reasons I am a vegan.
It is not that hard to live on a plant-based diet, even if you slip some of the time. My plant-based friends and family members (and I am plant-based when I am with them) have all chosen the path because of practices like this.
I don't understand how people can deny the suffering when so many slaughterhouse or factory farming expose videos exist. Literal screaming from these animals. It's evil.
I'm not a vegetarian either, but I do only buy meat that is pasture farmed. I'm lucky to live in an area that provides this, though the cost is obviously higher.
Ideally the transition to lab grown products will be quick, but even if they end up being the cheapest option I imagine there will be a persistent cultural aversion, both through naturalism fallacy and the 'back in my day' factor.
Simple
People like to eat meat boradly.
People like to have cheaper food.
When pocket-book collides with abstraction, pocket-book wins for most population other than the kind of economically comfortable well-educated who inhabit these spaces.
Ergo one needs realism
Lab grown meat and dairy can’t come soon enough. Greener, cleaner, safer, humane/guilt free/morally superior, and best of all, for meat lovers you can fine tune the meat to come out exactly how you want it. Perfect wagyu steak, bluefin tuna, pork belly, chicken ranging from fat free breast to oily dark meat for all sorts of dishes, you name it. The only barrier is the the famous meat producing regions of the world and their associated lobbies pushing back. But as with everything that is superior in the long term, it’ll prevail if anything eventually due to economics (mass production and distribution) and superior quality, even bringing over those who don’t care about the welfare aspect.
Timely post, we’re staying at a place in rural Fukushima Japan, I asked for no beef as we don’t usually eat red meat and that usually covers it for us, instead they served us….horse 😐🫠
Well - leaving aside the virtue-signaling of people posting they are veggie and vegan (I don't personally like meat myself and basically am a non-ideological veggie) anectdote of urbane upper-income college educated metropolitans is just about 100% besides the point: broader populatio, people broadly like to eat meat and they're going to. And people also broadly like to eat as cheaply as they can.
It is therefore more than slightly ridiculous Noah you wrote this: "20% is a significant increase; it’s possible that the American public, wearied by several years of inflation, is less inclined to care about pig torture than they were when the polls I cited above were taken."
20% price increase is large and given the market demonstrated backlash on price increases of which beef (for reasons not related to this specific subject of humane(r) pig-farming says very evidently it is wish-casting wishful thinking to not price in that in end this is a luxury subject and if polling was done with explicit numbers attached one would - like the area of climate - get quite different numbers - and one needs to think in realistic terms on the paths then rather than wish-cassting (noting I am in no way favorable to the industrial-pig farming methods used, however upper-income urbane metropolitans need to collectively start thinking hard on any subject where there is going to be significant price impact on and have a hard realistic view of what popular backash will be when airy "I don't like that in the abstract" collides with "I have to pay 20%+ more for my bacon."
I rather distrust the label "factory farms" (particularly when one sees commercial aquaculture lumped into the category, nonsensically as the other alternative is free-catch) the specific case of pig-raising operations seems clearly rather nasty. That said idealising non-commercial agri is also romantic nonsense.
"Virtue-signaling" is a silly accusation. These people are expressing a moral stance. If people said that a child abuser was a horrible person, would you accuse them of virtue signaling?
Posting about one's personal consumption habits is the very height of Virtue Signalling where the sole utility is to say Look at Me I am a Good Person and a Virtuous Person and I don't "understand" (aka approve of and I look down on) why the unwashe Heathen don't act like me.
This is exactly the ongoing habit of the college urbane metropolitans - a kind of new age Victorianism.
Or as your own comment shows, virtue signaling by collapsing "eating meat with indifference" lumped into child-abuse.
Several commenters here have written about lab grown products solving the whole issue of eating other animals. And that makes perfect sense. But I guess it would ultimately result in the extinction of cows, pigs and chickens as species, right? I guess we could keep some protected so each species still propagates. And maybe it doesn't matter; if pigs have a horrible life from start to finish they'd rather not exist at all? But now I'm getting into the philosophy of pigs, which is pretty unfamiliar terrain.
Probably somewhat hypocritically, pork is the only protein I don't eat. As you point out the combination of smartest and worst treated animals is too much. You mention the economics of not eating pork, that if more people are like me it just makes pork cheaper and more price conscious people will just switch from beef to pork, which does negate the impact I guess. Well, i wasn't going for a social protest, just some peace of mind.
Good job and I feel embarrassed not to have known the extent of this abomination. I try to stick to wild game as much as possible at home. Would much prefer ordering impossible burger in a restaurant if it were available. Lab grown meat will hopefully come.
Here,here! Time for lab grown meat. I still slip up all- too -frequently, but have radically cut meat consumption in recent years.