Recently Ive read a post by Dairyisntscary on tumblr, who currently goes by a different username, saying that there are things they think are wrong with industrial husbandry practices, and that they hate how cows dont really "get the whole cow experience" on large-scale dairy farms.

They've said that they "don’t believe that we can argue that cows on large dairies get their “freedom to display natural behaviors” in any sense and I don’t think it’s fair to them at all."

This felt a bit jarring to me, because previously theyve stated that there is no real correlation between animal welfare and the size of the dairy farm, large farms can have good welfare while small farms can have bad welfare. And for much of the time theyve been on tumblr, their position has been that animal welfare on dairy farms arent really as bad as vegan activists make them out to be, though even back then they still admitted that there are improvements that can be made.

To people who work in dairy farming: what's your opinion on the general animal welfare in dairy farming, and is there anything that can be improved? Do you share Scout's (Dairyisntscary's nickname) feelings on the state of animal welfare in dairyfarming?

Or maybe manufacture some proof for me?/s

Please help me with the argument that beekeeping "exploits" bees.

Came across a post on social media by a vegan who claims that bee-keeping is "cruel and exploitative". The OP addresses the argument that kept honeybees aren't exploited because they are capable of leaving by comparing the efforts bee-keepers make to prevent hives from swarming-clipping the queen's wings, with human business owners who manipulate and coerce their workers from leaving.

In their words, the methods they take ethical issue with are "giving the bees more work by removing them from a stronger colony to place them in a weaker one,"

“If you don’t want to own two hives, later in the year when bees stop swarming, you can kill the old queen in the bottom box, place a sheet of newspaper between the two boxes, remove the queen excluder, and the bees will chew through the paper.”

"So to keep their workers they will weaken their hive, increase the space they have and kill their queen. I’m not sure if bees have an emotional attachment to their queen but if we’re looking at it from the POV of a human it’s not a nice thing to do.

They are willing to kill bees to control them. Average boss."

Personally, I find it problematic to project human values and mindsets on to non-human species, especially arthropods. I also really detest that last statement.

I think its a mix of the "woke" language, the inappropriate comparison of human exploitation and the treatment of insects and the disrespect towards beekeepers who I really admire for their work.

In their words "beekeepers arent going to be any more kind than human bosses because they both operate under capitalism, because their interest is to get as much out of their workers as possible".

Other issues they bring up are that bees might starve if their food is replaced by sugar water, and being culled if they fail to produce enough or if the hive is sick which is an "inhumane practice", as well as "crushing queens if they dont behave as the beekeeper wishes".

As for sustainability issues they cite this article which goes into the impacts honeybees have on native pollinators:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/

the article actually states that the impact varies by ecosystem, and one study found that in Patagonia, honeybees and bumblebees had no impact on visitation rates of native pollinating insects.

So basically, the OP holds the opinion that the things beekeepers do to maintain hives such as wing clipping, killing queens, taking honey and culling hives are "cruel and unnecessary", and that kept bees harm the ecosystem by outcompeting native pollinators.

What are your opinions on these arguments and sources?

I recently came across an account which states that they had to go to an "industrial scale slaughterhouse" to break their bias-the distance of themselves from how animals arrive at their plate. They mention "the horrifying sounds of animals crying out, the overwhelming stench of blood and entrails in the air, witnessing animals being forced into gas chambers then having their throats slit." as the visceral experience which led to them abandoning animal products, saying: "In that moment, I realized none of it was necessary - humans can lead happy and healthy lives without animal products."

I disagree that its universally possible to live healthily without animal products, as has been shown by many ex-vegans and the many vegan influencers and celebrities who've been found to be cheating and are showing signs of malnutrition, but I do agree that the distance people have to how their food is made is a real issue that needs to be addressed. And the meat industry is addressing it.

Some slaughter plants offer guided tours to visitors where they can see the process in its entirety, from the moment animals are brought inside to being carved and packaged as pieces of meat. Some examples are Temple Grandin's Glass Walls project and Danish Crown Slaughterhouse: Danish Crown Slaughterhouse, Denmark

I would like to read about your experience of being in a slaughterhouse and seeing the process-including slaughter-personally. Was it as visceral an experience as the account I mentioned?

Total of 11 people on this thread, hence blurred out usernames in different colors indicating separate individuals

I would like to request a critique of this study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1713820115 by Shepon etal which claims that if all animal products were replaced with plant-based diets could add enough food to feed 350 million more people, which is "more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss."

I saw this paper linked in the twitter thread by unpop_sci which I posted about before. As for the paper, I think its another "paper" which bases its conclusions on the assumption that feed is grown specifically for livestock, when in truth its the by-products of human agriculture and food processing that gets into feed.

For example, after pressing soy beans for oil, what is left over and also makes up most of the mass is the soy meal which is what livestock are fed, and there would be a drive to capitalize on the meal left over as long as soy oil is produced. And nearly equal amounts of corn is turned into ethanol as animal feed: https://marketrealist.com/2013/12/average-american-uses-4-ears-corn-per-day/ not to mention that's assuming the corn in animal feed was grown for livestock specifically, and not simply the waste humans won't eat.

Saw a post by a vegan listing "welfare issues" in the sheep industry as reasons to oppose wool, I don't clearly remember what the post said but basically one of them was young lambs dying or being left to die on the field because lack of resources to care for them all, or that its more profitable to "let them die".

Baby animals die all the time in the wild, its how we get a functioning eco-system, and they will die even despite best efforts by human caretakers to prevent them from dying, as sheep are very fragile creatures base on what Ive read.

But does it make sense economically to let newborn lambs die?

I'm trying to research the subject of comparing the environmental impact of livestock vs crop agriculture, and whether livestock feed compete with human food, and I saw this article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation cited as a source for the claim that livestock feed competes with human food and water supply.

Specifically, the claim is that the US overproduces livestock which leads to "waste and inefficiency at several stages in the food production chain".

It is true that alfalfa is a critical feed crop in the US livestock industry, and also very water-intensive. The article describes how the rapid decline of the Colorado river and a 22-year drought has cast an "uncomfortable spotlight" on the Imperial Valley region's alfalfa industry.

Jack Schmidt, a professor and director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University has stated: “We’re irrigating alfalfa in 120-degree temperatures in the dead of July … how does that possibly make any sense?”

I also found this paper: Water scarcity and fish imperilment driven by beef production

which found that irrigation of cattle-feed crops was the greatest consumer of river water in the western United States, "implicating beef and dairy consumption as the leading driver of water shortages and fish imperilment in the region."

but also that "temporary, rotational fallowing of irrigated feed crops can markedly reduce water shortage risks and improve ecological sustainability. "

I've seen vegans use alfalfa as a counterargument against the talking point that since most livestock feed is inedible to humans and mostly composed of grass and hay, claiming that the descriptor of "hay" is "misleading" because rather than cows grazing on pasture the word might evoke, in reality "alfalfa" is the source of the hay and very water-intensive produce.

I'm seeking more nuanced perspectives which don't seek to demonize animal agriculture.

Does animal feed production compete with human food and water supply due to the water used for growing alfalfa as animal feed not being used by humans directly?

On tumblr this post:

Was reblogged by a popular blog run by an animal science student and farm worker who commented with "What do they fertilize plants with".

A vegan responded to them by saying that bloodmeal isnt the only thing that contain nitrogen, and that "There is no nutrient needed in plant growth that requires the use of animals. "

They argued that animals are unnecessary for plant agriculture, saying:

"Basically no large crop producer is depending on manure, for a couple of reasons. One is that, when you're fertilizing, you're primarily looking at NPK ratios (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium). The NPK ratio on most manure--cow dung in particular--is egregious. In order to get enough nitrogen that way, you'd end up adding more phosphorus than your land can absorb. (This is bad.)

But more importantly, unless you're eating all organic, the farmer who grew the crops you eat generally isn't getting their nitrogen from animal sources at all. It's coming courtesy of the Haber process. This is the industrial age, baby--we're pulling that shit straight out of the atmosphere.

But what about prior to Haber? Surely all our plants needed animal poop?

Not really, no! When you have animals for labor, meat, or milk, sure, you're returning their manure to the soil--it's a little rebate on the nutrients they're absorbing. (You're probably returning your own waste, too.)

But animals don't produce nutrients for plants. We might do other things a plant finds useful (like spread their seeds), but when it comes to bringing in nutrients, we're takers. Prior to Haber, if you wanted to add nitrogen to a field, you grew plants (mostly legumes) that partner with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Crop rotation for the win.

People frequently have a circle-of-life intuition that animals must be necessary to the nutrient cycle, but plants, bacteria and fungi pretty much have that handled. We're mostly good for moving stuff around."

How much of this is true? Are animals actually unnecessary for the nutrient cycle of plant-life?

Also, this vegan insulted said animal-sci student/farm worker by saying "it was bold of me to assume [they] had knowledge about anything like real-world agriculture" which pisses me off something fierce, since said student has actually studied dairy farming and has worked as a farm worker for several years, while tumblr vegans are eager to discredit them as just a "shill" for Big Ag.

I've seen many posts from vegans on social media which demonize the sheep industry, and I am looking for answers from sheep farmers who have experience with sheering.

A post from tumblr:

The source for sheep shearing being stressful is this article: The stress response in sheep during routine handling procedures if anyone wants to check it out.

The quote from Sam Beechey comes from this article: Farmers powerless to stop cruelty: retired shearer where he says that any sheerer found to have acted cruelly towards sheep would've been sacked, and a statement from farmer Scott Crosby who says that he has sent six shearers home in 20 years of farming, which isn't a lot. However, he claims that farmers are "scared" to take action against bad shearers and are "powerless to make change." due to there not being many shearers around for hire:

“You sack one here and you just can’t pick them up, so most of the farmers just tolerate it.  They can’t do much about it, I actually feel sorry for them.”

He says he’s noticed a big shift in the shearing culture.

“The drugs are in, they take no pride in their work. They’re after the numbers, they don’t care about the quality. 

Found this article: A newly surfaced document reveals the beef industry’s secret climate plan which compares the livestock sector with the fossil fuel industry, claiming that both delayed and obstructed climate policy using similar tactics.

It talks about a document titled "Strategic Plan on the Environment" by the National Cattlemens Association which was unearthed by two Miami University researchers. It detailed the NCA's goals "to positively influence legislation and regulations, and commission experts to write papers in response to critics as part of its “crisis management” strategy."

In 1989 the EPA held a workshop to address how to reduce livestock methane emissions. "Experts at the time knew that cattle produce significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change at a much faster pace than carbon dioxide. (Today, almost one-third of methane stems from beef and dairy cattle)."

The article states that for the past 35 years, the plan seems like a blueprint for how the broader animal agriculture sector would go on top respond to climate scientists and critics.

One stated difference between the meat and fossil fuel industry is that while oil and gas companies have encouraged changes to personal lifestyle such as using less energy as tactics employed to attempt evading accountability, the meat industry is opposed to eating less meat. The reason for this is that

The authors wrote in the climate policy paper The animal agriculture industry’s obstruction of campaigns promoting individual climate action "“Rather than embrace notions of individual responsibility, the animal agriculture industry hired scientists, pressured the media, and formed business coalitions to obstruct” initiatives that encourage people to eat less meat".

The reason for this difference is attributed to the fact that consumers have little flexibility in reducing fossil fuel use, but there's a lot of flexibility in your diet; meal decisions are made three times a day.

The author of the article claims that:

"Animal agriculture is arguably the leading source of US water pollution, a major air polluter, and far and away the main cause of animal suffering — around 25 land animals are factory-farmed each year to sustain the average American’s diet.

According to agricultural economists Jayson Lusk and F. Bailey Norwood, eating less meat, milk, and eggs does affect how many animals are raised for food. It’s not on a 1:1 basis, but if more people reduce their animal consumption, they’d collectively send a signal to the industry to raise fewer animals."

I want to receive opinions about this article. The way I see it is that the actions it describes are the responsibility of one, or a couple of dodgy associations and megacorps which shouldn't be attributed to the entire animal agricultural sector, but I'm still afraid that it will lead to decreased trust and a dismissal of the genuine progress made by the livestock industry in improving welfare and sustainability.

As for the author, using "factory farming" hints that she isn't educated on the subject, as really any large operation qualifies as a "factory farm", more accurately described as a "cafo" which isnt synonymous with "torture and mistreatment" like animal rights propaganda would have you believe.

Also, what are your opinions on Lusk and Norwood's paper linked in this post?

Vegans claim that animals in slaughterhouses "suffer' and 'are tortured" which implies they're in pain and stressed out. Multiple studies have scientifically proven stressed animals will either not reproduce, reproduce slowly, or give slow/ no yield. If that's the case, how is it that the yield is still so high per animal? It leaves only one possibility- that the animals aren't stressed, and they're simply making stuff up.

Am I missing anything else?

The article Farmers powerless to stop Cruelty includes many statements from people in the sheep industry in Australia about welfare concerns and complaints about animal cruelty.

The Australian Workers Union's national pastoral industry co-ordinator Sam Beechey told ABC rural that some sheep shearers take out their frustration on sheep and that he has witnessed shearers gouging sheep's eyes and breaking their jaws. Vasey farmer Robert Lawrence said that "We've had a shearer break 14 legs (of sheep) in two day's shearing", and that all the animal welfare concerns were related to "drug use".

One unnamed worker states that "The shearing shed must be one of the worst places in the world for cruelty to animals... I have seen shearers punch sheep with their shears or fists until the sheep's nose bled. I've seen sheep with half their faces shorn off"

Farmer Scott Crosby says that he has sent six shearers home in 20 years of farming, which isn't a lot. However, he claims that farmers are "scared" to take action against bad shearers and are "powerless to make change." due to there not being many shearers around for hire:

“You sack one here and you just can’t pick them up, so most of the farmers just tolerate it.  They can’t do much about it, I actually feel sorry for them.”

He says he’s noticed a big shift in the shearing culture.

“The drugs are in, they take no pride in their work. They’re after the numbers, they don’t care about the quality. 

If there's anyone here working in the Australian sheep industry, or the sheep industry anywhere in the world, I would like to ask for contexts on these statements.

I just don't buy the claim that violence towards sheep from shearers is that common-place, especially to the point of causing extreme injury. Each animal that dies is money lost. I can buy that there are bad people in any industry, and there are probably workers who take some of their frustrations on sheep through rough handling, but I don't buy that the average shearing time is a gore-fest, nor that the average farmer would just tolerate shearers acting violently towards sheep.

What's your opinion on the credibility of the statements in the article? If what the people interviewed had said is misinformation , what could be their motivation? Exaggerating to draw the attention of the public?

I've posted about this event before, but now I have some more questions that I want addressed:

Basically, some years ago a news story came out that a farmworker in NZ witnessed abuse at a dairy he was working at: Michael Ian Luke, one of the contract milkers was hitting cows on the legs, allegedly with a steel pipe, causing them to swell. He tried reporting it to the authorities but nothing was done about it, so he went to an animal rights org and they created an "undercover video" capturing the abuse on camera and the employer was arrested once the video was released: Cow-beating footage thrown out in court though as stated in the title the footage was thrown out in court due to being obtained unlawfully, and five charges were dropped against the milker. Luke faces one charge of "hitting a cow around the legs with an alkathene pipe and a metal bar." which relies on evidence not obtained by the animal rights group, Farmwatch.

The charges dropped included "three charges of ill-treating a dairy cow by striking it on the hind legs with a “metal object” and one charge of ill-treating two cows by striking – including on the face. All four charges were based on video evidence caught on hidden cameras."

The farmworker who witnessed the abuse had previously made an animal abuse complaint to the MPI (NZ's Ministry for Primary Industries) however investigations by MPI found no issues. Apparently the vet they sent only looked at the cows body score.

When Luke started using a steel pipe to hit the cows, MPI was contacted again but the worker said MPI told them the case was closed and nothing more could be done without proof.

When Newsroom reported on the story in 2018, the farm worker said they felt as if they had hit a brick wall: “We went through the right channels. We went to the owner first, nothing was done. We went to MPI, nothing was done. We didn’t want to leave it.”

The worker contacted Farmwatch about the situation and the organisation placed hidden cameras in the milking shed. These captured a month of footage which the group then supplied to MPI on June 21. MPI searched the property June 28, the same day Newsroom published a story.

However, Luke hasn't been banned from working with animals for any period, which has been stated by a Farmwatch spokesperson to be "outrageous".

In the footage you can cows being struck rather harshly with what looks like a pipe, and in an interview Luke reveals that he has painted expletives on a cow he was angry with. In any case, it looks to me like he has anger issues he took out on animals, which is deplorable.

In the article you can see photos of cows with legs that appear to be swollen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've talked about this case with a friend of mine who's a beef rancher, and she told me she has a lot of problems with the story as well as some suspicions regarding the case: in her opinion it was reported in an unprofessional manner; there's a lack of detail on vet findings or on the people who would've been involved in the court case, which is rare for cases like this-"these cases rarely go to court with so little detail or evidence".

My friend said that she feels suspicious because veterinarians are usually good at telling "what's right and what's wrong", so the fact the case was cleared based on body conditions means it was harmed otherwise, and the fact the worker first went to "the police, the SPCA, the rancher's association and the dairy board" further adds to her suspicion because "those aren't easy to get ahold of unless you've got someone willing to get dirt from the inside". Basically, my friend suspects that nothing was actually wrong and someone was just unhappy with their boss and wanted to ruin them.

When I brought up the photo of cows with swollen legs, she told me that she had cows like that but it wasn't from being hit, but from laying down for too long, fighting other animals or infection. And she's commented on the pipe shown, saying that it would be really hard to strike a moving animal and just leave swelling-the strength required to whack it would make a cow lame before swollen, and there's a real danger of breaking bones too. Additionally, the fact that the udder isn't swollen adds to her suspicion as it would mean the guy had amazing aim in order not to graze the udder. She said "that udder should be black and blue from swelling".

In my friend's opinion, it would be unfair to take away the offender's animals "for one poor decision" because most people have done unacceptable things such as hitting their cats and dogs, and if you watch anyone long enough it's inevitable that they'll be caught doing something deemed wrong, and what should be done is to ensure animals are well-treated through regular inspections by a vet to check if the animals are well-fed and in good health. She says that farmers face many issues that can make them lash out in unacceptable ways, like being overworked and little pay.

To those who work with animals I want to ask if it's a miscarriage of justice to not ban the milker from working with animals for any period of time, and could his behavior be corrected with the right treatment?

Now onto the questions:

1. What's your opinion on this news story and the issues my friend brought up? Was it reported unprofessionally, and does it look suspicious?

I personally don't quite buy the story of using a metal pipe since those would cause way more damage than what we see in the photos, but one made of plastic makes more sense, and we do see him use a thin plastic pipe in the video.

1. To those who work with animals I want to ask if it's a miscarriage of justice to not ban the milker from working with animals for any period of time, and could his behavior be corrected with the right treatment?

2. What would be the better option to reduce animal abuse-to permanently or long-term ban him from working with animals, or using vet inspections to ensure the animals are treated well?

3. I agree with my friend-how did the vet not notice anything wrong with the cows if they were swollen all over? Was the vet really incompetent or is there more to the story than what it seems on the surface?

​

Are there any real benefits of lab-grown meat compared to real meat? I doubt its going to replace the latter completely, but could it help with the list of issues of real meat above?

There's a widespread idea in animal rights circles that AI (artificial insemination) is rape and sexual assault, which is completely backwards.

I've discovered that even some non-vegans buy into this idea. Many hunters justify hunting with saying that hunting is humane compared to animal farming, which they characterize as "cruel and inhumane". It feels like even hunters buy into vegan propaganda, or at least don't fight it but instead use the supposed cruelties of animal farming to support hunting.

Ive talked to someone saying that they're a hunter who used to be vegan (this is their first year hunting according to them).

This is what they said:

" I absolutely agree that ethically it is wrong to kill another living creature. Period. It is not the best practice. At the same time, I am going to eat meat. I don’t think death is bad. I think suffering is bad. Factory farmed animals have horrific lives/ they suffer every single second. Their lives are horror movies and it is absolutely insane that we support it. They are locked in miserable, small cages, raped, impregnated, their children slaughtered etc etc. it is absolutely a “bad” thing. And when we tell ourselves otherwise we all know, somewhere In Our heart of hearts that we are lying to ourselves

Now, hunting on the other hand. If done with intelligence, courage, justice and wisdom, is generally a more humane death than an animal would have naturally. The animal lives a normal life and has a quick death. It is morally better than letting an animal meet its natural death.

So long story short, veganism is the most humane option if you care about animals. Hunting and providing a quick dispatch is the next best."

When I told them that AI is not sexual in nature, it's a medical procedure like any other, often more humane than natural breeding and has nothing to do with rape which is about dominance and power, they said this:

"Do you have sources to back up a claim that AI does not stress an animal more than mating? And of course the steps we take to over power and dominate an entire species (including AI/rape) has to do with dominance and power. "

What's your opinion on this one? I think they're still suffering from vegan indoctrination (having been one until recently), and despite no longer being vegan they still buy into the propaganda. It's ridiculous to claim that AI is comparable to rape in any way.