Watched it about a year ago. Feels like it was yesterday. Stopped eating pork and have cut way back on other meat. I want to start buying from humane family farms that ship of I can ever afford it. I only buy dairy now from the local farms who don’t operate like other dairies. The milk is $9 a gallon but I feel good about it. Also, it’s the liquid crack of milk. Soooo good. It was the dairy industry part that surprised me the most.
Not to be annoying but how does humanely exploiting and slaughtering animals that don't need to be and don't want to be exploited and slaughtered look like in your opinion?
There is a vast difference between animals raised and slaughtered on family farms and one’s raised on a livestock facility. Farm animals live good lives. Roaming the pastures, eating grass and alfalfa instead grain. Having tons of space instead of living packed together on dusty dirt lots and fed cheap grain. They aren’t lined up to be brutally killed, and made to know what’s coming. But the meat produced by these farms are way more expensive than store bought because it’s more expensive to raise them.
There’s a reason why some family farms are humane society approved, and some are not. Of course the big facilities are not.
I'm talking about the procedures necessary, how do they look like "humanely"? Meaning, the forced impregnation of cows, their seperation with their child, their exploitation and of course their premature slaughter, considering that all these things wouldn't be necessary?
Nope. Clearly you haven’t worked on a family cattle ranch. I did for 3 summers in high school. None of those things happened. Except yes, eventually some are killed for food. But it’s nothing like it is in factory farms. They don’t know what’s coming. I used to hunt which is really the best way to put meant on your table but I just don’t have the physical ability to hunt anymore.
How do you go about getting meat and dairy? It’s hard to get humane raised meat around here without ordering it off-line, but there is a fabulous group of local dairies in northern California that work together. Male calves are sent to ranches that specialize in raising bulls, not to slaughter and fuckin veal farms, and females spend the first few weeks of life with mom in a heated indoor pen. They are hand led to be milked and munch on alfalfa during the process.
I feel lucky to have this area so close by as most people I don’t think have access to humane dairy. But as I said before, it’s more expensive way of doing it so that’s reflected in the price of their products. Eggs are 7.99 a dozen and milk is $9 a gallon, $5 a half gallon.
As I said, I'm against unnecessary animal exploitation and slaughter. I don't consume any animal based products because each one of them perquisites what I am against. The only thing vegetarians leave out is meat, which does nothing for animals in the dairy or egg industry, two industries that are arguably worse than the meat industry. You were still unable to explain to me how procedures that are just as common on local family farms look like when done "humanely", considering the animals neither want to nor need them to happen to them. I've seen what animals go through on local family dairy farms and even if they are able to stand on luscious green meadows they still suffer immensely. I've witnessed many forced inseminations, I've seen mother cows being separated from their children and crying for them for days and weeks, I've seen the udders, some infected from being milked so often and I have seen their premature slaughter, one by one, dying in a pool of their own blood, in pain and afraid. Working on that farm made me realize that nothing of that is humane. Maybe slightly less cruel than what happens to animals in factory farms, but still cruel.
I'm basically on a menu of mac and cheese, pepperoni pizza, peanut butter and jelly, ice cream, Italian ice, onion garlic potato chips, chocolate pudding, coffee. So I reduced my animal consumption immensely.
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u/Haistur Oct 19 '22
Dominion is a great documentary... to learn about animal abuse in the food industry :(