this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
497 points (94.8% liked)

News

23645 readers
3106 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.

As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 117 points 1 year ago (41 children)

Just pump nitrogen in the sealed pens. The animal doesn’t panic due to perceived oxygen deprivation. They just get sleepy and die.

Hell it would be the way I’d want to go if I was sick with terminal cancer. Cheap, easy, and painless.

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I imagine that would be pretty difficult to do in a chicken coop. These are barns made out of corrugated steel and generally aren't even remotely air tight. You will, ultimately, need about 10x the nitrogen you would otherwise need, and that's if it even works.

So a special coop would need to be built for this purpose.

Chicken farmers are some of the poorest farmers in the country. They generally don't have the means to build a special kill shed to humanely euthanize their flock. They barely have the means to keep up with Tyson and Perdue's ridiculous bullshit.

So, while I agree, heat stroke is a fucking awful way to kill these animals, the issue isn't just "there's a humane method bro, just build a kill house bro"

The issue is, we are paying FAR too little for chicken, and most meat, honestly.

[–] Szymon@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you have millions of chickens to kill, you're not so poor of a farmer that be you can't afford to come up with a humane method to do this job.

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There are several documentaries on this topic, but they don't have a lot of authority over how many chickens they buy. They're dictated a flock size, they pay for it, and then they pay to feed and raise them, then they sell them back to the people they bought the chicks from. Inevitably every year the chicken processor, whoever it may be, makes additional demands that they also have to pay out of pocket for.

I'm not justifying their actions, I'm saying they are stuck between two masters and they have no room to wiggle.

[–] ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out of complete ignorance - do Purdue or Tyson even run their own hatcheries/coops?

[–] Kepabar@startrek.website 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No.

It's cheaper to out source it this way because as their farmers are contractors they don't have to adhere to the legal responsibilities they would if they ran them in their own.

They can keep their contracted farmers in debt to them indefinitely and essentially have a class of indentured servants.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have learned more in this discussion about chicken farming than I ever thought I would.

Sometimes I just love the internet.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I imagine there are a handful of ways to do it besides “long, slow heat stroke”

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I imagine the long, slow, painful, heat stroke method is the cheapest, thus the suffering is capitalist-approved!

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We are getting that heat stroke thing thrown back to us soon lol

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't sound as cheap as running the heater for a few hours.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] EtherWhack@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Carbon monoxide would be cheaper. We used it for euthanizing animals that couldn't be saved at the wildlife rehab center I worked at. Though, it was done with sealed induction box, not a drafty barn like someone mentioned

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] rbesfe@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nitrogen is expensive and these buildings aren't airtight

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

These are engineering problems. The point is it’s way more humane than dying in a sweat lodge.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (36 replies)
[–] ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world 75 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hello aliens I'm a vegan and condemn this bullshit

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 77 points 1 year ago (42 children)

I'm not and I condemn this bullshit.

[–] HerrBeter@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

"capitalism is more effective than alternatives"

Capitalism showing why it is more effective :

load more comments (41 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Hylactor@sopuli.xyz 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (16 children)

If humans don't commit suicide first through war or environmental abuse, I truly believe that future generations will look back on eating meat as a barbaric mistake. They'll tell stories about how we caused epidemics and pandemics, wasted valuable resources and land, polluted air, land, and sea, and abided the suffering of billions of animals, all so we could feed our children dinosaur shaped meat nuggets and buy cheap hamburgers that we were too lazy to even get out of our cars to purchase.

"And then, even as global warming spiraled out of control, they wasted arable land and dwindling water supplies on subsidized corn to feed to the subsidized beef and poultry stock. The ones that didn't get culled or recalled or spoil before even hitting a plate contributed to a dietary culture of heart disease. Also, the animals regularly suffered immensely, which they were aware of but preferred not to consider."

[–] MooseBoys@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (8 children)

future generations will look back on eating meat as a barbaric mistake

Primates, including humans, evolved to be omnivorous. In the 200,000 year history of the homo sapiens species, only the most recent 3% have had the benefit of agriculture. Even then, only 0.1% have had the benefit of the industrial revolution which could in theory provide enough calories and nutrients for all humans with a purely herbivorous diet.

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

So what? We evolved to thrive on a wide variety of diets. I don't judge my homo erectus ancestors for doing what they needed to survive. It's fairly apparent that the person you're replying to is referring to modern society's obsession with producing as much meat as we do, not the concept of eating meat as a whole.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)
[–] Fades@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago (36 children)

The meat industry is fucking sick and demented but people need their meats so animal ethics be damned…. Fucking bullshit, fucking human cancer

[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Take the subsidies from animal farming and give them to meat alternatives.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (35 replies)
[–] frickineh@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh cool, that's completely horrifying. And not at all surprising from the meat industry. They've never cared about animal cruelty with anything else they do, so why would they care about this?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fourty nine million just staggers my brain. Like, thats not even a blip in the production.

...nuts.

[–] Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (13 children)

If aliens do come to earth, and simply enslave us, torture us then kill us for reasons we can't comprehend, there should be absolutely no question whether we deserve it or not. They would be doing what we do to other sentient creatures en masse. We have the intelligence and ability to simply not kill these animals in a fashion that is sadistic and agonizing(im not even saying not to kill them, just do it humanely, bare minimum), yet we do it anyway because of greed and capitalist profit motives, cutting costs, etc.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I sometimes hope for aliens to come to this planet and treat us like we treat other living beings.

Humanity is such a poor excuse for civilisation

[–] 4lan@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Humans are fucking disgusting. If you zoom out far enough we are just a bacterial infection of the Earth. Spreading our gray cities like bacteria in a petri dish. Growth for the sake of growth is the mentality of a cancer cell.

[–] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Well Earth is about to pitch a fever to fight us off…

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)

Firefighting foam is full of PFAS that tends to pollute groundwater. The last thing we need is more uses for it.

load more comments
view more: next ›