Soy cake can be used to produce textured vegetable protein (meat alternatives), tofu, tempeh, soy milk, protein powder, biofuels and bioplastics, for example.

Calling that industrial waste is just a complete joke.

The land could also be used to grow other crops for human consumption.

You’re not the animals.

I literally wrote that this isn’t about me/humans, so yes, obviously.

There are many groups that are suffering and that I’m not part of, and I still care about what’s happening to them and want the suffering to end. It seems like most lemmy users share that sentiment when it comes to oppressed humans, so I really don’t get what’s so hard to understand about that when I extend it to animals.

You might have the opinion that factory farming isn’t a social justice issue, fine. Me having a different opinion doesn’t negatively affect you in any way. Why are you so pissed at me just because I see it differently?

Don’t you also draw a line when you choose to eat plants?

I think there’s a reasonable distinction here. You would presumably also draw a line between a conscious human and a brain dead human that won’t ever be conscious again. As far as we can reasonably tell, consciousness requires a brain. Dogs and pigs have brains, so maybe we shouldn’t torture and kill them on factory farms. We can also see them suffering and measure their physical reaction to it.

Of course there’s a possibility that plants have some kind of consciousness too, but 1. that’s speculation and 2. there’s no way around farming them, as you have said yourself:

Untill humans develop the ability to photosynthesize, we are going to have to eat other species, there’s no way around it.

Farming animals will always require far more plant deaths than growing plants for human consumption. These animals have to grow for months before being slaughtered and literally eat tons of animal feed in that time.

Therefore, plant-based food minimizes both animal suffering and deaths as well as plant deaths.

I’m not convinced that plant deaths are an ethical issue in of themselves, but farming has environmental implications so it makes sense to minimize the food that needs to be grown and make the farming as environmentally friendly as reasonably possible.

I’m sorry to hear that. The thing is, you mainly hear from those who are the most vocal, and those tend to be the most angry and therefore unreasonable. And those probably had their fair share of verbal (and/or physical) abuse from meat eaters, as vegans are hated on by a much, much larger part of society than the other way around. (That doesn’t justify their hate, of course)

It’s all a self reinforcing dynamic of groups riling each other up, unfortunately.

Just goes to show how little you care about others suffering. Social justice for me but not for others (those who I consider interior).

Inflammatory prejudices are only bad when others have them. They’re definitely the hateful ones, so lets spread some hate about them.

You just compared your eating preferences which are 100% a choice to someone being born homosexual and not wanting to be killed for it

All the animals on factory farms didn’t choose to be born there and don’t want to be killed either.

It’s not about the sensitivities of humans, but the insane suffering of animals in this system of oppression.

Haha, that’s the best troll comment I’ve seen in a while. Thank you for that.

What makes you think that processing food through an animal is healthier than through a factory?

You have to compare the actual nutrients contained in the product to draw any conclusion about health effects, and the macros are fairly similar for the plant-based versions compared to a given meat product.

The average person (in developed countries) eats significantly more meat than the recommended upper limit by nutrition organizations.

If you just go by the naturalistic argument, you’d conclude that processed drinking water is worse than untreated water, and that vaccines are worse than “perfectly natural” diseases. It’s a common logical fallacy.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature

For things like steak, I agree. Unfortunately it will take many years to become affordable for the average person, but when it happens, it will be awesome.

For many other categories, plant-based alternatives are already close enough for me. I recently tried the store brand plant based Schnitzel from Lidl (a supermarket/discounter chain here in Germany) and it was surprisingly tasty, given that it doesn’t even cost more than factory farmed meat by now.

There are decent burgers, nuggets, kebab, chicken and salami alternatives around as well. It’s crazy how much the taste, price and availability of these products have improved in the last 10 years alone. I don’t miss real meat by now.

I heard about studies that successfully used algae to inhibit methane-producing microbes in the short term, but I couldn’t find any studies that prove its long term efficacy yet. It’ll be interesting to see whether the microbes can adapt to the algae in the long term or not.

The issue with using byproducts as animal fodder is that ruminants produce a lot of methane while digesting them. This enteric fermentation in their stomachs accounts for around 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while the entire aviation industry sits at just 2-3%. If we give them more food that is harder to digest, they’ll emit even more methane per animal.

Biofuels make a lot of sense though. After extracting the fuel, the remaining digestate can be used to produce biochar or be put directly on fields as fertilizer, which is nice because synthetic fertilizers account for 1-2% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Another option is to burn the byproducts for heat or electricity in winter during short periods when there’s not enough wind and solar power to cover energy demand.

But the majority of us loves our animals

And when the milk production drops, the vast majority of dairy cows get their throat slit and their bodies sold for profit. I surely wouldn’t treat those that I love that way, but I guess animal farmers just have a very different concept of “loving animals” compared to people who have pets, for example.

Veganism requires the overuse of pesticides

What makes you think that? Why would growing grain for humans require more pesticides than growing grain for animals, for example?

Payments were also reportedly made to politicians from other European countries. Without providing further details, sources stated that apart from Germany, the countries included France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hungary.

Damn, I wish they shared the parties and politicians involved.

I wouldn’t say they’re equivalent. Obviously beating a fly isn’t as bad as beating a dog or a pig. But is beating a human much worse than beating a dog? For me it comes down to capacity to suffer I guess.

That’s probably because you criticized their behavior (in a rather provocative way), which is often perceived as hostile and leads to downvotes.

Haven’t you been told that we don’t talk about that kind of oppression here? Everyone knows that mistreatment of humans is bad, but mistreatment of animals is just how things are supposed to be. They are just lesser beings after all, and such kind of thinking hasn’t lead to anything bad in history, so it’s not at all problematic.

Progressivism is about fighting oppression when it suits you, and meat is just soo convenient. The mega corps promised that nothing bad is happening there, so praise the factory farms!

But that breeds diseases like avian flu and swine flu that will eventually kill loads of humans when they become human transmissible. It’s all just a bit delayed this time.

I’d be very interested in the source for this…

America’s richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/17/business/rich-americans-climate-footprint-emissions/index.html

The emissions of the middle class are also a huge problem and will have to drop to 0 as well.