Every living thing exists by consuming other living things in some way or another. Every living thing has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most animals are at least in small ways, consumers of animals.
There is moral value in striving to maximize the quality of life in all its stages, that does not necessarily have to exclude death for a purpose.
Everything dies whether by accident, disease, predation, of degradation by age. Thinking things were better off not existing or better off dying of organ failure instead of being eaten doesn’t always make sense to me.
Would you rather live a long life and then die of organ failure, or get eaten when you're three years old?
Most people value getting to live longer. So, if we apply our own principles to other animals, there's value in letting animals live longer rather than killing and eating them.
It's billions of chickens get to live 3 years and get eaten or a million chickens die of liver failure.
But I think you're missing the parent's point. Death isn't cruel. Suffering is cruel and can only be experience by living things.
This kind of philosophy is a pretty active subject currently. The debate is, generally, maximizing happiness vs. minimizing suffering. The former creating more suffering overall and the latter creating less happiness overall.
the problem is that we create beginnings for unnatural endings.
This is a very fast step beyond this point, which I think does not do it justice. This end goal is worthwhile and logical and it is not reasonable to pretend it somehow isn't the only desirable world.
I used “as if” not because i think many people think this way, but because it is the de facto way of thinking when you only strive to avoid endings.
In other words, people lack an appreciation for death and are so afraid of it they try to pretend like it can not exist.
I personally do not see a problem with using animals as food. If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans. There are certainly a lot of problems with the sustainability and humane-ness of our livestock farming, but I don't see "become vegetarian/vegan" as the only solution, or even necessarily a desirable one. But getting into a meat vs. no meat debate here isn't ever going to be productive, so that's all I'll say.
I had not known that male chicks are killed after birth in such numbers, and the practice does make me sad. But I also recognize that a lot of people just don't have any kind of emotional response to this sort of thing, and that's ok too. It's great that people are building new technologies to allow us to keep doing what we're doing, but with better treatment of the animals involved, and less waste.
I will guarantee that a massive percentage of people do in fact have a very strong emotional response to this kind of thing, but it's all just "out of sight, out of mind".
If you make people be involved in the killing of millions of baby chicks, they'll suddenly care very, very much.
Our modern world is doing thousands of thousands of utterly horrible things each and every day, we just don't get to see it or be involved, and we're way too busy making our next mortgage payment and getting the kids to school on time to notice.
Interesting you hold such expectations. Based on my dealings with people I don't think a lasting response would be that great. Empathy and morals seem to suffice while it is convenient, but when necessary people always take the path of least resistance.
For a few days, then they'll get used to like the 1000 previous generations of humans that had to kill animals to survive.
If there’s a larger “food chain” on the interstellar scale where some intelligent species mass-consume others, would it be “good enough” for some aliens to farm humans like we do animals?
The animals on the farm are welcome to do the same if they don't like being farmed.
For what purpose?
"If not you, then who?" - Hillel, first- century Jewish scholar
"would you like some cheese with that whine?" - my mom
"If I am not for me, who is for me? If I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when?"[1]
If Hillel said "if not you, then who?" I have not found a source, but I believe this is a common interpretation of his first sentence. Then again, maybe he was talking about self care and not taking responsibility. I don't know.
[0] Avoth 1.14
[1] Translation by me, the wording is terse and open to interpretation so I tried to be faithful to the text and not inject my own interpretation
> Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment.
There is increasingly more of that all the time.
> On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines.
Another step? They aren't getting any more optimized, if anything new available options are scaling that back in favor of more land-use, open space, slower growth.
> Sorry, I'm a dreamer I guess, continuously disappointed by a world that doesn't seem to be able to set any significant goals nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit and likely at the cost of the rest of the world.
You're free to consume whatever you want.
EDIT: my opening sentence is not fair. But it invited a lot of response. That can walk a thin line but in this case I figure it worked out. If my post were purely inflammatory, then it would be counter-productive but I don't see it that way.
That's a weird complaint on a site about eternal disruption, eternal improvement of things that are basically fine already.
I'm an omnivore, and I'm comfortable with it. But that doesn't keep me from recognizing the ethical issues with killing and controlling other beings to survive. I really appreciate people pushing the envelope on this. If I could eat basically the same diet but have it all be from a replicator, I'd do it in a heartbeat. So keep pushing, vegans!
I mean the subject matter is itself a disruption and improvement, which is being rejected. It is not the status quo. So I don't see that as analogous.
> But that doesn't keep me from recognizing the ethical issues with killing and controlling other beings to survive.
I also try to be cognizant of related issues. But I see developments like these as a win, whereas for for a certain demographic, it's irrelevant. They aren't the ones asking for this in the first place, egg consumers are. Granted vegans are a good base for criticism which probably contributed.
I disagree. Vegans generally adopt a hard-line, no-compromising position on things like this. That's the antithesis of a lot of what we talk about here, which is continual improvement, perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good, and making reasonable trade-offs and compromises to find better solutions.
A startup that said "We're going to build X in the most perfect, idealized way, and will settle for nothing less! We'll never ship until it's perfect" would be laughed out of town and burn through their money before shipping anything. And that's pretty much what veganism advocates for.
Does that include plants?
We don't undergo photosynthesis, so fundamentally we have to kill and eat other beings to survive. Plants are other living beings too. And a revolution is underway in learning about plant intelligence -- while not a nervous system, trees communicate with each other and share resources. [1]
My primary reason for trying to eat less meat is the environmental harms -- not the individual rights of animals -- as I think might eventually find ourselves in a place where we recognize that we cannot escape denying the rights of another organism (plants included) for our own nourishment given that we aren't photosynthesizers. Unless we become fruitarians and only eat fruit that naturally falls from the tree -- but obviously that is ludicrous.
Empathy is a great quality to cultivate.
- mussels/mollusks (zero sentience) - insects (very low demonstrated consciousness) - fish (low demonstrated consciousness) - chickens/reptiles (disputed level) - dogs, dolphins, primates, etc (high)
You can't equivocate chicken sentience with human sentience. What you can do is suggest they have a high enough level of sentience to warrant that certain treatments be immoral. I think infliction of constant stress and suffering certainly would be immoral, however, raising chickens does not necessitate it. And moreover, the level of sentience is not so high that captivity in itself / exploitation be problematic. If that were true keeping domestic pets ought to be just as problematic.
Animals suffer in the wild, that is a constant. They require vigilance over a) predators, b) constant search for food, c) other natural threats. In captivity, these issues don't exist.
Notwithstanding the symbiotic evolution of chicken with humans, a chicken is arguably better off in a free-roam farm than in the wild. This is constantly ignored.
The vegan solution is such that these animals basically cease to exist (i.e. are killed) because they are more dependent on humans than their ancestors. That's what letting them be "sentient" beings instead of commodities would mean.
Unless humans are somehow exempt from the list, I don't see how this argument is feasible in the realistic sense. Humans are frequently treated as commodities, as any team over the size of 1 needs to delegate responsibilities to people. Hence, "doctor, lawyer, police officer, teacher, pilot" are all words that describe a delegated responsibility of a human, and therefore the commodity that they represent. "We need more firefighters!" is a phrase that literally treats humans as commodities - showing how replaceable they are. How about whenever you ask a friend, or a family member to pick something up for you from the grocery store? Are they not being treated as a commodity to suit a need in that moment?
However idealistic the notion, being a "sentient being" isn't mutually exclusive from being treated as a commodity.
I understand the empathic argument in support of veganism full well (and I empathize with it), but there is such a thing as runaway-empathy, to the point that it becomes unproductive conversation.
This is a win in an aim to reduce unnecessary suffering and pain. I'll take it as such.
Seeking some sort of absolutism though, I can't wrap my mind around that. It gives me some serious Sith vibes...
After 2020, I'd like to see more in the middle. I think extremes are overrepresented.
I stopped reading right there.
- non-vegan with low tolerance for counterproductive comments
is that surprising? most vegans I know care more about the animals' quality of life than whether or not they end up getting slaughtered. this is a large part of why they are vegans and not merely vegetarians. interestingly, I find that they tend to be pretty accepting of hunting.
Granted "some vegans" would be more precise, but that's still the sentiment.
Getting human slaves out of the food production process is a great first step, but I like to think that we'll eventually spot inflicting pain on _any_ animal to produce our food.
The most funny argument used by vegans is: "we are closer to nature". There's nothing more natural than animals eating each other.
And no, humans are not herbivores. Some primates might be, but human evolution started the moment our monkey ancestors decided to get off the tree and eat meat. By promoting veganism you're trying to undo the last 3-5 millions of years of human evolution. Talk about Catholic Church pushing us back to Middle ages... /s
Another argument that I hate: by not eating animals you reduce suffering. If we take that to it's logical conclusion, the only way for you to not cause any sufferning is to die. That's why Buddhists (for whom "reducing suffering" is a religious imperative) came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu
Life is an infininte circle of joy, pleasure, sadness, suffering, death... If you try to eliminate one of them you are against the life itself.
Just to jump in with an additional point, vegans would never be ok with this. I believe you might be thinking vegetarians, which as a vegetarian, this is good news, and is enough for me.
Most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life.
You're not free to consume whatever you want. It may be legal but not ethical.
Causing zero harm to animals is enough.
It's totally within reach, too. You just have to take responsibility and DO IT.
Even the strictest Jainist can't stop from annihilating an uncountable number of tiny animals that live in, on and around us. (though to their credit, they sure do try).
No need for a blanket prejudiced statement like this.
You, as a consumer, directly dictate to companies what is profitable and what's not by what you choose to buy and what you choose not to buy. Dichotomy of profit and ethics doesn't make any sense: profit is a signal which among other things also includes information about what consumers think if ethical or unethical, and how important it is to them.
I never made this claim, as ethics in this case is subjective: some things are ethical in some eyes and unethical in others, and profitability is the mechanism of reaching consensus between these views.
Your point about transparency is valid, I have to admit. However, I don't think that it applies in the case of food production: most meat and animal products consumers are well-aware that in order to get meat, you need to kill someone, and if you want to keep milk and eggs as cheap as possible, you can't afford to treat the animals well.
There's no reason the meat industry couldn't divert the male chickens into a separate supply chain where they were raised until 6-8 months and then slaughtered and sold as stewing meat or some other (decent tasting) protein product for human consumption. The roosters don't develop aggressive behaviours until much later.
But that would be inefficient by market measures. So it doesn't happen.
That said, as you noted, on an industrial scale you would separate the roosters. But it's not clear that there's any market at all for rooster meat. Chicken meat is incredibly cheap and adds surprisingly little margin above the main input cost - feed. Roosters consume just as much feed but produce a lesser quantity of inferior meat. The margins are likely to be negative.
It's an efficiency story yes, but of the "you'll go bankrupt with this idea" sort.
Re: birds and rape, wait til you see ducks...
I should note that there are roosters and then there are roosters. We had a really amazing one, a well bred barred rock who was a real gentleman. They have an important role in the flock, warning about and fending off predators. He died after sustaining wounds from diverting a fox over 100 feet away from his hens. Tussled with the fox from the coop all the way down to the road, distracting it from his hens, then hid under a passing car until we could rescue him. Miss that guy.
But it is important that the hen to rooster ratio is right, or they get competitive and mean.
Also a good rooster will find food for the hens, and call them over to it. Ours used to find bugs and then make this cute "coo coo coo" and they'd come running, and eat while he watched and waited to take his turn.
sniff miss our guy. I think we'll get a new rooster in the spring, maybe a really neat looking bantam.
I assume that that cost of an egg for a broiler chicken is less than the price delta for fewer pounds of worse meat that takes longer to produce, so it's still more cost effective to accept the male chicks as a sunk cost and move on.
Setting aside the ethics, purpose bred meat birds are much less expensive to raise and more desirable to consumers.
>But that would be inefficient by market measures.
>No reason
>Gives reason
I really don't see an advantage of this technology for the consumer, the real advantage lies with the producers.
It would seem to me these are still killed. Lacto-ovo vegetarians might still prefer no-kill egg as shown in the article.
REWE is a little bit away from my location.
Edit: the article is from 2018. Lidl has announced recently that they plan to have that for their organic eggs starting in early 2021 and their free range eggs until end of 2021. Source: https://unternehmen.lidl.de/pressreleases/2020/200714_lidl_e...
This is great! Hopefully Lidl will have them in other countries as well so I can buy them.
This all sounds much, much worse than a fairly instant death almost immediately out of coming out of the egg, to me...
I suppose it's kind of _unaesthetic_, and maybe people have unrealistic impressions of what the lives of the chickens that don't get shredded are like, but I think this is all mostly a perception issue.
Honestly, what difference does it really make if male chickens are shredded and ground up into feed pre or post hatching? It's the same result in the end.
People almost universally feel that infanticide is wrong.
Abortion for whatever reason is easier for people to stomach.
Basically it's easier for people to feel good about preventing an embryo from turning into a cute little baby than it is for them to immediately kill that cute little baby once it's born.
A bird embryo is much more independent, pretty much only needing some heat.
If the machine is working correctly, I'm not sure the chicks have time to process pain, we are close to the limits of what a nervous system is capable of.
Perhaps we can rationalize that they “don’t know what is going on” but it seems unlikely that they are having a good time.
In general baby warm blooded animals want to be near their mothers.
Better to cull pre hatch.
Better still to just eat lentils.
> (depending on how close to hatching it is)
Not so clear a line then.
We are not simply just eating animals.
In nature there is an equilibrium; every prey has a chance to escape. If an species cannot avoid predators, that species ceases to exist.
In our world there is no such merciful release.
We force millions of creatures to be born and live their entire lives in cramped squalid conditions only to be butchered off, sometimes for no good reason at all. [0][1]
That’s not nature. That is a fucked up hell.
This is a completely automated process, and the algorithm is "embarrassingly parallel". It's cheaper, of course, to merely sex the chicks and grind up the males, but there are a lot of ways to handle that, from charging extra to simply mandating a switch to this process.
Small-scale farms could pool the purchase of the egg processor, or buy their chicks instead of breeding them, and the price of any industrial process goes down fairly predictably over time. I'm just not seeing what you're seeing here.
First time I’ve seen this, that’s a really cool feature.
This seems counterintuitive. If the external pressure is equally applied around the egg, what forces the fluid to escape?
Looking at this 2020 video[0], it seems like the procedure might be:
1) Laser burns pinhole through shell.
2) Robotic pipette applies the marker chemical onto pinhole.
3) Pneumatic grabber picks up egg by its pinhole end (so the atmospheric pressure, relatively higher than the pressure inside the grabber, is pushing a little fluid out).
4) Egg is stored so marker chemical can be read later after it has undergone its reaction.
I found a 2018 video as well[1], but the machine looks a lot different and it's harder to tell how it works.
In the 2020 video, the shot that starts at 55 seconds shows the whole carousel. A pair of robot arms are using pneumatic grabbers to load eggs onto the carousel, they go under the high power laser, then pass under the pipette robot arms, and finally are removed from the carousel by a similar pair of robot arms with pneumatic grabbers (it is at this last step that I suspect the fluid passes through the shell).
Also yeah, the fast majority of crops is farmed for animal feed, so your point is even more invalid.
At the end of the day, my suspicion is even most vegetarians don't like being confronted with the realities of egg production.
wat
Aside from that I'm not sure how you imagine not killing the birds by eating them?
There are many people that think it's more ethical to kill a cow just for it's meat than to eat the meat of a horse, which is never bred just for it's meat.
Both capon and horse meat are tastier than chicken and veal.
I think that is more of an ethical debate than a fact. One could argue that most farmed chickens live a life of suffering, and keeping them suffering long is not better than gassing them immediately.
On what basis, though? From a humane perspective, the quicker you kill a chicken the less suffering it does, and it's not like the culled chicks are ultimately wasted.
Maybe you meant to write
> the meat of a horse which was not bred just for its meat
Millions of horses are raised every year for their meat.
There's a lot more at play than just killing vs not killing. Some types of killing may be acceptable, and some may not. For example meat-eaters, which as you pointed, effectively kill animals, may disagree with other ways of killing - for example movies production or fur coats.
The most interesting case I've heard about this subject is in the movie Cannibal Holocaust. Among the other animals, two monkeys have been killed for script purposes, however, they have been eaten afterwards. Which are the ethics of this killing? There's no absolute answer¹
¹=I'm not implying, just exposing.
... Unless you were contemplating eating them _live_, I'm not sure how that works.
It's nice that someone figured out a way to optimize this and reduce unnecessary death. Massive kudos to them.
I've been raised to think: "what if there was a higher species of Aliens that farmed humans for their meat?" Yeah I definitely wouldn't want those aliens to kill me just because I'm male.
I think it could only be called "no kill" if there was a way to ensure each fertilised egg is female.
But you're right, it's just killing the chick earlier in its lifecycle, before it hatches. Analogous to aborting a human while in the womb, versus killing it shortly after birth.
The good news is, according to section 5.2.4 of the the "respeggt System Manual"[1] they are forbidden to kill earlier than 12 weeks old.
[1] https://respeggt-group.com/files/respeggt-Systemhandbuch_en....
Edit: link to the English system manual
If you have an ethical problem with eating animals at all, this won't matter. Otherwise, killing animals for food is part of our reality, and waiting until the 12 week mark brings the killing in line with the realities (and problems) of our worldwide food supply chain.
The first few days / weeks after birth are certainly louder but otherwise not much different developmentally from the preceding days.
Given that in US (for example) there are 160 million pets and a cat eats around 200-300 grams of meat everyday, which is more than half of the global World population have at their disposal.
It always amazes me the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify just enough harm in their minds to get what they want (in this case, meat to eat and eggs to eat). Just accept that these things are bred for fuel, and move on, or don't, and be a vegan. Both of those are fine, but to sit in the middle and pick and choose which you kill and justify it to yourself based on cuteness or anthropomorphizing it is silly.
If you're already eating meat, you're already demonstrably OK with the killing of an animal.
Probably not many out there. Which is funny since it would seem at a distance to come from the same instinct. My best guess is that it's political tribalism that creates the split.
Well, my first thought was "this isn't no kill, it's just chicken abortion". They're still killing chickens regardless. Maybe there's someone for whom this makes a difference; I'm not one of them.
But yeah...it's not human, and I eat chicken anyway. Religiously I am against human abortion because there is a sanctity in human life that does not apply to animals. In Christianity, humans are made in the image of God, are the only ones who contain a spirit, and are the only ones for whom there is a mandate in the Old Testament that if a human is murdered, then the one who murdered them should be put to death. That's not to say that animals are worthless in any way, and animal life is protected in other ways.
Purposelessly killing animals bothers me too, in that it's wasteful and we should be better stewards of life in general.
It feels that this article is rather disingenuous based on the title though.
I don't think it matter whether you are pro-abortion or anti-abortion since it's a chicken we are talking about. The abortion debate is about human life. Why post such flamebait?
> In their view, isn’t destroying the male egg the same as culling the male chick?
Fundamentally, a male chick dies/ceases to exist/etc.
I'm "pro-abortion" but the problem with fundamentalists like you is that you give everybody a bad name. Stop trying to turn everything to push your agenda.
Would you be okay with someone stepping on an egg with a male chick inside it? Probably not. Does it make pro-abortion view hypocritical? Not really. Because at the extremes, things get uncomfortable for both sides of the argument.
I’d go so far as to say it’s also because it is not heavily politicized either. The political right already has (human) abortion to win the emotional vote, they have no reason to go any further as those people will never change their minds on average (which is good enough to win elections)
For the record I don’t at all think abortion should be politicized, and seeing such clear pandering to emotion to win votes is so fucking tiring to see happen now, it’s tiring to read about it throughout history, and it’s tiring to know it’s going nowhere for the future.
> For the record I don’t at all think abortion should be politicized
But put yourself in a charitable version of your opponent's shoes: they believe it's a violation of the 5th amendment, and tantamount to murder. From the GOP platform,
> the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed
While I have personally heard convincing counter-arguments to this (as I said, I don't agree with the right), I don't hear them being stated by anyone at a high level on the left. The left's repeated talking point is that women have a right to their own body; but that view ignores, I think, that it's fully possible for someone on the right to believe that, but simultaneously believe that the rights of the unborn child take precedence. I have yet to hear someone high on the left address why either they believe that the right's stance on an unborn child's right to the 5th is wrong (and thus, a woman's right prevails as it is the only thing) or why the unborn child's right to the 5th is trumped by the woman's right to her body.
> and it’s tiring to know it’s going nowhere for the future.
I sincerely think that if the left took the time to argue against the steelmanned argument from the right, we might actually make progress at convincing people, and actually moving the debate forward. But, as it is, one side is screaming "it's murder!" the other "women's right's!", neither addressing the other's position or views. How is that ever to move forward?
Yes, there are plenty of uncharitable arguments made by politicians on the right, and one can no doubt cherry-pick an endless litany of examples. But that you can I do not believe frees you from the requirement of arguing a good, solid argument for your own viewpoint. Do you really think that half the nation is doing no more than "pandering to emotion", or that perhaps some subset of them might sincerely hold a view on the issue that might differ from your own?
While I don't agree with the right, I can certainly see how anyone on that side would be left utterly unconvinced by the rhetoric being produced on the left.
Why is this? Logically that would mean that either 1) females grow faster than males, or 2) all chickens that are used for meat are first used for laying eggs, because that's the only economic way. I'm fairly sure that neither is the case.
Actual answer is: commercially, meat chickens and egg chickens are completely different breeds.
In "broiler" chickens, they put on muscle at an astonishing rate; for laying chickens, they output eggs prodigiously.
The male laying chicks grow so slowly, with a small ultimate body size, as to be economically uncompetitive with broilers.
Though my SIL has expressed a willingness to slaughter the roosters so perhaps I'll just buy straight runs from now on and eat fresh chicken.
On the other hand... veal is delicious. But it does feel a bit bad.
At this point I just aim for local farms for meat as much as possible, and organic and pasture raised where I can't. Even if they still kill the male borns, at least I know the animals are being treated a bit better.
And the females are grown up and impregnated and milked and the process repeats.
At least, that's my understanding of it all anyways.
Instead of killing the male chickens as they hatch, you destroy the eggs halfway through the incubation period.
When looking to raise hens to lay eggs.
This company has developed a system for identifying the sex of a chicken whilst it is an egg.
So that they don't need to hatch it to determine if it's a male chicken and then kill it.
I eat eggs, so I'm definitely not making any moral judgements, but the process is brutal. I would definitely buy no-kill eggs when they come to the UK.
