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43·7 days agoFor anyone with a different mindset and wants to learn and grow:
There is one cheaper option we shouldn’t gloss over which removes the humanwashing: plants. Beans, lentils, potatoes, chickpeas, tofu, etc. are all rather cheap and rather good!
The reality kinds of end up being that factory farming is the only viable way to scale up to the insanely high per capita consumption in the west. The industry isn’t going to be meaningfully changeable as long as production and consumption levels are as high as they are
No chickens end up being “pampered” before they are slaughtered, no matter how much you pay. It’s just labels about handful of random practices that maybe won’t happen with limited amounts of checking. Even for antibiotic-free labels, there is still more antibiotics than you’d think
In 2022, Price et al. published a study reporting that 15% of RWA-labeled [raised without antibiotics] cattle contained antibiotic residues in urine samples
In 2023, the USDA embarked on the project reported herein to independently determine the extent of antibiotic drug residues present […] samples from 37 animals (20%) met the analytical identification criteria for at least one antibiotic
17·22 days agoThe technology for renewables is not the main limiting factor anymore. In recent years the economics have changed. Renewables are the cheapest form of power today and dominate (90-almost 100%) new global energy capacity because it’s so cheap. Grid scale batteries have become viable and are starting to be a significant portion of grid power in many countries
A number of countries did speed up their roll out of renewables because of that, though
The amount of oil supply removed is significantly larger this time. With the war in Ukraine there were also some more obvious places to get oil from instead. It’s less obvious this time
3·22 days agoDon’t see a paywall on my end, but https://archive.is/VKgxt should work
4·26 days agoJBS and the meat industry as a whole are not only horrible towards farm animals, but are also far worse for workers than most people realize. There are multiple human rights watch reports about working conditions
https://www.hrw.org/report/2005/01/24/blood-sweat-and-fear/workers-rights-us-meat-and-poultry-plants
And unfortunately this is not just limited to the US (though it is worse in the US)
7·2 months agoThe author added the entire text in the alt text if you click on the image and then the
to see the full thing. Can easily copy and paste from that or read it there instead
Others in captivity, for instance: Chimps Are No Chumps: Give Them An Oven, They’ll Learn To Cook
6·2 months agoIn Germany, it’s limited to more like 800 watts (and I think some other safety regulations). As I understand it, it’s generally worked without this being much of an issue despite millions of plug in solar installs (primarily for balcony solar)
4·2 months agoIt’s still more chickens who still very much suffer a lot, just a little less in one specific way. It is not accurate at all to say that they don’t suffer while they are alive along with suffering while being killed. It potentially worsens a lot of issue by increasing numbers. From the earlier article
Our results indicate that, if raised in CAFOs, a shift to slower-growing Rangers may increase crowding and related welfare concerns including increased footpad dermatitis [7], jostling, conflicts and potentially infection risk [14], and thus may translate to a decrease in aggregate welfare at scale. A shift to individual better-welfare chicken breeds aims to lessen bone, heart and disease issues in present Ross birds, but even in non-CAFO production systems, slower-growing breeds may still experience other negative welfare conditions such as emotional and physical stress, disease, predation, injury and premature mortality, as well as distressing transport and slaughter practices
I am mixed about this. On the one hand fast-growing birds have tons of health issues and help to make the production cheaper which allows the industry to stay larger. On the other hand if consumption and production levels stays constant, the total number of chickens killed will increase. Slower growing chickens have lower slaughter weights which means you need more of them. From a study looking at the US:
Maintaining this level of consumption entirely with a slower-growing breed would require a 44.6%–86.8% larger population of chickens and a 19.2%–27.2% higher annual slaughter rate, relative to the current demographics of primarily ‘Ross 308’ chickens that are slaughtered at a rate of 9.25 billion per year.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.210478#d1e265
4·3 months agoPockets of progress can still exist within broader repression. Based on your profile, I’m going to guess you’re from the US? If you want some hope:
US Senate Passes Bill Giving Children the Right to Plant-Based Milks in Public School Lunches and this ended up getting signed into law 9 days ago. It also overturned an 80 year old provision that prohibited plant-milks from being offered without special request from doctor/parent in K-12 school lunches. (Which I never would have thought would get overturned now of all times)
Clean energy is still booming in the U.S. despite Trump’s best efforts. Renewables still are going into place because they are just the cheapest option, and the Trump admin has had a lot of their attempts to target renewables paused in court for now. Not that it’s not impacting it at all (it obviously is), but that it isn’t enough to stop progress entirely
NYC Set To Cut All Processed Meat In Schools, Hospitals, And Care Centers and is going to replace them with whole plant-based foods
I can keep going. There is a lot of focus in both traditional and social media about the bad news and very little about good news. But there are people trying and when people try you always have the chance to win
Don’t stop trying
That difference seems a lot higher than most of the world. Were you looking at price per unit volume or price per whatever the container was? I’d be really surprised if there’s a difference that high
There is also the option of making plant-milks yourself. Price can be a lot cheaper that way by orders of magnitude. (Though may take some experimentation to get good tasting recipes, so don’t necessarily judge off of the first taste)
It probably won’t stop most people, but they’ll try to do anything they can to slow things down even if it’s on the margins
The goal isn’t necessarily to change how people speak (though they would if they could), but more to make the product name on the stores shelves look less appealing to reduce sales
27·3 months agoHe’s uh claiming to be “ending the war on saturated fats” so one may want to re-evaluate. The focus on animal proteins (plant proteins get only side mentions) and animal fats is already going against what actual health officals say. For instance from the article:
As it is, Americans are consuming protein in amounts well above the amount that is necessary to sustain health and development," Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a professor at Columbia University Nutrition, told ABC News.
Those are primarily just using the same the packing as they due to places that prohibit using the term “milk”. The dairy industry has lobbied quite hard for those bans across the world at all levels of government. Under the belief that “oat drink” or the like sounds less appealing that “oat milk”
That’s been the term of choice in English for the past 800+ years
In English, the word “milk” has been used to refer to “milk-like plant juices” since 1200 CE.[11]
Plant milks go back much further than most people realize
Almond milk spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and was popular in parts of the Middle East. Recipes for almond milk in the Middle East date back to around the 13th century as it was mentioned in Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi’s cookbook Kitāb al-Ṭabīḫ (كتاب الطبيخ; The Book of Dishes), written in 1226. It was especially popular during Lent.[12][13][14][15] Soy was a plant milk used in China during the 14th century.[3][16] Soy milk use in China is first recorded in 1365.[17] In medieval England, almond milk was used in dishes such as ris alkere (a type of rice pudding)[18] and appears in the recipe collection The Forme of Cury.[19] Coconut milk (and coconut cream) are traditional ingredients in many cuisines such as in South and Southeast Asia, and are often used in curries.[20]
81·3 months agoAnimal agriculture is a massive contributor to some of the largest problems in the world
It’s at least ~15-17% of climate emissions and is enough to make us miss climate targets on its own even if fossil fuels are immediately stopped
~73% of the world’s antibiotics go to animal agriculture, leading to antibiotic resistance diseases. It’s directly attributed to at least 50% of all zoonetic diseases since 1940
It’s one the most dangerous and exploitative industries to work in. There are multiple human right watch reports on working conditions in just the US (“When We’re Dead and Buried, Our Bones Will Keep Hurting” and Blood, Sweat, and Fear). And this is not limited to the US, here’s just a handful of reporting from The Guardian Revealed: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe, ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry
The rates of factory farming globally are far higher than most people think. It’s around 74% of all globally farmed land animals, and 90% of total global farmed land and marine animals. It’s around ~99% for the US. The number of animals slaughtered each year is immense at ~80 billion land animals / year, >100 total animals per year. The sheer number of individuals who go through that makes the level of suffering hard to parallel
And that’s just some of the harm the industry does, but I don’t want to ramble too long without talking about how to go about solving this
There is more we as individuals can do here than we can for 90% of other issues. With the laws of supply and demand, simply reducing our collective demand makes the industry smaller. That’s doable at the induvidal level: simply reducing (and ideally eliminating) our individual meat, dairy, etc. consumption can have a real impact. This is more achievable than people think. For instance, Germany has seen a 12% decline in per capita meat consumption over the last ~10 years. We don’t need wait for any institutions to make changes before that can work by doing collective action
There are also some systemic changes we can push for in the near-medium future to help make that happen faster. For instance, just making plant-based foods the default tends to increase plant-based consumption by several orders of magnitude. NYC hospitals implemented plant-based defaults and made their plant-based consumption rate go up to 51% of meals and reduced the average cost of a meal by 59 cents. If that sounds interesting to anyone there are campaigns with real successes to get more institutions and companies to implement those. There groups like the Better Food Foundation, Greener By Default, the Plant Based Treaty is running a Related Campaign, No Milk Tax which has gotten hundreds of chains to drop their plant milk up charge, among others
If anyone wants some plant-based recipes to save some money, there’s some good communities on here for that:
!veganhomecooks@lemmy.world
!veganrecipes@sh.itjust.works