The Gaming Den

My beef is that

Doh-hoh-hoh.

Psychic Robot wrote:

My beef is that

Doh-hoh-hoh.

Don't forget!

If that isn't grounds

The 'farmer' fed his cow too much grain, the cow gets sick.

The farmer fed his cow anti-bacterial medicines, the cow lives, but now has resistant bacteria in its gut.

The farmer packs his cows into a pen where they live in their own filth, spreading the bacteria to the rest of the animals.

The meatpacker cuts the animal open without washing it.

It uses untrained employees because they're expendable, even though they don't know the reasons for anything they do. The guts spill onto the meat. They don't segregate that carcass.

It washes the meat in ammonia instead of keeping trained employees and testing for bacterial contamination.

It ships the meat mixed into hundreds of other cows, so the one cow that had an infection, mad-cow, was miss-cut, was contaminated now contaminates hundreds of other cows worth of meat.

No one died from not eating a burger. Ever. Billions of people on the planet have never, ever eaten a cow. And somehow, they don't starve to death...

-Crissa

No one died from not eating a burger. Ever. Billions of people on the planet have never, ever eaten a cow. And somehow, they don't starve to death...

Tell that to starving Hindus. Would you care to respond to my prior post, or are you just going to rant?

Psychic Robot wrote:

Crissa wrote:No one died from not eating a burger. Ever. Billions of people on the planet have never, ever eaten a cow. And somehow, they don't starve to death...

Tell that to starving Hindus.

Ehhh... I don't think they are starving because they lack hamburgers any more than they are starving because they lack escargot and caviar. They are starving because they lack food, period.

Crissa wrote: No one died from not eating a burger. Ever. Billions of people on the planet have never, ever eaten a cow. And somehow, they don't starve to death...

Please do not pretend to be stupid. Millions of people, especially children are dying because of undernourishment every year across the world.

clikml wrote:Ehhh... I don't think they are starving because they lack hamburgers any more than they are starving because they lack escargot and caviar. They are starving because they lack food, period.

Do you seriously think that, without the massive food production we have nowadays, the price of the food will remain the same, and, there will not be a single person unable to afford proper nutrition?

fuck, we could give a single mcdonalds hamburger to a starving hindu, and it'd probably be enough calories to keep them going for at least two days, if not a week or so....

Screw that, give them fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. That's all Elvis ate, and did you see his fat ass?

Kobajagrande wrote:Please do not pretend to be stupid. Millions of people, especially children are dying because of undernourishment every year across the world.

And feeding cows the corn those people could eat so you could have a cheap hamburger helps feed them, how?

I don't even understand the level of argument that says we need to have hamburger because someone else is starving in the world. Do you even understand the massive waste of human-consumable food that goes into a single cow for a production hamburger patty, of which there are about 200 cows in each patty?

Your cheap hamburgers do not subtract from hunger anywhere in the world. In fact, they make it worse.

Your cheap hamburger consumes more grain than dozens of well-fed people each. It consumes massive amounts of diesel fuel, antibiotics which would be enough to cure the world over...

It adds to suffering. Why is it necessary?

-Crissa

Kobajagrande wrote:

clikml wrote:Ehhh... I don't think they are starving because they lack hamburgers any more than they are starving because they lack escargot and caviar. They are starving because they lack food, period.

Do you seriously think that, without the massive food production we have nowadays, the price of the food will remain the same, and, there will not be a single person unable to afford proper nutrition?

Oh certainly not! I'm just saying that as far as foods go, meats/hamburgers are far from efficient and should not be the scape goat or go-to cure for starvation any more so than any other particular american food. Feed people rice, beans, vitamins and more efficient critters. I was being a proponent just a few posts ago about meat alternatives such as insects and a future hope of artificially-grown meat.

One of my important requirements of food production was that it be efficient. That was with the intent of keeping in mind that it is totally possible to safely feed the world, and for much cheaply than is done so now. However I wish to do this without violating my other requirements of safety and health and thus not resorting to efficient but incredibly unsafe bioweapon farms that will inevitably lead to more bird flu and swine flu mutations, tainted meats, mad cow disease along with other potential epidemics.

It's no good if we supply hamburgers to the world but have to use up all the crop land and water just to feed the stupid cows. Then we get screwed anyway.

[edit]
Don't you ninja me Crissa! At least not without putting a bad pun in there dammit.

Ehhh... I don't think they are starving because they lack hamburgers any more than they are starving because they lack escargot and caviar. They are starving because they lack food, period.

The joke is that they can't eat cows because the cows are sacred to them. As in, they have a food source right in front of their noses but they won't indulge.

Crissa, please respond at any time:

Crissa, the people involved in writing that article are abysmally unintelligent and incredibly biased. Why would you bother linking that?

Anyway, I'm still not seeing how the American meat industry requires "torture." I have no desire for cows to be tortured. I do, however, enjoy hamburgers and steak. I see no reason why animals that are killed for food need to be "tortured" prior to execution.

I regularly go hungry. The first few stages of malnutrition aren't too bad aside from the delirium. Of course, if I'd get off my fat (lol) ass and get a job instead of depending on easy money selling my plasma I'd probably be better fed.

If you have no desire for cows and humans to be tortured...

...Don't buy from those producers. Vote out politicians who support their exploitation. Campaign for laws that let you know what really was in your food.

Because it totally is in their interests - not yours or mine - to keep consumers in the dark.

-Crissa

My father is a small time farmer that raises cows. They are not tortured or loaded with antibiotics. However it may turn out that the techniques to are used to meet the demand and maximize profits require the cramped spaces, antibiotics and such, but it isn't a requirement is raise cows for meat.

Data Vampire wrote:My father is a small time farmer that raises cows. They are not tortured or loaded with antibiotics. However it may turn out that the techniques to are used to meet :roll: the demand and maximize profits require the cramped spaces, antibiotics and such, but it isn't a requirement is raise cows for meat.

What's the point of saying this?

Isn't that my point?

Why would you argue that 'cows aren't tortured' from an anecdotal position while the vast majority - like vast, vast majority - of cows and meatpackers are, unless you really liked the status quo?

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:What's the point of saying this?

Because posters keep talking past each other.

Isn't that my point?

Nope, I raised points you didn't and at least tried to deal with what was being said.

Why would you argue that 'cows aren't tortured' from an anecdotal position while the vast majority - like vast, vast majority - of cows and meatpackers are, unless you really liked the status quo?

I have no idea why someone would do that, which is likely the reason that I didn't.

-Crissa

-Data Vampire

Obviously, this situation can only be resolved through dropping hives of angry bees on random areas of the Third World to ameliorate our prosperous-white-people guilt.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/be ... -drive.php

Data Vampire wrote:I have no idea why someone would do that, which is likely the reason that I didn't.

Okay.

-Crissa

Crissa is pretty well entirely correct. Assuming for a second that you don't care about animal suffering for some reason theres plenty of reasons why beef production shouldn't be the way it is. In addition to the health problems associated with it that Crissa brought up theres also the fact that bovine methane is a massive contributor to greenhouse gasses.

Why the hell are you two stuck with hamburgers? Do you think the normal, raw meat you buy from a supermarket is produced in a different way? No it is not.

Hell, sorry people, but meat processing shops and genetically modified seed is how the world feeds billions where it once fed millions, and lets the large percent of population in the developed world focus on activities other then agriculture.

Organic food is all nice and well... But abolishing the industrially-produced food would mean a BASE increase of a 100% in price at start, PLUS an increase in market price due to a reduced supply ON SUCH A HUGE SCALE that its impossible to realistically predict.

And you know what else would get more expensive? Cotton, because largest amount of cotton grown also comes from genetically modified seed. Which means that cotton fiber clothing prices would also skyrocket.

And you know what would get more expensive after that? Oil, because the demand for cheap, synthetic oil-based fibers would increase. And you know what prices would increase because of that? First, the prices of food again, because now you'd have to plant vast acres of land with plants you get oil from, which would not be used for eating. And, since that wouldn't be enough to supply the demand, price of oil itself would rise.

And you know what happens when the price of oil rises? First, the price of gas/transportation would rise. And also, the price of electricity would rise. And once the price of electric energy rises, it would mean that the price of EVERYTHING ELSE would rise as well, because you literally need electricity to do anything in the modern world.

Yeah, peace of mind is an expensive thing.

To be fair, Crissa's actual complaint is the following:

1) Cows are higher up the food chain than other food we can eat.
2) A cow provides you with 100 calories for every 500 calories it consumes (obviously, numbers are made up).
3) Feeding people is purely a matter of calories (or vitamins/minerals/protein/ect can be arranged in better ways, or the gain in calories would allow us to feed more people in such a way that it would produce net gain)

Therefore, wouldn't it be great if we just killed all the cows in the world, and only fed people grains, and no meat.

While Crissa seems like exactly the type of hippy who would start advocating starving people to death because we should only use organic foods, she has not made those claims yet, so it is uncharitable to accuse her of something she has not claimed. That would be prejudice to judge her as an organic food nutty based only on her position on cows.

Kaelik wrote: Therefore, wouldn't it be great if we just killed all the cows in the world, and only fed people grains, and no meat.

Don't forget vast chemical plants for the mass-production of those protein tablets everyone will need. Except nowadays they are produced from animals as well, so I guess new technology will have to be developed to create them from something else, maybe from Happy Feelings, or Love or some other bullshit like that.

Kaelik wrote: While Crissa seems like exactly the type of hippy who would start advocating starving people to death because we should only use organic foods, she has not made those claims yet, so it is uncharitable to accuse her of something she has not claimed. That would be prejudice to judge her as an organic food nutty based only on her position on cows.

The results, are, however, the same, whether you concentrate on just one aspect of food production, or on the whole. There is a long chain of consequences that people who moan about the cruelty and unfairness or the world do not stop to think about.