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1·3 days agoDidn’t make this graph, so not sure why it’s spaced like that
5·4 days agoSlaugherhouses and similar lines of work change a person for the worse. Institutionalized killing makes workers often numb and more prone to all forms of violence. PTSD is common as well. Near universal dairy industry practices include things like killing cows after their productivity declines, separating calves from mothers, and more. Some quotes from workers in slaughterhouses I think describe what those kinds of things do to a person most aptly
“Maximum six months then you make a change, because if he shoots continuously it will start affecting him. He gets a murderous attitude in him. He will do it to other people. He will stab you with a knife, turn around and walk away.”
[…]
“As time passes, you get used to it. You feel nothing. You can imagine, if you kill a thing a 1000 times over and over, you wouldn’t have feelings after a while. It kills you on the inside, an abattoir, it kills you. You can be full of blood, it will not bother you”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4841092/
Here’s another
Down in the blood pit they say that the smell of blood makes you aggressive. And it does. You get an attitude that if that hog kicks at me, I’m going to get even. You’re already going to kill the hog, but that’s not enough. It has to suffer.
https://theconversation.com/animals-suffer-for-meat-production-and-abattoir-workers-do-too-127506
Huh strange doesn’t show on for me, but https://archive.is/tV414 should let you see the article
25·6 days agoMaybe the EU will pass some legislation that will carry over to the US
GDPR requires the right to have your data deleted at least, but a lot of companies will only allow that if you are within the EU (because of profit and spite, I suppose). Though some just allowed it for everyone instead
Similar for California Consumer Privacy Act where a lot of companies will only let you do the stuff it requires if you are within California
Sort of like the “unsubscribe” button you get at the bottom of some emails. Did they have to pass a law to get that enacted?
Yes, see the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
1·6 days agoThis is at a facility that “processes” them rather than one that raises them. The turkeys most likely weren’t killed earlier than industry typically does (which is still young). Turkeys can live 10 yrs but are typically slaughtered between ~5-6 months old. Contract growers probably already reduced the amount of turkeys they raise because late January + 6 months comes out to around now
13·8 days agoDo note that a lot of early reporting on Trump’s “deals” in the past have often been grossly misleading. Often counting existing agreements as new one or leaving critical details out
For instance, I recall a lot of people were questioning a deal with Mexico earlier as bending the knee that turned out to largely be just be puff agreements that they had already made before Trump
There’s a decent chance that this is continuing that pattern. Though I can’t say for certain of course
Indeed, factory farming is quite dominant globally. From one group’s estimate:
We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates
Leagues already had rules on their own without the government getting involved. Now instead it’s outright bans being enforced by the state. The largest and loudest voices pushing for the government to do this have openly said they are doing this to attack trans rights in other areas. It’s not about sports
Plus beef is a large emitter to climate change. They’ve spread tons of disinformation on this to keep its consumption and production up. The industry is reaping what they’ve sowed
The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.
In particular, it would like you not to be especially concerned about how meat consumption needs to be reduced if we are to avoid the most violently disruptive forms of planetary heating (even if all fossil fuel use ended tomorrow).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-industry-public-relations-messaging-machine
You’ve heard of toxic negativity, get ready for toxic positivity
Unfortunately it’s now no longer just limited to the US. Australia has some Ag-gag laws, Various Canadian provinces have tried and there is active ongoing litigation of one in Ontario, and France has some Ag-gag laws
The immigrants sent to CECOT were from Venezuela originally, that’s why they cared about this. From the article about the motivations about that specifically
The release of the Venezuelans, meanwhile, is an invaluable win for Maduro as he presses his efforts to assert himself as president despite credible evidence that he lost reelection last year.
Long accused of human rights abuses, Maduro for months has used the migrants’ detention in El Salvador to flip the script on the U.S. government, forcing even some of his strongest political opponents to agree with his condemnation of the migrants’ treatment.
Their return will allow Maduro to reaffirm support within his shrinking base, while demonstrating that even if the Trump administration and other nations see him as an illegitimate president, he is still firmly in power.
In other reporting, El Salvador has basically just says that the whole deal was between the US and Venezuela directly and they didn’t have involvement besides just moving them out. They were being paid by the US to hold them there in the first place, so now they are presumably just not being paid for it
Tried updating it again to improve it. Any better with the edit to the edit? (May take a bit to federate)
Not the person you are replying to, but that is severely underestimating the amount of factory farming. They are the dominant method of production
Based on the EPA’s definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (i.e factory farm) and USDA census data:
All fish raised in fish farms were considered to be factory-farmed. More than 98% of hens and pigs. For chickens and turkeys, the share was more than 99%. Cows were a bit more likely to be raised outside in fields, with greater space and freedom. Nonetheless, 75% were still fed in concentrated feeding operations for at least 45 days a year.
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed
And even those that are not considered factory farmed don’t always look how one may think, for instance non-factory farmed cows still use plenty of grain feed
Currently, ‘grass-finished’ beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
None of this is not limited to the US by any means. For instance in the UK:
There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals
Factory farming is unfortunately what scales well. If we want less factory farming we need the industry itself to be smaller. That is no impossible goal. Germany, for instance, has seen its overall meat consumption fall over the last decade
In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.
This is more than usual. He got ratioed on one of his posts about this on his own platform - a first for him. The anger has also lasted longer than usual for the MAGA base. I suspect most will probably end up going back to him, but if even say 10-20% don’t that’s significant and weakens his grip within the Republican party. It opens the door to some degree of criticism of Trump within right wing media environments
Can’t predict the future here, but this is unusual for MAGA so I wouldn’t write it off as nothing
10·29 days agoNote that this article is not about the US
Decades ago, a generation of UK schoolchildren unwittingly took part in an initiative aimed at boosting reading skills – with lasting consequences
If there were no ranked choice, he still would have won in this case. He won the plurality of the votes on the first round (unexpectedly and a massive over performance of the polls)
Granted ranked choice may have made more people feel safer to consider him in the first place, but still worth noting here
Current trajectory estimates are more like +2.5C to +3C by 2100 based on existing policy. We’ve actually managed to move the trajectory downward even though we obviously have a lot to go. Every little bit counts. It is far less binary than this overly simplistic tweet is suggesting
Excessive claims like this end up demotivating people and make them want to give up when we can reduce the damage each time we move our trajectory down by 0.1C
Overperformance compared to polls and the money stacked against him. He’s not just won the primary*, but won it big. Few polls had him winning. Even the polls that had him winning overall had him losing the first round of ranked choice by a fair margin. He’s just won the 1st round by like 7%
(for reference about the money)
* technically the final rounds of ranked choice aren’t yet tabulated, but it is exceedingly unlikely he given that the person in #3 is a progressive who told his supporters to rank Zohran #2. Cuomo has already conceded
That’s taking a really short term view of it. As demand has stayed low enough for long enough, they have cut back on the amount and paid dairy farmers to not operate. These kinds of programs can only prop something up for so long
Animal welfare laws do not fix the fundamental issue with these systems. As long as the industry exists in a large scale capacity, it will find the cruelest ways to operate. As long as meat, dairy, etc. are consumed in mass, factory farming will exist
For instance, US beef consumption cannot be supplied by a pasture-based system. There is only enough land to support 27% of the consumption, and that still raises methane emissions by 8% so we would need to be consuming even less if we wanted to avoid emission reductions from a move like that
Various laws and larger action can be effective though. Like putting plant-based options by default has been tested in some places, has substantially reduced demand and still kept satisfaction high. Or things like prohibiting the production of Fur, Foie Gras, etc.