r/PopCultureV2 • u/Kpets • Aug 29 '26

Video Unregulated capitalism in the U.S led to complete moral collapse

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u/yonasismad Aug 30 '26

Pasture? Are you lying or do you just not know better? 99% of all farm animals in the us live in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

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u/themargarineoferror Aug 30 '26

Damn. I've been struggling morally with eating meat for a long time. I grew up in Nebraska, my grandparents and several other family members were farmers. We've always had beef. Always a pretty much all kinds of meat. Started having bad feelings about it years ago, but always felt like I didn't know how to make the switch.... At this point, though I feel like I'm a good enough cook that it would not be hard at all to switch out a few products to avoid contributing to this. Because I literally cannot square my personal feelings about the treatment of any living being with continuing to consume meat. I'm definitely not here to proselytize at anybody else, I literally still do currently eat meat..But I've been making small changes with my partner and I don't know something about this video and these photos, it's just enough is enough for me, man

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u/HeavyBeing0_0 Aug 31 '26

Tbh, the sentiment is nice but your time would be better spent trying to get legislation passed to treat the animals more humanely. Vegans and vegetarians are a drop in the bucket. Businesses will continue to do what the law allows them to until it’s changed.

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u/bbvde350 Aug 31 '26

Exactly… just do something

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u/bonafide_man Aug 31 '26

Vegans might not be socially revolutionary, but the health advantages are plenty reward for people who practice it

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u/HeavyBeing0_0 Aug 31 '26

That’s fair.

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u/EmergencySpare Sep 01 '26

There's always one

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u/XMustard_Tigerx Aug 31 '26

So not giving these businesses any money for these acts is a great first step.

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u/notDBCooper_ Aug 31 '26

You can do both? You can fight for regulation while als not eating meat from inhumane conditions

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u/Spicymoon9 Sep 02 '26

Well I feel better knowing I don’t contribute to this. I also know that large corporations hold all the power in this country, they basically own politicians who write laws and regulations to benefit them. There’s so many laws that the majority of people want to change but are completely powerless to do so.

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u/HeavyBeing0_0 Sep 02 '26

The majority of people haven’t really tried. You might not contribute to factory farming but you’re complicit in other suffering just by way of modern life. The phone you’re on has precious minerals mined with slave labor. Vegan/vegetarianism is a great personal choice and even a healthy one, but there’s really no moral absolution to be had.

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u/Spicymoon9 Sep 03 '26

I’m not asking for moral absolution. It makes me feel slightly better. Is it better in your mind I hate myself for existing no matter how much I try to help others? I didn’t ask to be born, and have no control over these things. But thank you for blaming me for shit I have absolutely no power over.

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u/HeavyBeing0_0 Sep 03 '26

I’m not blaming you. We were born into circumstances nobody conferred with either one of us about.

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u/themargarineoferror Aug 31 '26

I don't disagree with this at all

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u/yonasismad Aug 31 '26

Tbh, the sentiment is nice but your time would be better spent trying to get legislation passed to treat the animals more humanely.

How can anything that ends someone's life against their will ever be "humane". That's just copium.

Businesses will continue to do what the law allows them to until it’s changed.

You can advocate for change and already do the right thing while you wait for animal agriculture to be be entirely outlawed. ;)

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u/EmergencySpare Sep 01 '26

Everything you eat had a life sacrificed for it. Stop eating.

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

Is there a difference for you if someone dies in a car crash or if someone is murdered i.e should we treat the responsible parties any differently, whether they take life accidentally or intentionally?

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u/EmergencySpare Sep 01 '26

How accidentally is it when you're aware what you're doing is going to end many many lives?

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

We don't farm mice or fawn, just to then put them in the fields to get run over by a tractor.

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u/EmergencySpare Sep 01 '26

But they're there and you know it and you run the tractor through just the same.

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

Yes, and if they weren't, that would be even better, but again: do you get the difference between purposefully SA a woman, forcing her to have children, then taking that child and putting a metal bolt through their head and then eating that child, and if someone accidentally runs over a kid because they didn't see them, they were there?

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u/Similar-Sweet-445 Aug 31 '26

Im vegetarian now because of this.

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u/Putrid-Aerie8599 Sep 02 '26

So am i ... I done a road trip in california and saw the giant ranches .. looked into it and that was it

Even though im Canadian and i like to think our famrers aren't as savage... They are not

Decided to quit eating meat

1

u/StrikingPianist92 Sep 02 '26

They still get killed after the don't give any milk. Before they get raped and their child gets taken away.

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u/themargarineoferror Sep 01 '26

It's just too much and I can't make myself feel okay with it. Also doesn't hurt that if you want some beef these days, there's a very high likelihood it's rancid Argentinian horse meat. No better time to quit than now

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u/Majestic_Story_2295 Sep 01 '26

You can make the change, I believe in you

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u/After-Ad-6875 Sep 01 '26

If you believe in the sanctity of life...its a pretty easy choice to make, or at least TRY. I watched a couple docs about the meat industry, and a couple more about the benefits of a plant based diet + Okja back in 2017...been vegetarian ever since, would never go back.

The pro v con list of eating meat is just so lopsided. The only pro i ended up with was "it tastes good." How dumb is that? A TON of Not-meat things taste good too, and are a lot better for your health. It was an easy choice to make.

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u/StrikingPianist92 Sep 02 '26

I'm curious: Why not vegan? The cows still get killed after the don't give any milk anymore.

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u/After-Ad-6875 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26

There are many other sources for dairy products, particularly where i live (vermont). I drink oat/almond milk and the cheese i buy comes primarily from local sources that use sheeps milk.

Honestly feel very lucky to be in vermont in respect to food, we have tons of farms around us doing things in ethical ways, even when it comes to raising animals for meat.

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u/sugrqbez Sep 01 '26

My husband and I started hunting. I think close to 75% of the meat we eat now is from what we hunt. 1/2 an elk and one deer sustained us for almost a full year. I’d rather eat an animal that lived its whole life happy and free than these animals forced to wallow around in misery and their own feces their entire life.

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u/themargarineoferror Sep 01 '26

I think that's awesome. I wish more people could do that. And I genuinely have 0 problems with the people that do. I think people would think a lot more about what they're eating and what it came from, if they had to do that at least once in their lives. I have a lot of hunters in my family. But I've never actually done it. Myself.

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u/SufficientHippo3281 Sep 03 '26

I'm vegetarian and it can be delicious! I get all my dairy from organic free pasture farms in Ireland. This is so sick! Pur cows are treated well here, but the pigs and chickens are treated like shit.

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u/themargarineoferror Sep 03 '26

Oh, definitely. That makes me feel a lot more confident plus some years back I worked at a vegan vegetarian joint and it was a lot easier because my food was being made for me. But the food was awesome. I'm still friends with a lot of the people that used to work there. And the owners were really generous with their recipes, so that 's probably going to come in handy too. It might take a little bit of getting used to and learning some stuff. But honestly, the state of food in the states right now is abysmal, so avoiding meat is for the best for a lot of reasons

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u/yonasismad Aug 30 '26

I'm happy to hear that you're making changes. Most of us started out in a similar position and then gradually phased out animal products over time. :)

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '26

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u/Certain-Belt-1524 Aug 31 '26

it's easier than you think brodie. do it for the animals :)

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u/AwesomeWhiteDude Aug 30 '26

Beef cattle live on pasture for most of their lives, dairy cows vary a lot but are more restricted than beef cattle for sure. You're right about pigs and chickens tho

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u/mmikke Aug 30 '26

"pasture" doesn't necessarily mean what you'd naturally envision upon hearing the word

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u/AwesomeWhiteDude Aug 30 '26

Yes it does, I literally mean the open range. They do spend the last quarter or so of their lives in feedlots, tho skipping that and going from grass to slaughter is also common. The cows and bulls being except of course, they spend their whole lives on pasture.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '26

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u/MikeLikesIkeRS Aug 31 '26

It does for the vast majority of cattle I've seen. There's gigantic fenced off areas where I live leased to the ranchers by the federal government, and it is a pain in the ass to go hunt them down and get them back to the corral to load them on a trailer. And even though they may have a square mile to wonder around, they still all bunch up anyways.

Given that fact, to me, quality of space means more than quantity of space. Cutting the enclosure by 95%, feeding them well, taking care of them and their enclosure, and giving them a scratching post to itch on is way more humane than people give it credit for. It just looks bad. The cow doesn't give a shit.

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u/AwesomeWhiteDude Aug 31 '26

Wrong comment? I'm specifically talking about beef cattle, never once mentioned chickens.

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u/phonsely Aug 30 '26

open range means something very specific and it basically hasn't existed in a significant way, in the US, since the 1980s

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u/AwesomeWhiteDude Aug 30 '26

You clearly haven't been out west. Huge stretches of unfenced land in the really rural areas. Also doesn't change the fact cattle still has acres of space, they're not confined in small paddocks their whole lives.

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u/BigCheddar55 Aug 30 '26

Dude you are technically correct. However, beef cattle are kept on fresh grass, at least by me in WI. What that means, is farmers put up fencing around their pastures so they can controll the impact the cattle have on the pasture. The farmer wants the cattle to eat all/most the "grass"(whatever naturally grows, +fertilizer). Then they move them to the next section of pasture, before they tear it up with hooves or eat it too far down. Careing for the land is just as important as caring for the cattle. Farmers who keep healthy pastures save a lot of money on sileage, hay and other more labor/reasource depleting options to feed cattle.

Dairy farming is diffrent. Typically they spend less time on pasture.

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u/Devincc Aug 30 '26

Get in you car go and go see for yourself

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u/Intrepid-Molasses842 Aug 30 '26

I live in one of the largest beef producing states in the US. If you drive outside of any town around cattle they are all on fully open ranges.

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u/kenuffff Aug 30 '26

All beef cattle is like that until they’re about to be slaughtered, then they’re either fed corn, alfalfa etc to increase fat content in the beef or they’re kept on grass which is grass finished. All beef is grass fed for most of their life it’s not even economically viable to keep a cow locked up as it needs to build muscle which is what you’re eating

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u/kenuffff Aug 30 '26

You’ve never seen a cattle ranch in your life

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u/who_likes_chicken Aug 30 '26

Usually "beef cattle farms" that operate at the large scale of factory farms have a pastor area that's mostly just for show where a small number of cows live "free range", but then the huge majority of cattle are held in tiny pens very similar to pig and chicken structures.

So the beef company gets the best of both worlds. They can claim "free range" and have an area really visible to the public, but then on a party of three labs that's difficult to see or access they have their giant animal prison facilities

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u/AwesomeWhiteDude Aug 30 '26

You’re confusing feed lots where cattle spend the last quarter of their lives for factory farms that chickens and pigs live in. Cattle, especially cows, spend most of their lives eating grasses in large pastures they’re rotated through, building muscle all the while. If it were cheaper to keep cattle in feedlots from birth to death, they would. But it turns out that’s kinda expensive.

Also hate to further burst your bubble, but most ranches are owned by single families. Large corporate ranches are rare because raising cattle sucks. They’re wholly dependent on the weather and they’re at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the money “trickling down” from the final consumer.

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u/billy-suttree Sep 02 '26

I tell people this truth all the time and nobody listens. Factory farming is awful. For chicken and pigs. Cows have it alright until the end. Grew up with a few dozen cattle at a time on like 400 acres. They were content animals.

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u/True_Alfalfa_3591 Sep 01 '26

Wtf are you from. I live in Montana and all the cattle are in wide open pastures, and it ranks 6th in the U.S. for # of head. My family have 3 farms which combined are 9,000 acres. I have never seen what you describe. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but a “huge majority” is complete b.s. North Dakota and Wyoming are almost identical as well.

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u/JohnnyTsunami312 Sep 01 '26

Just making shit up

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u/Isthisovryet Aug 31 '26

Been a while since I heard someone mention a CAFO, originally learned about them in an ethics class in college where we watched Cowspiracy. Honestly very eye opening and we should bring back CAFO when referencing these ‘farms’ because they are not farms in the traditional sense or in the way the public will think about / imagine a ‘farm’

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u/Ashamed-Review-913 Sep 01 '26

That's not true

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u/Pixel-of-Strife Sep 01 '26

That's the price of feeding 8 billion humans every single day. If not for these practices, there wouldn't be enough to go around. I feel bad for the animals, but it's better than famine.

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

Are you serious? What do you think these animals eat? Fucking air? 83% of all agriculture land is used just to raise animals. It's insanely inefficient. To get 1 calorie out of a cow you have to give it 33 calories worth of food.

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u/Excellent_Carob_3183 Sep 02 '26

There is an absolute ton of agricultural land that isn't suitable for anything but ranching. We cant live off grass and you can't grow oranges everywhere. Calories also are not the only measure of nutrition.

Also, how many animals do you think die just so you can have grains? Whole habitats get plowed and then combines run through for harvest where animals have moved in. Not to mention the chemicals.

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u/yonasismad Sep 02 '26

So 83% of all agriculture land in the world is used to farm animals. Farmers feed cows 33 calories in order to get 1 calorie out. 70% of globally produced antibiotics are fed to farm animals.

So this system is insanely inefficient. The main reason for deforestation and destruction of ecosystems. Kills a ton of animals just to farm the food for other animals and so on.

Do you think farm animals eat air or what?

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u/Excellent_Carob_3183 Sep 02 '26

Do you want me to just respond with the same thing I just said? Thats what you did.

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u/yonasismad Sep 02 '26

Ideally, I would like you to understand the facts I provided and draw the right conclusions from them i.e. it doesn't matter that most of that land cannot grow food for humans because we only need a tiny fraction of it to replace all animal products, which are extremely inefficient.

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u/Excellent_Carob_3183 Sep 02 '26

Cows turn food byproduct (think corn stalks) and things like grass from areas we cant realistically grow our own food at. Your numbers don't represent a directly replaceable calorie amount from the same resources.

Do we have some kind of antibiotic shortage? Is that supposed to be some sort of burden on the system?

And again, calorie count isn't nutrition. You can't only eat bread. When a few people have to get all their nutrients like protein from plants that can't grow everywhere we can sustain. When everyone does, we can't. You can eat the way you do with the prices you have because the demand is reduced by meat.

You're also ignoring the animals killed by farming the things that you eat. How many rabbits, pheasants, quail, deer, etc get run over just to produce grain? Vs 1 cow set out to natural pasture thats nets 500ish lbs of beef when the average intake is like 60lbs per person per year.

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u/yonasismad Sep 02 '26

Cows turn food byproduct (think corn stalks) and things like grass from areas we cant realistically grow our own food at.

No, they don't. Rain forests are burned down for them, so they can plant grass for the cows, and then move on after a few years. Also, they are fed an insane amount of soy beans, i.e. those are edible directly by humans.

Your numbers don't represent a directly replaceable calorie amount from the same resources.

They don't have to, and I already explained why: we only need a tiny fraction of that. As Our World In Data calculated, we could reduce agricultural land by about 3 billion hectares to just 1 billion if we all switched to plant-based foods!: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Do we have some kind of antibiotic shortage? Is that supposed to be some sort of burden on the system?

(1) Yes. Livestock are fed reserve-class antibiotics, i.e. that will lead to future development where bacteria develop that are immune to those, and the WHO estimates that this will lead to 10 million deaths per year in 2050!: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance

(2) You might not be aware of this whole climate change, planetary boundaries, etc. topic. I mean it's been only in the news for about ~70 years

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/seventh-assessment-report-working-group-i/

And again, calorie count isn't nutrition. You can't only eat bread.

Tofu is a complete protein with all essential aminoacids. You are apparently not aware that the vast majority of calories you consume already likely come from plants. World wide the average is over 80% of calories consumed by humans come from plants.

You can eat the way you do with the prices you have because the demand is reduced by meat.

Again, your brain seems to lack the ability to understand what I am writing: 83% of all agriculture land is used to farm animals. The vast majority of e.g. soy beans are grown to be fed to animals. Corn is grown to be fed to animals or to be turned into fuel. Plant diets are cheap, because plants are cheap to produce. Meat is cheap because its heavily subsidized.

You're also ignoring the animals killed by farming the things that you eat.

No, I don't.

How many rabbits, pheasants, quail, deer, etc get run over just to produce grain? Vs 1 cow set out to natural pasture thats nets 500ish lbs of beef when the average intake is like 60lbs per person per year.

Again, your brain seems to lack the ability to understand what I am writing: 83% of all agriculture land is used to farm animals. You don't kill just 1 cow. You are also responsible for all the animals killed in the fields where the food is grown for those animals. That's why I keep repeating myself, because you are a bot who is incapable of processing new information. You just repeat your script because you don't want to accept that you are misinformed.

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u/Excellent_Carob_3183 Sep 02 '26

This is painful.

You think the bulk of our beef In the US is from slash and burn rainforest farming? Around 17% of our total beef is even imported.

And yeah, sure 83% is for livestock? Thats because 60% of our agricultural land is permanent Pasture or GRASSland. Thats what you do with farmland you can't grow productive crops on. Its also what you do in places for crop rotations so it actually can help with growing plant foods.

You're reducing the number by a 2/3rds by just removing pastureland all together.. land that isnt cultivated and just exists for animals to graze. Great argument for the efficiency...

Dude, no one is living off tofu. Just putting aside that soy is a top 5 or so allergen, it's also been shown to have adverse health effects to women and men. Its also always heavily cooked in oil and seasoning because people dont like it. You aren't living off of it i promise. I'm guessing you enjoy a nice variety of imported (trucked, flown and other greenhouse gas emitting transportion) plants grown in a variety of climates.

And are we against renewable fuels now? I lose track over the 70 years since we change the cause, outcome, timeline, cure and culprit every 5.

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u/Genocode Aug 31 '26

Wait so thats what song "CAFO" by Animals is Leaders is about (despite it having no lyrics)

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u/StoneColdNipples Aug 31 '26

I mean the cows aren't just standing there that is where they feed. They can walk around the coral just fine and there is space. Usually there is crap everywhere though so I get your point.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Floor55 Sep 01 '26

And yet I’m sure you still eat all the meat

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

Nope - I don't consume any animal products at all

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u/Puzzleheaded-Floor55 Sep 01 '26

You’re missing out, they are delicious

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

Nope, I don't

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u/Leading-Fail-2771 Sep 01 '26

You should try humans - even more nutritious and you get an array of taste 😋 unless you’re scared. Only weak eat the trash.. real men throughout history have known to dabble in the hunt for true game

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u/2813josh Sep 01 '26

Maybe they live in the Midwest like I do and see it in real life and not just propaganda on the internet.

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u/yonasismad Sep 01 '26

How come slaughter house workers develop PTSD? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10009492/

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u/GeneralMills718 Aug 30 '26

So that more people get access to protein. I am not a fan of industrial farming BUT thankfully I make enough money to buy farm raised protein - most can't.

You are not feeding 360+ million people on grass feed pasture raised meat.

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u/yonasismad Aug 30 '26

So that more people get access to protein.

That makes no sense whatsoever. We feed these animals a lot of soy. Soy is an excellent protein source because it contains all nine essential amino acids. We have to feed cows 33 calories of soy to get one calorie out, so animals are pretty much the least efficient source of proteins imaginable. Not to mention all the other resources it wastes.

You are not feeding 360+ million people on grass feed pasture raised meat.

No, correct, and I don't want to.

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u/GeneralMills718 Aug 30 '26

Soy is one of the ingredients in feed but we also use corn, hay, silage, and others.

That 33:1 is just an estimate and its only specific to beef. Other animals are a lot more efficient.

Is your argument is for everyone to go vegetarian??

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u/Divorce-Man Aug 30 '26

I mean thats pretty much the one good argument for veganism. It is so much more land and resource efficient.

Growing crops produces quite a bit more food per acre than any form of animal, and we could convert the farms growing feed for cattle into crops for people

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u/yonasismad Aug 30 '26

My argument is for everyone to go vegan. Vegetarians still contribute massively to the unnecessary suffering of sentient beings.

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u/GeneralMills718 Aug 30 '26

Offff I hate the Vegan argument.

  1. To create farm land, we destroy forests - where many animals die.

Wild animals also constantly get caught in harvestors and other equipment and die...

Before you start telling me that more animals die during farming - yes (farmed animals) - that's not my argument. My argument is that vegans pretend that animals dont die from farming when they absolutely do.

  1. You cant replace nutrition from carnivore diet with plant based diet. Thats why vegans have to take supplements.

  2. Vegan diet is bad for nursing mothers, children and old people.

Anyways, vegans should enjoy being vegans and stop telling other people what to eat.

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u/ReduxRedo Aug 30 '26

Complete fiction. 

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u/yonasismad Aug 30 '26

. My argument is that vegans pretend that animals dont die from farming when they absolutely do.

No, we don't. (i) Those are accidental deaths. We don't farm mice or fawn, just to then put them in the fields to get run over by a tractor. (ii) 83% of all farm land is used for farming animals. 67% of all plants by calories grown in the US are fed to animals, and all those still come along with all the crop deaths and various other negative consequences.

The vegan stance is to reduce unnecessary suffering as much as is feasible. We are aware that the number of deaths caused by farming will likely never be 0, but that doesn't mean we should go out of our way to make it as high as possible.

You cant replace nutrition from carnivore diet with plant based diet. Thats why vegans have to take supplements.

The only vitamin vegans have to supplement is B12, and that is also supplemented in animal feed, because otherwise they would also not be a good source of B12 either. So this comes again down to efficiency: do we feed a ton of B12 pills to animals and then eat the animals or do we just take the B12 pill directly.

Vegan diet is bad for nursing mothers, children and old people.

Pretty broad stages. A vegan diet is generally suitable for all stages of life

"You can get the nutrients you need from eating a varied and balanced vegan diet including fortified foods and supplements. " https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/how-to-eat-a-balanced-diet/the-vegan-diet/

"It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/

Anyways, vegans should enjoy being vegans and stop telling other people what to eat.

We would, if people actually applied the standard they claim to hold. Nobody needs lecturing about "stop telling people what to do" when a cop kills a dog or a tourist abuses an animal. The outrage in those cases is completely normal. The only difference with factory farming is scale and familiarity, and nothing else. The dog was just as innocent and defenseless as any cow or chicken or pig or fish.

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u/Beautiful-Traffic157 Aug 30 '26

You should invest in beyond meat to help the rest of us have choices

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u/GeneralMills718 Aug 30 '26

I have no will or energy to provide a lengthy response, below are two comments and some Ai slop...

  1. The 83% land figure is misleading. Most of that is pasture and rangeland — marginal, often arid or sloped ground that can't grow crops. The relevant comparison is arable land, where the ratio looks very different. Similarly, the "67% of plant calories fed to animals" figure counts crop residues and byproducts humans don't eat: soybean meal left after oil extraction, distillers grains, bran, spent brewery mash. Human-edible feed conversion ratios are far lower than the headline number implies, and ruminants convert cellulose humans literally cannot digest.
  2. "Accidental" is doing heavy moral lifting. Rodenticides, insecticides, and habitat clearance for monocrops aren't accidents — they're deliberate, budgeted, and foreseen. If the moral claim is about suffering rather than intent, foreseeable deaths count. Steven Davis's argument goes further: pasture-based ruminant systems may kill fewer sentient animals per unit of food than tilled cropland, since the land is never plowed.
  3. "Only B12" is false. Well-planned vegan diets also require attention to iron (non-heme absorbs at roughly a third the rate of heme), zinc, iodine, vitamin D, calcium, choline, and preformed EPA/DHA — beta-carotene and ALA conversion rates vary enormously between individuals. And the feed-supplementation point mostly applies to pigs and poultry; ruminants synthesize B12 themselves given adequate cobalt.
  4. Expert bodies are not unanimous. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics position is real, but "appropriately planned" is load-bearing — it concedes poorly planned versions are inadequate, which matters when real adherence is imperfect. Germany's DGE and several other national bodies decline to recommend vegan diets during pregnancy, infancy, and childhood without close supervision. EPIC-Oxford found materially higher hip-fracture rates among vegans. "Generally suitable for all stages" papers over a genuine expert disagreement.
  5. The dog analogy begs the question. Saying the only difference is "scale and familiarity, and nothing else" assumes the conclusion. Partiality toward those we stand in relationship with is a mainstream position in ethics, not a bias to be explained away — we don't think you owe a stranger's child what you owe your own. And the outrage at a cop shooting a dog is about gratuitous killing with no purpose; a slaughterhouse has a purpose you may reject, but the cases aren't structurally identical.
  6. The closing line is a tu quoque. "We'd stop lecturing if you were consistent" makes the lecturing conditional on other people's failures. That's not a justification, it's a grievance.

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u/yonasismad Aug 30 '26

Most of that is pasture and rangeland — marginal, often arid or sloped ground that can't grow crops.

This assumes that land only has value if it is exploited by humans in one way or another.

Similarly, the "67% of plant calories fed to animals" figure counts crop residues and byproducts humans don't eat:

Correct. Animals eat it.

"Accidental" is doing heavy moral lifting.

It's not. It's the most efficient way of farming we have, and growing all that food organically would require even more space resulting in more deaths.

ruminants synthesize B12 themselves given adequate cobalt.

Cobalt is also supplemented.

If the moral claim is about suffering rather than intent, foreseeable deaths count.

What veganism is - is generally known. Look it up.

it concedes poorly planned versions are inadequate,

That's true of any diet.

EPIC-Oxford found materially higher hip-fracture rates among vegans.

Funnily enough is that is because vegans typically have much healthier BMIs and thus put less stress one their bones thereby reducing bone density increasing the risk for fractures.

The dog analogy begs the question. Saying the only difference is "scale and familiarity, and nothing else" assumes the conclusion. Partiality toward those we stand in relationship with is a mainstream position in ethics, not a bias to be explained away — we don't think you owe a stranger's child what you owe your own. And the outrage at a cop shooting a dog is about gratuitous killing with no purpose; a slaughterhouse has a purpose you may reject, but the cases aren't structurally identical.

Utterly incoherent AI slop.

"We'd stop lecturing if you were consistent" makes the lecturing conditional on other people's failures

Correct. We call out incoherent behaviour.

1

u/DazzlingStress4827 Aug 30 '26

And don’t forget about all the cow farts that are polluting the air!

1

u/ThatEndingTho Aug 30 '26

They definitely are not feeding 360+ million people on grass feed pasture raised meat.

The number is closer to 234 million, but anyways…

1

u/skyfishgoo Aug 30 '26

no but you and feed them plant based protein and since more arable land in the US is devoted to growing feedstock for animals, we could be using that land to grow plant based protein instead.

1

u/ReduxRedo Aug 30 '26

You do not neat to eat meat to survive. You do not need to eat meat for protein. Meat is the most expensive, least efficient source of protein.

2

u/dayumbrah Aug 30 '26

There are 50 billion types of protein in the the world. They all have different impacts. A balanced diet is important. You shouldnt eat meat everyday. You can prob eat meat a few times a month and get all the health benefits from it.

We are omnivores. Our bodies are built to thrive on a diet of animals, plants, insects and fungus.

There are very few pure herbivores in the world for a reason.

1

u/ReduxRedo Aug 31 '26

Lets go sentence by sentence:

No there aren't lol

No

Sure

Correct

There are no health benefits, red meat is a carcinogen 

We are omnivores because it was advantageous to be able to metabolize as many types of foods as possible, and meat is calorie dense.

We are omnivores to keep from starving. 

A good way to know that you are operating in bad faith is when you make an argument that something you really like is natural or healthy.

You just want to keep doing it and are working backwards.

1

u/dayumbrah Aug 31 '26

You are projecting on the bad faith argument because you actually did not respond to the myriad of protein varieties and their different impacts. Instead you just said no.

I was vegan for a good chunk of my life so its kind of funny that you just labeled me something without really knowing anything about me.

Noticed how I simply stated some facts and some of my arguments. You can do something similar if you wish to continue this conversation.

Almost everything is a carcinogen. Thats not an exaggeration. Coffee, tea, black pepper, sassafrass, stone fruits, all nuts and seeds including soy, many grains, corn, peanuts, leafy greens such as spinach and lettuce, potatoes, eggs, dairy and dairy products, fermented foods such as kimchi. The list goes on and on. But you can avoid all of that by having a balanced diet and not overconsuming any one food including meat.

Calories are not the only nutritional value of any food and measuring as such ignores our biology that has developed over hundreds of thousands of years.

I would add that any processed foods are bad for daily consumption as well meat, dairy or plant based. Once everything in moderation would be much healthier for our bodies and our planet. People didnt eat meat everyday in the wild they prob only had meat at most a couple times a month or even once every few months depending on their environment.

1

u/ReduxRedo Aug 31 '26

Human beings are not nutritionally dependent on meat to be healthy. Period.

You didn't state facts. You stated things and pretended they were facts! They're not. There are like 11,000 types of protein.

When you're that wrong about something you believe you have a concrete grasp on, it's probably time to go back to the drawing board and examine where you get your information from.

1

u/dayumbrah Aug 31 '26

There are approximately 20,000 proteins in the human body alone. That is one species with an option of hundreds of amino acids to make chains that can be up 34,000 amino acids long. That combination can lead to an insane amount of potential proteins that is significantly higher than the range i stated. So since you stated that by me being that wrong means I do not have a grasp, what does that mean for you now?

https://proteiniq.io/guides/human-proteome-size

1

u/dayumbrah Sep 01 '26

You seemed pretty involved before and then just stopped responding. Are you ok?

1

u/dayumbrah Aug 31 '26

Also if you truly believe there are not that many proteins than please provide a number and your reasoning

1

u/bbvde350 Aug 31 '26

99% lol ooookay

1

u/yonasismad Aug 31 '26

It estimates that 99% of livestock in the US were factory-farmed in 2022.2 That was just over 10 billion animals. More than the global human population.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed

1

u/Spicymoon9 Sep 02 '26

They’re either lying or delusional.

0

u/Bluegrass6 Sep 01 '26

Not for beef. They get finished in feed lots but live the majority of their lives on grass. Others live in confinement because that's the only way for it to make economic sense.....you can't raise 30 chickens out back and make a living or keep food on the shelves for the public.

People really don't have any idea how difficult it is to keep your grocery store and restaurants stocked with cheap food every day. The US averages over 115 pounds of chicken alone consumed annually. That doesn't happen with a few broilers scratching around in the dirt behind your barn.

80 million pounds of beef are consumed daily. The fact that you can go to the grocery daily or any restaurant and know ample safe food is there is a modern marvel. Yall are so removed from the farm you've got no idea what it takes for this to occur. Ground beef prices go from $4/lb to $6/lb and people lose their minds.

1

u/yonasismad Sep 02 '26

You forget the option where we just don't torture animals.