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Comment by hayst4ck | Hacker News Reader

I am an unrepentant meat eater, but your visualization was absolutely fantastic.

I would add that (my maybe incorrect napkin math) shows that 5 Americans die per minute to give it scale.

My understanding is also that we destroy an absolutely phenomenal amount of chicks in an entirely gruesome way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling

I have trouble handling that.

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Chick culling is certainly gruesome, but not so shocking to me. It terms of animal suffering, I have seen much worse, still not enough to stop me from eating meat though.

I've seen videos of these chick grinders, from fully live chick to ground meat, it takes something like 1/10 of a second, I am not even sure their brain have time to register what happens before there is no brain anymore. Culling also happens very early, maybe after a day or so after hatching, so early it could almost be called abortion. Considered what happens after that, if I were to reincarnate, I would rather be one of these culled chicks than one that survives...

I think that focus on culled chicks is more because it looks ugly than real concerns about animal welfare.

What happens to birds in the wild? Is it ethically significant that a particular one is predated upon by a human rather than another animal?

The moral objection in this case is less around predation but the fact that humans rear the animals we kill and as such have far more control over their environment and lives. As such the cruelty of their lives and the way they meet their end is absolutely within our control as a choice. Whereas the vast majority if not all other animals aren’t in this position. You can also put this alongside the enormous amount of food waste that occurs in human society.

I think what really hits me about it, is that the male chicks aren't even product. They are just the exhaust out of the meat engine.

It's casual destruction of life because it's a byproduct. It is as good evidence as any that there are no karmic forces and reality does not care.

I agree though. I would rather be the chick than a farmed chicken. In terms of deaths in the animal kingdom, it's probably pretty hard to beat fast and certain without prolonged striving or suffering.

The idea of going full Fargo on little chickens is new to me. And that is the humane way...

There are definitely ways to improve the system to require a bit less cruelty.

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