• Lumisal@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Haven’t really seen it mentioned here, but for those who don’t know, the male chicks are not used for chicken nuggets, but primarily for pet food or plant fertilizer. Also not every country does this practice. Not only that, but eliminating eggs from the human global diet would be unfeasible. This is because eggs are the best source of protein, with only whey protein coming second. They are also the only food with such a high protein content that also contains all essential nutrients. And before someone posts “but da beans!” - no, they’re not on the same level. Although beans are a good source of protein, they’re neither complete nor are they actually as high as they seem, because the protein they have isn’t as bioavailable as that of eggs (speaking of, this is why there’s certain practices in vegan diets to gain more nutrients, such as eating leafy greens with an acid to get more iron or soaking pecans to remove the pyric acid in them to absorb the minerals they have better).

    Removing eggs from the world diet would actually lead to more ecological harm, even without more ethical chicken rearing practices becoming wider spread, because the amount of farm land needed to ensure proper nutrition for everyone with a mixed vegetable diet would be significantly higher than ensuring there’s just enough eggs for everyone.

    You don’t like baby chicks getting ground up? Don’t own carnivorous pets, and buy from more ethical egg farmers. Or if you can, honestly just get your own chicken or 2. You’ll have enough eggs with even a single chicken to be honest. Hens don’t need much space, males can be eaten once their 4am crowing drives you crazy - although they do keep the hens happy. If you can afford it or don’t have very particular diet restrictions, go vegan - you probably don’t need as much protein as you think. I used to be vegan until kidney failure, and now with a transplant am back to mostly vegetarian (at least for now until I can go back to being fully vegan). I also used to raise animals for food and farm because I came from a poor family initially. If you don’t care, then just consider eating less meat and eggs will ya? Too much ain’t good for your health either. Plus it’ll taste better if you don’t eat it every day. A weekend bbq is way more special when you haven’t had meat the prior everyday.

    • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I can respect that you mean well, but there’s a lot of issues with your comment, which I’ll get into.

      Haven’t really seen it mentioned here, but for those who don’t know, the male chicks are not used for chicken nuggets, but primarily for pet food or plant fertilizer. Also not every country does this practice.

      The first problem here is that you’re still treating chicks like they’re commodities. What their carcasses are used for is irrelevant, because we’re never going to continue progressing morally until we can learn to see these beings - who think, feel, and have their own qualia - as someone, not something. We can discuss side issues all day, everyday, like the environment, health, and pandemic potential. But we also have to stop being afraid to recognize this as a matter of justice.

      Not only that, but eliminating eggs from the human global diet would be unfeasible. This is because eggs are the best source of protein, with only whey protein coming second.

      Protein is not the only nutrient that matters, and it’s generally effortlessly easy to get all the protein you need on plants alone. The view that people can’t get enough protein on plants is such a thoroughly debunked myth that it’s embarrassing that vegans have to dispell this nonsense in virtually every discussion still.

      They are also the only food with such a high protein content that also contains all essential nutrients.

      This is a dangerously bad take. In the first place, eggs do not contain all essential nutrients. Eggs either completely lack some essential vitamins and minerals, or have them in such low quantities that you would have to eat an insane amount of eggs to meet your daily needs. Just as importantly is that the nutrients are a package deal - eggs contain almost as much fat as they do protein, and are so high in cholesterol and saturated fats that the more you eat, the faster you are on your way to a heart attack, stroke, and/or erectile dysfunction.

      And before someone posts “but da beans!” - no, they’re not on the same level. Although beans are a good source of protein, they’re neither complete

      Protein “incompleteness” in plants is so misunderstood that it’s effectively an outright myth. Virtually all plants have all 9 of the amino acids that are essential for humans. Where the incompleteness comes in is that human muscle tissue is composed of amino acids in a particular ratio. If we don’t have enough of even one of those aminos in our diet, our bodies can’t synthesize new muscle. For this reason it was believed that the closer a food matches the amino acid ratios in our muscles, the better that food is for gaining muscle. Obviously this way of thinking supports the idea of consuming other being’s muscle tissue since that’s naturally going to be the closest to our own (and yes that kind of thinking implies that cannibalism provides the “best” protein).

      But that line of thinking breaks down under scrutiny. For starters, there are thousands of chemicals our bodies make that require amino acids, why are they not a factor in discussing “protein quality”? Second, a food being really high in protein is not necessarily a good thing. There’s growing evidence that animal proteins themselves may be harmful for health and longevity.

      https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/plant-based-protein-lowers-risk-premature-death-heart-disease-dementia

      Anyway, I really want to drive home the point that the protein incompleteness thing is damn near a nonissue. If you’re a person who is strength training on a vegan diet, yes, you will make your life easier by diversifying your protein sources. But for the average person, the low amount of methionine in beans can easily be overcome by either simply eating some grains from time to time (or daily, grains are fucking great), or the person could eat 4 servings of beans in a day to get their rda of methionine (and all other essential amino acids).

      nor are they actually as high as they seem, because the protein they have isn’t as bioavailable as that of eggs (speaking of, this is why there’s certain practices in vegan diets to gain more nutrients, such as eating leafy greens with an acid to get more iron or soaking pecans to remove the pyric acid in them to absorb the minerals they have better).

      Food synergies are important for everyone, not just vegans. If for example you’re trying to get the antioxidant and antiinflammatory benefits of eating berries, obviously you would rather increase those benefits by getting the synergies that come from eating a mix of berries, as opposed to mixing those berries with milk or bananas which are known to reduce or cancel out the berries beneficial effects.

      Anyway, I’ll finish my protein rant with a link to a YouTube video on the subject, from a real nutritional scientist who specializes in the subject. Tl;dw? The bottom line is that it’s not only possible, but easy to get all the protein we need on plants alone. Carnists seriously need to just drop the whole protein thing because y’all just do not have a case in your favor here.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUqZXZlcnl0aGluZyB5b3Uga25vdyBhYm91dCBwcm90ZWluIGlzIHdyb25n

      Removing eggs from the world diet would actually lead to more ecological harm, even without more ethical chicken rearing practices becoming wider spread, because the amount of farm land needed to ensure proper nutrition for everyone with a mixed vegetable diet would be significantly higher than ensuring there’s just enough eggs for everyone.

      I’m not going to get into this one because other commenters have already done so. But no, that’s preposterous on the face of it. Any animal agriculture is fundamentally going to take more land and resources to produce food because those animals need to be raised on plants, so why not raise the plants for ourselves directly? And before anyone chimes in about the suitability of land for agriculture, maybe take some time to learn more about things like Permaculture and regenerative ag. If a person can grow a small food forest on an abandoned parking lot with 12 inches of manure in the midwest, or Geoff Lawton can re-green the desert, it warrants investigating just how many places we can make abundant. Anyway, Cowspiracy is a good documentary to learn more about animal ag land use.

      You don’t like baby chicks getting ground up? Don’t own carnivorous pets, and buy from more ethical egg farmers.

      No, the purchasing and consumption of eggs is what drives chick culling. They do it because male chicks are considered a waste product of that industry, and any commodities sold from it likely grew out of a way to recoup costs. If you want to end chick culling, the best way to do it is go vegan.

      Or if you can, honestly just get your own chicken or 2. You’ll have enough eggs with even a single chicken to be honest. Hens don’t need much space, males can be eaten once their 4am crowing drives you crazy - although they do keep the hens happy.

      From a practical standpoint, raising your own chickens puts you at risk of getting h5n1. The more time goes by, the more that risk increases. From a moral standpoint, you might be causing less suffering to chickens this way, but you’d still be causing suffering as well as being an exploiter of that animal. Chickens have been unnaturally bred to produce way more eggs than their bodies can handle. Not only is this prodigious amount of egg laying an uncomfortable experience for them, it generally leads to nutrient deficiencies that end up causing their bones to break under their own weight. They can regain that lost nutrition by consuming their own eggs, which is something they sometimes naturally do.

      As an alternative, consider either supporting an existing animal sanctuary, or start your own. As a bonus, you could use their manure to help grow a garden. Veganic agriculture can involve animals, as long as those animals are free-living, safe, comfortable, and they’re not being exploited.

      If you can afford it or don’t have very particular diet restrictions, go vegan - you probably don’t need as much protein as you think.

      But up there you just said… oh nevermind. 🤔 Yes, go vegan. Also, in most places it’s less expensive to be vegan, especially when you factor in the cost of healthcare.

      I used to be vegan until kidney failure, and now with a transplant am back to mostly vegetarian (at least for now until I can go back to being fully vegan). I also used to raise animals for food and farm because I came from a poor family initially. If you don’t care, then just consider eating less meat and eggs will ya? Too much ain’t good for your health either. Plus it’ll taste better if you don’t eat it every day. A weekend bbq is way more special when you haven’t had meat the prior everyday.

      A weekend bbq is a lot more special when it becomes fully uncoupled from the guilt of living on the commodification, exploitation, suffering, and atrocities of other sentient beings. Reducitarianism might be gaining traction, but it really hasn’t led to any appreciable results. Experts in fields like health coaching all insist that the most effective way to adhere to a more ethical diet and lifestyle is to go all in. If you mess up, that’s okay, just forgive yourself and try again. It’s absolutely worth it.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      7 days ago

      Land usage is still lower

      we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

      https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

      Complete proteins matter much less than you’d think. As long as you get the other proteins in at some point in the day you are fine. It doesn’t take much for that as just adding rice to beans is enough to make it complete for instance

      The bioavaliability of protein metrics are highly misleading when applying them to plant-based foods due to some their assumptions

      While multiple strengths characterize the DIAAS, substantial limitations remain, many of which are accentuated in the context of a plant-based dietary pattern. Some of these limitations include a failure to translate differences in nitrogen-to-protein conversion factors between plant- and animal-based foods, limited representation of commonly consumed plant-based foods within the scoring framework, inadequate recognition of the increased digestibility of commonly consumed heat-treated and processed plant-based foods, its formulation centered on fast-growing animal models rather than humans, and a focus on individual isolated foods vs the food matrix. The DIAAS is also increasingly being used out of context where its application could produce erroneous results such as exercise settings. When investigating protein quality, particularly in a plant-based dietary context, the DIAAS should ideally be avoided.

      https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13668-020-00348-8.pdf

      • BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info
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        6 days ago

        During my vegan phase I was counting calories with Cronometer - if you eat unprocessed foods you can count calories using data from food-related institutions. Because of that, the protein data is detailed and is split into the individual amino-acids rather than just saying “you ate 100g of protein today”. At the end of the day, my panel was all green (meaning 100% RDA) apart from lysine which was lower. I don’t see where my diet was lacking anything crucial protein-wise that necessitates eggs. I can get the micronutrient argument with B12 and dietary cholesterol, but protein?

        The thread poster ridicules “da beans” but is infact “muh eggs” themselves. And I have drawn myself as Chad and them as Wojak to prove it

  • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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    8 days ago

    I have been seeing a lot of animal abuse posts on here lately. I hadn’t noticed 196 being like that in the past on here or Reddit. Is there a trend toward that for this community in general? I’m well aware of how fucked the industry is, but I also don’t sub to this community for that. I am here for little gay people shit posting in my phone. These just make me sad. I can’t personally do anything to stop this. I don’t want to unsub, and there’s not a great way to filter, unless it’s all the same OP? :(

    • MilitantVegan@lemmy.world
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      It might still not be popular to be vegan yet, but the movement is growing rapidly. It could be a symptom of a larger trend - that the injustices against non-human animals is too terrible to keep Ignoring.

      Sometimes it just needs to be recognized that a problem isn’t going to go away until we start doing the hard work of solving it together.

      • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        That also wasn’t my point at all. I’m making no statement here about veganism. I’m saying 196 isn’t a vegan activism community and these bummer posts are obnoxious.

        • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
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          You sound like queer people in the 80s and 90s.

          “What does it matter if one person accepts me? Won’t change anything and it just bums me out.”

          Now, acceptance is the default position for most folk.

            • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
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              Well, as a queer vegan. Its really hard not to notice that bigots and carnists say the same sort of things.

              “You’re just trying to feel special.” “It’s unnatural, your gentials/teeth were evolved for a specific use”. “Stop trying to convert kidsto your cult.” “Queer/vegan people always think they are so enlighted.”

              But more to the point, defeatism is always an easy excuse to do nothing. But individual actions can have ripple effects through generations. Do you think that those at stonewall would expect an entire month celebrating their actions? Enough people making a choice not to support animal agriculture puts the concept out of business. Do I expect that or liberation soon? No. But it’s gotten LIGHTYEARS better on both fronts in my own lifetime.

      • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        Similar to recycling, the impact is small. There must be large systemic change. My adoption of a vegan diet, or my diligent recycling of aluminum and plastic, is a drop in the bucket.

        • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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          This is emphatically untrue. If you eat a few hundred fewer animals over the course of your life, that’s a few hundred animals saved (even if supply and demand aren’t perfectly elastic, the expected utility is 1-to-1). The fact that billions will still die is irrelevant.

          Would you refuse to save a child from poverty on the grounds that billions will continue living in poverty?

          • Victoria Antoinette @lemmy.world
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            Would you refuse to save a child from poverty on the grounds that billions will continue living in poverty?

            this is a terrible analogy because at the end of one, you can point to the person being saved. no animals are saved by eating plants.

            • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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              Good point. I don’t think it changes my argument though. If anything, allowing a creature to come into existence just so that it can be slaughtered is way more fucked up than exploiting an existing person.

          • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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            Yes, it’s not my responsibility to save that child from poverty. I would also be terrible at it. I would much rather financially support organizations than will assist in saving children from poverty in a more meaningful way, as well as supporting politicians that align with my values as far as lifting not just children, but everyone, out of poverty.

            • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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              You can, and should, give money to animal charities and support politicians in favor of better animal welfare (if you can find one) and I will commend you for that. But that does not negate the harm you do by paying for animals to be killed. Just as giving to a women’s shelter does not then mean that it becomes excusable for you to beat your wife.

              And I apologize for that analogy, I don’t think you’re a bad person. But I do think it’s an appropriate analogy and I think we live in a culture that normalizes and encourages normal people to participate in terrible atrocities. The reality is that you have nothing to lose from going vegan and, after a little research and preparation, it doesn’t take any extra effort, time, or money.

                • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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                  Veganism isn’t difficult. And yeah my tofu exploits people in the third world, but the beef I used to eat was fed soy anyways. You’re just removing a one really horrible and unnecessary step from the food supply chain.

              • OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world
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                That analogy goes so far above what’s happening, at least for the average person.

                Do you buy jeans or any clothing produced outside of the US? BAM, you’re as bad as the people in the factories abusing local communities and child labor.

                Should one attempt to find clothing that is ethical where possible? Then absolutely, and buying a pair of Levi’s doesn’t make you complicit in enabling child endangerment.

                Same with most things, I try my best to already only buy from brands that don’t: support genocide through funding or messaging, discriminate based on sex/race/gender, engage in union busting or union restrictive activities, employ under the table for children or for tax/benefit reductions. So many people try to argue from a place of Absolute Moral Supremacy, and the world is just too grey for that.

                Reduce the meat you eat, yes, that’s a good plan and it’s good for the budget and it’s good for the planet. But humans HAVE been eating animals for longer than we’ve walked upright, so going entirely non-consumption just isn’t going to happen.

                You can make stances as to why it’s a good thing, why it might assist you in the long run, but to conflate it with enabling violence towards spouses? That’s the kind of rhetoric that gets vegans shouted down and laughed at anytime the name is brought up. If you want to make long lasting change, changing hearts and minds will do that, and your tone/style won’t win hearts and minds.

                • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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                  First off, I have a tendency to be an asshole in online discussions so I want you to call me out if I’m being unproductive. I also really struggle with tone so please try to interpret what I say generously. This is why I generally only discuss veganism irl. This is a throwaway account I created just because I saw some anti vegan rhetoric and my emotions got the better of me. I’m going to abandon it as soon as we’re done talking. Here it goes:

                  As for you last point, I want you to consider things a vegan’s perspective for a second. You’re often forced to either package your ideas so meekly and inoffensively that they’re easily ignored or express them forcefully and then be called an extremist and mocked.

                  We slit the throats of 90 billion land animals each year. That’s billions of chickens who get theirs beaks cut off without anesthetic and get ammonia burns from living in their own shit. Billions of bulls that are branded, ear tagged, and have their testicles ripped off without anesthetic. Trillions of fish that suffocate to death or freeze to death in ice water.

                  And the absurdity of it all is that it’s easy, cheap, and healthy to simply eat plants. Most people can wash their hands of this entirely any time they want. The idea that none of this is ethical or necessary is an idea that deserves to be presented forcefully. The idea that animals are not property to be owned and exploited is no different from the idea that human beings cannot be property of their masters or their husbands and deserves to be expressed with the same vigor. So is it really that people hate us because we’re presenting our message wrong, or do people just hate us because our message is hard to hear?

                  I agree with most of your other points. Capitalism does force us all to be complicit in terrible things to a degree and I’m sure I absolutely could and should do more to avoid exploitative products. In fact, if you have a list of products that you avoid or a source you consult, I’d like know what it is. And if you’re willing to do research on the least explorative brand of jeans, then you really should go vegan. This is an easy win and I guarantee you it’s cheaper.

                  As for the “humans have eaten meat forever” argument. Humans have had slaves forever yet you are clearly against slavery. If you go vegan and prevent a dozen cows from being raised and killed for meat, that’s worthwhile regardless of what everyone else does.

        • threeduck@aussie.zone
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          7 days ago

          Couldn’t that logic be used against literally any good action? Like giving $100,000 to a malaria charity isn’t going to stop malaria. If everyone thought like vegans, the world would be vegan, the climate crisis would almost entirely be averted, rivers swimmable, billions of animal lives saved each year.

          If during your supermarket shop, you use vegan recipes instead, you’ll be one of those dominos. You could be the systemic change!

        • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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          The issue is how then do you get that systematic change? Governments are going to be extremely hard to convince to do anything as along as people expect to consume animal products en mass. It’s going to have to start with individual action until systematic change is palatable

          And with systematic action, it’s still going to have to involve change in consumption in the end. Factory farming is pretty much the only thing that scales. Want to avoid it? We’re going to need to see great drops in production and in turn consumption

          The impacts of people taking action do add up. For instance, in Germany there’s been declines in per capita meat consumption over the past decade

          In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

          https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian

        • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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          7 days ago

          Yeah, you should go vegan, and also post depressing memes on 196 that make all the carnists feel guilty. That’ll have a bigger impact.

    • debil@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      I can’t personally do anything to stop this.

      You can always upvote or share a post like this to spread awaraness and hence maybe make people buy less eggs, or at least make them pause to think before they buy their next eggs.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        “i don’t want to see shit like this”

        “you can upvote it so more people see shit like this as well”

        thanks, very cool

        • debil@lemmy.world
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          Yes, so that maybe some day in the future this horrible shit is no more. Until then, get used to bumping into a thought provoking meme every now. The mild discomfort pales in comparison to the practice itself.

    • fracture [he/him] @beehaw.org
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      yeah i feel you. i don’t think this would be better even if i were vegan (i’m not bc i think i would starve due to a number of dietary restrictions /allergies, but i cycle in the vegan food i can)

  • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    That’s only in industrial egg production. If you’re a local farmer and you need to dispose of the males, your go to quick and painless option might be a potato sack or your hands.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      Industrial egg production is the vast majority of egg production. Using the word only there is perhaps a bit misleading when for instance, 98.2% of US egg production is from factory farms [1]

      I’m not sure one can call any of those methods painless either

        • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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          The technology for it that currently does not scale to higher egg consumption rather well among other potential problems

          They have not yet tried to sell the technology to the US egg industry but, even if they did, the volume it can handle is currently too low for this technology to be used to get rid of chick culling across the board.

          […]

          One issue that complicates these efforts is the difficult-to-answer question of when an embryo becomes a chick. Some researchers say day seven is when chick embryos can begin to experience pain. If that’s right, sexing the eggs eight to 10 days after incubation as Respeggt does, and 14 days as Agri-AT does, may still end up inflicting pain on the embryo, which could be trading one animal welfare problem — culling — for another

          https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22374193/eggs-chickens-animal-welfare-culling

          • freebee@sh.itjust.works
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            Culling unhatched eggs seems less cruel to me than culling <1 day hatchlings. Cute-bias, I know.

            Seems to scale somewhat in Europe, talking many many millions of eggs per year too.

            At least trying is better than nothing.

            Not saying it’s perfect, but tech is advancing thought it would be interesting to add that to this thread…

        • Lileath@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          7 days ago

          That is because it got forbidden. They never would do something that lessens their profit without being forced to do it.

    • alx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      maybe, but you can’t feed a population on backyard farms. If everybody wants to eat eggs, there has to be a massive production, and it will be this kind of hell. The only logical way to prevent this is to stop treating animals as resources. We are perfectly able to feed with plants, we know how to get every necessary nutrient. Animal agriculture needs to stop, and if we’re truly leftists, we have to stand against any exploitation. How could we evolve as a society if we continue to use sentient beings as mere resources?

      • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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        Chickens are domesticated to the point that they cannot survive in the wild / have no ecological niche. Without some small scale animal agriculture like backyard chickens they would go extinct, though you could argue it’s for the best.

        Personally I think small-scale egg farming is not exploitative when the chickens are treated well.

  • CubitOom@infosec.pub
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    8 days ago

    I raised mine to roosters. I got a grey cock, a brown cock, and the biggest is my black cock.

    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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      I had this same question, I learned “meat” chickens are called broiler chickens, they were bred to put on weight rapidly. Egg laying chickens are separate breed and grow slower or won’t grow to the size of a broiler. The industry is limited by containment footage, so they wouldn’t use a male egg laying chick where they could house a broiler.

        • booly@sh.itjust.works
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          Wasteful of what, though?

          If a particular farm can produce 1000 kg of meat and 500kg of bones/other waste in a year by raising female meat chickens, would it be a waste to devote that farm to raising 500 kg of meat and 400 kg of bones from male egg chickens? In a sense, that’s a waste of the farm to produce half as much meat as it can produce through killing chicks.

          It’s a philosophical difference on what weight to assign to the lives of chicks, adult chickens, other resources including human labor, etc. The lazy shortcut is to maximize return on dollar investment with no regard for any of those moral, ethical, and philosophical considerations, and that’s what most of the industry does today, but even if you shift to a new moral framework you’ll need to decide how to weight those things.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      8 days ago

      The industry kills them right away because they’re not selectively breeded to grow as fast as broilers do. Egg laying chicken have been selectively bred to lay high quantities of eggs instead

      Due to modern selective breeding, laying hen strains differ from meat production strains (broilers).

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling

      As an aside, in both cases, the selective breeding has led to all kinds of health issues for these birds. Broilers can hardly walk due to being fast-growing. Egg laying chickens have all kind of bone health problems due to producing lots of eggs (takes a lot of calcium to produce an egg shell)

    • debil@lemmy.world
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      They’re totally different breed designed to lay as much eggs as physically possible compared to broilers that are designed to grow edible muscle as much and as fast as possible.

      More info here.

    • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Roosters are very aggressive and territorial and wouldn’t just chill with homies.

      plus Cock Meat is an awkward marketing phrase for some.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      Because we like big chicken breasts and we cannot lie.

      (Male chickens of egg-laying breeds don’t have as much meat, and also the males left together often compete and can try to kill each other. You’d want around a dozen hens per rooster, compared to roughly 1:1 that would come out naturally with eggs, and have enough space for each to call their own).

    • cows_are_underrated@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 days ago

      AS far AS i know, there are experiments with identifying the gender in the egg, but it isn’t practically usable on a big scale. I might be wrong, would love if someone knew more about this.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      Only in a select few places. It doesn’t scale super well among other potential issues

      They have not yet tried to sell the technology to the US egg industry but, even if they did, the volume it can handle is currently too low for this technology to be used to get rid of chick culling across the board.

      […]

      One issue that complicates these efforts is the difficult-to-answer question of when an embryo becomes a chick. Some researchers say day seven is when chick embryos can begin to experience pain. If that’s right, sexing the eggs eight to 10 days after incubation as Respeggt does, and 14 days as Agri-AT does, may still end up inflicting pain on the embryo, which could be trading one animal welfare problem — culling — for another

      https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22374193/eggs-chickens-animal-welfare-culling

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      8 days ago

      ?

      196 is a meme/miscellaneous community. This is a meme ergo fits within the community. Pretty much the only rule of this community is “if you visit the community you must post” besides rules like no transphobia, racism, etc.

    • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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      7 days ago

      Of course you don’t. You’re told your entire life that eating animals is essential and morally permissible. You’re constantly told your entire life that animal lives don’t matter. Just keep an open mind. Go to watchdominion dot com.

  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 days ago

    I’d think they could genetically engineer the egg layers to only produce males in certain conditions (such as when they’re incubated at a higher temperature), then only breed males when they need more roosters.

    OR, if sex is selected by sperm type (as with humans) artificially inseminate the hens.

    I suspect there are dozens of valid technical solutions that are cost effective and would allow them to not shred male chicks.

    • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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      7 days ago

      Every vegan initially dreams of a world with ethical meat. Then after a few years you realize you actually don’t miss meat at all. Please believe me when I say, ethical meat really isn’t worth the effort (and often mental gymnastics).

      • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 days ago

        For now, to paraphrase Marge Simpson, I can’t afford to choose a diet that has a philosophy I’m sure that yes, unprocessed vegetable matter is cheap if I know where to go, but turning that into a run of meals that doesn’t trigger my major depression and suicidality is simply not feasible. Also there’s the concern that when I endeavor to do complicated things and fuck up, the cost of the disaster is exponentially greater than the cost of not doing it in the first place.

        In short, getting ten pounds of legumes would be a great way for me to ruin ten pounds of legumes and stink up the street block.

        I’ve heard that people who actually know how to cook are able to do wonderful things with vegetable matter. But I do not have access to them, and their pre-processed products at the store are more expensive than meat and eggs.

        Sometimes I fantasize about a society in which one’s status as a person wasn’t contingent on how much money I make for someone else, who is glad to give me a tiny portion of that take, but we are a few generations, and a couple of great filters away from such a pipe dream.

        • dinkusmann@feddit.rocks
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          7 days ago

          I’m lucky in that I’m very content to pour a can of beans on rice and call it a meal. But I can sympathize with your situation. I’m very sorry to hear about your mental health. If I may offer a suggestion, if you can’t be 100% vegan, then just be as vegan as you can be. Choose the shirt made from cotton and not wool. Experiment with vegan food a little bit at a time and learn what you like. Buy the fake meat when it goes on sale. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe it won’t. But if you take it slow and gently then you probably don’t have anything to lose.