
Millions of US farm animals to be culled by suffocation, drowning and shooting - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/millions-of-us-farm-animals-to-be-culled-by-suffocation-drowning-and-shooting-coronavirus
======
hprotagonist
For small animals, CO2 is humane. It's widely used for laboratory research
animals, and it's generally the least-worst option for them. I don't know how
well it scales up by body mass above roughly a canada goose, so use on pigs
doesn't seem immediately sane to me.

Drowning doesn't seem viable.

A bullet to the head (or a bolt gun, or whatever) is probably the fastest way
to remove sensation from neural tissue for large farm animals. The shock wave
takes milliseconds to turn brains to soup.

~~~
bbrree66
Please define humane. Killing an animal that doesn't want to die is not
humane.

~~~
missedthecue
when the alternative is them starving to death, it is quite humane.

~~~
bbrree66
That is illogical. That's like saying: I chopped someone's arm off so the only
humane thing is to shoot them. Maybe don't do the terrible thing in the first
place (breeding them to be slaughtered), and you won't have this issue.

~~~
ksdale
Doesn't it follow from this that it would be beneficial to kill wild animals
so that their far more numerous offspring won't die grisly natural deaths?

~~~
vzidex
Yes, but only because we (humans) wiped out the natural predators of many wild
animals - the typical example being wolves and deer in North America.

We then do indeed kill wild animals so that their populations don't explode
due to a lack of predators - in Canada and the US you typically need a "tag"
to hunt wild animals, basically a ticket that allows you to kill X number of a
specific species.

These tags are distributed in limited numbers, and extensive work goes into
surveying populations of wild animals to distribute the right number of tags.
Proceeds from selling tags go to conservation efforts, including the surveying
efforts previously mentioned.

As someone trying their hardest to follow a vegan diet, I fully support
hunting wild animals for food and population control. However, that situation
is worlds removed from animals that are bred for the sole purpose of being
raised and slaughtered in factory farms.

EDIT: to rip off another comment in this chain - the issue of hunting wild
animals is orthogonal to the issue of factory farming. i.e., the two issues
have little to do with each other and you cannot/should not use one as moral
justification for the other.

~~~
ksdale
I meant kill them in general so that they don't have offspring at all, as most
animals in nature die what we would consider grisly deaths. (Which, to be
clear, I think is wrong.)

I'm not a fan of factory farming, but I don't agree that hunting and raising
farm animals are orthogonal issues. My own views are more complicated than I
care to get into here, but I think it boils down to - 1) Is it always wrong to
kill animals for food? and 2) Would those animals rather exist than not, prior
to dying?

I think the answers to those questions are no (or else we have to declare eg
lions immoral) and yes (assuming the conditions they live in aren't absolutely
horrific, which also leads me to believe that factory farming should basically
go away and we should reduce our meat consumption as much as we need to to
make that possible).

I try to limit my meat consumption and find meat that I believe has been
raised ethically, but I don't believe veganism is required (though I totally
respect those beliefs!)

~~~
vzidex
Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful response. I'd agree with you that
I'd be OK with meat consumption if the animals being raised for meat were
raised under "optimal" conditions for their happiness, and only slaughtered at
the end of long, fulfilling lives.

What burst my bubble on that idea, however, and really gave me the urge to
strive towards a vegan diet, was just how completely implausible that image
is. Even if your meat comes from "ethical" sources, I have three big issues:

1\. Animals are typically slaughtered far short of their natural lifespans.
Cows, pigs, and chickens have natural lifespans of 20, 20, and 10 years, and
live 3, 2, and 0.2 years under factory farming conditions [1]. Even if the
meat you're consuming comes from animals that live fantastic lives - the
stereotypical image of open pastures, a "natural" diet, loving care from the
farmer - those lives are almost definitely being cut short for the sake of
profitability.

2\. The animal products industry puts a humongous amount of effort into
keeping consumers from thinking about the origins of their food. Part of this
effort is whitewashing the process as much as possible. I don't feel like
finding specific examples off the top of my head, but it's cases like "cage
free chicken" meaning that the birds are kept in a massive, communal shed with
24/7 artificial lighting, very little cleaning, veterinary care, etc. It's
very possible that even if the meat you're buying is labelled with "humane"
and "ethical" terms like free-range, cage-free, etc. that those terms mean
very different things than you might assume.

3\. Modern livestock are bred to produce the maximum amount of product (meat,
milk, eggs, wool) as possible. This leads to chickens whose legs collapse
underneath them from their weight after a few months of life, cows which have
chronically infected udders from the quantity of milk they produce, etc. Even
if you take these breeds and raise them under "humane" conditions, they'll
still have miserable lives without extensive veterinary care.

That all said, if you _do_ indeed source your meat from sources that you have
verified give their animals fantastic comfortable lives, let them live (most)
of their natural lifespan before slaughter, and only raise heritage breeds
that don't suffer just from being alive, then I'm all for your meat
consumption - and very curious how much your meat costs!

[1] [https://www.four-paws.us/campaigns-topics/topics/farm-
animal...](https://www.four-paws.us/campaigns-topics/topics/farm-animals/life-
expectancy)

~~~
ksdale
Thank you as well!

1\. I guess it doesn't bother me so much that their lives are being cut short,
for the same reasons that the killing in general doesn't bother me. I would
say that waiting until they're old may make the meat taste bad enough that it
would be better to not bother (in which case, veganism!)

2\. I agree wholeheartedly with this point. Somewhat related, we recently
bought a freshly butchered duck from a small local farm and when I looked up
how long we could wait before cooking it, I was shocked at how long freshly
butchered meat lasts! It makes the shelf life of meat from the store seem
almost disgusting, how close it is to going bad on the day you buy it. But
that information has been obscured to the point that we all think raw meat is
just naturally gross.

3\. I also agree completely with this point, if the animal's existence is
misery, then it shouldn't happen.

We really don't eat very much meat, we buy from nice, little, local farms (and
that's expensive) and we raise our own meat rabbits and try to give them as
much room and freedom as we can while making sure they don't get disease from
the wild rabbits in our area. I decided a while ago that I wouldn't eat meat
if I wasn't willing to do at least some of the slaughtering myself. It felt
too important to outsource completely.

And it may sound weird, but the slaughtering itself has made me appreciate
nature way more, and really changed my relationship with death, in that I see
death less as a horrible thing that happens and more as part of a cycle
whereby nutrients are redistributed and renewal is allowed to occur. We happen
to live long enough that lots of things will die while we live, and it's easy
to forget that we'll die and something will consume us, too, even if it's just
a microbe or a plant.

And factory farming is way more... extractive? It feels like it doesn't allow
for the redistribution and renewal, the same way that mono-culture farming on
a massive scale can leach away nutrients and destroy biodiversity.

~~~
vzidex
> we buy from nice, little, local farms (and that's expensive)

> but the slaughtering itself has made me appreciate nature way more

Sounds like we're mostly on the same page then :)

------
bborud
This is a good opportunity to read up on the balance of livestock to wild
animals in terms of sheer numbers and have a good think about what this means.

(And in case someone thinks I'm a vegan here to lecture: last night's dinner
was Boeuf Bourgignon cooked for 5 hours)

~~~
TeMPOraL
For the sake of the undercaffeinated among of us, could you elaborate a bit
more on what it means?

~~~
vzidex
I'm guessing they mean that the population of livestock is orders of magnitude
greater than the population of wild (mammals and birds) animals on this
planet. I forget the exact figures and am lazy to Google them, but I remember
that cows, pigs, and chickens far outnumber even the population of people on
this planet.

~~~
bborud
I've seen various estimates over the years as well as various ways of
measuring this. I think that the most useful is to look at the resource draw,
which roughly is about biomass.

I didn't post any numbers on purpose because I don't believe in just throwing
out numbers that require a lot of context. I was being sincere when I said
that "This is a good opportunity to read up...". One _should_ spend some time
trying to understand our footprint.

But yes, our food completely dominates the picture. Many places in the world
most mammalian wildlife is little more than a footnote.

If this comes as a surprise to anyone, this makes me a bit upset and worried.

------
gdubs
I was reading Carl Sagan’s “Dragons of Eden” years ago and realized that while
humans may have intellect, emotionally we’re very similar to other animals.
Then I had the thought: when it comes to being slaughtered, what’s worse;
having an intellect, or having emotion? I know that if I were subjected to
confinement and ultimately slaughter, it would be my emotional response — not
my intellect — which would define my experience.

The universe eats itself and I’m not really qualified to make a moral
judgement on killing animals for food — I’m particularly loathe to make black
and white judgements. But, I’m able to eat a mostly vegan diet, and so that’s
what I do.

------
zadkey
The alternative is by butchering. (E.G.) there was sufficient demand for
meat/processing ability at plants.

Though I honestly wish there was a more humane alternative to culling.

These industrial farms don't have room to spare for animals that aren't
wanted.

I wish there was some kind of park or nature reserve or somewhere that they
could be sent to live out their lives in peace instead of the culling. Or if
such places already exist, laws that mandate that they be sent there.

~~~
PeterisP
Who would feed them?

Releasing large quantities of animals to nature is both anti-ecological and
inhumane, as it results in destruction of that ecosystem, starvation,
cannibalism, etc. Like the horrible aftermath of the cases when activists have
"freed" animals from fur farms, resulting in them dying within weeks but also
taking all the local wildlife (e.g. nesting birds) with them. You can
successfully do a controlled release of a limited number of animals given
proper preparation. But if we're talking about releasing large numbers
quickly, culling is much more humane than that that.

------
ge96
This is an ignorant "wishful" thought/question on my part but, what would be
the cost to "donate" this food instead of just killing. I think I understand
that it costs money to go through the full process, but if they're in an
"adult" stage and are "edible" after processing. Is it really better to just
kill/accept the loss than to get some use out of it? I think logistics is the
main issue anyway, costs money to transport/refrigerate.

~~~
globular-toast
The cost would be non-zero, so it won't be done. In fact, it would be very
much higher than non-zero. You can't just march these animals down the road to
the market one morning and give them away. Just because there are sentient
beings involved you shouldn't think that this is any different from any other
huge industrial operation. A car manufacturer can't expect to be able to
liquidise a bunch of parts. Without the correct tooling it's worthless to
anyone. Meat is the finished product, not animals. And those animals have no
more rights than a hunk of metal.

~~~
BostonFern
People, this is a descriptive characterization, not a normative one. It's
perfectly sound.

~~~
danharaj
All communication has a normative component. The normativity of a description
is what it considers relevant and what it considers irrelevant.

------
vzidex
To anyone reading this thread and thinking "The horror!":

Being culled through these various methods is no better or worse than they
would have experienced under "normal" conditions - i.e. being raised until
they are fit for slaughter and sale. No animal wants to die, and the methods
used to kill them when being sold are just as cruel as the "culling"
techniques listed here [1].

If you don't like what you're reading in this article, go vegan. Otherwise,
you're paying for other people to inflict this sort of suffering on animals.

[1] Dominion (2018):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko)

~~~
deweller
Not all animal slaughter is overly cruel.

One can eat meat without contributing to excessive cruelty to animals. In
contrast to large meat corporations, there are local farmers that do care
about the methods used to slaughter their animals.

Yes animals must be killed to be eaten. But "this sort of suffering" is not a
necessity.

~~~
vzidex
> Not all animal slaughter is overly cruel

Sure, but no animal _wants_ to die. No matter how you kill it, you're still
harming it.

> there are local farmers that do care about the methods used to slaughter
> their animals

The problem is that farms like that are exceedingly rare, and I think that
their existence is mostly used as a mental cop-out to avoid feeling bad about
the animal products one consumes.

By exceedingly rare, I mean that factory farms produce (in the USA) [1]:

* 99.9% of meat chickens

* 97% of egg-laying hens

* 99% of turkeys

* 95% of pigs

* 78% of cattle

I've also make a bunch of points relating to the natural lifespans of animals,
the issues with modern breeds, and whitewashing of animal farming practices in
my other comment [2]. If animals were to be raised for their products (meat,
eggs, dairy, wool) in ways that do not contribute any excess cruelty to their
lives - i.e. letting them live out most of their natural lives, giving them
space, good food, loving care, and not raising modern breeds that suffer from
their over-engineering - I would expect said products to cost an order of
magnitude more than what you typically find at the grocery store these days.
Odds are your "free-range" eggs that cost 30% more than the cheapest ones
aren't it.

If you want to consume animal products, go ahead. But, face the consequences
of your diet, and acknowledge what you are paying others to do - without
imagining the magical "cruelty-free" farm. That was the point of my post: that
while in theory you can have wonderful farms with happy animals, in practice
they don't exist.

[1] [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-
f_b_1...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1018840)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237599)

~~~
dazilcher
> no animal wants to die

Since we're pretending to speak on their behalf, I posit no animal wants to
_not live_ either.

By going vegan, you are not merely sparing some animals, you are denying their
very existence.

Is a miserable short life, ending in painful death, worse than no life at all?

(rhetorical, pretty sure there's no universal answer)

------
mensetmanusman
UNICEF is now predicting 6,000 child deaths per day due to food and medical
supply issues.

It turns out you need an economy to fight the virus.

All these knock on effects will be great learnings. Probably will turn out
that future policy will be a local function of population density, public
transportation usage, etc.

~~~
carapace
The problem is that our economy is not as resilient to a pandemic as we would
hope. Centralization of meat supply was economically desirable in a perfect
world that doesn't contain e.g. Covid-19. However, since the world does
contain that virus (and many others!) it behooves us to arrange our economic
systems is ways that are resilient to viral pandemics.

Unless and until we can develop rapid identification and mediation technology
mass international travel is a thing of the past. Covid-19 isn't the only
virus in the world. In computer terms, our "attack surface" is too large.

I'm a proponent of _applied ecology_ (Permaculture, et. al.) but not a
virologist or epidemiologist, I like to think that a biomemetic agriculture
would be both more humane and safer. (FWIW) I think we will have to create a
kind of "cellular" society.

~~~
carapace
On the "new" list today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23251734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23251734)

[https://www.hcn.org/articles/covid-19-will-covid-19-help-
sav...](https://www.hcn.org/articles/covid-19-will-covid-19-help-save-small-
slaughterhouses)

"Will COVID-19 help save small slaughterhouses?"

> As laborers for the Big Four meatpackers fall ill, small slaughterhouses see
> unprecedented demand.

> From 1990 to 2016, the U.S. lost more than 1800 livestock slaughterhouses,
> 40% of the industry. As small slaughterhouses closed, the so-called “Big
> Four” meatpacking companies — Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef — came
> to dominate the industry. Today, these four companies process more than 80%
> of beef in the U.S.

There it is: optimization of one metric to the detriment of others, resulting
in overfitting, and exposed during a pandemic to rare-but-predictable crisis,
it falls over.

------
indifferentalex
Really hope information like this regarding our meat-industrial complex
disappears into obscurity before the aliens visit, or that they at least don't
judge us by the biblical "sins of your forefathers"

~~~
marcinzm
Assuming universal ethics onto a human is the subject of whole fields of
study. Doing so onto something that isn't even from the same evolutionary tree
seems silly. An alien evolved from predators might find vegetarians merely
dinner and not worthy of talking to.

~~~
karatestomp
Same as the problem with Pascal's Wager: if you don't know the motivations and
values of the entity you're trying to please and can't even really narrow the
possibilities down much, you might find the "wrong" behavior/belief is
actually the one that pleases them, and the "right" one pisses them off.

~~~
vzidex
I disagree, Pascal's Wager deals with the situation where you don't know
whether the (omnipotent) entity you're trying to please exists or not.

This comment thread assumes the omnipotent entity (aliens) exists, and so
you'd be taking a coin flip as to what behaviour they find pleasing. Pascal's
Wager resolves to:

(infinite gain * non-zero probability of success) > (finite gain * non-zero
probability of failure)

While this situation is more like:

(infinite gain * non-zero probability of success) ~= (infinite gain * non-zero
probability of failure).

~~~
karatestomp
Pascal's Wager hits precisely the same problem because it's not knowable what
might make one eligible for "infinite gain", _including not believing in
gods_. There's no way to differentiate between "finite gain" behavior and
"infinite gain" behavior.

------
peterlk
This implies to me that if they "gave away" the extra animals to family farms,
there would not be enough takers. Is that true?

~~~
StavrosK
Keep in mind that sometimes killing the animal might be the humane option. I
certainly wouldn't want a cow left to starve in what's essentially some guy's
backyard box. I've seen enough dogs kept in such conditions.

~~~
bbrree66
This is a crazy thought so please keep an open mind........ if we didn't mass
produce animals to kill and eat them.... we wouldn't have this issue in the
first place.

------
bronzeage
This is the breakdown of capitalism as a resource-routing mechanism. On the
one hand, a vital resource with much needed demand. On the other hand, someone
having to throw that resource away at a cost. I'm pretty sure people starving
would volunteer to take animals away, but after the whole process was
optimized to the cents before the crisis, there is just no room for
flexibility during the crisis.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I'm not sure whether it's capitalism at fault here, or not. For example, the
EU is far from a communist utopia but so far I haven't heard anything about
farm animals being culled over here. That's certainly not because we lack
industrial farming. I don't pretend to understand how industrial farming
processes work and I wouldn't be surprised if the same news surfaces about the
EU soon, but so far that's not been on the radar. So it's still possible that
two capitalist economies can manage their resources in different ways.

To be honest I think we should also challenge the assumption that capitalism
is incompatible with sustainable production. For example, wikipedia tells me
that "Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the
means of production and their operation for profit". I think most people
living in the West today would not consider private ownership and operation of
the means of production to be directly responsible for, e.g. the destruction
of the environment, or atrocities like the currently discussed cull of farm
animals in the US. Different processes seem to be at play here. But I don't
exactly have the knowledge to discuss this issue at depth.

Edit: I'm 100% with you on the exasperation with the situation, whaterver
caused it. It makes me want to pull my hair out just to think about it. People
are starving and animals are being culled instead of being slaughtered to feed
them. Because profit margins. That is the absolute pinnacle of stupidity.

------
jordache
ha and the righteous ppl here in the west wants to wag their fingers at animal
farming treatment in asia

------
globular-toast
CO2 and drowning are horrific ways to die. To anyone who disagrees why not try
waterboarding or taking a breath of CO2. Neither one will kill you, but
they'll be the most uncomfortable things you've ever felt in your life.

If they can use CO2 they should be able to use CO or Nitrogen. Both of these
cause a completely painless death in mammals. It was shown in a BBC
documentary called _How to Kill a Human_. The topic was how to execute
prisoners for the purpose of capital punishment, but the effects of Nitrogen
were shown on a pig. It was completely oblivious to anything happening and
voluntarily subjected itself to more Nitrogen after losing consciousness.

~~~
jstanley
> voluntarily subjected itself to more Nitrogen after losing consciousness.

How can you argue it did anything voluntarily if it was not conscious?

I'd think it was merely subjected to more nitrogen because it was unable to
move away, no?

~~~
globular-toast
I sadly can't find the video right now (there are other clips available on
Youtube). The experiment involved putting some food in a gas chamber into
which the pig could stick its head. The pig voluntarily went for the food and
the chamber was filled with Nitrogen. The pig lost consciousness and fell
backwards away from the chamber. Now breathing air the pig regains
consciousness and after fully waking up goes right back to the food.

