- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.
As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.
You must log in or # to comment.
Just pump nitrogen in the sealed pens. The animal doesn’t panic due to perceived oxygen deprivation. They just get sleepy and die.
Hell it would be the way I’d want to go if I was sick with terminal cancer. Cheap, easy, and painless.
I imagine that would be pretty difficult to do in a chicken coop. These are barns made out of corrugated steel and generally aren’t even remotely air tight. You will, ultimately, need about 10x the nitrogen you would otherwise need, and that’s if it even works.
So a special coop would need to be built for this purpose.
Chicken farmers are some of the poorest farmers in the country. They generally don’t have the means to build a special kill shed to humanely euthanize their flock. They barely have the means to keep up with Tyson and Perdue’s ridiculous bullshit.
So, while I agree, heat stroke is a fucking awful way to kill these animals, the issue isn’t just “there’s a humane method bro, just build a kill house bro”
The issue is, we are paying FAR too little for chicken, and most meat, honestly.
You’re not wrong and nuance is often the bane of rationality. I didn’t say it was an easy solution just a more humane one.
Why would anyone get into chicken farming if it makes you one of the poorest farmers in the country? Are they stupid?
Why do people work fast food jobs if they don’t pay a living wage?
You’re blaming the poor for being poor. If you care so strongly about this, you should start financially supporting poultry farmers to change vocations.
I imagine there are a handful of ways to do it besides “long, slow heat stroke”
I imagine the long, slow, painful, heat stroke method is the cheapest, thus the suffering is capitalist-approved!
We are getting that heat stroke thing thrown back to us soon lol
Us: pumping heat into the atmosphere.
Mother earth: oh you guys cold? Don’t worry, I got you fam!
Those big coops are not anything close to airtight. Heat, however, doesn’t require it to be airtight.
Carbon monoxide would be cheaper. We used it for euthanizing animals that couldn’t be saved at the wildlife rehab center I worked at. Though, it was done with sealed induction box, not a drafty barn like someone mentioned
Sounds like it would be more expensive? Nitrogen is incredibly cheap to concentrate out of the air, 70% of what we breath is nitrogen after all.
deleted by creator
Or… and this is crazy… not kill them?
They are already dead. (Infected) Better to kill then now and not risk even more birds life.
This is specifically talking about mitigation for highly pathogenic avian influenza. HPAI kills chickens fairly quickly, so to contain the spread and minimize the risk of zoonotic spread to people, they kill every bird on every property that it’s detected on.
This is one of those situations where no one thinks it’s a great solution, it’s just a pragmatic one that minimizes the risk towards workers while quickly depopulating the barn. The problem is that this is one of the cheapest and least humane ways to depopulate a barn, and shouldn’t be allowed. We should insist that barns allow humane depopulation, or at least less inhumane methods.
Or, and I know this sounds even craizer… not farm them and stop this from happening to begin with?
Hello aliens I’m a vegan and condemn this bullshit
I’m not and I condemn this bullshit.
“capitalism is more effective than alternatives”
Capitalism showing why it is more effective :
Lmao how does this have more upvotes than the one you’re replying to.
Because vegans are annoying AF?
I am and I don’t condemn this bullshit. I believe they should be tortured even more.
So you’ll put your money where your mouth is and stop buying chicken then right? That’s how condemnation works.
And yet, you couldn’t resist the temptation to be aggressive and further turn off people to the idea of going meat free, vs trying to kindly convince them.
I get my chicken (and beef) from small, local neighboring farms, directly. I don’t see the problem?
I raise my own chickens. I love them very much. Some of them get eaten. I am very grateful to those. You don’t have to be a vegan to be a good person.
In their eyes you do.
Also a backyard chicken owner. My ladies live well
You don’t necessarily have to be vegan to be a good person. I’m sure your chickens wouldn’t miss an egg or two every once in a while. It is pretty fucked up to claim that you love them, but also kill and eat them sometimes. Like, I love my cat, and because of that the idea of putting her dead body in my mouth makes me feel sick.
“I love my chickens so much that I kill and eat them sometimes”
Remind me not to let you watch my dogs
Wow. I’m really fucking floored by y’all’s response. Where do you think your food comes from man? Seriously. I’m not being ugly, like you are, im trying to understand how you feel like you have less impact than I do. I am just able to take the responsibility for my own food
My food comes primarily from farms. I’m not saying I necessarily have less of an impact on anything than you, all I’m saying is that I don’t kill animals for food and I don’t pay for them to be killed.
You mocked me, man. It only hurts in the super small space that internet strangers can reach but it exists, regardless of how small. So. Bullshit.
Do you kill them?
Yes. I do. I have a separate small flock. I feed my family a proportion of our food over half that I grow, rise, and make myself. It would be impossible with out the protein from the chickens. And before anyone says some dumb shit to me, you do the math of your monoculture grown vegan food and if you still think my overall footprint is greater than yours, you are wrong.
That must be really hard on you. I’ve killed animals before and that’s why I know I never want to be part of that and I never want to make anyone else do that for me. I know the statistics, people who kill animals are more likely to abuse drugs, self harm, hurt others, and commit suicide. When you kill animals you kill part of yourself. You have to, because our human instincts make us empathize with animals.
That’s why I’m vegan. I don’t pretend like consumer choices are going to save the environment - nothing either of us do as individuals matters on that front. I’m vegan because someone has to kill those animals and it fucks people up. Maybe you’re fine. I doubt it.
Seek help.
what would you think of a backyard farm where chickens are only killed once they’re dead? or, are only basically killed when they would otherwise die from old age in the next, say, 2 months, to just put a random number on it? would only be killed when they are diseased, have cancer etc. Cause we already do that with people a good amount of the time, assisted suicide, hospice, whatever.
also what do you think of if we just ate like old people
You are an insane person and a coward. You buy your food at a supermarket and are not able to comprehend the impact of your precious soy. As a matter of fact, your not even on my level really. You are probably a child. If you ever need help, call me.
That’s hilarious, people have no sense of personal responsibility whatsoever. Just look at COVID.
They use the argument that one person not eating meat won’t change anything. Ignoring the fact that they are literally deriving joy from suffering. It doesn’t have to be this way. I truly believe meat can be ethical, but when 99.8% of beef is factory farmed I do not have the option to ethically eat meat.
17 years meat free and every once in awhile I reconsider adding chicken to my diet. Then I see a post like this lol
deleted by creator
You do understand you’re not doing your cause any favours by being a fundamentalist right?
“I hate cruelty to animals” buys animal products at the grocery store
This is such a common phenomenon that it has a name: cognitive dissonance. If you already knew what that was, then your comment suggests another example of it.
I hate capitalism, I still spend money
I can exist within society and still be critical of it, quite frankly I’m not sure how else one exists.
You’re aware of how we treat produce pickers right? How we treat the people who sew your clothes together? Or the people who assembled the device you’re reading this on?
Cruelty to life exists at every level. If you’ve ever eaten chocolate, or had coffee you’ve participated in slavery.
A vegan that can’t resist antagonizing others over their diet is being rather counterproductive. It’s an easier lifestyle choice to keep your mouth shut and not be snarky than it is to completely change your diet.
It begs the question, if this person criticizing me can’t make an easier lifestyle change than what they want me to do, why should I even listen?
(And I’m going to get replies that completely miss the point and continue to moralize at me)
Most vegans can’t keep up the lifestyle more than about 5-7 years, as health issues start to creep in.
The diet isn’t as nutritious as they claim, and there is no good replacement for animal fat and protein.
The meat industry has problems. Don’t get me wrong. But they’re not at the same scale most vegans will tell you they are, and as it happens herbivores are much better at turning plants in to energy than we are. Plus it’s not like we’re treating the actual humans picking tomatoes much better than we treat cattle.
Gonna cite these stats or are you just parroting Joe Rogan? Obviously there’s a large amount of gastronomic variation among humans, some people can’t go vegan easily. But the idea meat has anything you can’t get from plants is absolutely a myth: I eat dark chocolate and nuts for iron, and B12 is in all sorts of shit from mushrooms to potatoes (and is easy to supplement with vitamin water or fortified cereal if not pills). And protein? Protein is the textbook example of this. Y’all just have some weird thing against broccoli and chickpeas.
deleted by creator
Too bad for you the aliens eat meat
The meat industry is fucking sick and demented but people need their meats so animal ethics be damned…. Fucking bullshit, fucking human cancer
Take the subsidies from animal farming and give them to meat alternatives.
We will be awash in lentils!
You’d better get all your meat free-range or hunt it yourself.
Um, just not eating meat is a fairly straightforward option…
I dunno why so many people discount hunting as a good alternative to sourcing your own meat.
Sometimes the whitetail deer populations are fucking insanely out of control because we killed off their predators like 100 years ago in some areas, and similar things happen all over because predators require larger ranges and are less able to integrate with human developments. Sort of like how we have a shit ton of crows and rats and pidgeons, and raccoons. I think it would probably make more sense to source meat from doing your part to clamp down on the populations, than the alternatives, which are predator reintroduction, which isn’t always guaranteed to work and comes with complications, as the native species are usually totally extinct, or just like. ecological collapse from overgrazing, which sucks and is bad.
Oh cool, that’s completely horrifying. And not at all surprising from the meat industry. They’ve never cared about animal cruelty with anything else they do, so why would they care about this?
As an industry they necessitate not caring about cruelty, so anything they do isn’t surprising
hi frick
Fourty nine million just staggers my brain. Like, thats not even a blip in the production.
…nuts.
deleted by creator
I sometimes hope for aliens to come to this planet and treat us like we treat other living beings.
Humanity is such a poor excuse for civilisation
Humans are fucking disgusting. If you zoom out far enough we are just a bacterial infection of the Earth. Spreading our gray cities like bacteria in a petri dish. Growth for the sake of growth is the mentality of a cancer cell.
Well Earth is about to pitch a fever to fight us off…
It’s the “mentality” of most everything. We just have the ability to reflect upon it and, perhaps, change it.
I’m looking forward to alien’s selectively breeding us for pets like we do dogs.
It would be a trip to see how many dwarf albinos end up running around
If aliens do come to earth, and simply enslave us, torture us then kill us for reasons we can’t comprehend, there should be absolutely no question whether we deserve it or not. They would be doing what we do to other sentient creatures en masse. We have the intelligence and ability to simply not kill these animals in a fashion that is sadistic and agonizing(im not even saying not to kill them, just do it humanely, bare minimum), yet we do it anyway because of greed and capitalist profit motives, cutting costs, etc.
Yes please. End this horrorshow
I like veganism because it forces meat-eaters to eat their own shit and perform mental gymnastics that make them worthy of an Olympic gold medal to avoid admitting their contribution to the problem.
Really shows the cognitive dissonance among average people. And they’re proud of it, lol.
Eat shit, die, get in my belly!
They would be doing what we do to other sentient creatures en masse.
Chickens are sentient?
I see this sentiment a lot regarding eating meat. I think a lot of people don’t realize how much these animals suffer.
Just look at your dog anytime you eat pork. Remember that that animal you’re eating is smarter than your dog. That pig used to play with its siblings, have love for its mother, and eventually live in complete terror before it is killed. People love to make fun of Asian societies for eating dogs when it is exactly the same as eating a pig.
That little bit of joy you gained from eating pork came at the cost of unfathomable suffering.
There is no excuse in 2023, I’ve been building muscle for the first time in my life and doing it on a vegetarian diet.Vegetarian diet or vegan diet?
Vegetarian, no dairy though because casein intolerance
There is evidence that plants may be sentient. How should we handle that consideration?
Conjecture isn’t evidence. Plants lack both the means to have thoughts and the reason to evolve those means in the first place. They react to stimuli in the same way my phone does. Should I be as worried that I’m hurting my phone by not charging it as I am that I’m hurting my cat by not feeding her?
Or is the entire premise stupid in the first place and we should stop wasting everyone’s time with it?
Also, if plant suffering is a concern, you should definitely be vegan, because trophic levels are a thing, and every calorie worth of meat you eat is 10 calories worth of plants that had to die.
Oh my god I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count.
Robots can react to stimulus too, are they sentient? No
Plants are biological machines devoid of the capacity suffering, as far as we know. There is no evidence that plants grieve the loss of their young or fear for their lives.
You know when people say “there’s no such thing as a stupid question”?
deleted by creator
It’s like normal ventilation shutdown but allows 4K streaming to 3 devices.
But only on approved devices, otherwise it’s 480p
With a mouse at the controls…
When regular old chicken suffocation won’t do, get VSD+!
Ventilation shutdown is just what it sounds like.
VSD+ is something like VSD + CO2 or VSD + heat, where they add a little something to speed things along just a little bit.
Firefighting foam is full of PFAS that tends to pollute groundwater. The last thing we need is more uses for it.
Heaven forbid you actually vaccinate your livestock.There isn’t really a vaccine. One is being trialed but it is not available. The reason they are so extreme with this is that in affected birds they have about a 99% chance of dieing within 48 hours of infection. Waterfowl can carry it for longer but are still susceptible to death, they seem to be the major infection vector. HPAI highly contagious (highly pathonogenic avian influenza is the name), a bird brushing up on another is enough to spread it, due to birds cleaning their feathers with their mouths. So if a poultry farm tests positive they want to quarantine it ASAP so a sparrow doesn’t spread it to neighbors and wild populations.
Today I learned. Here’s hoping they have a vaccine soon.
And, setting up an entire culling operation, which would have to include transporting the birds, and contaminating another facility and several semi trailers, and staff, not to mention other wildlife is a huge risk. Shutting the windows and turning up the heat is probably the safest and quickest way to do things in this situation
Good
