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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

I have no judgement for people in poorer countries. They gotta do what works for them and I support that. In the USA where I live, animal agriculture is grotesque and torturous, so I don’t eat any animal products. I actually work at a small rural farm which produces plenty of eggs, but even there the chickens are treated as things which produce money more than living creatures. It all seems cruel and unnecessary to me.

It sounds like eating lamb has a material basis in poorer countries (potential lack of food), but in places like the US that is not the case. It is done solely as a “tasty” food product.

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As long as large companies can buy votes through lobbying, the condition of animals will not improve. I’m not a vegetarian but when I see how they’re treated in the US it sickens me a little. Thankfully I don’t live there so I know my chickens and goats are those that I see hanging out in front my house.

Buy from local farms yo... it is a bit pricier, but worth it (from taste alone). Your average grocery store is probably mass grown/produced, but almost every city will have a store or two that sell animals from local small farms. If not, at least farmer's markets will have.

I live in the USA dude... you can chose pasture raised animals here as well. During the early days of the pandemic my sister bought a whole lamb, and 5 pasture raised chickens from a family farm in Massachusetts so our family didn't have to risk going to the grocery store often and risk exposure (my parents are in their mid-ate 70s).

Nothing wrong with eating pasture raised animals from a local family farms. It can be pricier, but if you can afford it, go for it.

Since they forage grass (which captures carbon), they tend to be almost carbon neutral. Your vegan soy beans are probably raised and processed with some intense farming method, using lots of fuel, and are probably more damaging to the environment. Things like vegetarian meat substitute (like beyond meat), are worse to the environment than grass fed/pasture raised animals from small farms.

Also, things like 'almond milk', are very intense users of water, which has become very scarce in central California.

BTW, this is what pastures in Albania look like. 100% natural

http://abroadcooks.blogspot.com/2017/01/albania-tave-kosi.ht...

> Things like vegetarian meat substitute (like beyond meat), are worse to the environment than grass fed/pasture raised animals from small farms.

This is entirely false. Pasture raised animals are generally worse for the environment than feedlot-fed animals, which are already much bad to begin with compared to plant-based foods. You can try to justify it to yourself as “the animals are happier because this is more humane” (which I’m not disregarding, mind you, although I dryly note that not eating animals at all is even better), but from an environmental standpoint raising animals this way is energy intensive and “inefficient”.

I think you have misunderstood me. The parent said that in poorer countries they may have to kill sheep when they are young if there is not enough grass to feed them on in the winter. But we do not have the problem of a lack of animal food in the USA. We eat young sheep ("lamb") simply because they are considered to taste better. It is not due to material lack of animal feed.

Too late to add to my previous comment but if you live in the USA I don’t see what pastures in Albania have to do with anything. I work in a farming town and I see the grass fed cows in the pasture. I’m quite aware of the pastoral views and open air. And then the animals disappear. It’s the disappearing part that I am concerned with. The animal is raised as property and killed to serve us. If you consider that they are sentient beings with as much right to live as you and I, it all seems rather horrible. Even if one believes pasture raised meat is ethical, the majority of meat consumption in the USA comes from factory farms, a truly grotesque operation.

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