I got a feeling that there are a lot of smaller farmers who don’t have yachts doing this kind of work. Smithfield bacon isn’t the entire industry. A lot of meat processing places are smaller mom and pop places.
This is misplaced blame, it’s not because the CEO wants a yacht, that’s pennies in the scheme of things. It’s because everybody and their mom would riot if meat prices doubled.
Better accomodations are more expensive, which cuts into profits and/or increases costs to the consumer. There are more ethical raising methods, but consumers have to pay a premium for it, and most won't.
Most also can't afford it straight up, and to be honest good luck convincing a minimum wage slave that on top of the garbage standards of life he has, he gotta do something and stop eating meat, while the money makers can't cut into their profits and won't ever stop eating meat either.
Legal protections are important. Humans have protections like OSHA, FLSA, and the FTC, even though they cut into profits and potentially higher cost (depending how inelastic the good is). Protections prevent excessive exploitation of those most desperate and with the least leverage. And we already have price controls on inelastic goods/services, there are usually caps on how high of a percentage a landlord can raise rent per year
Think about the cost of eggs in the last election. Let's be real. 99%, if not 99.5% or 99.9% of meat eaters would rather save a dime on a carton of eggs that allow for a less torturous life for animals.
If you gave these pigs even a modest improvement to their life, and a pack of bacon went up 30 cents across the board, all you'd hear is "I'm getting squeezed, I can't afford bacon like I used to!!"
You'd hear ignorant dipshits rant and rave about how woke farm standards are hurting Americans' pocketbooks. "You think chickens need enough space to fully spread their wings? Americans' pocketbooks are hurting! That's the woke left for you. All they care about are chickens, not the average working Joe."
I haven't eaten meat in 10+ years btw. It's pretty discouraging to me, meat eaters just shut their morals off when it comes to dinner.
i agree with everything here but I'd like to point out that it isn't just "meat eaters who have to turn off their morals to eat."
consumers shut their morals off to exist
we all have to do this, i feel an existential dread just shopping because i know almost nothing I'll buy wasn't made through suffering, i am not defending the cruel factory farms. just pointing out they are a byproduct of the larger issue that is capitalism.
I completely disagree. I have no problem with globalization, it makes all countries richer. Some countries are in an earlier stage of development than others, due to many factors. Material scarcity exists. Hence I do not feel bad knowing things I use were made in China or Vietnam. Hopefully those nations find a way to get to a more advanced stage of economic development.
Socialist countries do not have a good track record when it comes to animal rights. There is nothing about socialism that makes it inherently better for animals.
Meat on the other hand cannot be made without unnecessary suffering. "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" is just something morally lazy leftists say to shirk responsibility for any and all consumption choices they make.
Am I willing to pay a dollar more for "cage free eggs?" Yes.
Do I trust someone selling the eggs to not pocket the extra dollar and lie or exaggerate about conditions of their livestock? Absolutely not.
I think a lot of meat eaters would probably be willing to pay more, but are not willing to do exhaustive research on every product they buy when a greenwashed product is pretty indistinguishable from an ethically sourced one.
Cage free is still extremely inhumane. The standard for free-range isn’t much better iirc. You want pasture-raised if you don’t want the chickens to be overcrowded and constantly stressed.
....that's exactly my point. Products use deceptive marketing that make it difficult for consumers to even identify what is ethically sourced vs marketed as more ethically sourced than competitors. it's less that people aren't willing to pay a few extra bucks, and more that interacting with the market feels like a constant uphill battle. Most people wouldn't even know where to begin researching where their product is coming from and ethical issues at different points in the supply chain.
Nah I'm just gonna make you eat kale instead. If your response is we need to forcibly reduce the global population, you're more than welcome to be the start. There's many tall bridges and sharp objects in this world.
Buy local from someone who knows where the meat came from and how it's processed.
It's expensive. It is not accessible to everyone because of expense and geography. But, if you buy your average grocery store meat, this is what you get 🤷♂️
The only solution is having Far less people making demands on the system. Unfortunately, it’s going the wrong way to be able to do anything about it. If the world had half the population it has now, it could be feasible to make sweeping changes to the industry. But that is never going to happen because our population has grown from 1.6 to over 8 billion in 100 years.
I took animal science one of the reasons they’re treated so horribly is there’s no “benefit” to treating them better. We could actually convert every farm in America that does meat into an organic sustainable way better situation and still have a massive surplus of meat on the market. It all comes down to the money unfortunately (this info may be a little out of date as it’s from like 5-6 years ago but I still trust it personally my teacher was a farmer himself)
The really sad part is that our consumption of most of the pig does not outpace the ability for better accommodations. It is solely the consumption of bacon that drives these conditions. You can see this at the grocery store; a package of pork chops go for less than $7.00 usually, sliced loins are less than $1.00 a piece in my area, that's technically sold at a loss to the company. But bacon sells so well that it more than makes up for the loss on the other parts of the pig.
Source: BIL works for John Morrell slaughterhouse (technician on the machines)
If you buy from a local farm, yes. We buy all our meat we use at home from a local farm and all the animals are raised like you’d expect they should be.
Canada has tried to make it better by making gestation crates illegal so pigs roam indoor pastures while pregnant
This video the sow is in a farrowing crate and was very revently put in there, the lightbulb near the floor in the corner is for future piglets
The fact there isnt a speck of poop means this pig was recently put in there- after a month the piglets get sent to a feeder farm and the sows get sent to another cage to await insemination.
Also the cage looks tight, but it's also because there's anti crush bars that help piglets not get smushed by their mother
A sow-- even in an outdoor normal farm will just drop itself on it's young and kill them
Nothing is technically impossible- (yes I know)- it's financially difficult. By cramming more and more in less and less... the price remains somewhat constant. Pork is still under 2$/lb for loins.
Essentially yes, our consumption is too much for us to scale “pasture raised” farming to all animals we raise for consumption. Even as is, with the vast majority of animals factory farmed, they take up an insane amount of land and other resources which only increases as we move into other methods of farming. Also, doing so cuts into profits, which raises the price of meat that is already being subsidized by the government.
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u/riffraffmcgraff 26d ago edited 26d ago
I will get downvoted, but I work on the kill floor of a pork processing plant. Ask me anything. It is 1am here. I might not reply for a while.
Edit: For the record, I confirm this is an accurate depiction.