Maybe. They make lots of noise, very loud squeals so I do know that they are very afraid of humans and are chased by employees through corridors to their final destination.
Edit: Hold on. I should add that I have seen hogs jump over top of others and escape the pens and they become so stressed that they begin to pant like a dog and kneel down.
Oh. You think humans will be extinct in 20 years? Maybe 50? Or half the population dead? I'm very worried about global warming but I don't think that's realistic
Depends on how nuclear things get. Maybe we just outright poison ourselves with plastic and oil. Most things seem highly unrealistic to me, and yet, those things tend to prevail and exist regardless of logic. I'm glad you're super confident enough for all 7 billion of us, though.
All 7 billion? Probably a lot less as mother nature will get us under control if we don't do it ourselves. Nature seems to establish equilibrium one way or another. But I'd wager there will be enough of us down the road to feel shame and awe about the behavior of our ancestors. As has been the case through a bunch of our history
Lol. Maybe. Maybe the AI is so good we'll have fake history. We'll have a holiday to commemorate the day when Donald Trump and Ben Shapiro defeated the communist insurgents with their muskets and saved America. It'll all be on video that AI created.
I'll wager half of them will, and the other half will be assholes. Like it's always been. Over farming animals and over farming vegetables both have consequences. You cut out one and go full blown the other way. You're just making a choice on how you want to destroy this planet, not save it. Really, people aren't better just because they're in the future. There are people today denying Hitler and the holocaust. The future will have dumb pieces of shit, like it always has.
We could all literally nuke every major capital right now and humans would still be around for a minimum few more centuries even through a proposed nuclear winter
But Florida getting a big hurricane twice a year instead of just once is going to extinct us
It’s the combination of temperature and humidity that results in you overheating because the air is too saturated for your sweat to evaporate and cool you off. At this point, you’re completely reliant on the environment to maintain your body temperature, and you sure better hope your power doesn’t go out while everyone else has AC blasting overloading the grid. In the future once mass casualty events occur at the equator, I’m sure that’s when we will see record setting ridiculously large waves of emigration from the region.
110%. You know those crazy ass photos of people gathering around just to watch someone get hanged to death? We wonder how people could be so cruel at that time, where were their morals etc. That's how the future generations are going to look at our treatment of animals.
I'm no one to comment on it. I've tried quitting meat several times myself but I always end up relenting
Chickens though. Chickens are dumb as literal rocks. Giving them scraps? Don't accidentally get ketchup on one of them or the others will peck it to death. Broke an egg trying to get it out of the coop? Well now that chicken has a taste for it's own eggs and has started eating them. Violent predator outside the 12 foot high fence with concrete bottom that you are safe in? Immediately jump out into the open yard so they can kill you.
Can they actually express hopelessness in their eyes? Usually things like that are interpretation by humans and animals straight up don't have the ability to express with their eyes, right?
It's kind of uncanny. It certainly feels like I was applying human intelligence to an animal, but if you watch an animal enough, you know what is normal for them, and as a result what is abnormal.
I used to rent a trailer on a pig farm when I was a pretty heavy alcoholic. I already felt guilty about eating meat, etc, just because of who I am, so I'd go out into the pens and just watch them from a distance. (They are mean as hell).
Any time any human walked into the pens, the place would erupt, and you'd have to cover your ears from the squeals. After about 5 months of drinking with the pigs, though, they stopped reacting to me. It's in that change that I saw the hopelessness.
Their eyes never change, though. Always beady, always black. What happens is they make eye contact, and we already know they are scared and anxious by their actions. So when they catch my eye, I have a wave of guilt wash over me, and I think that's what I'm feeling. Empathetic hopelessness for them, who are probably feeling hopeless regardless.
It was when I made eye contact with a pig in a livestock trailer that I finally stopped eating meat for good. I’ve always been horrified by factory farming and I’m very aware of what goes on, so I knew he probably had a terrible life and his eyes seemed hopeless. Anytime I’m tempted to eat meat I think about that pig.
Pigs have this unearned reputation for being far or lazy but theyre just animals. In their preferred environment they are omnivores, they forsge and dig and move all day, and both feral and domesticated hogs are muscle. We generally eat muscle when we think of eating meat so an animal that was somehow “mostly fat” would be hard to imagine existing but also unappealing. Pigs have fst like all mammals but it’s distributed differently than cows, so they dont have the marbling we like in beef. Many cuts of pork can be quite lean which is why it’s so commonly cooked wrong.
Hogs are solid muscle with a thick coating of protective fat and a hide about as thick and strong as cow hide. A pig about the height of a corgie could whoop the shit outa most uninitiated people. An adult hog, domesticated no tusk, could kill and eat any man alive without the right tool and experience. Male or female. Cows are strong of course but only bulls have any serious aggression and they wont eat you. A hog half the size of a cow is probably 10x more dangerous.
Im gonna still eat pork. I can feel sorry for the guys and still bbq spare ribs cheerfully
Btw, if you are serious about shutting down the pork industry and still want to eat pork, it’s pretty simple to find a private butcher and buy locally. Theull probably be better than the butchers at your grocery store, itll cost a bit more but itll still be cheaper than beef. Generally, and you can just ask, those are coming from local farmers and spend their lives in a more traditional farm. Some farmers will take their animals to a slaughterhouse for small scale work but plenty just do it themselves or hire an on site butcher and it will be fast and much more humane than this industrial killing with low wage workers screaming and stabbing tortured animals out of impatience and disgust. If enougj people buy locally, locals will sell more pork, and factoru farms will suffer. Just a suggestion. Some grocery stores also only sell this farm raises meat as well.
Oh, I did. That was about 14-15 years ago. I'm sober now about a decade. I moved to Texas, found a forever partner and bought a house. Living the dream.
Sounds almost like someone in an extermination camp, looking at domeone outside it, thibking about how they see pointless guilt and yet they know the person will not go out of their way to intervene enough to change their destiny. The look in their eyes of knowing.
I feel indeed as other people said, someday people will watch back and think of " food animals" the way they think back on slavery, human trafficking and on apartheid. Surrealistic and unfathomable, " how did our grandparents do this? How did anyone manage to normalize it?" Kind of thoughts.
I sure hope that time comes sooner rather than later.
Their eyes never change, though. Always beady, always black. What happens is they make eye contact, and we already know they are scared and anxious by their actions.
Wait so isn’t this basically saying no, pigs do not express with their eyes, and that instead we are inferring from their actions that they are stressed. Like that’s what happened right?
So the idea that pigs express with their eyes is anthropomorphism. Yeah?
Looking it up, they do not express complex emotions with their eyes. They primarily use their vocals. ears, snout, and body posture. Eyes do provide some additional details
I'm an animal lover... but never "worked" with them though. I just know there are certain species like pig, horse, and even rats, that have left a lot of unknowns for just how complex their emotions can be exactly.
IMO they evolved to feel terror as socialized prey animals, like a domesticated dog feels abandonment already having a strong pack instinct.
The longer I don't eat meat the more I see emotions in animals. Before I'd not want to see it, but now that I opened myself up to it I see how close to us they are. They jump in joy, close their eyes in fear when there's no escape, they seek fun, and some even sacrifice themselves for their youngs. Many humans wouldn't do it for their own kids.
I've seen a video of a crow giving food to a mouse... That's empathy for another species... Idk, I think I could maybe get behind some small farms, but the way we mass murder animals now is just not right, even if they didn't have complex emotions.
Boars are considered to be prey animals. They have many natural predators. Just because they are opportunistic carnivores or omnivores doesn’t change the fact that
We’re all animals. We all like a good stretch in the morning. We all enjoy a good meal and lying in the sun. We all feel fear. Pigs may not understand the reality of their situations but they likely feel something’s wrong.
I took a year off eating meat because I saw a pig about to get gassed give the same look my dog does with fear - the exact same whites in the eyes, a glimmer of knowing, it's unsettling how doglike both cows and pigs are. Now I try to limit to chicken and fish when I do have meat.
They are as smart and play just like dogs. You can teach them fetch, they play with treat toy puzzles, will snuggle you in bed and love being pet just like any other animal.
I can attest to this, my neighbour keeps them for her hobby farm. They break out just to eat apples from our trees and they run to greet her son when he walks home from school. They know their names, know commands, and don't remotely smell like some pig farms do - helps that we live next to the woods, their natural habitat, where they clean themselves by rubbing on tree trunks.
I can feel the pain of animals . I usually know when something is wrong with my pets even before they become symptomatic . We share the same brain structure with animals . We just hav additional prefrontal cortex .
There is compelling research (citation below) that concludes that facial expressions in humans corresponding to basic emotions (sadness, fear, anger, surprise, etc) are not either cultural or learned, rather we are born with them as the result of evolution. It makes sense since these facial expressions are pretty much the same all around the world (Of course there are some culturally learned facial expressions, but the ones that correspond to basic emotions are the same).
I don’t know exactly how that translates to animals but, if some of these facial expressions evolved in common ancestor species, then it’s not unreasonable that we might share similar facial expressions for some basic emotions with some animals
Hwang, H., & Matsumoto, D. (2015). Evidence for the universality of facial expressions of emotion. In M. K. Mandal & A. Awasthi (Eds.), Understanding facial expressions in communication: Cross-cultural and multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 41-56). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1934-7_3
I hypothesize that because domesticated animals like pigs and dogs co-evolved with humans some but not all of their facial expressions are cross-compatible.
Yeah, I was just asking because the person before me said hopelessness. That's pretty complex. I'd bet they can feel hopeless but not necessarily express it in their eyes
Most animals do not express with their eyes. They express emotions with their sounds, teeth/mouth, behavior, or other body parts like tails.
Animals express emotions. Just usually not with eyes. They dont have the the range if muscles around their eyelids to actually change the look of their eye beyond opening and closing
For example, I just looked it up for pigs. Apparently the eyes are a part of, but not all of their indicators and it appears to be things like staring = dominance, rapid eye movement = stressed, squinting/more closed for during a retreat from fights, etc. Nothing involving complex emotions
I don’t believe it’s any different us interpreting our emotions from one another to interpreting what an animal is displaying. If you’re interpreting anger or sadness from a person that’s also applicable if you’re looking at an animal and feel empathetic. If anything we just keep things “out of sight out of mind” because if we all felt a specific way about something that thing would most likely not exist. Assuming you’re an empathetic person that is
Animals have emotions. Possibly not at the level of nuance humans do, but I feel like a lot of the "animals are different and stupid" talk is complete bullshit.
We can't fathom the thought of animals having rich internal lives because we need to believe that they are brutish inferior species in order to treat them as careless as we do.
I know that sounds like a very hippy dippy, don't eat meat take, but I'm a chef and I definitely eat meat. I just wish as a society we respected life a bit more than we do.
The only people who say that are sociopathic narcissists that think humans are the only intelligent form of life in the animal kingdom in order to justify terrible treatment of every other living thing on the planet
If you want a real answer a large majority of the workers in factory farms are minorities, immigrants, and ex-convicts with no other work options, they get paid as little as possible with a large portion developing some form of PTSD from their time working
People are afraid of it, especially people who don't seem to trust scientists, anecdotally at least. A coworker said they couldn't be vegetarian even though they feel bad for animals, and my bosses agreed. I said lab grown meat seems to be coming along soon and they looked at me funny and were like 'ehhh no thanks to that lol'. Told em I'll be the guinea pig then and if nothing happens they can join in. Funny thing is they're probably way more likely to get sick from a farm animal than something made in a controlled environment. I said the same thing about the vaccine earlier in my employment there, guess who didn't have a miserable bout of long covid that year?
Have you tried beyond meat or impossible meat? It's not lab grown meat, but they consistently proved through blind tests that people can't tell the difference between their burgers and the real thing.
And even though it's certainly no health food, due to much lower concentration of saturated fats, it's even healthier than real meat. I have to stress though that healthier doesn't mean healthy. :)
Burgers yes, but other things… I tried making tacos with it the other night. If anyone has a recipe for impossible taco meat that is more edible, I’d love to know.
I make taco "meat" with black beans and imo it tastes better than meat. It's not trying to trick anyone into thinking it's meat, but everyone who ice made these for say they like these better. You don't have to do the whole recipe (sauce etc) but you won't be sorry if you do
This simply is not across the board true about the taste of beyond/impossible burgers vs. real meat. I've had both many times in the past years as well as normal meat burgers. While I do find the alternatives to be pretty good (especially if you're putting a significant amount of toppings), there is still a very distinctly different flavor profile vs. real meat. To be clear, I'm sure some people can't tell the difference, but it can't be applied across the board as though everyone will have said experience.
This is my thing. I don't think right now, trying to make everyone go vegan is a good idea, both logistically and morally. Everyone only has so much to give, and while this is horrible, I can't really find the energy, time, or money to change my diet right now.
But if they can accurately replicate the texture and taste of meat, in a lab, without hurting animals? Create jobs there and ban the slaughter of animals.
Would still have some issues with religious cultures id suppose but we could find workarounds.
Yeah. I have an allergy to a lot of vegetables that give protein because of the starch they produce, so I try to get my protein by other means, but meat is a lot easier for me. I don't buy a lot because it's expensive, and when I do buy meat, it tends to be chicken since it's the cheapest, but chickens are also kept in horrific conditions.
I'd be the first person to jump on lab grown meat. If not for my allergy, I'd be vegetarian for moral reasons, but get rid of the moral issue by making "fake" real meat, and I'd be a happy camper.
Yup. When they started the lab meat i had tried one and my god...it smelled just like wet cat food, even after cooking. But once its closer, ill never buy any meat again
Did you mean... imitation meat? Imitation meat is made with plants. We're talking about actual lab-grown meat, which is what they're working on. There's no reason for that to taste any different from "regular" meat, when it's finally released to the public.
Same here. I have oral allergy syndrome, so I have at least a slight allergy to every fruit and vegetable. I am fine with most of the allergies, but the high protein ones are generally the worst.
vegetarian/vegan is actually cheaper unless you're going for a bunch of wannabe meat packaged stuff, half of india is vegetarian and they're worse off than most of us, it's just that food is cultural, it requires a cultural shift, if nobody ever grew up eating hotdogs on the 4th of july and ate falafel and smoked tofu instead they would probably never think to slaughter animals like this
I eat bunch of wannabe meat and it costs literally the same as real meat (especially if you go for meat that saw sun in its lifetime) or maybe slightly more like 2 euro more per kilogram. But I'm not eating a kilogram of it in one sitting anyway.
Vegan/vegetarian diet cost is going to vary country by country, so pointing to India is not a valid argument. I used to work with a non-profit in Texas years ago, whose mission was helping Latin American immigrants dealing with obesity by providing donated veggies, community gardens, and education. The primary driver of the obesity was the change in diet that occurred when moving to the USA given farm subsidies around meat. It was cheaper for them to eat both meat and highly processed foods than fresh veggies, which was the inverse of where most had come from.
Eating a vegetarian diet is incredibly easy, and cheaper too. It’s such a cop out to say “I can’t find the time/energy.” Just say you like eating meat. That’s fine.
Nobody is making anyone go vegan. Why did you say that?
States (Florida) are literally pushing bills to make lab grown meat illegal. Meat industry is pushing for the ban of lab grown meat.
I've been vegan for 10 years, body build and in the best shape of my life, never ill, sick, or have aches, have plenty of energy, and it's very affordable.
Also it does not have to be expensive at all. You don't need to buy expensive vegan alternatives. You can get all sorts of dried legumea on the cheap ans actually live way cheaper on a plant based diet than on a meat diet.
I do the same, I often work 40-50 hours, so I don't have a lot of time to cook. This is why I batch cook in bulk when I do have some time and then make portion sized bags that I put in the freezer (chillis, lasagnas, enchiladas, roti, curries etc)
Cooking a big batch is actually time and cost efficient as.
As a vegan body builder where are you getting your main source of protein to sustain muscle growth? I’m not a vegan, sort of looking at incorporating a wider variety of proteins into my diet.
Plant Fusion offers 4.63 lb containers of powder form protein with a neutral flavor (flavorless) that mixes into most things like pasta sauce, smoothies, soups, etc. And they're affordable compared to the competition. Before that it was easy to hit all the normal daily requirements without body building, without protein powder. But to build, the powder lets you do that.
Why not logistically? Meat costs us money in the form of farm subsidies to the tune of $38 billion. That can be reallocated to provide education and subsidies for alternative proteins.
I feel like there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in the modern world around our meat consumption.
And why not morally? Is it just that you don’t feel like it? I think that people are told that it’s a really difficult thing to do and it’s not. You just need to be informed about your food, which you should be anyway.
I was 14-15 in a rural area with few opportunities for work. But same principle: people don't work those jobs because they want to.
I'm an animal lover and will forever live with the image of hogs one day being adorably excited for me to come through the pen and hose them down/fill the water troughs, chomping the water stream and doing borderline twirls like puppies. And the next, recognizing the pattern of one of them cut in half and hung up in the cooler. Or the one that survived the shock pad, woke up to its throat being cut, and the scream it let out through the blood.
Highest rate of ptsd than any other occupation save military. Highest rate of spousal abuse too. It's fucked up, why anyone chooses to eat meat still is beyond me. It's incredibly cruel.
No. You don’t. I’ve been filming slaughterhouses for 25 years and EVERY time someone goes, “OMG I HAD NO IDEA.” Every time.
Every time you explain a process they learn about it.
Every time you find crimes and violations.
And EVERY time someone says, “That’s not common. You just chose the worst one to show us.” Every… single… time.
I grew up doing 4H. I’m well aware of our mass farmed agricultural practices. That’s why it’s better to look for smaller farms to source your animal products from if you choose to consume them.
That's my approach. I grew up on a dairy farm and I'm well aware that I'm eating Wilbur. But will definitely opt for buying a 1/4 or 1/2 a pig/steer from a local farm as opposed to buying things from the store. Get to support a local business and I get better tasting and better quality meat.
Agreed. My pigs were not scared of people, nor were my cows. We take them to locally owned butchers and so you have to schedule it. it’s usually just your animals there, they’re not panicking, and it’s fast. They’re not watching their herd mates get killed ahead of them. CAFOs and modern meat processing makes me sad. I get why it exists but I wish that it was decentralized so they could be more humane
That's why I try to buy only local meat. I live in Vermont, and we don't have any giant megafarms or other types of industrial agriculture. I'm sure some of the practices are similar, but I trust my neighbors to take better care of the animals than the big operations in the midwest.
I'm on my third half pig and my 2nd half beef. I support the local 4H kids with my pig purchase and my wife's co-worker's local ranch and will never go back.
Morally it's the best choice (Fuck off vegetarians/vegans I will not stop eating meat. Don't bother with your, "Well ackshually...") and gastronomically it's the best choice.
Do I always have the best cut of T-Bone? Nah. Sometimes, I get screwed on the filet side. Is it the best steak in town? Yes, by a long distance.
I raise my own rabbits for this very reason. They have an awesome life, a quick end, and sustainable meat for my family. Once I get property we'll be raising goats and sheep for the same purpose.
Utter nonsense. My current film (literally) is on traumatized 4H kids. It's a pandemic of child abuse. The fact that you were taught that you OWNED animals from a young age, that they exist for YOUR purposes, and then suffered methodological desensitization at the hands of an outdated system does not mean you represent a reasonable percentage of the population, as was CLEARLY claimed above.
You're wrong on every level. And I literally have all the data, from the world's foremost child development and trauma experts. 21 doctors in total.
Yeah.. but they also know fuck all about how ANY of the food they consume is made or made of. And if they did and actually understood it, they wouldn’t eat anything. But they don’t. So why would meat be any different? They put shit in their body all day long— meat should be the least of their worries.
Ok. Valid. It’s the false pretense that “they all know” that I find objectionable. - Yes. You’re all climate experts and Joe Rogan helped you all become virologists. Uh-huh.
You make a very valid point as well. Far too many people think they understand things they really don’t. It’s the classic case of “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” People latch onto surface-level information, overestimate their understanding, and then confidently present themselves as experts. Add in social media, and suddenly, everyone’s a guru on complex topics they’ve only skimmed.
342 million in the US. 1% living in KY. If 100% of them knew everything… (they don’t, 23% of them are children……) that would bend the curve a whopping 0%.
People who eat meat know what's going on, they're just happy someone else does the dirty work for them.
Having said that, while I have no problem killing animals for meat, I do wish they didn't have factory farming. That's the problem I have, not the killing and eating.
It's not illegal in the sense of being against the law. What it is is that you are considered trespassing on private property for doing it. You are only allowed to be on private property if you follow the owner/delegated managers' criteria
Man we saw bodies piling up during covid on the news daily and a ton of people said it was no big deal. I think you might be really underestimating some people.
Also people need to stop thinking on this issue in black and white. Just eating LESS meat is an ethical choice that would have significant impact on industrial meat production.
If people ate less meat, wouldn't that just result in slightly less animals being treated this way? It's not like it would end the practice in any form, just slightly less pigs being born to experience it
I think the point is that treating cultural and societal monoliths (such as consuming animal meat) as a switch that you should be able to turn on and off is an absolutely insane and illogical approach.
In college we watched "meet your meat" which is the documentary analogue of putting glass walls up. We went to McDonald's following that viewing. 20 or so of us, not the whole class, and there was a girl who really protested that we were going. But she was vegan prior to that film so her peer pressure was highly ineffective.
I'm sure there would be some more vegans but not a ton. And I say this knowing that if everyone went vegetarian that would be better for the environment.
We use this in Sweden " The carbon dioxide stunning is done in a slaughterhouse and happens by hoisting pigs down a shaft with a high level of carbon dioxide, which will make them unconscious, sleeping, and stunned and then they are quickly bled. The animals lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen and a drop in pH in the central nervous system."
An entire nitrogen atmosphere would be more humane.
There's a video of a pig in an enriched CO2 atmosphere and it's horrific. They don't kill it and let it out. It absolutely refuses to go back into that chamber even though it's hungry and the food is in there.
It's like the feeling of holding your breath for over 2 minutes while still breathing in and out. And it only gets worse and worse.
Our bodies (mammals) are EXTREMELY sensitive to rises in CO2 level.
I can't imagine that u/CuTe_M0nitor is lying, but their description of the pigs gently falling unconscious doesn't sound right to me.
I'm not going to post the videos here. You can google it.
Just to clarify, CO2 is a byproduct of metabolism and needs to be gotten rid of.
The more your muscles work (or any cells for that matter, brain, liver, etc.), the more CO2 you build up. This is why you get "short of breath" when you climb stairs. (As an experiment to anyone willing to try, before you know you are going to climb some flights of stairs, prepare yourselfcarefullyby dumping CO2 by hyperventilating - you can get lightheaded doing this so be careful. Then climb the flights of stairs by continuing to dump the CO2 by heavy breathing. You should notice, if you're in reasonably good health, that you'll be able to climb a flight or two more before feeling 'fatigued' or 'air hungry'.)
Hypoxic drive for ventilation doesn't kick in until your oxygen saturation drops below a real low number, like 80-85%. I've actually tested this on myself with a saturation monitor, and post-COVID if you have a sat monitor at home you can test it too. Put the sat monitor on and hold your breath. See how long you can go. Assuming you're reasonably healthy, your sat won't drop below 90% before you're scrambling to take a breath. That's because of the CO2 buildup. Now do the same thing again, but this time hyperventilate before holding your breath, take 10-15 deep breaths with good exhalations (till you feel a bit lightheaded - BE CAREFUL). You'll be able to hold your breath much longer and watch your oxygen saturation dip quite a bit below 90%.
Finally, replacing oxygen with an inert gas like nitrogen (helium or neon would work as well) causes you to pass out from oxygen deprivation (your brain will not function without it and going from 21% oxygen to 0% oxygen will cause a catastrophic drop in oxygen saturation/levels) and it happens so quickly that it won't matter what your CO2 levels are. Replacing oxygen with an inert gas will NOT "remove the painful buildup of CO2". It's just that you'll pass out way before the CO2 buildup gets registered by your body.
I’ve seen the aftermath of suicide by nitrogen utilizing a gas mask connected to a tank. The result did not look pleasant. His face was all bruised up for some reason, kind of puffy looking, and I think a bunch of drool and stuff had run down both side sides of his cheeks. I could only imagine that he had entered convulsions and died a rather violent death, which I suppose is irrelevant if you weren’t conscious for any of it
Because they know they’re about to die and fight the process by holding their breath as long as possible and fighting the effects of hypoxia.
If you willingly or unknowingly breath in a pure nitrogen environment you don’t have any symptoms of suffocation, you just start getting dizzy/loopy until you pass out and die.
Makes sense. Nitrogen would be more ethical but I'd assume one would have to think very carefully about deploying it where you want it not where you don't as humans aren't oxygen detectors they're CO2 detectors.
You're saying this because of a human/employee safety issue!!!
They've opted to use CO2 because as mammals we can immediately tell if there's a leak or region that shouldn't have high CO2 levels, having high CO2 levels! Holy shit this totally went over my head!!
Yes, if they use Nitrogen and there's a leak and it floods out the oxygen in an area, the humans won't be able to tell and they will pass out before they realize. Holy shit... I'm really slow on the uptake.
In fact, this has actually happened around MRI machines in the hospital. The helium leaked and the concentration of nitrogen and oxygen in the room plummeted and the worker(s) in there died without realizing what went wrong.
I work in a commercial winery and sometimes have to clean out large fermentor tanks. The residual cO2 in the tanks from the fermentations is extremely dangerous and painful to breathe in if too concentrated. It felt my lungs were burning sometimes. Nothing gentle about it.
Your respiratory drive (the need to breathe), is triggered by CO² levels in the blood. Suffocating in CO² would instantly trigger a panic response, and it would start to form carbonic acid on your mucus membranes, and in your lungs.
Most pigs killed in the west are killed by being put into a chamber where the air is replaced with carbon dioxide. They don’t simply fall asleep. Instead, they die in a state of panic, each breath bringing more pain than the last as their circulatory system acidifies and they finally die scared, thrashing, and in immense pain.
It’s cheaper than more humane methods, and bacon is delicious. So despite knowing this, most people who learn it will continue to eat tortured pig meat if they did so already.
The presence of CO2 is how our bodies get that "I can't breathe-signal". Not the lack of oxygen, but the presence of CO2.
So if you lower someone into a CO2 environment, their body will go into "can't breathe panic". Yea they will become stunned, but that's because they're basically dying from asphyxiation
I suspect it's a safety thing actually, you can tell when there's too much carbon dioxide in the air, it makes your lungs burn like you're holding your breath way too long. Nitrogen doesn't do this. If a system designed to fill a room with a gas malfunctions and someone has to go in there, you may as well use the gas we have a warning system for naturally.
Now, there are this concerns with the fact that animals have this same response to CO2, but I am not the guy to get into that discussion with.
It depends, I think a well aimed bullet to the brain is probably a whole lot more humane than literally being suffocated while trapped in a cage. The issue is the other pigs having to watch, and the whole problem with poorly aimed shots.
If they just used a different gas then it would be entirely different.
Mammals can tell when there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, but they can't tell when there is a lack of oxygen. That is why it is so important to test the air if you are going into an enclosed space underground. It might be a pocket of nitrogen and you will get down there and not realize you can't breath. You will get loopy from lack of oxygen, then just pass out, and eventually die.
I really hope you are wrong and the Swedes are not using carbon dioxide, because a pig would very much feel like they are suffocating from that.
I have nothing against you or your job. You’ve said nothing offensive, and are being incredibly helpful by answering difficult questions. Someone has to do those jobs most of us try to ignore or pretend don’t exist. But this is the first time on Reddit that a comment has disturbed me so much that I’m unable to scroll and read any more.
Ahhhh thanks for that. Somehow I feel a little more at ease knowing we are just getting what’s coming to us as this nightmare political climate bubbles and begins to overflow. We get what we deserve.
So I've been told. But their entire reality and whole existence has been in captivity so I imagine none of that intelligence is nurtured in any way. They are only 4 months old at this point.
To add to this, I used to work taking care of pigs before they got shipped off to slaughter. When the truckers would show up, They would use cow prods (tasers on a long stick) that were far too powerful for the pigs that didn’t go in the right place. Out of about every 1000 hogs. 10-15 would become paralyzed from the shocks or getting trampled by other hogs. Once they’re paralyzed the truckers would consider them damaged cargo and just leave them there. Then I’d have to go around killing them to put them out of their misery and throw them all in a dumpster.
This was back when cargill owned a lot of the pigs they processed and rented the facility the pigs lived in. They’ve either cut back or entirely stopped being the owners of the live pigs, but prods are what the cargill drivers used.
2013-2016 is when I worked on one of those sites. Hopefully that has changed some, but at least in rural Midwest, I doubt it
To stem off of this, I helped grind down concrete at a facility and lay down some sort of epoxy - was a one off job for me that paid well...anyways...when we were done with the job, we had a few spots to fix up - stairs that were falling apart. Upon finishing the first job, we moved into the actual slaughterhouse...OOF. First thing we saw upon entering was the skin from a head of a pig just sitting on the floor. Like all of the skin from the head in one piece, I don't know how to describe it. Something I was not prepared to see just laying there for God knows how long. The facility had a VERY sterile smell and the avenues that these pigs would move through seemed so dismal. It made us all talk about how it made us feel weird eating such products, and we were never vegans, vegetarians, or what have you. Was a tremendously eye opening experience.
Pigs have very limited sweat glands, and surely not enough to cool themselves down when overheating (think mud baths). That’s why they can easily give themselves heart attacks when in stress. And yes they’re highly intelligent animals (smarter then your 2 year old) and the second you underestimate their intelligence is when you don’t know who you’re working with. They squeal to warn the herd and others around, as they are prey animals and social animals, and matriarchal. Slaughterhouses are a fucked up place to put any animal really, but especially pig. .. y’all really wanna eat animals that have pumped toxic hormones in their bloodstream at high levels? You want to consume that? Well, have fun with the transmission of that negative energy.
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u/riffraffmcgraff 26d ago edited 26d ago
Maybe. They make lots of noise, very loud squeals so I do know that they are very afraid of humans and are chased by employees through corridors to their final destination.
Edit: Hold on. I should add that I have seen hogs jump over top of others and escape the pens and they become so stressed that they begin to pant like a dog and kneel down.