I'm an opponent of factory farms and consider election night to be a fucking disaster. A few small bills may have passed, but the big picture stuff all went in the wrong direction.
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
45 points (88.1% liked)
politics
19144 readers
2822 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I dont want to hear the myth of "small free range farm" people use to justify eating meat when they voted down Measure J and the Denver ordinance.
I'm interested to understand your perspective better- are you saying that the idea smaller less industrialized farms are less harmful to animal welfare than industrial ones, is a myth?
If so, I'd like to better understand why. I have an eating disorder and am not in a position to go vegan from a health standpoint, but I'd hoped that as I'm able (financially, and with respect to my eating issues) I'd be able to reduce my animal product intake and purchase my animal products from sources that treat animals better like smaller local farms, either shopping at a local butcher or farmers market.
Obviously I can still reduce my animal product intake as I'm able, but are you of the perspective that smaller, less industrialized farms are just as damaging to animal welfare? Or are you saying all farms these days, even small ones, are industrialized in the ways that negatively affect animal welfare?
If so, I'd love to hear about why, and if you know any sources I could take a look at I'd really appreciate it. That had been my plan in the future and if my plans might not yield what I was hoping for, I may need to re-evaluate what I can do, and what goals I might want to find ways to work towards.
Thanks for your time, hope you have a good one :)
One big issue is that the term "free range" is essentially meaningless as defined by the USDA, and often gives consumers the false sense that products marked as "free range" come from animals who had a higher standard of living than non-free range, therefore making their farming more ethical. In reality, this is basically never true.
To qualify as "free range" an animal needs to have "continuous access to the outdoors for 50% of its life". Sounds good on paper, but "outdoors" isn't rigorously defined in this standard. This means that situations that no reasonable person would call "continuous access to the outdoors" still count. For example, you could cram 1000 chickens into a small barn to the point where they barely have space to move, but as long as there's a hole in one wall that opens into a tiny one-foot-by-one-foot pen with no roof, it still counts. If that teeny tiny "outdoor" space can fit at least 1 chicken, then congratulations, all 1000 are now "free range". As long as you cater to some very specific loopholes, you can get away with factory farming while still having the legal right to claim on your packaging that your animals were treated humanely.
Terms like "organic" and "pasture raised" are similarly deceptive to the point of being meaningless, and so it's basically impossible to know what conditions your food was subjected to during it's life based on the packaging alone. Of course you can always try to do your own research about individual companies (or if you're lucky enough to have access, individual farms), but there are lots of laws on the books protecting them from having to disclose specific details to anyone but the USDA, so good luck getting any meaningful information. There have even been cases of farm workers and journalists being prosecuted for things like sharing pictures of farm conditions or publishing personal accounts of how livestock were treated on private farms. Fortunately the "ag gag" laws that allow these whistleblowers to be prosecuted are rarer than they used to be, but there are still a handful of states that have them (if you tried to guess which ones, you'd probably get most of them right).
In reality, the only way to know if an animal was raised to your own standards of ethics is to raise it yourself.
Thank you very much for taking the time to explain, that was very helpful :)
My pleasure!
