
Animals killed since opening this page - mavsman
https://justone.earth/food/
======
nikivi
Just wish it was illegal to show smiling chickens on chicken packs. It
desensitize people from treating meat as previously living beings.

Ideally each animal product comes with the imagery like one you get now on
cigarette packs (but of an animal in a cage/slaughterhouse) + appropriate cost
increases for welfare.

Recent law introduction of putting 1, 2, 3 stars on animal product packages to
signify how well animal was treated is great start but we can do so much
better as species coexisting in this planet with every other animal.

In my eyes it all starts with education and awareness of alternative plant
based diet but government enforced help would be great too.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Makes sense to me. At a minimum people should know how reality looks.

~~~
samatman
Strikes me as a great way to harden opposition.

Meat eaters are going to want the nasty images taken off of packaging, and the
cheaper option is to lobby to remove them, not pay substantially more for an
idyllic, pasture-raised, humane future.

Congratulations, you now have a pro-factory-farming lobbying group with actual
grassroots support.

Might also have more people on your side; might not. Worth considering the
adversary in any move of this nature.

~~~
eindiran
I don't think this is true. I think many people who eat meat do it because
they enjoy it and in most cultures, eating meat is the default thing to do;
most don't actually approve of factory farming conditions. If the pictures
actually depicted animals in the conditions they were raised (humanely raised
meat could depict something more humane than something factory-farmed on the
packaging), many people would try to eat more humanely raised meats.

There will of course be people who don't care, and people who revel in the
pictures, and people that lobby to have them removed, but overall I think
those groups would be in the minority. Many people would slowly (and
unconsciously) improve their consumption habits, in the same way that people
didn't really notice that the tides turned on issues like gay marriage and
marijuana consumption.

Part of the knee-jerk antagonism by people who eat meat to posts like this one
is that most vocal vegetarians/animal activists are absolutists: eg there is
no desirable path forward for most Animal Liberationists where a greater
percentage of animals are raised humanely but people keep eating meat. As is
often the case, everyone could benefit from agreeing to a compromise where we
improve animal farming conditions but don't vilify people who choose to
continue eating meat.

Another element here is that eating meat is integral to many cuisines and is
extremely culturally important to most people - stating that your goal is to
remove it wholesale feels like a direct attack. Claiming that people who enjoy
eating meat are your adversaries seems like exactly the wrong thing to do.
It's as unhelpful as saying that everyone who owns a car is contributing to
climate change is therefore the enemy of environmentalism.

~~~
samatman
Consider that taxing factory meat and putting the proceeds into a subsidy of
humane meats would accomplish the policy goal without the tedious social
shaming.

The problem that faces is that it looks and feels more like an animal-lib play
than an animal-welfare one. As you point out, the animal liberationist faction
will not stop pushing until there's no meat at the market, and raising and
slaughtering your own is as illegal as slavery.

Since I don't want that, I'm obliged to oppose anything that gives them power
and influence. A lot of people would implicitly come to the same conclusion.

~~~
Ididntdothis
That’s a very convenient but not very ethical conclusion. You are basically
saying “I believe some people will try to go further than I like,I conclude
it’s best to do nothing”. I can’t agree with that but it’s a common political
trick to mark things you don’t like as too extreme and therefore nothing
should be done.

------
tempestn
So, here's what I wonder about this. I think most people who think about it
can agree that a lot of factory farming conditions are terrible. Cramped
quarters, lack of outdoor time, space, exercise, poor food, etc. So working
toward eliminating those problems seems incontrovertibly good to me.

However, let's say hypothetically we're only talking about farms run with a
focus on animal welfare. (And not just giving animals 10 square feet of
'pasture' so they can say they're free range, but really.) So the issues of
poor living conditions are removed, and we're just talking about killing
animals for meat. If people stopped eating meat altogether, most farm animals
simply wouldn't be born in the first place. Farmers aren't going to raise
animals if they can't eventually earn money from them, obviously, and most of
these animals wouldn't exist in large numbers in the wild. So what I'm
wondering is, for a farm animal is it not possible that a decent life followed
by being slaughtered for food might be superior to no life at all?

Obviously if we think in terms of humans, that would be horrific; we consider
killing humans unnecessarily an absolute moral wrong. If someone decided they
would have a child, but only if they could murder them after some period of
time, that's obviously monstrous. I'm just not sure that that analogy applies
to farm animals who certainly are living creatures who feel pain, but don't
have the same understanding of the world and their place in it that humans do.
To me that's the rational reason why the the idea of killing humans could be
considered differently from killing other animals. That said, I expect the
real reason we instinctively feel that killing humans is wrong is more an
evolutionary drive to protect our own species.

I do grant that it's uncomfortable to think about when the analogy to humans
is drawn. For some I'm sure it's uncomfortable even without consciously making
that connection. I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore
conclude it's morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I
agree.

~~~
ChristianBundy
> I can absolutely understand why someone would therefore conclude it's
> morally wrong to use animals for food. I'm just not sure I agree.

Why not? Your comment makes it clear that industrial animal agriculture is
wrong (not to mention ecologically disastrous), but then your last sentence
makes a 180 out of nowhere. It feels extreme at first, but I'd like to assure
you that reducing your consumption of these industries is possible (and
sometimes even easy!).

~~~
tempestn
As I said, I'm certain many of the current industrial farming practices are
wrong. I'm speaking solely about the morality of killing animals for food, and
questioning whether or not that alone is unethical, even if they are raised in
good conditions.

------
atlasunshrugged
Maybe I'm being a techno optimist but I really am rooting for Beyond Meat and
all the plant based alternatives here. I've tried to go vegan a few times for
both the ethical and environmental reasons but have never maintained and end
up a 'reduceatarian.' I just think realistically the best chance for animal
welfare is that plant based meats become cheaper, tastier, and healthier and
just replace the majority of them, leaving only a high end segment of meat
that was well treated; and then it doesn't seem morally wrong to eat since
you're helping enable a net "good" life for an animal with your consumption
rather than the horrible conditions most animals are raised in today.

~~~
J5892
While Beyond and Impossible meats are great alternatives, I don't think
artificial meat will truly take off until "lab grown" actual meat becomes
mass-produceable and sustainable.

I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.

------
enruwhuy
Some context for the scale of this:

“[F]armed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30%
being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on
Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are
wild animals.”

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-
ra...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-
just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study)

~~~
kendallpark
Reminds me of:

[https://xkcd.com/1338/](https://xkcd.com/1338/)

------
jankyxenon
"Animal equality" is not a great brand. Sure, maybe you can get most people to
agree that they should be treated more humanely. Equal is not the right word.

If it came down to me or a chicken - I sincerely hope society would prioritize
me.

------
mydongle
Uncomfortable thoughts: Let's say first world countries in the West get on
board with not eating meat anymore. How do you exactly go about telling
impoverished countries/peoples to stop eating meat? Would we ban meat and
force them to eat some substitutes? But food is an important part of culture
and we would be erasing their culture if we did that wouldn't we? Should we
give some cultural groups the right to eat meat since they're less privileged?
Of course I'm only speaking hypothetically, assuming that the goal is to reach
0 animals killed for human consumption.

~~~
tomglynch
Most of impoverished countries already eat mostly veg. We wouldn't need to ban
them

~~~
samatman
"Mostly" is a useless metric when they're eating as much meat as they can
afford, and that just happens to be not much.

The only exception I'm aware of is India and since that's religious it seems
difficult to scale. Islam has animal slaughter as one of its few obligate
rituals.

------
ebg13
The page is a neat and useful visual exercise until the chickens section which
just completely breaks all my browsers.

~~~
ken
Interestingly, no problem at all with an iPhone SE, a phone packed with
5-year-old technology.

~~~
ComodoHacker
Number of pixels rendered per second is much fewer on SE I suppose.

------
therealdrag0
Worth pointing out: The future is now. Just this week I bought Beyond Burgers
from my grocery store (first time) and made them for my partner and me and
they were really good.

~~~
J5892
I bought Beyond ground meat for the first time because the grocery was out of
all actual meats. (this was the first day of the CA stay at home order)

It's now the main "meat" we use for tacos. I'm not a big fan of it for
burgers, though.

Impossible burgers, on the other hand, are great. It's a shame they only sell
to restaurants.

------
derision
Would be interesting to have the opposite, animals bred since opening this
page

~~~
soperj
Or plants killed since opening this page.

~~~
ainiriand
Or thoughts dying in an empty brain. That would be something.

~~~
ultimape
I"m assuming you're being sarcastic, but I would love a similar style page
showing how many trees are burned and how many fish are harvested vs. how many
fish are repopulated.

Thinking about memes as living organisms (infomorphic beings?) would be an
interesting way to frame cultural decay.

~~~
soperj
I wasn't. Plants are clearly important to our well being, more so than
animals.

~~~
ainiriand
You are being equidistant. You can't compare the suffering of a pig or a cow
with the suffering of a lettuce.

Considering we have to eat, we should try to minimize the suffering.

~~~
soperj
I'm not, and I can. Just because you choose not to, doesn't mean that I can't.
Life is life.

------
Starkus
A lot of humans to feed

~~~
blahblahblah22
It's pretty well-established that we (in the West) consume far more protein
than we need. We don't need to go vegan but do need to reduce meat
consumption.

~~~
nradov
On the contrary, most people would be healthier if they ate more high quality
protein from a diverse range of plant and animal sources. The US RDA is enough
to avoid nutritional deficiency but insufficient for optimal health and
athletic performance.

------
mavsman
Disclaimer: this is not my website. I'm not pro or anti vegan or vegetarianism
(therefore clearly don't understand how loaded of a conversation this can
become).

I posted this because I thought it was interesting. Didn't realize this
conversation would devolve. I'll try to post more consciously in the future.

------
hi41
I am not sure if veganism and vegetarianism as preached by some religions can
be practiced everywhere on the earth. Places which are very cold during the
winters cannot grow trees and vegetables, and the people there need to depend
on meat from the animals for their survival. What are your thoughts on that.

~~~
uxcolumbo
Veganism is defined as

"Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and
practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food,
clothing or any other purpose."

So the keyword here is 'practicable'.

People living in places where there are no alternatives and where people need
to eat meat to survive then that would be OK.

People living in the western world don't need meat & dairy to survive.

------
Mizza
These types of pages and articles always draw out a bunch of weirdly
sociopathic comments saying things like "mm, delicious" or "now I'm hungry",
etc. Why is that?

It's possible to materially enjoy the taste of meat while simultaneously being
horrified by the scope of man's destruction and industrialized cruelty. It's
entirely another thing to revel in your own ignorance and disinterest of the
issue. Really revolting.

~~~
samatman
The normal reaction to being shamed is defiance.

We don't even have to think what we're doing isn't bad. It's enough if we
think it's not as bad as it's being made out to be.

Also, just about everyone in the English-speaking world is sick of PETA's
sanctimonious shenanigans. It's a bad look which rubs off on any group whose
tactics rhyme with PETA's.

------
georgewsinger
For philosophical issues surrounding this topic, I recommend Michael Huemer's
_Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism_ : [https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-
Ethical-Vegetarianism-Micha...](https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Ethical-
Vegetarianism-Michael-Huemer/dp/1138328294)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Why are human skulls shown next to the cows and chickens? When cows or
chickens are killed they leave behind cow skulls and chicken skulls not human
skulls.

~~~
delecti
Probably because cow and chicken skulls are less immediately recognizable.
Also there are likely not emojis for "chicken skull" or "cow skull", and it
seems that's what this displays.

------
yters
Is there any upside to industrialized livestock farming? E.g. the enormous
number of animals that get to live?

~~~
uxcolumbo
Do you think quality of life matters? Or is mere existence enough?

If so, do you think factory farmed animals have a good of quality life?

~~~
samatman
My conclusion from this argument is that it should lead one to eat:
sustainable wild-caught fish, pasture-raised eggs, game meats, beef, sheep,
and goat.

Avoid chicken (other domestic fowl are generally ok) and pigs, which can be
(and are) tortured their whole lives for profit. There is considerable room
for improvement in how veal is raised as part of milk and meat production, but
calves which avoid that process and end up as meat get: two good years, a
couple not-great months, and one really terrifying and shitty day.

~~~
uxcolumbo
Would this be scalable? Could we replace factory farming with your suggestion?

Is our ecological footprint important as well when making food choices?

If so, why not listen to the science and try to reduce meat & dairy as much as
we can.

"A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on
planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification,
eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University
of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on
your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse
gas emissions."

From:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-
meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth)

------
rukittenme
What level of animal genocide would be acceptable to my vegan peers?

~~~
ainiriand
I think you are framing the problem incorrectly. I think that is this only
about sheding some light to this problem, and beeing the intelligent humans
that we are, take action. We are consuming much more meat than we need, as
soon as you notice that, you can act and reduce some of you meat intake by
replacing it with some good source of plant protein. When was the last time
you had chickpeas, for example? Or any good source of legume protein?

------
jodrellblank
> Save the animals

50Bn chickens each taking 1 square foot of space in an endless battery farm
makes an area about the size of Delaware. Per year.

Save them, and then what?

~~~
delecti
The rough lifespan for a factory farmed chicken, from hatching to slaughter,
is under 2 months. There's no plausible scenario where the entirety of America
and everyone we export chicken to stops eating chicken in the span of 2
months. As demand drops, factory farms will stop hatching and raising chickens
they don't expect to be able to sell. Even if it slowed within the span of a
year, there would only be about 1/6 that 50Bn unless there were 10 months of
absurd over production. More likely it will be a shift over many years or
decades.

------
sdinsn
I'm aware of the realities of factory farming, but I'm also very aware that I
like eating chicken.

------
metiscus
Where are the entries for deer and fish? Mmmm delicious.

~~~
blahblahblah22
I know these kinds of comments are meant to shut down conversations about
meat-eating. Even if you find something delicious, it's possible to reduce
consumption to have a positive impact on both the animals and the climate.
After all, many of us love sugar (or alcohol or salt or fried snacks) but we
control our intake.

------
nradov
Why don't they count the bacteria killed to make cheese?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They're not cute. People don't connect with them.

------
JoeAltmaier
Not too much different from animals that die in nature. Birds: 15 per second
is about right.

~~~
blahblahblah22
Well ducks at >90/second and chickens at >1500/sec doesn't quite compare with
15/second. How do you figure 15/second is about right anyway?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
An estimate of 1/2 to 1B birds dying per annum. But that was only due to human
interaction (freeways etc).

Yeah but chickens - that given number corresponds to 50B per year. But there
are more than 65B (though less than 20B at any one time exist).

------
fooker
Now do: Animals which would have been killed if all forests were cut down to
supply the agricultural needs of 7 billion vegetarians.

The sort of one dimensional thought process presented here is somewhat
dangerous.

~~~
waterbadger
Animals are lossy at converting plant calories into meat calories (varies for
different kinds of livestock obviously). I don’t think it’s an obvious
conclusion that more agricultural land would be required.

~~~
fooker
Most agriculture is only feasible in fertile lands. A majority of modern
agriculture happens in river valleys once occupied by rainforests.

In comparison, animal rearing is feasible in pretty desolate places as long as
you can transport feed and water.

Just claiming it's a lossy energy conversion is pretty irrelevant. Not all the
'calories' here are created equal.

~~~
jgwil2
Where do you think the feed comes from?

~~~
fooker
Did you get the impression that I am speaking for abolishing agriculture?

To answer your question, almost anything will do as feed. Byproducts of
agriculture, grasslands, processed/filtered organic waste. Animals will thrive
on rotten meat too -- famously leading to the mad cow disease.

~~~
jgwil2
Funny that you cite diseased animals as evidence of thriving.

------
justicezyx
A lot of these compassionate posts about protecting previously-unknown or
unconscious things/creatures/human groups etc, is that they systematically
have no mentioning of what they want to achieve, and the roadmap towards that.

Sure, if you want to raise awareness, but for what purpose?

To provoke meat-eating people's conscience? Or make them angry?

Edit: Comments did a great job of explaining the objectives, and rationale.
Thanks!

~~~
d1str0
They want to achieve a decrease in pollution, animal cruelty, heart disease,
etc.

When I look at this I see 1.5 billion pigs producing insane amounts of by
product that directly affects our climate and our watershed. Not to mention
the impact on human health.

------
scott_paul
Yes, humans eat animals. "Top of the food chain" means something. It means
lunch. Delicious lunch.

Oh man, now I want a chicken sandwich with bacon on it.

~~~
lurker2823
maybe with a little bit of parmesan cheese in it also, yummmm

------
gjsman-1000
One problem: This website doesn't adjust for time. For example, the turkeys
killed per minute is much higher in Thanksgiving than outside of Thanksgiving
(like right now).

~~~
partiallypro
I'm sure they just take they daily average throughout a year, and don't
account for cyclical events. So they are probably over-counting on a daily
basis and under-counting on holidays.

------
cryptica
This page doesn't count animals killed by other (non-human) animals. Mother
nature is also cruel. I don't think that humans are the biggest animal
killers. A single humpback whale likely kills millions of krill every day. One
could even argue that eating whale meat is ethical because it saves millions
of lives.

Also it should be noted that most of these farm animals would never have been
alive if humans did not breed them in the first place so we shouldn't see
death as necessarily a bad thing. We give them life and then we take it away.
Every creature dies eventually - So do we.

I think the focus of animal protection movements should be based more on the
ethical treatment of animals. It's important to make sure that all animals
have the opportunity of a decent life before they are slaughtered; especially
have room to move around in an open area with access to natural light.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> This page doesn't count animals killed by other (non-human) animals.

Because it's a silly vegan propaganda page by wealthy privileged virtue
signaling crowd without any grasp on reality.

Countless quadrillions of animals are killed every year in nature. Countless
billions of animals are killed every year to clear land and protect vegetation
from insects, worms, rodents, etc. Countless billions of animals are killed to
build homes that these privileged people live in.

Not to mention the countless billions of animals killed by pet cats and
countless billions of animals killed to feed our pets ( cats, dogs, snakes,
etc ).

~~~
stanski
Factory farming big in nature?

