How much more would you pay for humanely raised and treated meat?
(Sorry ECA, this is the sad state of farming today.)
Found on UpWorthy.
The Misanthropic Principle
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Also, check out the incredibly impressive Heart of the Adirondacks project in the Adirondack State Park, the largest park in the continental United States at twice the size of Yellowstone.
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Anyone want to bet on how long it will take the CAFO corporations to file charges against the videographer for trespassing or violations of their air space? Can it really be called air space when it stinks so badly of pig shit?
Initially these pig raising factories were set up as sterile environments for the swine to be fed and grow without any detrimental biologicals! This became an expensive method, yet produced very desirable protein free of diseases. So it was to be expected they would start to squeeze and cram in more porcine units to reduce the cost per pound, as any economist would attempt. At some point there needs to be a limit at which this abuse of animals must not proceed past! Without any controls, the next effort will be to teach the pigs how to walk on the ceilings! Homo stupidus is very predictable when it comes to making profits!
I agree Rod. However, the way we treat the animals in our care is indicative of our own morality … or complete lack thereof.
And, so, it is no shock that raining shit down on one’s neighbors becomes acceptable (at least to the one raining the shit down, not to the one rained upon).
I dont know the conditions pigs need to live..I know chickens and cattle..I also know the markup for how much you pay for it..500-1200 lbs.. Butchered…and the rancher gets about $2 per pound.
Seems to me there are no ranchers anymore. Or, at least the CAFOs shown in the top video are not ranches and no one on them would be called a rancher.
In the case of the few remaining real ranches, you’re probably correct.
Buying organic may alleviate some of that. I think I’ve heard that organic implies fair trade. I’m not positive though. Certainly, it implie$ a lot more dollar$ per pound to go around. And, it’$ worth it if you can.
It goes without saying, raining sewage on anyone is very unacceptable! That is why there should be an exception to using torture as revenge in justifiable circumstances! My first choice would be to use an Acetylene Cutting Torch to perform dental surgery on both ends of their gastrointestinal tracts on live TV!
Get the maximum terror with the minimum effort in the shortest time! [I trace back to Bloody Mary Queen of Scots, so this just comes naturally!]
You’ve got quite a mean streak in you Rod. I like that. You’d make a good dentist. Remind me to go elsewhere. Ditto for proctologist.
Personally, I usually envision putting someone into a meat grinder … toes first … and turning the crank very slowly.
DEAR Rod,
you have no imagination..
I thought over many years of a solution to people being MEAN..
it was a solution to people ruining Halloween..
I wish to find how many bones a person has, and how many times each can be broken..
I wish no blood shed, but how many layers of skin can we take off a person? Then dip him in Iodine..
How many toe/finger nails can we pull out..Carefully and slowly..
And NOT kill him.
ECA, you lack the experience of what really hurts! 27 years in 2 steel mills taught me what hurts! Sledgehammers, pry bars, and cutting torches are very potent attention getters, and not necessarily in that order! Touch a fingernail with a torch and that is far worse than attempting an extraction, likewise a tooth! Fire purifies in more ways than one!
Meanwhile back at the Ranch, we have some Quaker Farmers up North of town here, who specialize in raising clean beef! But their prices are not cheap, either! Plus another independent meat packer who imports cattle for his slaughterhouse from out West where I grew up on range fed animals! They are fed only the Prairie Wool Grass, and fattened on feed grade Oats/Barley! It is a leaner beef that roasts well! That meat packer is also quite expensive, too!
Getting back to tortures, I have no idea about what these new tazers are like, nor electric shocks in general! I suspect they can jolt you into another state of mind almost instantly! I followed the rule that if I had an electrical problem, I was to call Alec….Alectrician! which brings up their heavy rubber arm length gloves, which we borrowed for handling pickling acids to descale specimens for examination. Hot acid another category of pain that won’t go away!
How did we get onto this macabre vein? Je Suise n’ Charlie pas!
ECA. Just for the record, I think some of those tests, notably the bone breaking one, have already been performed, including a comparison between the results on a 4 year old and on a 4 month old.
But, we won’t talk about that for fear of running afoul of Godwin’s Law.
We have a farmer/rancher in this area, and for about $3 per pound he will Cut and Wrap 1/2 to a whole animal for you..
Which isnt bad. when you consider 1 of the cuts in a cow, is worth about $20 per pound and its about 5-10 pounds..
According to well understood physical parameters, the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration and from the current level of ~390 ppmv, (parts per million by volume). Accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level. The earth has been there before.
This inconvenient fact is well understood in the climate science community. It can be accurately modeled using the Modtran program maintained and supported at the University of Chicago.
The logarithmic diminution of the effect of CO2 is probably the reason why there was no runaway greenhouse warming from CO2 in earlier eons when CO2 levels were known to be at levels of several thousands ppmv.
Our sequestering of CO2 is a total waste but makes politicians rich.
Now Obama is after Methane, 25 times worse than CO2. Neither one has much to do with global warming. They just won’t go after the real problem, water vapor, 1000 times worse than the others! It doesn’t matter however, because they can’t do anything about water vapor without killing off all life on earth and it has little to do with global warming anyway.
What they need to do is pour water on the sun, that will cool things off. Global warming on the Mars will also stop.
—
Rod,
Since the 60-70’s they have been gathering people under 1 flag or another..and in the end it is all about Pollution.
And listening to this person/that person, and every time it keep changing the name of it..Co2, Carbon, what ever you want to name it.. regulations dont work if they just walk it across a border, and start it up again.
Bare fact is that the EARTH dont give a shit about us..we are the Fleas on the elephants back.. If it wants to take a bath, we cant stop it..
There are many alternatives to what we are doing. Why do we do them? as the corps say..ITS CHEAPER THIS WAY..
Cheaper for WHOM? not us..not the Peons.. we have tried over many years to MATCH what nature does naturally..and there isnt an easy way..Hemp/MJ/Bamboo can replace TONS of failed experiments and trials. but thye dont want us to have Clothing that Lasts, generations..They dont want Substitutes for what they have. THEY are making money.
When it was STATED and became law, that a corp is only there to MAKE MONEY..things went down hill fast.
I would love to start a company that uses Bamboo to replace Metal cases, dash boards, Wall board, and many construction materials..Chairs, and domestics… But the Corps wont do it, unless you can show they can make money..That they can have an abundant supply. And that it can be destroyed/used up..so they can sell more.
There are 2 ways our world has to go(if we dont control over population)
Full synthetic..Food, everything.
WE start working WITH nature..
BOTH of these has to be able to Cycle, in a closed loop, or things will run out..
I made an explanation long ago about something people dont THINK about..
Think of the earth as a BALL, inside we have gases which we can breath..HOW polluted does it need to be, that we CANT breathe. Oxygen hasnt REALLY ben on this planet long, and it likes to change..and there are MANY other gases that the earth can create. MOST we can not breathe.
That Ball, can only have so much gas in it..so Where is all the oxygen going?
ECA,
There are companies that are using bamboo. Kitchen cabinets, flooring, even towels, are all available made from bamboo. For some reason, probably a combination of the scale of the operations and the externalized costs of doing business as usual, bamboo products are expensive as hell. They should be cheap because bamboo grows so quickly and easily. But, they’re not.
A quick search turned up this list that claims to be 1000 uses for bamboo in existing products.
http://www.guaduabamboo.com/uses-of-bamboo/products-made-from-bamboo
Climate sensitivity is consistently estimated at 3 degrees Celsius per doubling (plus or minus 1.5C). Hansen says 4 and has a long track record of being right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity#Sensitivity_to_carbon_dioxide_forcing
We haven’t doubled CO2 yet. So the fact that this is geometric is no help to us yet. At 400ppm, we’ve only increased CO2 by 42%. But, it’s not today’s CO2 that we’re feeling.
There’s a 10 year lag.
So, the 0.8C of warming we’re already feeling is based on 2005’s CO2 level.
And, remember, if we double the CO2, we will hit 3C (or 4C if Hansen is as correct as he has been thus far). The overwhelming scientific opinion is that we must stay below 2C.
I understand that it’s hard to think about the fact that we’ve trashed the planet for the next generation. It’s easier to pretend that the climate change is natural. But, it isn’t.
The current warming trend is faster than anything the planet has ever seen. And it is because of us. And it will kill us if we do nothing about it.
So the easy thing is to pretend all is fine.
But, that’s not fair to the next generation. Children today are already growing up in a vastly different climate than we did as children. I still haven’t adjusted my brain for current temperatures. I still think normal temps for January and February in the greater NYC area are lows in the low 20s and highs in the low to mid 30s. But, now they call that cold as opposed to seasonal.
And, then we get the extremes, the polar vortexes, the highs in the 40s and 50s. No one notices all those highs in the 40s would have been shockingly unusual a few decades ago. No one remembers when one could reliably make skiing plans to ski Vermont or even the Catskills of New York for almost any week in winter.
Now, I have to make plans last minute if I want to know there will be enough slopes open for it to be fun and worth the money.
But, that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that it’s taking it’s toll on global food production. Climate change is dramatically altering the rain patterns. Places that were a bit dry are now in perpetual drought. Places that were wet now flood, destroying crops as effectively as droughts. Wildfires used to be a risk for about a month a year in SoCal. Now, they’re a risk nearly all the time.
Here are the effects on the U.S. Australia is probably in much worse shape.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.html
Global food production has been dropping and population is still increasing.
Today’s children will see huge problems come to fruition. Even places like the U.S. and Canada will not be immune to the effects.
Regards temperature increases, I moved to Oshawa 50 years ago from Edmonton. Those first 2 Winters were execptionally warm here in the lower Great Lakes basin. One in three Xmases here have Green grass and above freezing temps during the day time. There have been several other Winters what were far colder and with brutal freeziing rain events along with much heavier snows like last Winter! This current Winter is much milder, and far less snow!
Again this ppast week end it warmed up and 95% to 98% of our snow has melted. But 10 miles inland, and 300 to 600 feet higher altitude [we live in a basin] there is much remaining snow. Hence our ski hills are doing a roaring business still!
Yet the authorities have declared last Summer to have been the hottest on record, while the Southern Ontario experience has been far from that! With this type of reality, it is a tough sell here at least for Climate Change. What I have seen is far less butterflies and moths, and wonder if that is more to do with the new Neo NIcitinoid pesticides that corn and soya farmers have been using. The use has recently been curtailed by Agriculture Canada, but how long will it take for the insect and bird populations to recover to near normal? [Excluding the Canada Goose numbers which have burgeoned due to their feeding on the Zebra mussels in Lake Ontario year round. I have photos of the thousands feeding on the green grass of our parks, soccer fields, and ball diamonds then returning to the inshore areas of the lake! Goose Guano in not nice when you slide into 2nd base!
Yeah. Goose guano on my wife’s breasts would be rather offputting. Or, is that not what you meant by sliding into second base?
Regarding local temps around you, that is actually the real reason they changed the name from global warming to climate change. It’s been looked at as conspiracy and obfuscation by the right wingers. But, it’s just an acknowledgement that the world is not warming evenly. There are even some regions that are cooling.
And, still the planet warms whether we believe it or not.
you know, its taken many years for me to see the stuff that has happened. Because its taken many years to get all this done. It started after Pres. lincoln. And it was a slow build up of corps slowly taking over Areas in the nation. Taken is the wrong word..Influence peddling is better. backing people that Favor those that were behind them.
Corps have figured a few tricks out.
1. They Show that the Money went OUT..
2. Create Sub companies that take the money and show little or No profit..
3. Change the Main companies location to a Low/no tax area..
1/2 the problem is that the Tax agency(IRS) has little or any ability to Check everything..
They have little ability to Check every company Start up, every year.. Checking all the info gets abit tedious..
WOULD it belittle us, to help the IRS? For free?
You know they PAY groups for info…Start a group to follow thru and check out the data the IRS was/is given..
Even if it leads out of country, with the net and a few friends..we should be able to TRACK some of this down.
See, I wish to get Rid of the EXTRA middle men..there is no reason for them. Except for the corporation to Charge you MORE..
They dont want to make it Easier, or simpler..They DONT want to save money, as they just pass it on to the customer.
Example:
1 of the Food processors in the area, over stocks and dump the extra into the market..I can get a 5lb package of French fries for $3, After the Store markup..
Would love to Grab the top 3 processors in the Pac NW, and do local distribution of large packages..I’d only add 10% over cost..
Agreed. But, a big part of the problem is that the corporations literally hand the rules to the politicians along with the money. So, the laws that get implemented, especially the ones we hear little about, are written by corporations for corporations. How could the IRS prosecute a company for breaking the rules? They don’t break them. They made the rules such that what they are doing is perfectly legal.
Here’s a petition against Monsanto putting smaller farmers out of work and into poverty.
ECA might be particularly interested in this one.
http://act.watchdog.net/petitions/4889?n=87888766.0FMc8j
LAST THING i HEARD ABOUT MONSANTO, IS THAT THEY ARE QUITTING.. problem with this is many..
1. who gets the patents..
2. it will probably still be there, just a new name..or many new names..
3. there is more then 1 corp that distributes seed to farmers around the world..its a very BIG business..
Whats going on:
Monsanto is being Sued by many in 3rd world nations.
1. for the strange crops that dont reproduce seed crops in the next generation.
2. Monsanto products needed for the Crops to grow..
3. Weeds that are adapting to the chemicals..that kill them.
4. cross pollination to OTHER crops..(see #1)
5. they have so many ideas to TRY, that they cant keep up with testing..
Monsanto is scary, as is the rest of the big agriculture industry. I’ve heard nothing of them quitting. But, if they do, I’m sure it will be just some corporate rebranding, a new name or several, and then business as abusual, i.e. abuse of the planet and its ecosystems.
http://www.ir-d.dk/gmo-lose-europe-victory-for-environmental-organisations/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-seeds-of-suicide-how-monsanto-destroys-farming/5329947
http://consumerist.com/2014/01/28/monsanto-shareholders-fail-to-convince-company-to-disclose-info-about-genetically-modified-seeds/
http://consumerist.com/2012/04/26/monsanto-blamed-for-bee-population-collapse-so-it-buys-bee-research-firm/
just the tip..
That’s scary shit ECA. Couple that with the Round-Up Ready ™ crops that do contain the weed killer Round-Up (in the parts of the plant we eat) and the fact that Round-Up causes infertility in lab rats, and we can simply say that Monsanto is doing it’s part to reverse overpopulation.
MS,
And you REALLY want scary?
REALLY REALLY??
Think about a crop that insects wont/cant eat..
Mice and rats dont like it either..
now think about our world and the BALANCE it had..there are reasons to many things, and they all interrelate/interact..
If they cant go 1 place for food, where do they go..?
Forests? you want forests filled with mice?
Or Dying mice being eaten by Owls, cats, ferrets, and other animals. THEN dying also..
Into local homes? and being killed there..
Didnt we have this problem and nation wide discussion in the 70’s?? When we had DDT, and they were spaying stuff EVERYWHERE, not caring??
when I was younger we had Frogs all over the place, near lakes and streams..We even had CLEAR water swimming holes..Crawdads only live in clean clear water..
WE ARNT learning from our mistakes..or we cover them up..Bury them. but how do you bury FOOD?
I hadn’t heard about crops that insects and rodents won’t eat. That’s pretty shocking. And, are we supposed to eat them? If the rodents and bugs know better, why don’t we?
But yes. Everything is out of balance.
This is what humans do everywhere we go since we left Africa. There have been “coincidental” mass extinctions that followed immediately on the heels of humans everywhere we went. Within just 1,000 years of humans crossing the land bridge from Asia into the Americas, 83% of all large North American mammal species went extinct and 87% of all large South American mammal species did too.
Damn we moved fast and killed fast!
Take a look at the pronghorns. They are not true antelopes. But, they can run 60 miles per hour! We didn’t understand why they ran so fast until we discovered that there was a North American cheetah. Unfortunately, like the sabre toothed tiger, the N. Am. cheetah is extinct. Ditto mammoths and mastodons and sloth bears and … … ….
Even horses, which evolved in North America, went extinct here. Luckily they had crossed the land bridge into Asia where people learned to ride them instead of eating them. And, later, Europeans brought them back to their home continent. But, before all of that, the Native Americans ate every horse here.
I was not aware that Homo stupidous is credited with the extinction of Mammoths, Mastodons, N.A. Cheetahs, and the Sabre Tooth Tigers! Weren’t they already extinct in N. America when the Bering Str. immigrants arrived?
I have paced a herd of Pronghorns at 62 MPH in Southern Sask. between Estevan and Regina while driving a ’54 Coupe d’Ville that had an excellent speedometer! And was very surprised that they do not jump fences but come to a screeching halt to look for a way to go under the fence! It is indelibly imprinted in your memory!
The carcass of a juvenile Mammoth was discovered in a shallow natural burial site in Southwestern Ontario a few years ago, so they were widely distributed apparently.
Isn’t there some climatic event that coincides with these extinctions? Natives that had not learned to domesticate and ride horses would have a very difficult time ambushing and killing them, as wild horses are a very wiley lot! Yet the Bison survived all of the native hunting efforts! I just don’t buy it!
It is controversial. But, no. They were here when we got here. Within 1,000 years, they no longer were.
Many people, even many scientists question the strength of the link and the cause and effect. Such scientists will generally point to one of the mass extinctions that have followed us around like our shadows. They may talk about the North American extinction and point to some small impact that may have been the final blow to some of the animals.
They may point to the mammoths of Siberia and point out that this one animal species’ demise was not perfectly correlated with our current understanding of when people got there.
They may even say that the climate changed around that time, which is true, while ignoring the many colder and warmer periods that the same species had survived before our arrival.
The problem is that people, even scientists, don’t want to believe it’s us.
The reality is that everywhere humans went upon leaving Africa, whether it be Eurasia, the Americas, each of the various islands as the Polynesians went from place to place, Australia, New Zealand, etc., etc., etc., around the world, extinctions have followed.
It’s true that the cause and effect of many of these may not be determined.
But, everywhere we go, species die. And, when a second wave of more technically advanced people follow, such as when Europeans later got to Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, etc., etc., etc., more extinctions followed.
We, collectively, are the grim reaper.
So, whether we’re talking about mammoths and mastodons and saber-toothed tigers or great auks or passenger pigeons or moas or Haast’s Eagles or thylacines or sloth bears or a couple of dozen lemur species, it’s always us.
We are a plague, a blight, a global virus, a parasite, etc.
Do we always know the cause? No. Was it overhunting? Was it viruses or bacteria that we brought with us? Was it rats that follow us everywhere we go? Was it the package of crops and animals like wheat, rice, pigs, goats, etc.? Maybe. Would this matter? Would it still be safe to say that it was us, even if it was us bringing some plague with us? IMNSHO, yes!
So, am I stating as fact things that are not 100% proven? Probably. Perhaps I should specify that it’s just too many times and places for me to believe it is coincidence. These extinctions were not all at the same time as if one cataclysmic event happened. These were wave after wave after wave of extinction that always just seem to follow us wherever and whenever we go.
Here is a factor you might want to consider. In just 300 years, Homo stupidous has denuded this Planet of more than 50% of the forest cover/canopy! It has accelerated in the last 150 years with mechanization and herbicides. Plus the last 75 or so there has also been an rapid paving over of the soils in many populated areas. Does all of that combine to render the change in balance of nature? Of course it does! I have neglected to mention the air pollution which has ensued, too!
One factor that we fail to recognize is that the systems are dynamic and not static. There have been many shifts in Climate in geologic history, too, that precipitated extirpations and extinctions!
What is amazing is that there are next to no new species arising, or that we have noticed at this time! Will there be a superior/dominant super species arise that will eclipse Homo dumbkov? And that is a speculation which maybe on a time scale that we don’t fathom! Will it be smart machines that are self replicating, and don’t need the type of environment that biologicals do? Only time will reveal that!
There are new species arising. It takes longer than for an existing species to die. And, we don’t know exactly when to call something a new species versus just variation in the existing species. Here’s a list of observed evolution. I’ve posted this before. I’d call the lizard with the wholly new never before seen organ a new species, personally. But, I’m no biologist.
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/aaron-fleishaker/2/550/499
As for climate change, certainly the climate has changed numerous times in geological history. Warm periods, such as the one we’re causing, are associated with mass extinctions. The P/T extinction 250 MYA was caused by global warming, as were several of the smaller ones. The most recent extinction 65 MYA was caused by a cometary impact. But, after that, the planet was warm for 10 million years. I don’t know why. But, it was. How long was it before species began to proliferate again? What a coincidence! 10 million years. Only when the planet began to cool did speciation begin in earnest.
BTW, regarding my prior post about us killing species everywhere we went, here are a few links I found with a quick search. I’m sure some will hem and haw trying not to blame us. I know wikipedia also suggests other possibilities. But, as they mention climate, remember that the same species had survived multiple such changes in the prior couple of hundred thousand years. None of the climactic events were on the scales that produced mass extinctions in the past. In fact, none involved a planet even as warm as today. And, the animals died when it was fairly warm, so cold didn’t do it.
Note that I have not read each of these in depth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event
This one’s good because you can click on regions to see who went extinct there.
http://www.amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/IntroFourteenMigFS.html
http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/extinction/humextct.htm
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-human-migration-13561/?all
These next two may actually be summarizing the same study. I’m not sure.
http://www.livescience.com/46081-humans-megafauna-extinction.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98510&page=1&singlePage=true