We're led to believe the animal products we purchase came from animals that had space to move around and had good, long lives. That happy animals make quality products, so of course we try to make them happy. That this is a mutually beneficial relationship: we keep them fed and safe, and they feed us at the end of the arrangement. The reality is this is not the case for almost all farm animals in the U.S.
99% of U.S. farmed animals are now on factory farms / Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Factory farm conditions are very cruel and unhygienic (see here for examples). 71-85% of the U.S. public found standard animal agriculture practices unacceptable in a recent study, ranging based on the animal; this shows the public has concern for the animals in our "care".
There are many entities hard at work trying to prevent the truth from getting to us, even passing laws that register citizens as terrorists if they reveal what's happening in these farms.
In my view, if we saw where our farmed animals really came from, most of us would either change where we buy or stop eating those animal products altogether.
/u/James_Fortis (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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I don’t think we would stop eating it, or change where we buy; but instead we’d change our rationale on how acceptable it is. Humans are excellent at rationalizing the decisions made for their financial health
This is interesting. So you're saying if the 71-85% of people who find the practice unacceptable saw that almost all of their animal products came from those practices, and saw how cruel and unhygienic they were, that we'd change our minds into saying they are in fact acceptable instead of changing our behavior?
Yep. Material forces beat morality for most people.
I wasn't expecting to give a !delta this early, but you make a really good point. I made this post assuming that we are rational creatures and would change our behaviors based on the truth, but your point has me realize that the "truth" isn't necessarily the same thing to everyone - that we can change our world view to fit our behavior, if we choose to. I see this a lot in our political environment - that something is wrong until our tribe does it, then we justify why it is now okay to do.
Great point!
It's called "subjective morality".
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Nrdman (227∆).
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As a less morality driven, but similarly irrational example, look at smoking and alcohol.
Once we knew (as a society) how bad for us smoking was, there were a ton of regulations and public education campaigns. Many people did stop smoking, and over generations it has dropped quite a bit, but there are still a ton of people who smoke and have constructed numerous reasons why it’s ok for them to do so.
To see even less of a shift, most adults still consume alcohol somewhat regularly. It accounts for roughly 4-5% of all deaths, and yet is still a standard part of most societies. No one likes liver disease or horrific car crashes, and despite awareness campaigns for both of those things we continue to drink and rationalize why it won’t be us.
Smoking has dropped 73% since 1966, when we started informing our public of the reality of the product. This is consistent with my point that most people will change, if given the proper information.
This is an interesting point, but I believe alcohol is different for the following reasons:
I honestly did not know it was that big of a drop in smoking, I must unfortunately (or I guess fortunately for everyone else) live in a tobacco island. Still though, you are talking about heavy regulation in addition to information. You are also talking about 60 years, which is 2-3 generations of societal shift. I do think we are likely to see something similar with factory farming, and a decrease in meat in general.
However, I took the claim to be that we would see an immediate shift where the majority of current meat eating people changed their behavior. In 1965 42% of adults smoked. By 1985 that had dropped to 30%. I can’t really find numbers on how many of those were adults that didn’t quit vs. new adults, but it doesn’t look like a majority of smokers quit in that 20 years.
It's a good point, and I agree my post might have made it seem like I was expecting an immediate switch. You're right that it would take time, similar to other societal shifts since this is a big boat to turn.
Just for point 3… I suggest people try cannabis instead.
You can dose more effectively, it doesn’t have to last as long. And you hear about all those stoners getting into deadly crashes? Me neither. Yet we all know folks who take some variation of a “blunt ride”.
Also, no hang over. 🤘
Downside: Makes you stupid.
I suggest don't habitually get high? Maybe get some exercise instead, that helps you feel good.
Idk how old you are, but acceptance of drunk driving has absolutely tanked. It used to be pretty normal for people to drive drunk and it wasn't really considered a big deal.
Also I think one of the big differences is moderation. Plenty of people have a drink or two a month. It's still bad for your health, but not as bad as things like obesity or lack of exercise. But how many people do you know who just have a nice cigarette or two once a week?
It seems like acceptance has tanked to me too, and yet the rate of drunk driving fatalities hasn't really changed much. In 2012 it accounted for just over 10k deaths (31% of all traffic deaths), and in 2023 it was 12k (30% of all traffic deaths). The campaign I see now is "buzzed driving is drunk driving" which, along with those numbers, makes it seem like we've just switched from thinking it's ok to drive drunk to thinking that we're not actually drunk.
I was comparing to the 80s, since that's around the same time anti-smoking campaigns got big. Anti-drunk-driving campaigns were very successful back then, they just kinda plateaued in the 90s and never picked up. There are more factors too, like smartphones being more common (a dumbass getting in an accident because they were texting will be considered a drunk driving fatality if they were drunk) and safety features in cars lowering the fatality rates for mid-speed collisions but not highway collisions caused by drunks.
Also I don't think we've raised our threshold for what we consider drunk. I think it was already too high. Campaigns at first were talking about people who were hammered, who everyone agreed was a drunk driver. Now that that's been mostly accepted to be a bad thing, we have the much harder task of convincing people who don't think they're drunk that they are. And that's made especially difficult because the law says they aren't. 0.08% is the legal limit, and that's actually pretty high.
Five and drive!
People do know that their meat comes from factory farming. When they say they think factory farming is unacceptable, they’re simply lying, both to themselves and to the pollster.
Correct. At this point, most people are aware of how cruel the conditions are. But they want to eat meat way more than they care about how it arrived.
Plus a lot of people never see or touch any livestock so they have no connection.
Dawg people already know it does but they don’t care
Do you maybe have any comparable examples of his happening in society?
I can compare it to how clothing had become more revealing over time, and how individuals who used to have a restrictive view now have a relatively looser view, but I think that crosses multiple generations so it's not as present in the individual.
Child labor to make phones. We say it’s bad, but we get the products anyway
That's a fair example.
I have a hard time differentiating between the effects of decisions made for personal financial benefits vs decisions made against morality because the immorslity is 'subjectively lessened' by distance and scale (it happens so far away and at such a scale that my sense of personal involvement is reduced).
I doubt many people would have a phone if other people don't have a phone and if the child labor happened in their vicinity.
I'm not trying to argue either effect is worse or better, and I don't really mean to debate you nevessarily, just thinking out loud.
You say for our financial health, but cutting out animal products actually saves money. Beans, tofu, lentils are some of the cheapest foods in the store. Even studies have found that vegan diets are the most affordable, reducing food costs by up to one third.
Then you gotta change peoples habits, which is also difficult
You're right, it's difficult. I'm going to keep trying though.
Every animal we eat is an individual who thinks and feels and doesn't want to die. They're our buddies, not so different from my cat I grew up with and love more than anything. It's difficult, but I'm going to keep trying to help them. They don't deserve this.
You good with eating clams? A bit lower on the evolutionary chain
I don't eat any animals or animal products! I feel my happiest and healthiest just eating plants
I was just curious, as I wouldn’t say every animal thinks and feels
I will say (this isn't directed at you personally, and is a more general statement) that many things posted on this sub are fundamentally empirical claims and can and should be addressed empirically. Usually I would suggest starting with google scholar, tho tbh I more and more have been using chatGPT as starting place recently. DO NOT accept the conclusions it offers you, but it does generally do a really good job of translating a natural-language question into a search for journal articles, so follow its links. I realize that not everyone has access to university databases, but there are lots of ways (including subreddits) to access journals.
So, here "if more people knew about factory farm conditions, most of them would stop eating meat." Is a very straight-forward empirical question.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9741386/ is a meta analysis of this exact question. Question C) was: have consumers reduced or stopped the intake of animal products due to animal welfare? Necessarily people can only respond to things they perceive, so it's the same question. Section 3.8 is what you want. There is a fair degree of people expressing that they would eat less meat after exposure to new information, but little actual change. 3.11 covers it too, and they talk about it in the discussion. All show some, but limited, reductions in meat eating from the type of information you're suggesting.
A note for your specific purposes, they include a brief review of a Belgian study where participants were actually shown the inside of a pig slaughterhouse, which had mixed results in how it made people feel. Herrewijn, L.; De Groeve, B.; Cauberghe, V.; Hudders, L. VR outreach and meat reduction advocacy: The role of presence, empathic concern and speciesism in predicting meat reduction intentions. Appetite 2021, 166, 105455
What actually seems to most reduce meat eating (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4996498/?utm\_source=chatgpt.com as an additional source) is basically this: make them look at a picture of a cute cow while eating, call it cow rather than beef, and describe how much the cow likes its friends or whatever. That makes the meat literally less appetizing.
Here I will offer conjecture, but for most the sort of knowledge you're talking about is too attenuated from the practice you're trying to reduce. You learn about things in a way which is abstracted from the actual practice. If you had to step through a pool of blood literally to eat every steak, that would deter some people (though not everyone, because for some that would become normalized). But just being abstractly aware that this pool exists (metaphorically) matters less.
You are also I think inappropriately assuming people are inherently logically consistent in a straight-forward way. They are not. People have complicated ways of justifying things, ignoring things they can't justify, and of understanding them. Here's a very straight-forward (and basically correct) way of dealing with an internal conflict on one's own meat eating.
1) I do not wish animals to be treated unethically. 2) The vast majority of animals are farmed in an unethical way. YOU want them to conclude 3) Therefore I will not purchase animal products. But instead, some people (I think rightly, to be honest) go: 3) However, my personal purchasing choices will not change how much suffering happens. 4) Therefore, I can buy meat if I want to, if the costs are reasonable, if it is pleasant to me, etc.
Hope that's helpful and makes sense
Just because something can be partially or wholly investigated empirically, doesn't mean we can't interpret the data differently :)
The data I've seen suggests showing an A/B of how we picture animals to live versus how they actually live is most effective. Here is an example. This proves my first point - that there is empirical data on these topics, but we can still have different views on how to interpret or even if we want to accept the data at all.
This is a good point and I agree. I awarded a delta for a similar point earlier.
This might be slightly off topic, but does this mean you don't believe supply and demand applies to purchasing from factory farms?
Absolutely! But we do need to have the data first in order to interpret it.
Can you actually provide the data rather than just your interpretation? As I said, I certainly agree that things are very open to being interpreted.
No. And I have had this conversation quite a few times with people and they all seem to take this conclusion, so perhaps I need to say this idea a different way, or perhaps people are just stuck on their own conceptions, hard to say.
I am not saying that purchasing choices do not influence the production of goods on a market. Other than things like government regulation, they're basically the only thing that does. I am saying that my personal purchasing choices do not. I am one person. I do not run a cafeteria or a multinational. If I, personally, buy no more meat, the grocery store I go to will not buy any less, the distributor they buy it from will buy no less, the farm they get it from will produce no less.
Do you agree with that idea? And if not, why not? And if so, do you think there's a better way to say it from the get go to avoid this (as I said, very common) confusion?
Do you vote? If so, why? You are just one person.
Just because a change in demand is small doesn't mean a change in supply will not happen. Maybe you cause the store to breach a floor threshold, causing them to order significantly fewer than what you would have ordered (I spent time in purchasing in the Renewable energy field and breaching a floor for standard pack was a thing). Or, maybe they'll just keep on ordering the same amount and they'll just end up wasting money by throwing away your portion.
I don't. I think it's hard for people to imagine they have any impact at all, but they do. Do all 8.2 billion people think they all have zero impact? 8.2 billion times 0 is 0, so surely we'd have 0 negative impact on the environment. What you're claiming is called the tragedy of the commons; I've seen too many examples of this not being the case, so I don't buy it as a hard-and-fast rule. What we buy is important. Voting with our $ is important. Supply and demand does exist in small scales.
In what? Presidential elections in the US? Basically never, I've never lived in a place where it was relevant. For other things? The smaller the vote is, the more I will try to, for this exact reason.
I think this is a potentially reasonable argument. I'd be interested to hear more about what thresholds are like to understand a single consumer's impact on them. Without that data it is pretty hard to imagine the sub $100 I spend in a month could be relevant.
I think this is an inappropriate re-framing. Obviously the cumulative effects of small scale actions are large. That says, as far as I can tell, nothing about what effect my personal behavior would have. I think it's a good argument for not telling people that their individual choices are pointless -- since that might affect a large number of people's choices -- but I don't see how it addresses the actual matter of my personal ones.
I am aware of the tragedy of the commons. It talks about aggregate effects. It does not talk about the effect of one cow or less chewing cud.
Outside of the specific mechanism that you mentioned, which is interesting and I'd love to hear more about, it does not seem to me that supply and demand interact on small scales the way people insist they do. Basically every conversation I've had on the topic has ended with the other person just insisting it's the case without actually demonstrating why. Which is why, despite having had this conversation many times, I remain quite unconvinced. If you can say more about how it actually works I would be really interested in hearing it and happy to change my mind.
To be clear I absolutely do think people can and do have important large scale effects on the world. I just think they do so through concerted, collective, political (widely construed) action, not through atomized market choices.
People think we have elected leaders, but what we really have are elected followers in the U.S. Let's take Barack Obama as an example, who most would view as a confident maverick as far as presidents go. In 2007, Obama was against gay marriage because it was a political loser. In 2012, he changed his tune because his constituents did. He was really our elected follower in this way, and the same could (or perhaps has to) happen with other changes.
Regarding exceeding thresholds when purchasing, I'll give one real example from work:
When I was purchasing for medium voltage line covers for substations that fed from windfarms, I would need to buy a case for the tools people needed to install the line covers. Our business required us to order all inventory very frequently in order to promote what is called "inventory turns". This is an important concept for large businesses, as they believe their money isn't tied up in inventory, but rather a smooth and efficient cash flow of value-add components.
Vendors, however, have a Minimum Order Quantity and also a Standard Pack that you must adhere to when purchasing components. Theoretically, I needed to order the exact amount of cases because if I didn't, the business would just throw the extra ones away to promote low inventory dollars (low inventory = strong cash flow in corporate jargon). This would eventually go against the profitability of the GPL (Global Product Line), which would make them show up in red on the higher-ups spreadsheets and put into question if we should divest or continue to support the GPL.
The standard pack was 100. If I needed 100, that's perfect. If I needed 101, I literally needed to order 200, since we needed to satisfy customer demand while adhering to the Standard Pack from the vendor. Sure, I could negotiate different Standard Packs, but the higher the Standard Pack, the lower the price per piece.
In your case, perhaps you are the 101th. Perhaps they're ordering a ton more just to make sure they're completing your demand, and if you dropped off, they could just order 1 Standard Pack of 100 instead of 2. I'm not saying this is the case, in fact it probably isn't, but it could be and it would have a much larger impact than just your 1 piece.
Sure, that's a good way to think about things. I really wasn't talking about electoral politics, which is why I said "political (broadly construed)" so you're not really countering here I don't think, if you intend to be.
Thank you for the explanation, that makes sense and is helpful to think about. However it seems like you mostly agree with the specific thing I am saying here, you just don't take the same conclusion from it. Again, if you can explain why I'm interested and would be happy to change my mind, but perhaps it's one of those things where you're just convinced or you're not.
Since there’s not a good way to know if we are the one breaching the threshold, we could do one of two things: 1) assume we are and change our behavior 2) hope we’re not and do nothing.
I think there’s a lot at stake, including the lives of others, so I don’t feel like I can risk it doing #2.
Is there not? It seems like the answer is quite clearly "It's very unlikely." I agree that there is no way to know for sure, but that's just not a standard we can set on our behavior in almost any context. And even if I did breach this threshold at my local grocery store, that only matters that if in doing so it also does the same at their distributor, and then from there at the farmer.
So assume it's a 1% chance that I'll be the threshold at the grocery store, and for the subsequent results. This seems like a big overstatement, but since we can't know I think it's reasonable to overstate. So you're saying that in order for me to have a 0.0001% chance of doing anything relevant at all, I should change my whole life. You can disagree with the numbers if you want, sure, and if there's a good justification for that I think it's important for the argument. But in the abstract that doesn't really work for me or most people. I can understand, however, if for you it feels differently.
In my case example, say theres a 1/100 chance of you being the 101th. The probability is actually higher, since it can’t be below about 30 without us discontinuing the line entirely.
So you have 1/100 chance to make it so we need to order 100x the amount of product that you order. That cancels out to 1 - in other words, you can expect a 1:1 supply and demand correlation from your purchase, on average.
I would disagree, namely, most Americans already know exactly where their food comes from and they won't stop buying it.
The issue isn't lack of awareness.
If given a choice between "free range" and factory farmed, people will choose "free range" (if the price isn't too different). But given a choice between factory farmed or going without meat, most people choose factory farmed.
The people already know, but they aren't ready to give up meat despite the cost. And as you said, the ability to switch vendors is limited, people will to the extent they can, but 99 percent is the majority by definition.
I don't think I agree on this one. In my experience, most of the people who see slaughterhouse or factory farmed footage are mostly shocked or appalled, and definitely not what they were expecting. I think we, including me until recently, have this fantastical view of the farms, as propagated by the industry. Happy chickens on the label for meat that came from a factory farm. "Cage-free" labels for factory farmed products where the hens didn't have space to move, etc. There is a strong reason why the industry has pushed for laws to hide the truth from the public.
I believe the crux of my argument depends on the above, so I'll wait for your response on the above first.
This is usually a framing issue, though. People are shocked because the footage is intentionally cut in such a way as to be shocking. If you actually go to a factory farm and look at what is happening and talk to the people who work there, you won't be that shocked. (Or rather, you'd probably be shocked at how poorly the workers are treated, but not at the actual farming practices.)
I'm not so sure about this. I've seen videos of caged hens and sows in gestation crates at a normal farm. This is where the majority of them are being held. Totally standard practice - nobody is kicking the animals - everyone is on their best behavior. It's still super cruel to have the animals in such small cages, no special framing needed.
I've basically never seen any video like this that didn't prime the viewer with some text or caption or camerawork that suggests the cages are too small.
There are many from the industry itself. Here's a video from a farmer showing his rows of gestation crates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghq_LCIgduk
Yeah, but this video isn't shocking.
I think it is for many. This framing is the complete opposite, trying their best to show that the animals are happy and better off not being able to turn around, walk, or basically do anything but bite the bars in front of them from boredom / madness. He even pats one on the butt at one point, trying to show that he cares for them, and the pig tries to turn his head around to see what's touching them... but can't.
In any case, this is an example where the framing is the complete opposite, and still is pretty horrible when we think about what this animal (who's smarter than a dog) has to endure.
Then I just think you are seriously overestimating the extent to which this video and others like it are shocking/appalling/upsetting to ordinary people. Just to illustrate: the animal agriculture industry is not stupid and would not put out videos of a type that they thought would shock people and turn them against their industry.
I feel like you are basing this entirely on beliefs you already have that are outside the information present in this video. Most people don't share those beliefs.
So are you saying that whether a video is shocking or not to you depends almost exclusively on the framing? That the content doesn't really matter? I'm not necessarily disagreeing; I bet we could make light of murder with happy songs, faces, and bouncing around.
Having intelligent creatures confined to small cages their whole life is pretty appalling to most though, as shown in the first link in my post.
I would disagree. I have done quite a bit of street outreach, and even just verbally describing common practices in dairy, most people are surprised, disgusted, and say it’s unethical. Most people absolutely do have the same beliefs (harming animals is wrong, even for food) once given the opportunity to truly think about it.
The issue is that this is one conversation (or one video, article, etc.) but then the rest of their life has meat and dairy pushed on them through every medium. If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. So I would argue the reason why nothing is being done about factory farming by the general public is an issue of lack of exposure/presence in everyday life that reminds people where their food comes from.
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I’m very aware of the practice and reasons. Here is more info that you might find interesting, including the fact that US sows are kept in gestation crates for most of their lives: https://www.humanevma.org/assets/pdfs/hsvma_veterinary_report_gestation_crates.pdf
We create problems in factory farms, and then pat ourselves in the back for trying to fix them. For example, we cut off pigs’ tails because other pigs go crazy and bite each other from the extreme confinement. This does not happen with their ancestors, because they’re not in the situation that humans put them in. This is very similar for pigs, crushing their children on accident.
It’s a false choice to think we must factory farm pigs so therefore we should choose to deal with the symptoms that causes.
I’d say it starts far before abject cruelty - the happy cows on cheese and smiling pigs on BBQ restaurants give people the notion these animals are hanging outside at their will until their one bad day.
People don’t even know that pigs are killed in gas chambers
If you talk to a typical 5 year old, they will picture old McDonald's farm. Which is folksy and stuck in the 1800s. I agree with you here.
I disagree that the typical 25 year old still believes that. Between the ages of 5-25 almost everyone has the realization of what factory farming actually is and entails.
Many schools literally teach "the jungle". Many schools cover this topic explicitly. Even if not covered in school, vegans on the Internet exist, and are happy to break people's bubble.
Old McDonald's farm is much like Santa. Eventually, you come to learn it's a lie, even if it's what you are told when you are 3.
If this is true, why does the industry spend billions of dollars per year to keep our population in the dark? And to lobby congress for Ag-gag laws that make anyone who exposes these truths into a registered terrorist? Seems like a huge cost savings potential for the industry if these practices don't bring them value.
You mean filming on a farm without the consent of the owner?
These exist for the same reason PLCAA exists for guns. The unethical actions of others who are pushing an agenda. PETA is especially guilty of this.
Can the be overreach - sure. But don't kid yourselves. The politically motivated actions of different groups caused this to happen.
Do you believe factory farms/slaughterhouses are staffed by people who converted to veganism? Or those who not just briefly saw it but work in those conditions and kept eating meat anyway?
People who work at slaughterhouses are usually there because they have no other choice to. A large amount of those employees are immigrants. This industry preys on individuals who don't have any other options. These workers are highly likely to develop anxiety, depression, and PTSD. There is also a correlation indicating they are more likely to perform sexual assault.
Here is my source if you'd like to read more.
The issue with said research is it doesnt establish causation. Are those who are more predisposed to those things-- either through factors such as poverty or internal factors-- more likely to work as slaughterhouse workers, is slaughter house work more likely to cause those issues, or does the lifestyle of constant travel with no long term "home town" the cause?
A major point against the job being the cause is compared suicide rates among farmers. The suicide rate among Canadian farmers is 3.5x that of their genpop, with 45% of their farms dealing with livestock. If livestock was the cause, then it would stand that Australia would have a higher farmer:genpop suicide rate since 65% of their farms deal with livestock. But the rate is lower, only 2x.
I'd be willing to bet that that amount of exposure swings around again. Even if some exposure reduces your intake (which seems debatable), you have to internally denigrate animals in some way in order to be able to treat them that way consistently. I don't say that to mean something negative about the workers, they're all broke and doing their best. If people in farms eat less meat (which idk), my guess would be it's more often that they think the process is disgusting and they don't want to eat its products.
I dont think its denigrating to treat them as food, its rather proper for their place on this earth.
I work as a nurse. I see how disgusting hospitals are. Yet even the most germaphobic nurse I know will still have food/a drink at the nurses station. I think the initial realization is mainly shock value and it wears off fast.
lol yes, when you believe that something is correctly treated as lesser it's hardly the case that you view that as denigration. I'm not even necessarily disagreeing, just pointing out that what you're saying here isn't much of a counter, if you intend it to be.
But really by "denigrate" I wasn't talking about "treatment as food" but the specific, pretty horrible, practices that take place in factory farming.
I think there's two types of footage, right? There's the really terrible footage of sick and wounded animals that get passed around vegan and vegetarian spaces as representative of factory farming. And then there's the orderly, clean, industrial footage that gets passed around (to a much lesser extent) meat eating spaces. Both are factory farms. Which is more common is probably up for debate and largely coloured by what you're seeing. It's not accurate to say that 100% of factory farming is dirty and injured animals. Just like it's not accurate to say that all non factory farming is better or more humane.
Also, nonfactory farms also use slaughter houses to process the meat. So using slaughterhouse footage to convince ppl to buy more humanely raised animals kind of misleading. The animals might have a better life, but their death is indistinguishable.
I think this really depends on where you live and grew up. NYC? Yeah, I get not understanding where meat comes from, its a whole different world than that city. Rural Iowa? Might have been a field trip to the pork plant that powers the local economy.
I disagree that people really know what the conditions of factory farmed animals looks like, but I think you’re ultimate point is correct. I’d be willing to bet a decent number of people who do try to give up/limit their meat consumption will end up going back to eating meat because eating a healthy plant based diet would be very foreign to most Americans to the point where they’re buying impossible/beyond meat with every meal and their budget skyrockets, or they don’t get the right nutrition because they just removed meat from their current diet and start feeling like shit.
This. All day this. Too many people have no idea what healthy or proper nutrition is or looks like, especially when making a change like going 100% plant based or vegan. A lot of people under count their calories or fail to take adequate supplements (B12, iron) and then feel horrible. The world health organization states that a well planned plant based diet is good for the majority of people. The key is well planned.
Given the environmental impacts of animal agriculture, and the horrible processes the animals endure, we really need people to give up animal products. How would you recommend we convince people to do so, particularly at the individual level?
Individuals typically respond within the structures available to them.
Put more simply, people buy what is in the store. Most people don't look extra extra hard for obscure items. Something being available in the abstract matters a lot less than something being freely available.
So rather than changing hearts and minds, it's probably faster and easier to target the companies. Increasing taxes on meat, increasing costs of the various elements of the farming/butchering process, increasing the margins stores receive for non-meat items - these are all ideas of top of mind and may be awful but I think the general concept is clear.
Decreasing the profit margins for meat products and increasing the margins for non-meat products will get companies to change their offerings - which will in turn alter customer behavior.
At an individual level best tactic is to show then the horror shows of industrial farming like with video. But to be effective society wide is to remove subsidies and even increase taxes on meat no one is going to do that but that's the best way
Its worth noting that faunalytics is an ARA organization, so there is an inherent risk of bias.
That being said, people often initially hold views of idealism, but (outside of reddit) will typically change them when confronted with realism. If told "you can have that 'unnacceptable' treatment or the cost of ____ will raise by ___%," they would likely change their opposition.
Also most people who work in factory farms likely eat meat.
Noted; I wasn't able to quickly find another source on this topic. Please let me know if you have a different source we could go off of.
This is a good point, and unfortunately I already awarded a delta for it :)
I haven't seen statistics on this, but this would make sense. If you work requires you to believe something to protect your ego, you believe it. For example, I was an engineer working on wind and solar products, so I had to believe that wind and solar was the silver bullet that was going to stop and reverse climate change. Once I stopped getting paid for it, I was able to see that wasn't the way. A lot of slaughterhouse workers stop eating meat after they leave the slaughterhouse, likely because they a) saw what happens, and b) are no longer getting paid to do it and have to justify why it's okay.
While im sure theres cases of ex slaughterhouse workers becoming vegetarian, I can't find a source showing prevalence. Mind sharing?
You stated that 71-85% of US public found the standard animal farming practices unacceptable.
So, ....they know the truth.
Yet, they do not change.
Thus, by your own acceptance it isn't that people are in the dark, but they're simply not in a position to, "either change....or stop eating animal products".
My point is that they think that their animal products come from the "good" farms, and if they a) knew that 99% of U.S. animal products come from factory farms and b) saw the conditions, they'd see that their animal products do not come from the "good" farms. I haven't met a single person in real life who already knew that 99% of U.S. farmed animals are now on factory farms.
Your source states that:
So, they know the practice and they oppose it.
The argument that:
That would imply that the study you cited has flaws. That every single person is under the illusion that their animal products come from the 1% of 'good' farms, since 99% use standard practices.
This is not logical.
People are aware of the standard practices, but for economic or convenience, they knowingly choose from the 99%.
To summarize where we disagree: you're claiming that most people know that almost all U.S. farmed animals are on factory farms, and they know the cruel and unhygienic conditions that their animal products come from?
If this is true, why does the industry go through such lengths to hide it (including laws that make you a terrorist if you expose it)? Why does the industry spend so much $ on marketing to put up a false narrative of happy animals? Surely they've been around long enough to know these two things are non-value-add and a massive waste of $ if everyone already knows exactly what they're getting.
You use anecdotal fallacy to presume that people do not know. Even as your own citations confirm that they do know. Objectively.
People are not stupid. They make choices, often for financial reasons. Give the argument the courtesy of honesty than the excuse of personal incredulity.
Hunger makes a thief of any man.
My first source showed they believe standard practice is cruel; it did not investigate if they think that they were personally buying from those cruel sources.
In my post, I also mention how important it is for the industry to hide the truth from society. They spend billions every year in doing so. If everyone already knew where their animal products came from, why does the industry spend so much time and effort to hide it?
Just gonna throw this out there. I'm well aware of factory farming, assume ever I eat comes from it, and I am perfectly fine with it. Sure I think we could do better, but I don't think it's practical to stop or change it, so I just keep buying it. Not trying to change your view with this but rather give some talking points to the conversation as a whole.
Interesting. Is there anything that would get you to stop buying from factory farms? Like if it because so socially unacceptable that your friends gave you shit for it (similar to how racism or sexism has become; I'm comparing, not equating btw)?
How about if it became much more expensive?
Expensive would work, but comparing to social issues wouldn't. I don't give gay people any grief for the way they live, but I am not an activist for LGBT rights. People sometimes give me grief for not being more supportive of them, but I just don't care to put energy into that despite the social praise I would receive. So to compare, if it was suddenly as taboo to eat chicken from a factory farm as it is to be homophobic, I would just see it as more social stuff that I don't pay attention to. I'd just go buy my cheap meat and let the world move on around me.
I presume you avoid outright homophobia: there's a big range of behaviors between "activist for LGBTQ stuff" and "publically, loudly homophobic". Surely enough social pressure would have an influence on a sizable proportion of us, particularly if we already philosophically dislike factory farming.
I disagree, grew up in the middle of nowhere and hunting was extremely common. Even if you didn't hunt yourself you would still tag along especially if you are a kid. Then it was draining/dressing the animal and butchering the meat. Ill tell you now there were no vegans.
My point isn't about hunting, but rather factory farming and the cruel and unhygienic conditions that follow. Check out gestation crates and battery cages for example.
I don't think people would stop eating animal products at all. that's definitely not happening. I saw countless animals getting slaughtered at the hands of my grandpa and uncles while a kid. It's pretty graphic the first time, but then it doesn't matter when you have nice, warm, delicious meals that feed a family for weeks.
at most, we would either buy less or pay more so that the animals are treated better.
also those, studies have 0 worth. if you made a study measuring people against poverty we would probably have 100% approval rating, yet nobody does much to actual combat it.
I think you're onto something; are you saying being against factory farming but still buying from them is virtue signaling?
Would it make a difference if we realized we caused the issue instead of just thought it was bad? Like, hypothetically, if the 100% who were against poverty were shown how they were directly stealing from the poor (instead of just being a passive observer), that most would change their behavior to correct this?
I think so, if that's virtue signaling, then yes. people will all jump on board the morality train when it's free, but when we have to actually do something about it, or have to lower our own material situation, no matter how slightly, you will see the true colors and selfishness of humankind.
You make a really good point. I just awarded a delta for a a similar comment, but I believe yours is different enough in that: a) theirs assumed a change in their world view to match their beliefs, b) yours is more about keeping the same world view / living with that cognitive dissonance if it's more convenient than changing our behavior, especially if it comes with expected accolades from society.
!delta
Thank you!
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/South-Cod-5051 (6∆).
Delta System Explained | Deltaboards
There was a report done on Elsalvador's extrajudicial prison and there have been several investigations into Guantanamo Bay, and the inhumane torture that occurs to human beings incarcerated in these places. Many are held without trial, without a recourse to appeal and without basic human decency.
We know all these things - they were widely publicized, but successive governments from both sides of the political divide have failed to stop these human tradgedies from occuring, and it seems no politicians in the US have the backbone to start a movement to end these injustices.
These are small,largely isolated instances of human rights violations but they are institutionally part of American culture, and have been well known since legislation following 9/11 made clear the intent for the government to sacrifice liberty for some intangible security.
The idea that America would suddenly change its buying habits on the basis of animal welfare wholesale is a madness, when we know America in general doesn't care about human welfare. People are more concerned with Trans rights or Abortions to worry about things like the Bill of Rights.
When you are facing poverty, and you are utterly powerless to have your political opinions expressed in the governmental stage, you don't care if your meat or eggs are battery farmed. You only care about feeding your family and not going broke.
Factory farming is a consequence of an economic system we tacitly accept, in the same way polution was before the EPA in America. If you want change in a capitalist system the best way to do this is to develop an alternative that is more profitable. People as a whole will not change their buying habits based on the ethics of the product, they will only change their habits based on the economics of the product.
When I was in school they showed us the movie Supersize Me, before it came out that it was largely faked / results not reproducible. So we all thought that McDonald's was really gross and that it could destroy your liver and decrease sexual function and all that!
The same night after watching it, I ate McDonald's with my friends.
You'd think that people would change their habits based on these kinds of realizations about how their food works. But when people get hungry, they eat. There's a reason why 90+% of people who attempt weight loss diets relapse and gain it all back. It's really deeply difficult to make lasting changes to what you eat.
So sure, maybe if people saw more documentaries about factory farming, they would feel worse about their food. They might even try to buy locally sourced meats for a while. But it's cheaper and easier to go to the supermarket. So they won't make a lasting change. I saw plenty of these documentaries when I studied environmental economics. I know the treatment of animals is horrifying and inhumane. And I still eat meat from supermarkets and just try not to think about it too hard.
Food is definitely more emotional than logical. I am amazed though, that taste + convenience + tradition outweigh baby animals’ lives. I guess collective consciousness is just not there yet. Really sad
I'm not a cow dude. It's honestly that simple.
You’re not a cow dude, but you literally eat their bodies and drink their breast milk?
The disconnect is REAL
I eat oranges too. Literally flay their skin and savor every taste of their raw flesh.
Don't feel a lot a lot of sympathy or identification with an orange.
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I mean those things outweigh human babies lives. I don't see what's surprising.
Well, yeah, but they’re not in the same situation so…
Like the collective empathy for pet animals is super high, to where if you see an animal in a hot car or someone neglecting a dog, everyone swarms you. However, we can do awful things like gas chamber pigs and put 8 chickens inside a tiny crate and the excuse suddenly comes back to emotional, traditional, convenience.
This is highly culturally contextual. I am sure that is true where you live but it is not everywhere. For many people, non-human animals are just ways of getting specific things done, not pets.
Children are forced into sex work, mining, war, etc., across the globe. Humans do wild shit unfortunately.
I guess that's the problem there. I think people do feel a bit of guilt deep down, knowing that their choices are causing fear, suffering, and death. But we don't want to believe that we'd cause that pain, or that it even exists in the first place. So we put it out of our minds.
If only ignoring suffering made it go away. We need to start keeping these poor animals in our mind and make choices that align with our values.
We don't need to eat animal products, and it can actually be cheaper and healthier not to. So let's just stop.
I live in one of the most liberal counties in the US. Last election we had some of these practices on the ballot (prop J). It lost by a huge margin.
In the end, people did not give up meet. In fact, people supported the local farmers that are raising animals believing the proposed changes would be to too onerous.
A lot of people came to believe that the rules being proposed were designed to kill the local farm’s ability to keep animals. And that they were being proposed by people who don’t want anyone eating meat.
Here’s a whole Reddit thread on it, you might find people’s reactions useful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Petaluma/s/0rafPhBFU4
Where I live has multiple massive turkey farms within view of residential areas. I drive past them everyday and they smell awful and look awful. Yet turkey sells just as good here as anywhere else.
To get a non-factory farmed turkey is expensive, and not widely available outside farmers markets. Even if I find the practice distasteful, on an individual level it’s easier to go to the store and buy a turkey than to track down a random farmer and hope they are treating the turkey better.
I always find it interesting that folks like you never consider another option: not eating turkey at all.
Sure, that’s definitely an option. It’s just not significantly being practiced near me was my point. If OP is saying if we knew of factory farms we’d stop eating those, but every near me knows and turkey still sells well.
For me personally, I buy non-factory farmed meat if I have the option to, but buy factory farmed if not.
Diet wise I want meat in my diet for nutrition and a lot of vegetarian recipes include things I can’t eat because stomach won’t tolerate it. My diet is already limited and sure it’s selfish but for my health and time cooking meals buying meat is worth it to me.
Human have, until relatively recently, ritually sacrificed animals and pulled out the steaming intestines to divine their fates from the mess.
I think its a miracle that as many people care about the welfare of livestock outside what makes them tasty at all.
Most people just don't care. We sort animals into a few categories of purpose like: Pets, Food, Fish, Wild Dangerous, Wild Passive and have systems for dealing with each group.
You dont have to stop eating, you know. There are plenty of grazing animals with ample space here in brazil or other places of the world
Those statistics are also misleading. Because it is much more common for chicken to be factory farmed than cattle, for example. But chicken has much less meat than cattle. So the amount of meat we eat that is factory farmed is not 99%, is a much lower number
Farmer here.
People who would be turned off by a factory tour would also be turned off by a "traditional" tour if it lasts long enough.
Factory farming by its nature is very intensive. All those animals in a confined area eating diets calibrated to be the best possible diet for those 7 days of their life.
This concentrates the unsightly parts of rearing animals. Removing dead animals daily, unwell animals left and right. Not under a blue sky or on green pasture.
This is where statistics get interesting.
Daily deaths? A function of the number of animals present, the fact you find and remove each dead animal appropriately. The actual mortality per 1000 animals is often half or less of the 'free range' animals.
Unwell animals? Particularly in modern facilities that are very bio-security aware, sickness is seen more, because you are checking the animals much more regularly AND can actually treat/care for them. In other words, they get more attention and action to solve their problems.
Not being on pasture/outdoors. This is dependent on where you are, but in many areas of the world, the paddock is unpleasant for a good period of the year. For example in our area, we have 6 months of drought with hot temperatures. Animals like the shelter even at dense stocking rates when the outdoors is anything other than a nice day. Less true for cattle, particularly true for chickens.
Traditional farming involves animals being much harder to manage, higher mortality, less care, and often less welfare attention. Factory farming has to have the basics covered to maintain profitability.
So yeah, heads up that factory farming for meat doesn't lose the welfare comparison to outdoor methods without a fight. Factory farming breeding stock (so years confined vs weeks and months) I get a bit more twitchy about.
Most Americans know that their meat is unethical and cruel in theory and in general, but they don't know more because they don't want to know. If they knew, they'd have to give up meat, or pay twice as much for humane meat (when it's even available), or at least admit to themselves that they care more about eating meat or saving a few bucks than they do any animal welfare. They'd rather do none of the above, so they choose to look the other way. They're cowards, really, unwilling to put any force behind their hazy morals
Excuse me, I meant we're cowards, because of course I'm one of these people. I know farm animals are treated cruelly, and I wish they were treated with respect, but I look the other way because it's easier than doing anything about it. Especially in the modern world where there are a million things worthy of my outrage happening every day, but I can't be outraged all the time without burning out, and I'm not convinced it would make a difference anyway, so I make some caustic comments about it on Reddit but keep eating my meat.
Hey, at least I know I'm a hypocrite! 🫤
If you tell those same people that their meat cost will increase 100x for sustainable meat, i think they will find factory farming to be acceptable.
I disagree.
Most Americans are aware of factory farms and don't hate them enough to make up for the convenience of abundant fresh protein at every grocery store for cheap.
American culture has deeply ingrained elements of the Protestant Reformation. Among these, right next to equating work with morality, is the underlying assumption that humans are the rightful masters of the planet, and that this world, this continent specifically, along with all the lesser life forms on it, belong to us to use as we please. Only mankind was made in the image of God, and so if we wish to decree some animals to live and others to die in factories, who may stop us?
That's how I feel like most Americans rationalize factory farming, and more awareness won't change that.
No I dont think anyone would stop doing anything. Animals do have some "rights" if you want to call them that. I for example work at a place where we kill birds.
But I dont think people will change their life on a large scale because its never happened before. America sold out to send cheap labor to other countries and remove tons of work from america, but america still supported these companies. Clothes made in sweat shops. Phones made by enslaved children. None of it has actually stopped anyone from doing anything.
Its just gesturing for brownie points in social spaces. "Look at me I care about X thing because its bad, arent I such a good person" then turn around and still participate in those "bad behaviors"
As someone with a farming family - I'm personally quite aware of where meat comes from. I'm very aware of how chickens are raised, just their selective breeding is pretty awful just for a start, the conditions they're raised in are awful too.
I still eat plenty of chicken. The story I tell myself (which is true to an extent) is that it's less ecologically destructive to eat factory farmed chickens than the equivalent amout of "free range" (a pretty bullshit term in itself) chicken, and way more ecologically minded than eating beef. I'm not prepared to give up meat, so this is what I do.
OP, I think that a huge number of people simply don't care. I am one of them, for the record. I have helped slaughter/butcher before (not in the US, but on a family farm), and so am not disturbed by animals dying.
Sanitation at factory farms is a concern, but it seems to be holding up well. For most people, tasty cheap food is more important than animal rights.
After The Jungle by Upton Sinclaire was published and exposed the disgusting practices of the meat packing industry people stopped buying meat altogether and sales plummeted, especially after the government passed the meat inspection act and made a report on it it verifying the same conditions. Germany and France banned American meat too. It could happen again
Anecdotal evidence, but I have seen footage of factory farming, I've seen close-up shots of animals being butchered. I've even made the trip to a factory farm to see it first hand and butchered live chickens myself. My mind has not changed because for the average consumer like myself who's afforded very few luxuries, the reward outweighs the consequences
Literally the only way you would get people to stop eating meat is to make it unavailable. Sincerely, someone who would love to give up meat because it gives me the ick, but feels like utter garbage without it. And no, don’t tell me to get my nutrients from spinach or broccoli or a pill, red meat or eggs is the only thing that seems to work.
The majority of Americans care more about how much their food costs, than its quality of life. When polled, they will respond in ways that make them feel better about themselves, or to cause others to think better of them, but will buy the less expensive factory product almost every time.
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I know we need to be better, but I'm not gonna stop eating meat. There is no alternative. Veges suck. Tofu sucks. I've tried vegan "meat." It's gross.
My brother hates zoos because of how they treat animals. Loves cooking steaks. Most people would be like this, I think. People still go to zoos.
I live in the west. I see the ranches where the cows wander around. I also see them on our public open spaces living in the rolling hills. Every day.
They look like they have a great life living in the farm, and living on public land.
Speak for yourself, I saw all of the fucked up videos from animal farms, I just accept there’s nothing I can do about it and enjoy my hamburger
"Do you know what they do to those animals?" "Yes, and it's delicious!"
That's probably the most common attitude.
As long as it tastes good and most importantly is affordable most people do not give a shit. At all.
I think part of the problem here is the desensitization of violence and the mental barriers we put up. When we see factory farming and slaughter footage, we tell ourselves that it's a necessary process, even if the conditions could be better. I don't think most people realize we don't actually need to eat animal products to be healthy, so we're quick to rationalize the farming of animals because we think it needs to be done.
What we don't do is internalize how every single animal going through the system is a sentient, emotional being who thinks and feels pain like how we do.
We don't think about the pain that mother cows go through when their babies are ripped away from them to be slaughtered for veal. We don't think about the terror coursing through the bodies of those little piglets when they're picked up to have their tail cut off.
The problem isn't just knowing what happens, but knowing who it's happening to.
We have been told for a generation that fossil fuels are contributing to to global warming. I chose not to follow the road of environmentalism in college because I knew there was no way in hell Americans would stop driving.
We do what the commercials on tv tell us. If those commercials tell us to buy factory farmed meat, we will. Because we are marks for corporations.
When people try to expose the reality, they are arrested and called terrorists. Monsanto will sell you some corn though.