Animal cruelty in the food industry

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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#151

Post by Sev »

I love meat, and that isn't going to change. However, relative to the cost of labor in the US, the relatively slight increase in cost associated with treating the animals more humanely would be well worth it.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#152

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

But if it cost more it wouldn't be worth it? Exactly how much is suffering worth to you?
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#153

Post by Sev »

I would say that I would be willing to pay about 20-25% extra.
Any more, and I might as well be living in the UK.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#154

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

Might be of interest to some: Wired just recently had an article on cage free eggs. http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-insane ... s-for-all/
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#155

Post by Leeward »

I found this video about the dairy industry the other day and I was absolutely appalled by the sadistic treatment these poor beasts have to endure. I mean I knew about it, but actually seeing it is different. It's even worse than being bred for meat, because at least then their young aren't ripped from the teat shortly after birth, traumatising both young and mother. The suffering is so obvious, how do these people not want to hang themselves for doing this to them every single day? What makes it even worse is that traditional (i.e. pre-industrial revolution) dairy farming is relatively ethical, but because it's not "economically viable" on a large scale, it has become this barbaric... for lack of a better word, slavery. No, it's worse than slavery. But because they're "just" animals, that somehow makes it all right.

Warning for the sensitive souls: graphic content.

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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#156

Post by Sev »

I watched a Documentary called Earthlings. It's was about human mistreatment of animals. I got 17 min into it, and couldn't go any further. To say that it was traumatizing would be a massive understatement.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#157

Post by Raven Song »

The biggest probkem in my new job is having to research shit.
I cry every day
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#158

Post by Adagio »

Ok... That video was MADE with the INTENTION of shocking people... I mean seriously... We have 110 cows.
Our neighbor, whom we buy milk from milks his dairy cows.
Yes. They get pregnant once. The way he did it, was feed raise the calf by hand. After it was fully grown. you keep milking the cow, and if you do this daily, the cow keeps lactating.

Yes. It is worse in "commercial" farms. There they have machines to do this...

But the cows shown in that video was mistreated by assholes who don't give a shit about their animals... Who's only concern is their paycheck...

https://www.quora.com/While-as-mammals- ... t-the-year
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#159

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

Adagio wrote:Yes. They get pregnant once. The way he did it, was feed raise the calf by hand. After it was fully grown. you keep milking the cow, and if you do this daily, the cow keeps lactating.
As I recall, there's supposed to be a break period.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#160

Post by Adagio »

Rakuen Growlithe wrote:
Adagio wrote:Yes. They get pregnant once. The way he did it, was feed raise the calf by hand. After it was fully grown. you keep milking the cow, and if you do this daily, the cow keeps lactating.
As I recall, there's supposed to be a break period.
I don't know... All I know is what he tells me...
And I know for a fact, he doesn't have armies of calves running around...
He does not inseminate them, and pull away their calves once a year...
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#161

Post by Contrast »

I recently heard something very disturbing about the dairy industry. Normally I wouldn't ask stuff like this here, but I tried to Google it for myself to see if it's true, but I couldn't find mention of it anywhere, maybe because I don't know the proper terminology.

Anyway, the thing I heard was that sometimes dairy farms will cut calves' ankles with these giant bolt-cutter looking things, basically crippling them to keep them from moving around too much and to minimise the risk of them injuring the workers.

This can't be true, right? Somebody please tell me this isn't true...


PS: Sorry if this question is already answered in the above video. I couldn't bring myself to watch something with explicit animal cruelty in it. :(
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#162

Post by Leeward »

Adagio wrote:Yes. They get pregnant once. The way he did it, was feed raise the calf by hand. After it was fully grown. you keep milking the cow, and if you do this daily, the cow keeps lactating.
Yup. It's the same with humans: if a mother keeps breastfeeding, she keeps producing milk. That's how you get those weird stories of teenagers who still breastfeed.

This exactly is what I meant by traditional dairy farming. You let the cow raise her damn calf, and then once it's weaned continue milking her. It's so simple, I don't understand how the industry can't do the same just for the sake of profit.

Contrast: I've never heard of such a thing, and no it's not mentioned in the video. I do however know that it is common practice to dock (i.e. cut off) dairy cows' tails, supposedly to keep the udders clean. That is, thankfully, being phased out, just like tail docking and ear cropping in dogs.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#163

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

Adagio wrote:I don't know... All I know is what he tells me...
And I know for a fact, he doesn't have armies of calves running around...
He does not inseminate them, and pull away their calves once a year...
Yup, from Wikipedia.
Production levels peak at around 40 to 60 days after calving.[16] The cow is then bred. Production declines steadily afterwards, until, at about 305 days after calving, the cow is 'dried off', and milking ceases. About sixty days later, one year after the birth of her previous calf, a cow will calve again. High production cows are more difficult to breed at a one-year interval. Many farms take the view that 13 or even 14 month cycles are more appropriate for this type of cow.
It was mentioned in the animal ethics course I took through Coursera. Problem is they remove access to the notes after the course finishes and I don't go saving all the slides.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#164

Post by Adagio »

Well, I've got something interesting to add. We're going on vacation on a tour of the Cape.
On this tour, we would be going to one of dad's cousin's dairy farm.
I don't know how many of you have had Spar's long life milk? Those green and blue boxes?
He supplies them with the milk(before all the preservatives are added)

He has 600 cows(from what Ive heard)

I'll be sure to ask many questions.

If you'd like to know anything in particular, let me know...
I'll be glad to ask...
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#165

Post by Leeward »

Cool, thanks for letting us know, Adagio.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#166

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

Adagio wrote:I don't know how many of you have had Spar's long life milk? Those green and blue boxes?
He supplies them with the milk(before all the preservatives are added)
Aren't those usually just heat treated but no preservatives?
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#167

Post by Sev »

Doesn't really matter, pasteurized milk tastes garbage either way.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#168

Post by Adagio »

Rakuen Growlithe wrote:
Adagio wrote:I don't know how many of you have had Spar's long life milk? Those green and blue boxes?
He supplies them with the milk(before all the preservatives are added)
Aren't those usually just heat treated but no preservatives?
Really... You think that milk that struggles to last 2 day's unpasteurized will last for 30 days under only an UHT treatment?(We drink unpasteurized milk...)

Those things are loaded with preservatives... I saw one of those milks go "sour" once. It still tasted like milk, but had started granulating(?)
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#169

Post by Raven Song »

Adagio wrote:Well, I've got something interesting to add. We're going on vacation on a tour of the Cape.
On this tour, we would be going to one of dad's cousin's dairy farm.
I don't know how many of you have had Spar's long life milk? Those green and blue boxes?
He supplies them with the milk(before all the preservatives are added)

He has 600 cows(from what Ive heard)

I'll be sure to ask many questions.

If you'd like to know anything in particular, let me know...
I'll be glad to ask...
Spar is supplied by about 10 large farmers (which your dad's cousin would fall into)
Pick 'n Pay is supplied by 2 major suppliers who obtain milk from not just their own farms of like 1000 cows but also use milk from co-op (from smaller farmers who sell it to them...)
Woolworths "owns" a dairy... their system is complex because they also use co-op but they also import and they have their own dairy which also supplies flavoured milk to Mozambique... it's... weird...

MPO (Milk Producers Organisation) is a good source of milk trends etc. I used to use it to produce my Milk report from the market research company, and my report was used by clover etc. to make important decisions.

this is February's stats

http://www.mpo.co.za/images/downloads/kms201602.pdf

Now:

In 2009 a census done stated that there were 1 222 000 head of dairy cattle in South Africa. This has gone down tremendously since 2001 when there were 2 010 000 head of dairy producing cows in SA. Due to this a lot of our dairy comes from over the border, Zimbabwe and Zambia to be exact (two years ago I got to speak to the head of the Zambian Dairy Association... nice guy, terrible choice in suits) and he said that Zambia needed to cut half of their dairy supply to SA. Which means milk from new sources (I think if I remember Angola was on the list of possibilities). Because the milk has to travel so far, through some mother hot countries, it is primarily processed in the country of origin and is UHT.

The four types of processed milk are:

Pasteurised - Milk that is heated to 72°C for 15 seconds.
UHT Milk - Ultra-high temperature... milk that is heated to above 135°C for like... five seconds (maybe even 2 seconds. it's flash heated)
Sterilised milk - this is milk heated to 110-130ºC for approximately 10-30 minutes.
ESL (Extended Shelf Life) Milk - Sub category of Sterilised milk - and it just gets cooked for longer. the slow heat allows it to last for longer (or something. Science).

The of course you all know Whole milk, low fat, 2% fat and skim. That's done prior to the heating process.

It has nothing to do with preservatives. It's all about the way the fat cells in the dairy are affected by the heat. with the exception of poor quality milk, no milk in SA has preservatives added to it. What helps it last so long is also Tetrapak or Combiblok (dependent on which dairy produced the milk... but Tetrapak pretty much owns the market) a tetrabrik allows for outward breathing (the milks own gaseous exhale) but not inward breathing (no oxygen in).

That's why it lasts so long.

Here's a link to the sample of the report on the market I did last year (I get proud of my stuff okay)

http://www.bizcommunity.com/f/1512/Quan ... e_Milk.pdf
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#170

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

RavenSong wrote:It has nothing to do with preservatives. It's all about the way the fat cells in the dairy are affected by the heat. with the exception of poor quality milk, no milk in SA has preservatives added to it.
Even your own presentation points out it's about killing bacteria. Bacteria make milk go bad, if you kill them then they can't do anything.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

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Post by Raven Song »

poor quality milk has a small amount of preservatives added to them because the probiflora or something (I dunno... i'm not a scientist) aren't as prevalent and therefore both good and bad things are killed by the heating process... so they need some help...

I'm glad someone actually looked at that report :) It makes the two weeks of sleepless nights worthwhile :) even though the data in it is no help here.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#172

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

RavenSong wrote:poor quality milk has a small amount of preservatives added to them because the probiflora or something (I dunno... i'm not a scientist) aren't as prevalent and therefore both good and bad things are killed by the heating process... so they need some help...

I'm glad someone actually looked at that report :) It makes the two weeks of sleepless nights worthwhile :) even though the data in it is no help here.
I just glanced at it a bit. But I'm not sure what the preservatives would be for. Good and bad things are both killed in the heating process. Nothing will survive that. Standard heat sterilisation is 121 degrees for 15 minutes. That will kill everything except certain bacterial spores. The UHT process goes higher than that to kill even spores.

I suppose if they didn't look after it before that there could already be too many bacteria which released enzymes and chemicals before they died and maybe that needs to be stopped.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#173

Post by Raven Song »

Possibly. I sadly don't know enough about the processes, only the bits and pieces pertinent to my old job. I could always do some research on it...

also I forgot to add, Adagio, the way the milk goes, isn't because of any process that happens to it, even natural milk goes like that "granulated... lumpy" is because of the milk curdling.

here's a really cool video explaining it:

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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#174

Post by Rakuen Growlithe »

So I signed some online petitions a year or two back and now keep getting emails. This one might be of interest though.
https://www.change.org/p/mcdonald-s-sou ... ion-letter
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#175

Post by Raven Song »

Done. I may still be a cruel carnivore, but I can be compassionate right?
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#176

Post by Raven Song »

Leeward, slightly off topic from here viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3905 (because of how you were talking of baby cows)
but do you know of Premarin? It's a chemical used in certain medicines for women which comes from the urine of pregnant mares. Mares are literally put in foal and stand, in stalls with their hind quarters strung up, and their urine is collected. Once the foal is born it is taken from the mother immediately and 9 times out of 10 destroyed because they don't have any need for it (unless it's a filly, then it's kept for use when it's older).

Sorry, I change that stat:

Off of this website - http://www.premarin.org/

A filly foal has a less than one in 10 chance of not going to slaughter, a colt foal, less than one in 50!
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#177

Post by Leeward »

What the fuck?! I had never heard of premarin before. Going to do some googling in the morning. That's seriously messed up.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

#178

Post by Sev »

Holy fuck, just one look at the pictures is enough for a lifetime.
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Re: Animal cruelty in the food industry

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Post by Raven Song »

Precisely. It's why I am very careful of what medicine I take. If I see any ingredients starting with prem I immediately start checking to ensure that it isn't from a premarin farm.
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