How the Meat Industry Thinks About Non-Meat-Eaters | Hacker News Reader

How the Meat Industry Thinks About Non-Meat-Eaters

theatlantic.com

18 pointssergeant317 comments

> "they're in the business because they see what they’re doing as something more than just making meat products. They see themselves as feeding people, feeding the world, feeding their community"

Ahhh, except there are multiple states in the US where it's illegal to film inside an industrial meat-farm. Even if the video shows illegal acts, the person taking the video will be charged, not the doers of the crime.

When it's come to that, I think it's pretty obvious the people involved know they are not "feeding their community" like it gives them warm fuzzies or something.

> "But fundamentally, one thing about people in the meat industry is that they’re not going to be in the meat industry by accident. It’s a self-selecting group. People who work in the meat industry, whether it is on the line or in the small butcher shop, or on the ranches, or in the big processing plants with all kinds of robots and things, they're in the business because they see what they’re doing as something more than just making meat products. They see themselves as feeding people, feeding the world, feeding their community."

This is highly presumptuous of him to imagine all the people in the industry as a self-selecting group, and ignores how the poorer classes usually get into it, because they aren't able to get anything else, for long hours of highly repetitive work in an environment that poses various kinds of risks, physical and emotional.

> "And the other thing is that people in the industry know the science. They’re in the barns with the birds, or with the animals, and they know how the birds wind up on the shackles, on the production line. They’ve got degrees in this, and they know what the meat science is, and they know what antibiotics are for, and why they’re used. So a lot of people in the industry wonder why they have to defend themselves when people who do not know as much as they do about the science of meat processing are telling them they’re wrong."

Again, generalization does not help. Claiming that they're all experts and know what they're doing, as if to allude that it isn't harmful in different ways (it affects all other people due to the relatively higher environmental destruction too).

> "Have you ever seen the eyelashes on a cow? I mean, they’re just adorable. Big eyes, and these long lashes—how can you do anything to harm this little creature? I get it. Even people who really love meat don’t want to talk about how it gets to their plate."

This ending is probably the most honest part of the entire interview. And this attitude applies to many other ills that humans create for humankind.

I completely agree with your comment about selection for working class people working in the meat industry. Often, it's not what they would choose. I have friends who grew up in the Midwest US where the largest employer (easily half the population) was a meat packing plant. For many in highschool it was perceived that "the meat" was the only choice for those who remained in town (e.g. didn't leave for college).

At the same time, I disagree with your other point. Although, I've never really known anyone who liked the industrially mechanized meat industry, I do know individuals who enjoy raising and eating those animals. I've raised chickens for eggs... other family eat the pullets. Friends raise pigs, and other friend's kids enjoy raising pigs and cattle. My group of friends enjoy buying buying meat from them and their friends, exactly because we know where it came from. I know hunters for both deer and pheasant. I know many fishermen.

What I don't know are people who want to know that the food they eat (including vegetable) was industrially farmed without care or concern. Whether it's tasteless heavily fertilized veggies, herbicided soy, fumigated strawberries, or hundred carcass ground beef, it's disturbing. The distance of packaged food is welcome then. Although, I also know some people who would refuse most preprocessed food (e.g. cooked, prepared, packaged), unless it was from a friend or acquaintance.

*Her

Thanks for pointing that out. My comment is past the edit window now, and so I can't change it. I'm embarrassed to have used the masculine pronoun without paying attention because I wouldn't want to assume or make incorrect inferences. I skimmed through the article and didn't pay as much attention to the introduction and names of the interviewer and interviewee. Lesson learned! Thanks again!

I thought the article would be about how the meat industry feels about vegetarians. Instead, it was a general overview of the meat industry, it's declining employment, and a description of of the working environment... I would be interested to know what meat producers really think of non-meat eaters. Do they look down on them? I'm a vegetarian and take an "each to their own" approach to other people's eating habits. Yet, every so often, I'm made to feel a bit awkward at social gatherings when the host has prepared mostly non veg food, or if my friends have picked a mostly non veg restaurant. They take it almost as an insult that I won't eat the food, or sometimes I get the impression they think I'm just trying to be difficult!

Eh, that's normal human behaviour.

I've found that if you're engaging in a behaviour that has a positive value judgement associated with it (dieting or eating healthier, exercise, etc), if people find out and do not share that behaviour, it often puts them on the defensive (they're not doing it, too, therefore they are somehow lacking).

This is exacerbated by the fact that a vocal subset of people engaging in those behaviours talk about it in order to either virtue signal or brag to others those who don't.

After that it's all about protecting the ego. The vegetarian is seen as an inconvenience. The dieter is teased for not eating desert with everyone else. The people who don't go to the gym start explaining all the reasons why they hate gyms and the people in them.

And I'm hardly immune. One of my friends is extremely fit and I caught myself teasing him about it as a consequence of my own envy and insecurities. I hope I've since stopped but it's a pretty basic human behaviour as far as I can tell.

The article shares little-to-nothing about its headline claim.

Yeah, it's an interview with the editor of a magazine that's targeted at the higher-ups in the meat industry. They talk about the state of the meat industry, risks, developments etc.

The only statement in regards to non-meat-eaters is that the "anti-meat-folks" are better at marketing than the meat industry, because the meat industry never really had to do advertising.

NB: This is part of a new series on trade publications that the author is ramping up:

"The conversation that follows is the first installment of “Tricks of the Trade,” a series of interviews with the editors of trade publications, and it has been edited for length and clarity."

It could be a good series to follow depending upon the publications.

I would like to assume, but can only hope, that this kind of article in a not too distant future will be read by all with the same kind of shuddering disgust which it already provokes in some of us - a horrifying reminder of an asshole era. "They killed on a hyper-industrial scale, without mercy, without refinement, but with high tech, and they were proud of it".

I've recommended this one before - the mockumentary "Carnage: Swallowing the past" [1] is a good take on such a future. Those in the UK can watch it on BBC. [2]

[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6667360/

[2]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04sh6zg

Wish the interview talked about how the meat industry can make the slaughter process as pain free as possible. We are talking about billions of animals, and any improvement in the process could reduce a lot of suffering.

It's a big topic and a business line for manufacturers. CO2 stunning, for example: http://m.meatpoultry.com/Writers/Other-Contributors/CAS-syst...

That was a good article. I've come across Temple Grandin before. She seems to have a positive opinion of CAS with the important proviso that induction is done right.

If such efforts at reducing suffering become the industry standard, with the standards backed by legislation requiring pain free death, it would be a very, very big deal.

Even for humans, many people fear the pain associated with death more than the death itself.

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