Comment Re:FLOSS software? (Score 1) 356
1. The need for the "strictest animal welfare laws in the country" say a lot about standard practices in animal agriculture. The people that have designed them are not farmers, they are industrialists. Their portrayal of themselves as farmers, with a connection to traditional methods of raising food and care for the land, allows them to get away with many things they couldn't otherwise. But they sure aren't living out there and seeing the consequences.
2a. The standard for whether poultry and egg operations are humane is not standard industry practice. The standard is humanity. The birds are still packed in far denser than they can handle. This has serious consequences for their social development. Many turn to fighting and even cannibalism -- this is why they're often de-beaked (a truly fun and wholesome procedure for everyone involved, to be sure... similarly, pigs in tight conditions often have their tails removed to prevent behavior like tail-biting). Similar to grain monocultures there are poultry monocultures; both the "roasters" (birds raised for meat) and "layers" (birds raised for eggs) have been selectively bred to the point that they can hardly live healthy lives under the best of conditions. But even if you don't care about animal welfare at all, consider the problem: where does all the manure go? It's shoveled into giant, foul-smelling pits in the earth. And how about the spread of diseases among these birds? It's rampant. The manure pits become havens for bacteria and pollute the nearby water and air. Sometimes when there's not enough space in the pits they just spray it into the air. So (a) that's why you have to handle poultry so carefully and (b) that's why the incidence of asthma is so high near factory farms. In any other industry the pollution and disease potential would be regulated. But the lobbyists put on their overalls and say, "Aw, shucks, we don't know nothing about pollution except that we can't afford to prevent it." Meanwhile most of their neighbors don't have the money or clout to do anything about it.
2b. So in this case, what might disgust you, the crowding, the fighting, the smell (apparently it's so nauseating up close that it's caused workers to pass out, and then fall to their deaths in manure pits), is actually an indication that something's wrong. This is so obvious that operators of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs; this abbreviation is used by some because "farms" is really a misnomer) are extremely secretive about what actually goes on there. You can't just get a tour of the Tyson plant. Based on your comment, I'm assuming a neurosurgeon has consented to let you watch a surgery multiple times. The "disgust" here is just squeamishness.
3. So what, exactly, is the great advantage of the modern industrial omnivorous diet we have? It's not the welfare of animals, nor the welfare of workers. It's not the environment, local or global. If you count the subsidy dollars and various tax breaks it's probably not even a cost-efficient source of nutrition. Especially when typical consumption of protein and fat, at least in the USA, is far beyond what's necessary and health. So it's not our health, then, either. I'm a pretty fast runner (just ran 37 minutes for a hilly 10k above 5,000 feet altitude) and I dabble in the other triathlon sports -- point is I have greater nutritional needs than most people. I've been eating vegetarian for almost 6 years and I haven't had any problems fueling my body; I've set plenty of PRs in that time. I don't really see a great advantage to eating meat at all, certainly nothing that outweighs the destruction it causes. It's just convenience and tradition.