[HN Gopher] Horseshoe crab blood to remain big pharma's standard...
___________________________________________________________________
Horseshoe crab blood to remain big pharma's standard as group
rejects substitute
Author : _Microft
Score : 126 points
Date : 2020-12-02 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| yalogin wrote:
| Isn't this shortsighted? Why would an entire industry rely on
| something that can be wiped out in an instant by some pathogen?
| Of all people that industry knows how powerful and sudden these
| pathogens can be. Why risk leaving one crucial aspect of their
| work flow to chance?
| dharmab wrote:
| Horseshoe crabs have resilient immune systems; they do not have
| adaptive immune systems like humans that have to "learn" how to
| defend from a new pathogen. Instead, their immune systems are
| general purpose. This is exactly why their blood is valuable
| for testing for the presence of pathogens in drug and device
| testing.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > Why would an entire industry rely on something that can be
| wiped out in an instant by some pathogen?
|
| Let me first say that I disagree with the use of horseshoe crab
| blood: but the industry _isn 't_ reliant on it, it's choosing
| (via lobbying) to continue to use it.
|
| If your scenario came to pass, everyone would quickly agree to
| use the synthetic alternative. But, they don't have to agree on
| the basis that your scenario might unfortunately come to pass.
| openasocket wrote:
| Horseshoe crabs have been around largely unchanged for like 450
| million years, I like their odds
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| And humans think being "smart" is going to get us to the end
| of time...
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| That image of the horseshoe crabs being bled is certainly
| provocative.
|
| > Some of which die after being returned to the Atlantic Ocean
| following bleeding.
|
| I'm super surprised that they even bother. I would have thought
| this were a simple birth->death captivity cycle. Though I
| wouldn't be surprised if this were only out of necessity; perhaps
| the crabs simple don't thrive in captivity.
|
| Or perhaps we have less of an ethical standard for the animals we
| farm just because we like the taste of their milk on our taste
| buds.
|
| Unfortunately, as far as animal ethics go, it feels like progress
| is so slow that even etching out a comment is a waste of time.
| It's like being for women suffrage in the 1700s; people just roll
| their eyes at you, and you hope the people 100 or 200 or 300
| years down the road wake up because it's not happening in your
| lifetime.
|
| Then again, I admit it's no simple feat for us humans to have
| gone from bone and fur and tribal technology to a global
| technological civilization in just thousands of years. And every
| awakening and enlightenment is always obvious and taken for
| granted in hindsight. There's probably even a good benefit to
| having such glacially evolving ethics: taking a bad fork in the
| road can kill a civilization.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Aren't there some ethical cow milking processes? Like regular,
| non-Mega AgriCorp farms?
| merpnderp wrote:
| Ethical compared to what? Coyotes eating a cow alive while
| she laid down in a field to calve, starting with her hind
| quarters? A killer whale slowly nibbling another whale's calf
| to death over hours? So how do we measure the ethicality of a
| cow that has spent most of its life pampered, fed and
| protected, and in the end goes to a feedlot? How do we score
| that? What metrics do we use to compare? Because it certainly
| had a better life than a wolf casually stumbling upon it as a
| newborn.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I think one benchmark should be would "is this animal be
| better off to have never been born than the conditions we
| let it live in?"
|
| And a second is "how much better or worse is this animals
| life compared to a similar animal in the wild?"
|
| My personal opinion is anything that doesn't meet the first
| benchmark is evil. Anything that is between the too is in a
| gray area. And anything past the second I don't need to
| feel too concerned about, or I'd describe it as ethical
| husbandry.
|
| It's clear that there are plenty of chickens whose lives
| are soo terrible that don't meet the first benchmark and
| their extinction would be preferable to their current
| experience
| merpnderp wrote:
| The first one is easy. Nearly every animal would be
| better off not being born. Not many animals have an easy
| fun filled fulfilling life. Most of them spend their days
| hungry and scared, and their last day is often being
| eaten alive or some other miserable death.
|
| The second is also easy. Nearly every animal that is
| farmed has a much better life as livestock than as a wild
| animal. Want your last day to be a bolt through the brain
| after getting to gorge on food for weeks, or chased down
| and your guts ripped out and eaten while you're pinned
| down in terror?
| miles wrote:
| > Nearly every animal that is farmed has a much better
| life as livestock than as a wild animal.
|
| If you were a non-human animal, which life would you
| prefer?
|
| https://vimeo.com/130694373
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wkPMUZ9vX4
| merpnderp wrote:
| Hey I'm all for making agriculture humane and to end
| needless suffering. I'm just saying there's got to be a
| point on the ethical scale where farmed animals are
| better off than they would have been in nature. I live
| around massive cattle operations, and they are absolutely
| in every way possible better off than a bison wondering
| the Serengeti. If only because they can drink water
| whenever they want and never fear a giant croc will drag
| them into the water to be drowned.
|
| And yes, pig and chicken operations like that should be
| stopped.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Interesting take that whipingnout all eXAa
| bserge wrote:
| The only obvious solution I can think of is every human
| having a piece of land big enough to support a small farm
| enough to feed the whole family.
|
| A cow, a goat, chickens, sheep, whatever you want,
| managed by the family, free range, decent life before
| being slaughtered.
|
| That seems like it would fit those benchmarks quite well.
|
| It's how it was done in the past, people were self-
| sufficient when it came to food. Big agriculture
| companies could provide food for the people and these
| animals, so they would still exist and be profitable.
|
| The problem is that land is limited, and spreading out
| would just result in extremely inefficient fuel usage,
| with all the pollution that entails.
|
| Plus, some would say it would be a pretty inefficient use
| of man hours, although I think it would be a better, more
| "natural" life for humans, as well.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >It's how it was done in the past, people were self-
| sufficient when it came to food.
|
| Everything I've read or heard says there was quite a bit
| of malnutrition and hunger.
| ralusek wrote:
| That first metric is highly subjective. There is a
| growing movement of anti-natalists that believe that
| having children is immoral, because being born a human is
| worse than never having existed, and people can't consent
| to their existence.
|
| I don't think we'll be able to move beyond subjectivity
| for the morality of this, but I do think we can be more
| precise.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Such people, when met in real life face to face,
| inevitably remind me of Aesop's fable concerning a fox
| who wanted grapes but couldn't reach them.
| BeefySwain wrote:
| Interesting. We tend to feel the same way about those who
| disagree with that premise.
| ralusek wrote:
| Wild animals also kill for sport, and rape, and steal, and
| eat their own babies.
|
| I do think it's important to understand that humans are
| animals, and that they are not uniquely immoral within the
| animal kingdom, but the fact that something happens in
| nature isn't sufficient in order to morally justify it.
| Humans ARE unique in their capability to reflect on the
| morality of behavior at a high level.
|
| Where I think your argument is strongest, as I said, is in
| response to the claims that humans are uniquely malevolent,
| as if most species aren't constantly maximizing their
| acquisition of resources within the boundaries of their
| capabilities. That just doesn't mean that we have carte
| blanche on all behavior we can observe in nature.
| svrtknst wrote:
| why are wild animals only used as an ethical measure tape
| when it comes to animal consumption?
| klyrs wrote:
| Because our ethics distinguish us in many other aspects
| of life. Rape, murder and cannibalism are generally
| frowned upon, we have international laws governing
| warfare, we're waking up go the destructive nature of our
| expanding population, we have medical care that generally
| exists to remediate the sick and wounded, etc etc etc.
| But slavery and torture are open questions in this
| millennium, and who would expect us to draw a line for
| animals where we're reluctant to do so for humans?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What else can we use? We can compare against the natural
| state (as GP did), which is mostly horror. We can compare
| against what would happen if we suddenly left these
| animals to live by themselves - which is even worse, and
| followed by extinction. We can compare against
| hypothetically caring about all animals as pets - but
| that's beyond our logistical capabilities and thus would
| cause great suffering for both animals _and_ humans.
|
| There is no good measure tape available.
| j_kao wrote:
| I don't disagree that animals (cows in this case) in
| nature (whatever that looks like at this point) do suffer
| and are constantly under fear of predators.
|
| However, I think saying that there is "no good measure
| tape available" might be intellectually dishonest since
| we can probably come up with a rough model to optimize
| for the minimization of global suffering of all beings
| involved.
|
| Obviously, most mental models have a higher weight biased
| for humans rather than animals, so a suffering factor for
| humans would have a higher multiple than for animals.
| That is where most of the controversy seems to be.
| s0rce wrote:
| I'm not an expert but the extinct ancestor of the modern
| cow, the Auroch was quite a large mammal and at least
| according to wikipedia [citing van Vuure, T. (Cis)
| (2005). Retracing the Aurochs - History, Morphology and
| Ecology of an extinct wild Ox. Sofia-Moscow: Pensoft
| Publishers. ISBN 954-642-235-5] claims that the main
| predators were big cats (lions and tigers) and hyenas).
| Across much of the cows modern range those predators
| don't exist.
|
| Possibly a wolf, Siberian tiger or large brown bear would
| predate a cow, similiar to the predators of a moose but
| it doesn't seem like they are under constant fear of
| predators any more. Cows are often left to pasture across
| vast unfenced area of basically wilderness and don't seem
| particularly afraid nor at risk of predation (otherwise
| they'd need to be guarded).
| badRNG wrote:
| >There is no good measure tape available.
|
| There's a difference between having moral worth and being
| a moral agent. Non-human animals (generally) cannot
| contemplate the ethical character of their actions, so
| they are not moral agents, nor should we consider them
| such. This does not mean they are unworthy of moral
| consideration. What is being evaluated is the ethics of
| the behavior of _people_ who _are_ moral agents, and
| there have been guide sticks for the behavior of people
| for as long as people have been thinking about ethics.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Hate to quote myself but "How do we score that? What
| metrics do we use to compare?"
| badRNG wrote:
| The answers seem sort of trivial: using the same ethical
| framework that informs your decision-making process on
| other ethical questions. Regardless of the unique flavor
| of one's moral tradition, most seek to limit the
| suffering of sentient beings.
| Jack000 wrote:
| Most mammals have a similar brain architecture. Humans
| share the limbic system with animals like dogs, cows and
| pigs. This means these animals have extremely similar
| subjective experiences of pain, fear, joy and other
| emotions.
|
| For a consistent framework of ethics, these animals
| should be treated essentially as lobotomized humans.
| vegannet wrote:
| You can sort-of argue that there are examples of ethical
| milking if you just consider the direct action of milking,
| however if we look to the bigger picture of dairy production
| -- which includes how the cow came to be and what the milk is
| intended for and why the cow needs to be milked -- it becomes
| more difficult because dairy cows have been bred to produce
| more milk to the detriment of their health: you'd need to
| find an example of the more broad "ethical dairy production"
| and that's a lot more difficult, as almost all dairy
| production builds on the unethical behaviour of the past.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| There is the same dilemma for many other animals too. What
| harm does it do to a chicken if you simply snatch the eggs
| it was already laying on your property, or shear a sheep
| that already had locks of wool?
|
| Unfortunately the first harm was done by breeding species
| that ovulate daily or produce so much fur that it would die
| without human intervention.
| 0xy wrote:
| Are you suggesting we cull dairy cows to eliminate the
| tainted breed?
| nobodywasishere wrote:
| Not OP but I'm suggesting we never breed them into
| existence in the first place
| merpnderp wrote:
| Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock
| how can you say this? By using this metric for a
| species's survival nearly nothing should be allowed to
| live. If you think farming animals is bad wait until you
| see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is
| still alive, and will be for most of the meal.
| badRNG wrote:
| >Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock
| how can you say this? By using this metric for a species'
| survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live.
|
| When considering an ethical question, typically one must
| have the "ability to have acted differently." To be
| grotesque: I may be justified in eating a dead relative
| to survive in some nightmare scenario, however its
| permissibility here doesn't allow me the opportunity to
| desecrate human corpses for pleasurable eating. Is it
| possible there was a point at which humans were required
| to perform otherwise unethical acts to survive? Yes,
| absolutely. Does that permit the same behavior when its
| necessity no longer exists? I wouldn't think so.
|
| >If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a
| Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still
| alive, and will be for most of the meal.
|
| Hyena's aren't moral agents, they cannot consider the
| ethical content of their decisions. Even if they were,
| the bad behavior of one moral agent usually isn't a
| justification for another's unethical behavior.
| Falling3 wrote:
| What moral questions are you comfortable using the
| actions of hyenas to justify?
| merpnderp wrote:
| How could this possibly pertain to the conversation you
| are responding to? Or do you just ask randos this
| question to make friends?
| Falling3 wrote:
| It pertains pretty specifically to the comment I replied
| to. I'm not sure how that's not clear?
| merpnderp wrote:
| Since you don't seem to get the point, I'll turn it
| around. How many humans are comfortable causing the
| deaths of if you could go back in time and make sure no
| animals were ever domesticated for livestock?
|
| Are you comfortable killing a million people? A hundred
| million? Do you have a maximum?
| Falling3 wrote:
| Oh I see you were the original commenter as well. Are you
| disputing the idea that you tried to use the actions of a
| specific wild animal to justify our treatment of animals?
| I mean, I get it. It's a really common tactic. I'm just
| confused by your surprise.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Why would you think I was the start of this thread, can't
| you see the usernames? A person said we should never have
| domesticated animals in the first place because it is
| cruel. I said that if being cruel to animals to ensure
| your species survival is wrong, nearly nothing deserves
| to live. You then took that out of context and made some
| bizarre assumptions about ethics and hyenas. You were
| wrong, and I get your confusion. Following these threads
| is hard. But it's okay.
| svrtknst wrote:
| hyenas or old human populations dont have the ability or
| opportunity to reduce harm
|
| we do
|
| farming animals is bad no matter what hyenas do, that's
| such a weird counterargument
| jolux wrote:
| I think the argument is that we have derived massive
| benefits from farming as a species that outweigh the
| amount of suffering we've caused in the process. I'm not
| sure I agree, but then I do eat meat.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, their argument is surely either "we benefited from
| X then, thus we should continue doing X now despite
| having other options" or it's "animals already do bad
| things in nature, so why care when we do it despite
| having other options?"
|
| Neither of which is a very compelling position.
| merpnderp wrote:
| You obviously didn't even read the comment I was
| responding to or are misinterpreting my point so you can
| attack a straw man.
| vegannet wrote:
| This is a funny line that I hear a lot as a vegan and
| it's based on a misunderstanding. Veganism is actually
| quite pragmatic, veganism is not driven by saving lives
| it is driven by harm reduction. If I thought that the
| greatest harm reduction outcome for dairy cows could be
| achieved by a mass cull, I would support it.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| My town has a Guernsey farm [1] just outside it, so that
| milk is available at our local food markets. It's _wild_
| how expensive it is. Like, the regular cheapo milk at the
| grocery store is $4-5 for 4L, and the Eby Manor milk is $5
| for 1L, basically four times the cost.
|
| Now, they're a small time operation doing a specialty
| product, so I'm sure that contributes a lot to this cost
| bump-- they justify this mostly by touting health benefits
| rather than talking about the sustainability of their
| operation, but I suspect that getting many animal-based
| food products to a more sustainable place would require a
| similarly eye-watering bump up in price. Which is, of
| course, part of the argument for going part-time
| vegetarian/vegan-- get used to the idea of meat and animal
| products being something we enjoy once or twice a week or a
| few times a month, rather than multiple times per day.
|
| [1]: https://ebymanor.ca/our-family-farm/
| ThrowawayIP wrote:
| Most of that page is dedicated to how "nicely" that
| farmer treats his herd. But, there are a few omissions.
| How do they care for cows that are no longer capable of
| becoming pregnant? [0] How do they control the size of
| the herd when each cow is giving birth about 3-4 times
| over a 4-5 year "lifespan?"
|
| Even at four times the cost, the industry doesn't look
| any better.
|
| [0]: https://www.agweb.com/article/deciding-when-dairy-
| cow-starts...
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The mental image of a green sunny pasture with an old farmer
| milking a cow that just magically happens to be there, ready
| to be milked, is a fantasy limited to package marketing on
| cereal boxes.
|
| When you look into the details of how a dairy cow comes into
| being, the reality isn't quite so charming.
|
| Though there's also the fact that, even if ethical milk
| existed, for 99% of people it's just a warm thought they have
| while they buy whatever factory-farmed milk carton their
| grocer sells, myself included.
| tw04 wrote:
| I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I grew up in small-
| town America and 30 years ago that was (almost) the image.
| While the farmers definitely didn't milk the cows by hand,
| they did attach the apparatus to each cow by hand and check
| on them. Also had plenty of green pasture for the cows to
| graze every day.
|
| Source: my best friend in elementary school was a "farm
| kid" and I thought it was fun to help do chores as a "city
| kid".
|
| I'm not going to sit here and claim that was EVERY farm 30
| years ago, but from what I've seen of the mega-farms it was
| a HECK of a lot better than what's going on today.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| There are still plenty of countries where a dairy farmer
| milks a handful of cows that are pretty free-range, and
| then a truck does a run each morning to pick up that
| farmer's milk along with other farmers.
| yarcob wrote:
| People here are proud of the "small scale agriculture"
| that is still somewhat common here but truth be told most
| farmers don't treat their cows any better just because
| they only have 5 of them.
|
| I rarely see cows on pastures any more.
| vel0city wrote:
| I live in Texas. I see tons of cows in pastures. However,
| they're not always there for dairy.
| wincy wrote:
| My friend tried to do the "ideal farmer" route, rather
| unintentionally. He bought a cow, who escaped and mated
| with a bull down the road.
|
| She had a calf, so he thought he'd share the milk the
| mother was producing with the calf. So he woke up at 6am to
| milk the cow.
|
| The calf started waking up at 5:30.
|
| So he woke up at 5am.
|
| So the calf started waking up at 4:30am.
|
| You see the pattern here. Turns out, calfs aren't a big fan
| of having their milk taken, and there's a reason they're
| separated from their mother if you want to milk the cow.
|
| Edit: some people are saying that dairy cows produce more
| than the calf can drink. I don't know if this was a dairy
| cow.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I worked on a small dairy farm (~100 cows) when I was in
| high school in the 90s. That's pretty much how it works.
| The cows start lining up at the barn door when the time
| comes.
|
| This family treated their cows very well -- they were their
| livlihood, almost like family. Unfortunately, policy has
| impacted the small farm to everyone's detriment. I'm sure
| corporate farms treat cows as well as they treat their
| people.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Unfortunately, policy has impacted the small farm to
| everyone's detriment. I'm sure corporate farms treat cows
| as well as they treat their people.
|
| Pretty sure we know who the policy benefits.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Isn't the same true for almost everything? Clothing,
| electronics, disposal of electronics, plastics, etcetc.
| Which isn't an excuse, it's just that - i don't know if i
| can throw a stick and not hit something humanity is
| actively and aggressively exploiting.
|
| The only way out of this that i see is to make "other
| things" our slaves. Eg, i don't think we can convince
| people to always pay for their shirts/phones/etc from
| ethical sources - even if they had the info to base those
| decisions off of. However once we get to the point where
| machines can outcompete slave wages that problem will start
| to realistically be mitigated.. i hope.
|
| Same is true for everything we're destroying i imagine.
| Humanity has no moral compass when beyond arms reach.. it
| seems.
| philistine wrote:
| The only reasons cows give milk is because they gave birth. A
| cow's life is to consistently be in a non-ending cycle of
| being artificially impregnated, giving birth and being milked
| dry while her young is not the sole drinker of her milk, as
| it should be. I am an avid milk drinker, who expects calcium
| deposits in his early 50s, and I know there is no ethical
| milk. I'm actively choosing the beautiful taste of cow's milk
| knowing full well the pain and misery I'm inflicting on all
| those cows.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Some good news. Modern dairy farms use sex selected semen
| to prevent males from being born, and use synthetic
| hormones to extend milk production. The combined result is
| that few excess calves are required.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| While provocative, this is the inconvenient truth that most
| of us have certainly accepted. I myself drink milk and eat
| meat while acknowledging the obvious moral superiority of
| veganism. It's even hard to argue against veganism without
| sounding rather selfish or even psychopathic, as your
| argument, sooner or later, is going to boil down to "but I
| like it". So it's amazing how hard it is to change this
| habit.
|
| The path of least resistance and most convenience and least
| personal sacrifice is hard to leave despite living in
| violation of my own ethical standards.
|
| There's also something weird about our relationship with
| animals and food. We use ethical justifications (or avoid
| them) that we don't use anywhere else. Our eating habits
| are deep cultural traditions that don't budge in the face
| of even the most agreeable arguments to change them.
|
| "But it just feels too good to give up! XD" or "But if I
| stop, everyone else is still going to do it, so why stop!"
| aren't arguments we'd level at the carnal pleasures of
| rape, but when it comes to meat, they make everyone's head
| nod in agreement.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > I myself drink milk and eat meat while acknowledging
| the obvious moral superiority of veganism.
|
| In my moral belief system, the highest good is human
| pleasure and thriving. Eating meat and using animal
| products and using animals for research advances that.
|
| Veganism tries to sacrifice human pleasure and thriving,
| and is therefore morally inferior.
| Falling3 wrote:
| The highest good or the only good? Do you actually try an
| quantify the suffering of an animal on a farm and make an
| honest comparison to the pleasure a human gets from
| eating them? Do you also support torturing animals and
| bestiality with the same justification?
| volkl48 wrote:
| > We use ethical justifications (or avoid them) that we
| don't use anywhere else.
|
| I don't really agree with that. We don't use those
| ethical arguments when it comes to conduct that has a
| direct, near-immediate effect on other humans, and we
| give a handful of animals we have particularly positive
| feelings about a partial exception, but we _do_ use them
| basically everywhere else.
|
| > "But it just feels too good to give up! XD" or "But if
| I stop, everyone else is still going to do it, so why
| stop!" aren't arguments we'd level at the carnal
| pleasures of rape
|
| These are exactly the kinds of things people say about
| why they still fly numerous times a year for leisure, why
| they're driving a large vehicle they don't need, and
| basically every other area where what people recognize as
| the ethical or societal ideal doesn't match up with how
| they want to behave.
|
| Most people recognize it's not compatible with their
| ideals, but the vast majority still choose to do it
| anyway.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I think that is a reasonable clarification.
|
| Of course, my point is to line up things where there's a
| short thread from our pleasure to another's immense
| suffering (rape, death, squalor) and how eating certain
| animals is the odd one out in our zeitgeist.
|
| The only reason "well I like it" isn't enough to tip the
| scales on joy-riding our SUV or visiting family by plane
| or buying some child-labor Nikes is that the impact of
| the event can't actually be observed nor can we run the
| equation equation at all. And even if we could observe
| it, it's possible that the effect is so tiny that we can
| still largely justify our single trip or shoe purchase in
| a way that we can't justify raising an animal to
| adulthood in squalor just to feast on its muscles during
| a 20 minute meal.
|
| There's always a spectrum of trade-offs at play when it
| comes to ethics. Ants are my favorite animal but knowing
| I'm going to step on 20 of them on my way to enjoy a
| single beer at the bar doesn't keep me home bound.
|
| The question of ethics is surely to maximize the
| wellbeing of sentience and minimize suffering, so it's
| inherently a curve of trade-offs in a finite universe.
| It's hard to find a nihilist who really thinks that the
| optimal point on the curve is the elimination of all
| life.
|
| So, barring that, we're left with the impossible task of
| balancing impossible equations like whether a lifetime of
| flying home from Christmas produces more wellbeing in the
| world than suffering. However, some questions are much,
| much easier than others.
| ThrowawayIP wrote:
| The phrase that jumps to mind is "Nobody committing
| atrocities thinks _they_ are a monster."
| leetcrew wrote:
| I guess I can't speak for the movement as a whole, but
| the vegan/vegetarian activists I know aren't very
| pragmatic. they tend to take a very all-or-nothing
| approach to convincing people.
|
| I guess this is a personal moral failing, but I just
| can't commit to never ever eating meat, cooking with
| butter, etc. what I can do is stuff like saving meat for
| special occasions (or when I'm served it at someone
| else's place), and substituting olive oil for butter. the
| two things I have a really hard time cutting back on eggs
| (such a great way to get protein in the morning) and milk
| for my coffee.
|
| anyways, I feel like "consume less" is a much easier
| message to sell than "consume none". I wonder if it
| wouldn't be more impactful to convince a large group of
| people to consume less than to persuade a small group of
| die-hards to abstain altogether.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Alot of this stuff is decadent navel gazing.
|
| Why is it virtuous to breed olives for a human purpose?
| Why is it immoral to be in a symbiotic relationship with
| a cow, which wouldn't exist without it?
|
| Perhaps our bovine friends would be able to roam freely,
| if only we didn't isolate them from their habitats by
| growing vegetables and grain.
|
| Just eat what you want.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Then again, the very statements of "we should eat less
| meat" or "animal cruelty" seem provocative to most people
| regardless who utters it. Any time those phrases rear
| their heads they seem to ignite a bunch of defensive
| hysterics.
|
| Just like our enlightenment values such as liberty and
| reason, all progress on this issue certainly does depend
| on human conversation. However, I'm wary of tasking a
| single group of people to usher us into an enlightenment.
| I also think it's all too convenient to go "well, vegans
| should improve their marketing if they want me to
| change."
|
| The thing is, we don't need vegans to convince us. They
| didn't invent animal ethics, they are merely the first
| practitioners. It wasn't the first human to rethink the
| ethics of rape or slavery that convinced everyone else
| nor had to.
|
| We humans came up with animal ethics, slavery ethics,
| women suffrage ethics, liberalism, and everything else
| from first principles.
|
| A first principle of animal ethics isn't vegan voodoo,
| it's "why should a sentient being be grown and killed for
| my pleasure?" After all, we already hold that standard
| for other humans and, for most people, even our pets.
| It's a small leap of reason to extend the courtesy to
| other animals.
| leetcrew wrote:
| call me cynical, but in my view humans rarely do anything
| for strictly moral reasons, at least not at scale. laws
| and customs are motivated much more by pragmatism (hard
| to have a flourishing society with frequent random
| killings) or at least reciprocity (I'll agree not to do X
| to you or people you care about as long as you agree to
| the same for me). modern democracy is an efficient system
| of control; it doles out enfranchisement just fast enough
| to prevent violent revolt.
|
| bit of a tangent, but I think this explains a lot of why
| we don't see much progress with animal rights. exploiting
| them is pragmatic, and we can't negotiate with them. even
| if we could, what concessions could they offer? for the
| minority who currently care, the only viable strategy I
| see is to make veganism "cool" and to make it easier to
| join the club (ie, not demand total abstinence).
| nitrogen wrote:
| The problem is equating "progress" with doing less of
| something that historical progress has allowed more of.
| This is where part of the modern "progressive" movement
| runs into a bunch of walls, because it's actually calling
| for _re_ gression. Less travel, less fun, less food, less
| family, less space, less comfort.
|
| If you want to continue progress on an issue you care
| about, you have to tie it into actual material progress.
| Don't try to ban things or turn them into moral dividers,
| try to make better things.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Try Just Egg who knows you may even like it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| For the sake of accuracy of the inconvenient truth, let's
| remember it's not just about _drinking milk_ , but also
| consuming all the products that use milk as ingredient.
| Want to stop the suffering of cows? Kiss cheese, yogurt
| and butter goodbye.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Of course. And just think of all the free labor that will
| evaporate if we abolish slavery; kiss your cheap and
| cotton-comfy textiles goodbye!
|
| But that's just a justification from carnal pleasure, the
| same reasoning people have uttered over maintaining their
| harem of enslaved concubines.
|
| That "but it tastes/feels so good" carries any water with
| anyone is one of my lamentations. I was with you when you
| said milk, but giving up yogurt and cheese? That's just
| too much pleasure to lose!
|
| If that argument works with dairy, why doesn't it work
| with rape and sex slavery? Or keeping a Gattaca clone
| alive so you can enjoy some spare organs?
|
| Though I don't think we actually believe this argument
| when we use it, it's so indefensible. I think we usually
| come up with kneejerk decisions and then make a bunch of
| splashes trying to justify it, perhaps without even
| realizing that the decision was made before the
| rationalization.
| maneesh wrote:
| Given that 65% of the world's population [1][2]
| experiences lactose intolerance post-infancy, maybe this
| wouldn't be such a bad thing.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Epid
| emiolo...
| [2]https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/lactose-
| intoleran...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Cheese and butter have very little lactose, and yoghurt
| has only a quarter of lactose content of milk. In many
| human populations without lactose tolerance, preparing
| these was actually a way to consume milk they couldn't
| drink directly.
| maneesh wrote:
| They still do have lactose though. I'm lactose intolerant
| and even a little butter used for cooking causes me to
| bloat up and gain 5-10 lbs within 30 minutes.
|
| Some cheeses are supposedly lactose free, but seem to
| cause the same effects.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That's highly unusual level of intolerance. A whole cup
| of butter contains only 0.1 g of lactose, and since cup
| of butter is 1500-2000 calories, in a typical meal that
| includes butter you'll consume much less than that. If
| you just use 1-3 tsp of butter for frying, and then don't
| consume everything you cooked, you'll be consuming less
| than 1 milligram of lactose. For comparison, most people
| with lactose intolerance can consume around 10 grams a
| day, that is, 10 000x times as much. What you describe
| looks more like allergy than regular lactose intolerance.
| fakedang wrote:
| Could it have been that lactose intolerance was developed
| by the various diets in Asia and not by a natural
| evolution of humankind universally? Because that's
| exactly what your second link states - that people from
| the West are less lactose intolerant compared to people
| from the East.
| simiones wrote:
| Lactose intolerance in adulthood is the default for
| most/all mammals. There is some subset of humans who grew
| to depend on drinking milk from cows who have adapted to
| continue producing lactase for their entire lives, but
| this has no spread to all humans.
| svrtknst wrote:
| you've gotten a lot of replies regarding the lives of milk
| cows and how they're bred - one other factor athat I didn't
| see mentioned is that only about half of the calves turn into
| dairy oows, and the world has very little use for living
| bulls.
|
| The same issues arise in chicken farming, where it's
| impossible to have eggs or dairy without death.
|
| I saw some image of genetically modified eggs where they
| supposedly were able to control the sex of the chickens pre-
| birth, but in general, you need to kill about half of the
| animals born.
| fakedang wrote:
| Or you could raise them to adulthood and consume them for
| meat. Once a cow or hen passes the age for producing milk
| or eggs, they are often sacrificed.
|
| The issue is that mass manufacture of meat has led to many
| bulls being killed at birth, because it's resource
| inefficient to raise them to adulthood. That's where we
| went wrong.
| Falling3 wrote:
| That's exactly where most veal comes from - the male
| offspring of dairy cows.
| pstew wrote:
| No, to produce milk a cow needs to be pregnant or recently
| pregnant so milk production requires forced insemination and
| giving birth to the calf. After birth, the calf is separated
| from the mother to be caged for veal, raised as a milking
| cow, etc., and the mother is re-inseminated so she can keep
| producing milk and the process starts over.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| The process you describe is true for organic milk, but less
| true for regular milk. Modern dairy farms use sex selected
| semen to prevent males from being born and they use
| synthetic hormones to extend milk production. Not much
| excess calving happens in big dairy.
| ThrowawayIP wrote:
| I'd like to see the citation for that and an example of
| its application outside of a laboratory setting (if there
| is one.)
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > I'm super surprised that they even bother. I would have
| thought this were a simple birth->death captivity cycle.
|
| I'd think it's less about ethics and more about trying to
| minimize the damage to the crab population to avoid a potential
| depletion.
| trianglem wrote:
| From a random comment I read on reddit regarding this same
| issue, they made it seem like they are mostly just killed,
| ground down and used for bait. This bleed and release is more
| of a PR stunt. I have nothing to back up this claim however.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Its also about the law. Biomedical companies are required to
| return the horseshoe crab to the ocean.
|
| http://www.asmfc.org/species/horseshoe-crab
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| I'm surprised they survive this. Looking at the image [0], the
| amount of blood being drawn compared to the size of the crab is
| enormous.
|
| [0]
| https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/78bd72e9713cbe052ed080fe1f869...
| s0rce wrote:
| Very dystopian. I'll file that image with the memories of
| dark red wildfire smoke filled skies that looked like
| Bladerunner as the future we want to avoid.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| AFAIR the crabs in that image had their tail part cut off and
| will not survive.
| beervirus wrote:
| There's a distinction between big-brained animals vs. all the
| rest. Are horseshoe crabs any more conscious than ants?
| jgwil2 wrote:
| This seems like bad news from an environmental perspective. We
| will end up with a synthetic alternative someday - the only
| question is whether we will be forced into it by the collapse of
| the horseshoe crab fishery.
| dharmab wrote:
| The horseshoe crabs' eggs are also a food source for other
| animals in their ecosystem like birds.
| pg_bot wrote:
| Recombinant factor c (rFc) which is mentioned in the article is
| that synthetic alternative. I have no doubt that it will
| eventually replace horseshoe crab blood for the LAL test, but
| it takes time for these things to be approved. You need to be
| absolutely certain that this test works or you will kill
| people. We need more data to be sure everything is kosher and
| it's reasonable to be ultra conservative when you have a
| working method.
|
| There is another method which is arguably worse than bleeding
| horseshoe crabs that also works. (the rabbit pyrogen test) So
| even if the entire horseshoe crab population died tomorrow we
| could still manage to keep everything working without our hands
| being forced.
| ct0 wrote:
| Posted by Reuters on Sat 30 May 2020 22.53 EDT
| quercusa wrote:
| Saving horseshoe crabs, one by one: http://returnthefavornj.org/
|
| Big ones can be surprisingly heavy.
| isaacg wrote:
| According to Wikipedia [0], about 500,000 Horseshoe crabs are
| bled each year, with a mortality rate of 5-30%, depending on the
| source. In contrast, about 1,000,000 Horseshoe crabs are used as
| fishing bait each year, in the United States alone.
|
| This fishing practice has been banned in New Jersey and South
| Carolina, and partially banned in Delaware. It remains legal
| elsewhere in the United States.
|
| Personally, I'd much rather see the fishing-bait use reduced than
| the biomedical blood use reduced, since the fishing-bait use
| seems less essential. Of course, I'd love to see the synthetic
| option reach the same level of trust that the blood now enjoys,
| at which point both reasons to harvest Horseshoe crabs could be
| reduced.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab#Harvest_for_blo...
| yrral wrote:
| It looks like they drain 1/3 of the blood of 500k crabs a year
| and use 1m crabs as bait a year. Why can't they just take 100%
| of the blood of 500k/3 crabs a year and then give those crabs
| to be used as bait?
| xutopia wrote:
| This right here is smart. Maybe there are good reasons why
| that isn't possible but in the mean time we should be asking
| that question.
| hangonhn wrote:
| I think it's one of those convenient lies we tell ourselves
| so we can all feel better but doesn't survive real scrutiny.
| Saying 500k crabs will be drained with most of them surviving
| sounds better than 175k dies for sure... and we are giving
| the dead bodies to the fishing industry. The math is going to
| work out to be the same in the long run (and in fact better
| in your scheme) but one sounds better as a one-liner than the
| other.
| x87678r wrote:
| > This fishing practice has been banned in New Jersey
|
| No, non-medical fishing is banned, they are still harvested in
| NJ for crab blood.
|
| If we switched to using the synthetic alternative, fishing
| would be allowed again and we'd be catching them to grind into
| bait and fertilizer like in the old days.
|
| https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/coronavirus/2020/09/2...
| deluxe-panda wrote:
| Not really driven home in the article, but migratory birds that
| depend on horseshoe crab eggs are reliant on an abundance of
| horseshoe crabs (because eggs are normally buried out of reach,
| but become exposed when secondary waves of crabs dig up
| previously laid eggs).
|
| Although the industry may be careful to not deplete the horseshoe
| crab population, it's the lack of an abundance of crabs that
| causes problems for migratory birds.
|
| (As explained to me by a birder friend of mine last month.)
| [deleted]
| mhb wrote:
| Radiolab: Baby Blue Blood Drive
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/baby-...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is a great piece. If you've just come across this story
| and are wondering WTF is going on, you should definitely give
| it a listen!
| 2Pacalypse- wrote:
| Real Science channel on youtube did an episode on horseshoe crabs
| recently that is worth watching:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXVnuG3zO_0
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