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Spacenut

@ Spacenut @lemmy.world

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3 yr. ago

  • Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in UK animal cruelty crackdown

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  • United States Department of Agriculture. PSD Online. Available at: https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/app/index.html#/app/advQuery.{/ref}

    The majority (77%) of the world’s soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. 7% is fed directly to animals as soybeans, but the remainder is first processed into soybean ‘cake’.{ref}Soybean cake (sometimes referred to as soybean meal) is a high-protein feed made from the pressurization, heat treatment, and extraction processing of soybeans. The oil is extracted from the soybeans to leave a protein-rich product.

    Per the source above, although it's fair if you missed it because it's in the footnotes

  • Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in UK animal cruelty crackdown

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  • I understand the core of your argument: "animals can eat parts of the plant that humans can't, so it's most efficient to use those as animal feed instead of wasting them." But this is not really engaging with the source I posted above, showing that, indeed, farmed animals are directly fed only 7% of all raw soybeans produced in the world, but 69% of all soybeans are specifically produced to be turned into high-protein processed animal feed, for a total of 76%.

    From your previous comments though, it doesn't really seem like you're engaging in good faith. Feel free to have the last word, have a great day

  • Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in UK animal cruelty crackdown

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  • Cmon let's be real, again this is a very simple trophic levels thing. If you truly care about the suffering of all the field mice and bugs and whatever being killed in soybean monocultures, and their other various environmental harms, then surely you would be vegan, because 75% of all soybeans grown globally are used as animal feed. (Source)

  • Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in UK animal cruelty crackdown

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  • That's ok, totally understandable. Just read the comment again

  • Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in UK animal cruelty crackdown

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  • Let's suppose that you actually genuinely care about reducing the amount of plant suffering in the world. If this is the case, surely you would be vegan, because 3/4 of our total agricultural land is used to grow plants to support animal agriculture. (Since grass feels pain just like soybeans do, this includes pasture land.) So far fewer plants would be killed if everyone was vegan.

    Of course, you don't actually live your life in a manner consistent with believing plants feel pain. I don't think anyone would think twice about swerving into some flowers to avoid a dog in the street for fear of causing suffering to the flowers.

  • Are fossil fuels vegan?

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  • I mean I think bees are harmed in the production of honey, it's just that most people don't care about bee welfare. Commercially they're bred by crushing the male to extract semen, and any operation above hobby scale will clip the wings of the queen so that the hive can't escape.

    Then you necessarily need to replace their ideal food source with something that is nutritionally much worse for them (basically sugar water), and then hope that they survive on that long enough to make more honey for us to take.

  • Are fossil fuels vegan?

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  • Imo "backyard eggs" are really small potatoes, especially when like 98% of eggs globally come from factory farms. But even in that case, egg-laying hens are basically bred to suffer. They lay an egg every 1-2 days, compared to like once a month in the wild, which takes a huge amount of energy and nutrients. And we've bred them to produce eggs too big for their bodies, so that even when they're treated really well, the vast majority of hens have bone fractures.

    That's why animal sanctuaries will usually either feed the eggs back to the hens, or give them medication to stop them from laying at all.

    Of course, this is on top of the fact that 100% of egg-laying hen breeders, everywhere, kill the males shortly after birth because they can't lay eggs. See this for more information.

  • Are fossil fuels vegan?

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  • Yes. No animal was intentionally harmed or killed to be turned into oil. This puts it in the same category as foraged deer antlers or cicada wings, or I guess compost where you found a squirrel carcass and added it to the pile.

    You could argue that animals are harmed by the process of extracting and burning fossil fuels, and thus it's not vegan. But this isn't very convincing to me, since that's a secondary effect and not necessary to the process of consuming fossil fuels. (Or at least not necessary in the same way that killing chickens is necessary in order to make chicken sandwiches, for example.) And if you start worrying about a big web of consequences of your actions, then it seems like you're mostly just adding stress to your life without actually making the world a better place.

  • Scientists have developed a honeybee "superfood" that could protect the animals against the threats of climate change and habitat loss.

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  • Is it called honey?

    Obviously this is not a cut and dry issue, because modern agriculture wouldn't exist without honeybees, but honeybees are an invasive species that crowd out more effective, native pollinators. For the most part we'd be better off not breeding them by the trillions (quadrillions?) and just leaving them alone

  • Spotify boycott: Artists leave ‘garbage hole’ platform after CEO invests in AI weapons

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  • "Waives" instead of "waves"

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    Permanently Deleted

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  • Honey

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  • This isn't true for the vast majority of commercial honey unfortunately. If you're buying it from the supermarket, or any producer that operates at even medium scale, they'll clip the wings of the queen so that the hive is unable to leave even if they want to.

  • I love children's sense of humour

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  • "No it isn't"

    "Yes it is"

    Argument won, great job 👍

  • Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson could face up to 15 years’ prison in Japan if convicted

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  • No of course not. I was mostly just trying to make the case that killing whales isn't good for the environment, or is at least strictly worse than not killing them. The sustainability of whaling mostly refers to killing just few enough that we can continue killing them indefinitely, rather than any sort of positive effect on the environment. Clearly if we were actually interested in environmental sustainability we just wouldn't be killing whales at all.

    Did you have any thoughts about the other two points I made? I'm also curious why you're so passionate about defending people who kill whales, since this seems like a pretty uncommon opinion.

  • Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson could face up to 15 years’ prison in Japan if convicted

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  • Sure we can do that, I just didn't want to hijack a conversation about what makes killing whales ok with a bunch of other separate considerations.

    1. Whales feel pain.
    2. It's wrong to inflict pain on others unnecessarily.
    3. Killing whales is not necessary.
    4. Therefore, killing whales is bad.

    Separately, there's the environmental impact. No matter how sustainable the whaling is, it's not like they're overpopulating and need to be culled or something. Whales are important in the ocean ecosystem, and they're good at sequestering carbon on the sea floor for a very very long time when they die. It seems pretty obvious to me that killing whales is done out of self interest (we like eating them, it's our tradition, etc.) rather than out of some altruistic sense of duty to preserve the ecosystem, and not killing them at all would be the most sustainable solution.

    And finally, I don't know a ton about it but evidently there are some pretty serious health concerns with eating whales, that makes it seem like you could argue for not eating them (and therefore not killing them) purely out of self-interest to maintain your own personal health.

  • Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson could face up to 15 years’ prison in Japan if convicted

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  • So from what you're saying, it seems like not only is killing whales unnecessary for the Faroer anymore, but the document you linked seems to imply that it's actively detrimental to their health.

    Also this response doesn't really engage with what I said before about the lines of reasoning being flawed. You're painting a picture of how whaling has been an integral part of their cultural history, and that's interesting information, but it doesn't really relate to whether it's the right thing to do.

    So again, it's an argument of the form "X is ok because it's cultural and we've been doing X for a long time," which I don't think is very persuasive.

    And one more thing: you're now saying that they don't kill whales commercially? So "Y is ok because we would be economically ruined if we didn't do Y" doesn't even apply, right? Or am I reading what you said incorrectly?

  • Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson could face up to 15 years’ prison in Japan if convicted

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  • Got it, thanks for clarifying. I think both lines of reasoning have problems though:

    1. X is ok because it's cultural and we've been doing X for a long time.
    2. Y is ok because we would be economically ruined if we didn't do Y.

    I can think of many things to fill in for X and Y that satisfy the necessary conditions, but still aren't ok. I do, however, think this line of reasoning is valid:

    1. Z is ok because we would literally starve if we didn't do Z.

    I don't think any vegan would take issue with #3, since in that case Z is necessary, and vegans are only concerned with unnecessary harm.

  • Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson could face up to 15 years’ prison in Japan if convicted

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  • Just to be clear, you're no longer saying it's ok to kill whales because it's cultural and they've been doing it a long time? You're now saying that it's ok because they would be economically ruined if they didn't kill whales?

    I'm not trying to be combative, just trying to clarify.