One positive aspect of IT is that the cheap foreign labor comes from a country that speaks English, albeit with accents that are completely indecipherable over the phone. I don't think I would handle that HR conversation very well, because we both know that they only hired the non-anglophones because they're cheap. Possibly illegally cheap. I think this SMBC is topical http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3105
A big part of it is that most people don't interact with an animal in real life beyond the family dog. Dogs aren't normal animals. They domesticated us almost as much as we domesticated them. Cattle, pigs, chickens, and rabbits are not dogs. Hell, even with dogs they project their own shit onto it. It's mostly people picking out patterns that aren't there and projecting what they want reality to be onto what actually exists.
Pigs can be pretty pet-like. Factory farming is pretty fucking horrific too, I've been re-evaluating my stance on it all recently. I don't think I'll ever be a vegetarian, and I'm not trying to get on my high horse here, but I at least think people who are against factory faming have a valid position. My two/three year goal is to start hunting and try to get most of my meat from that.
Here's a surprise....I once raised hogs. I had 8 or 9 sows that decided the coldest fucking night of the year was the best time to drop their litters. All at fucking once. Baby fucking pigs everywhere. I was out in the hog house all night putting plastic on the windows, arranging barn heaters, playing pig mid-wife, all the while trying to keep the 700lb boar away, so he wouldn't eat his offspring. Sure, I wasn't trying to save the piglets for humanitarian reasons, I was trying to protect my investment. And my yummy, freshly birthed bacon on the hoof. After I'd done all I could, I went to bed about 4AM. In the morning it looked like someone dropped a bomb that killed only baby pigs in the hog pen. It was a piggy fucking holocaust. How the bloody fuck they all ended up outside is anybody's guess. In the end, I lost about 60 or so baby pigs. 2 hours later, there wasn't a single sign of the dead piglets. The pigs ate them all. I had to collect the surviving 30-40 and put them in another pen so they didn't get eaten as well. Moral of the story? Pigs like pork just as much as we do.
There's nothing good whatsoever about factory farms. The suffering of animals, the mountains of fecal waste, the horrible food they produce. They deserve scorn and scorn is what they shall receive. But attacking a hard-working (and I MEAN hard working) indie farmer for "stealing the unborn offspring of innocent chickens" is just monumentally stupid. Most of these people bust their asses to put food on everyone's table and to read these lazy, sans-pigment hippie fucks trash their way of life is infuriating. Being a vegan is a priviledged, First World-option. Go tell a dirt-poor family of 8 in Mexico that pretentious nonsense about using animals for food and I hope the Vicaras enslave you.
Re: Ground Chuck Seriously though, my mom is a slut. Where is 'wildered when we need a good boom roasted?
I worked on a hog farm for several years. The hogs were treated better than we were. The sows had birthing stalls. Once they gave birth the piglets were moved away from the sows until the entire process was completed.
Are you saying the workers were not provided birthing stalls? That's terrible. You should've filed a complaint.
These "factory farms" you speak of are usually the cleanest facilities you'll find. They're highly efficient and the animals experience very minimal stress, which is huge in meat and dairy production. There really isn't a line between what you consider "factory farms" and "indie farms". Some farms are bigger than others, and the size doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of what it produces. It has everything to do with how they're managed. All of these farms have to follow the same rules. Here's something funny that I heard the other day. There's this huge 8,000 head dairy barn near me, and the place is immaculate. If I were a dairy cow, this is the kind of place I'd want to live. Anyway, the upper management decided they were going to completely stop the use of antibiotics, against the advice of the 10 or so veterinarians that they work with. This way they can sell "higher quality" cheese for a higher price, because people are morons. Their cull rate went from 4% to 60%. That must be some god damned expensive cheese.
I think dairy cows (Holstein and Jersey) are hilarious. They're generally very friendly animals but good golly are they nervous wrecks. Any sudden or sharp movement around them and it scares the shit out of them. They jump, scaring the next cow in the next stall creating this hilarious, instantaneous domino effect that collectively spooks every cow in the barn at once. It's almost like they're a hive mind.
Unless you are talking about chicken farms. I get cage free eggs for free from my Mom(who volunteers at a local park that has free range chickens) and the difference from the shit you buy in the store is huge. Chickens aren't supposed to be crammed 3 in a cage so they can't move. They love to eat bugs and dig up worms from the ground.
In completely unrelated news. This is potentially very interesting, albeit 5 years after the fever pitch was at its highest... http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/boxing/pr ... 34983.html Pacquiao has seemingly lost a bit from his prime, this fight will likely be Mayweather avoiding him around the ring, safely, and not having to worry about some of his previous knockout power.
Am I the only one surprised this discussion is happening? I'd thought more people would take a different viewpoint and be indifferent to the whole topic. This place is starting to sound like a fucking farmers market.
The discussion also sort of weirdly comes to this; you got domesticated food-purpose animals, and then you have people introduce the new concept of certain animals being "pets". For example, horses still toe, or hoof if you will, the line between pet and livestock. And animals the typical Western world considers pets now were traditionally considered food animals. Take guinea pigs, domesticated by South American Indians for food and rabbits, domesticated by ancient Europeans for food. It's a weird paradigm. Also, factory farming and the butchery process for food animals is highly humane, it's violent but of course it is going to be. Having seen how various other carnivores or omnivores kill their prey, I can honestly say I'd rather take a bullet or bolt to the brain. Spoiler or Spoiler Now what's more, you can't argue that humans weren't designed to eat both plants and animals. Our big brains and bipedal movement was needed to persistence hunt both large and small prey, and of course to forage for edible plant matter.