Login to Change.org
Create an Account
Allen Sneed
Recent Activity
-
Allen commented on the article |I'm with you on not breeding more humans when we alreayd have more than we can feed. My wife and I do not have kids and plan to adopt instead of breed if we ever do decide to have kids. Check out the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. You might find more ammo for your position there.
-
Allen commented on the article |
L.S. Hope, I don't understand what you are talking about. I haven't said anything at all regarding the rightness or wrongness of eating or not eating meat other than a passing reference about the unsustainable amounts of meat eaten in this country. I also haven't said anything regarding animal rights. I said that most industrial farmers don't seem to know anything about farming anymore. As an example, I pointed out how this Mr. Hurst guy doesn't know anything about pigs or turkeys yet claims to be an expert on the topic. If I haven't acknowledged any of your points, perhaps it is because I don't understand what your point is.
From reading your comments, you seem to be saying that organic agriculture won't work because we've been using chemical fertilizers and pesticides for so long that we can't afford to not use them now. That may be true, but when the oil runs out we are going to have to find another way to farm, so why not start now? At least, why not support farmers who are making an effort to be more sustainable? Mr. Hurst, and other industrial farmers, seem to prefer to attack the sustainable agriculture movement by saying those who oppose industrial agriculture are naive or stupid. I was simply pointing out that Mr. Hurst and other industrial farmers are the ones who seem to be naive or stupid.
You also seem to be saying that the main problem with the human food supply is import/export laws. As I mentioned before, I agree that import/export laws are part of the problem.
-
Allen commented on the article |
L.S. Hope, I don't think having a discussion about any topic, including vegetarianism vs. omnivorism, is the same as "shoving" beliefs down people's throats. People can have polite and civil discussions, even when they disagree. If some people don't want to participate in such a discussion or debate, they are free not to.
-
Allen commented on the article |
I suppose my concept of sustainable agriculture is agriculture that can be sustained indefinitely. Using petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides cannot be sustained and is therefore unsustainable. Wasting edible food crops on farm animals cannot sustain a growing human population, and is therefore unsustainable. Sorry, I'm not sure what you don't understand about my use of the term.
-
Allen commented on the article |Hi Margaret,
Let me start by saying I think it is great that you rescued some animals from horrible factory farms and now treat them much better. Good for you!
I’m curious though… you say that your goats are like “family” and are treated very well. You say that their utters would pop if they weren’t milked and that it wouldn’t have been a problem when their babies were here but now that they are weaned it is not an option. Where are your goats’ babies? Were they sold for slaughter? If so, that is one of the points of contention here. The only reason your goats need to be milked is because someone took their babies away from them so they could be slaughtered for meat. People don’t usually sell their family member’s babies to be slaughtered.
I’m also curious to know how you feel when you kill a chicken or a duck who was formerly treated like a member of the family? Do you do the killing yourself or do you pay someone else to do it? If you do the killing, do you feel like you are betraying the trust of these animals? I mean, they trusted you to take care of them and to love them and then you betrayed them and either killed them yourself or had them killed, right? How does that make you feel?
If you learned that you could be perfectly healthy without having to betray the trust of your dear animals, what would you say? Would you adopt a healthy vegan lifestyle to save the lives of your beloved goats, chickens and ducks? Why or why not?
I’m not trying to be rude. I am just trying to understand your perspective. I could never bring myself to slit by dogs throat. Once I realized there is no meaningful difference between my dog and the cows, pigs, chickens and other animals I was eating, I was very upset. If I didn’t feel comfortable with someone killing my beloved dog to eat then why was I comfortable with someone killing any other animal for me to eat. I felt guilty and hypocritical. At first I tried to bury my guilt with excuses, as most people do. But once I discovered that people don’t need to eat meat or drink milk to be healthy I was truly relieved. I learned that by adopting a vegan lifestyle I am no longer contributing to the needless suffering and deaths of farm animals anymore.
If you were to adopt a vegan lifestyle you could let your goats nurse their kids for as long as necessary and then allow them to stay together as a family. You could let your chickens and ducks live out their lives with love and care and never have to betray their trust again. It’s really quite easy. I can help you if you want.
-
Allen commented on the article |
Cheryl, thanks for your comment. I mostly agree with you. However, overpopulation is not a myth. 6 billion people on the planet is about 5 billion too many. But you are right to say that we could feed about 10 billion people on the planet if all food resources were distributed fairly, if sustainable agriculture practices were used and if people in western countries reduced their meat and dairy intake by about 90% or more.
-
Allen commented on the article |
I agree the main issue is overpopulation and lack of access to locally grown sustainable food. The solution is not industrial agriculture, which will only make the problem worse in the long run, but instead combined sustainable agriculture and population reduction efforts.
What I am pointing out is that too many so called farmers don't know what they are talking about and yet still profess some expertise. To make matters worse, these idiots then try to counter the arguments made by sustainable agriculture advocates with nonesense about how we "just don't understand how things work."
I'm saying that we should dismiss "farmers" like Mr. Hurst who believe that turkeys would drown in the rain if they aren't crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy dark warehouses (which is absurdely false) or that clear cutting forests and dumping toxic chemicals on our food and environment is ever appropriate.
-
Allen commented on the article |
Yes, I think it would be much better if people hunted pigs who were able to run freely, turn around and lay down comfortably before they were killed. I think that is much better than paying "farmers" to confine intelligent and social animals to a space barely bigger than their own bodies for their whole lives and driving them to madness. Or better yet, why eat pigs at all? It isn't exactly healthy.
The "slaughterhouse" industry does not provide any accommodations for animals except for temporary holding stalls where the animals wait to be killed after they are offloaded from trucks. Perhaps you meant to say the pork "farming" industry might be able to provide better accommodations for pigs if we didn’t import so much pork? I don’t really think that is true. Most of the imported pork is still produced by Smithfields and other multi-national corporations. The industry exploits cheap labor in Mexico and other poverty stricken areas which allows for cheaper pork. If people bought only domestic pork the industry would still rely on immigrant labor (as it does now) and would seek to cut costs in order to maximize profits. The cost cutting is almost always done at the expense of the animals and the labor force. The cost cuts don’t translate to the customer, they just line the pockets of industry executives and shareholders.
My statement that farmers are ignorant may be an over-generalization. I admit there are a few farmers who may know a thing or two. But in my experience, the vast majority of so called farmers either have no formal education and simply do as they have been taught or they have Ag degrees and simply do as they have been taught. If they have been taught that gestation crates keep mother pigs from rolling over on or eating their piglets then they accept that as a fact and don’t’ question it. They then perpetuate the lie to defend their obscene practices (to themselves and others). If they were not so ignorant, they would realize that the reason mother pigs sometimes eat their piglets is because they are driven insane in horrendous and unnatural conditions on industrial farms.
Modern farmers seem to have forgotten how to farm. They don't seem to know a thing about the animals they raise or the land that they cultivate. They’ve bought the lie that has been sold to them by the very people who have pushed most small scale family farmers out of business. One hundred years ago nearly fifty percent of Americans lived and worked on farms. Now only 2 percent of Americans work on farms. Unsustainable, profit-driven practices have made a lot of money for a few corporate executives and their shareholders and have driven the actual farmers and laborers out of business. The animals are treated as mere production units instead of living beings with natural needs and behaviors. The ever more depleted environment upon which we all depend has become a waste disposal pit. Farmers are now wholly dependant on Big Ag corporations and loans to even stay afloat. What, if not ignorance, has allowed so many farmers to be used like such powerless pawns? What, if not ignorance, has prompted so called farmers to defend such indefensible practices as factory farming? Greed perhaps? Well, yes, they are greedy. But their ignorance has made it so that only a very few actually profit.
Don’t get me wrong. I think American consumers are just as ignorant about the realities behind modern farming as are the “farmers.” And they are just as greedy too. American consumers tend to look at unit price as the sole determinate in choosing which items to purchase. If its cheap, they want it. It doesn’t matter how it was produced and the externalized costs and damage to the environment, to animals, to our health and to humanity as a whole are ignored. All that matters is that we can get those 99 cent bacon double cheeseburgers. Forget deforestation, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, and skyrocketing health care costs. Just let the farmers keep doing what they are doing. They must know what they are doing, right? They are farmers. Don't farmers know the right way to farm by mere instinct? Well, no. They don't. And I don't think it is unreasonable for so called "agri-intellectuals" who have actually done independent research to correct farmers who are doing it wrong.
You mention import/export laws and of course there are a lot of factors that come into play in this equation. But when so called “farmers” answer the industry’s call to defend the status quo against the onslaught of sustainable farming advocates who are actually working to level the playing field for responsible and intelligent farmers… well, I say it is these people who are biting the hand that feeds. Intelligent farmers come out in favor of industrial farming reform. Intelligent farmers realize that you can't continue to feed a growing population by using unsustainable practices. In fact, using unustainable practices to feed a growing population just means more people will starve when we finally do run out of resources (or pollute and destroy the resources we have).
-
Allen commented on the article |
It seems to me that Blake Hurst, like many modern farmers, is out of touch with reality and knows very little about the animals about which he claims expertise. First of all, the idea that turkeys will look up into the rain and drown is simply false. Unlike people, turkeys have eyes on the side of their heads so they would have to tilt their head to the side to look up into the sky at the rain and then her nose would be pointed in such a way that rainwater could not drip down in it. If a turkey tilted her head skyward in such a way that rain could get in her nose she would still be looking to the side, not up at the rain.
Like most birds, turkeys are actually quite smart. Unfortunately, the people who raise them for food are not usually so smart. For example, domestic turkeys have been bred to grow so big and fat that they can barely walk. Whereas wild turkeys can fly and like to roost in trees, domestic turkeys are too fat to fly. They are also too fat to breed on their own anymore. That all has to be done manually now. Seriously, tom turkeys are masterbated and then the hens are artificially insemenated. What kind of idiot farmers breed turkeys to be so fat that they need to be masterbated every year just to keep farming them?
In any case, I would be willing to bet that the 4,000 turkeys who drowned on Mr. Hurst’s friend's farm were simply too fat. Most domestic turkeys are so fat they can barely walk on dry ground much less wet, muddy ground. The turkey’s Mr. Hurst is referring to probably drowned because they were fenced in and unable to take shelter. If there was shelter, they were probably so fat that they couldn’t walk through the mud to get to it. So, the turkeys drowned because of the farmers' stupidity, not their own.
Moving on…
Contrary to Mr. Hurst’s claim, the “good citizens of California” outlawed gestation crates for pigs, not farrowing crates. A gestation crate is a metal cage so small that a pig can’t turn around, take a step forward or backward, or even lie down comfortably. Breeding sows are kept in these crates for their entire pregnancy. Many of these intelligent and social animals develop painful sores and neurotic behaviors (like cannabilism) caused by severe stress, boredom and fear. Breeding sows are literally driven insane by gestation crates.
Pig farmers don’t keep pregnant pigs in gestation crates to keep them from rolling over on their piglets. They do it to save space and money. There is no danger of a gestating pig rolling over on her piglets because, by definition, a gestating pig's piglets are tucked safely inside her womb. On industrial pig farms, when a gestating pig is about to give birth she is moved to a farrowing stall. Farrowing stalls were not banned in California, or anywhere else for that matter. A farrowing stall is a little bigger than a gestation crate and gives mother pigs just enough room to lie down and nurse her piglets (through bars).
Although piglets would normally nurse for about 17 weeks, industrial raised piglets are taken from their mothers when they are 2 or 3 weeks old and put into finishing pens where they are fattened up to 250 pounds and for slaughter at 5 or 6 months old. The mothers are almost immediately re-impregnated and put back into gestation crates. Once their bodies are too worn out from having so many babies, they too are sent to slaughter, usually when they are only 3 years old.
In nature, pigs usually have about 6-7 piglets at a time. The mother pig will have spent a good amount of time building a nest for her piglets and preparing for their birth. Once born, the piglets form a “teat order” in which each piglet gets a specific teat from which to nurse. In nature, pigs are actually very devoted and loving mothers. They learn how to care for their young from their own mothers. A mother pig and her female offspring will typically live together for life. In nature, mother pigs never roll over on their piglets and never eat their young. They are very loving and careful mothers. In the wild, mother sows have even been known to share nursing duties with each other. Demonstrating a dynamic communal effort in pig societies, one sow may stay behind to “babysit” to the piglets while the others spend time foraging for food.
But unlike wild pigs, modern industrial pigs have been bred to give birth to about 15-20 piglets at a time. Since modern industrial pigs were not raised by their own mothers, they haven’t learned how to cow for their piglets and are often confused when they give birth. Driven mad by close confinement in a gestation crate and by being unable to root in the ground or build a nest for her piglets, industrial pigs are not ideal candidates for parenthood. If they don’t have enough room to move around they can become frustrated and may inadvertently squash their piglets. Also, since there are many more piglets than there are mother teat’s from which to nurse, the proper “teat order” cannot be established. Some mother pigs, driven mad from the stress of confinement and unnatural conditions, may eat their piglets. So, Mr. Hurst is right that farrowing stalls keep mother pigs from crushing their piglets or eating them. But if allowed to live as nature intended, mother pigs don’t squash their piglets or eat them anyway.
Sadly, most people, even “industrial farmers” know so very little about farming nowadays that these crazy notions about drowning turkeys or stupid mother pigs are widespread. It is easy for the average person to be mislead by farmers and just as easy for farmers to be misinformed about their own practices. Contrary to Mr. Hursts claim, it is usually the so called “agri-intellectuals” who have done the research and who know how animals normally behave and how eco-systems are supposed to function. These are the people to pay attention to, not the ignorant farmers who think they know something just because they are farmers. More often than not these so-called “farmers” are just doing what they have been told to do and haven’t given it much independent consideration or study.
-
Allen commented on the article |
Well said Olivia! For every fleeting moment of "eat or be eaten" there are hundreds or thousands of moments of joy and pleasure. The fact that pain and suffering are facts of life does not mean we should contribute to it or cause others pain and suffering, especially when we don't need to.
When vegans describe what we eat we can be completely honest about it without any qualms or guilt. We can even describe our foods in gorey detail. "I bit into the flesh of an apple" or "I ripped a carrot from the ground and ate it" or "I tore a lettuce leaf off of a plant and chewed it up." But when meat eaters describe what they eat they tend to use euphemisms or otherwise hide the truth of what their "food" is. "I had veal for dinner" instead of "I cut a baby calf's throat and then ate his flesh" or "I love cheese" instead of "I love to eat the rotted excretions from a cow's teat" or "I had scrambled eggs for breakfast" instead of "I ate a scrambled chicken period this morning." If you can't honestly and accurately describe your food or where it comes from without grossing people out or sounding cruel, then maybe their is something wrong with what you are eating.
Impact
0 Actions
0 Recruits