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Comment by throwawayk7h | Hacker News Reader

The suffering of test animals is a tiny decimal point compared to the suffering of factory farmed animals, which produce 99% of the animal products humans eat. Literally 50 billion chickens a year in the most inhumane conditions imaginable for their entire lives. Over one billion pigs per year. They die in horrible 9/11-like conditions.

Edit: I used to dismiss all that since I figured animals don't have enough neurons or intelligence or whatever for their pain to matter. A quote from Ozy Brennan[1] (five paragraphs down from this hyperlink, though BB's commentary here is important too) changed my mind. TL;DR: intelligence is almost certainly not relevant to feeling pain, and the same pain pathways that exist in the human brain exist in other animals too.

[1] https://benthams.substack.com/i/151605056/2-intensely-what-a...

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+1. Highly recommend people read “Animal Liberation Now” (“Now”) being the 2023 version of “Animal Liberation” from the 70s.

I became vegetarian after reading the original book, and more recently _mostly_ vegan after reading “Now”. (Still a work in progress as it’s only been a few weeks and takes time to adjust my diet).

Factory Farming is definitely horrendous and it’s not only for the animals killed for meat. Animals kept for egg or milk are essentially mistreated during their entire (short) lives.

Trying to go vegan because of this, but then I realize halfway through the yogurt I am eating that it is based on milk and is not vegan in the slightest, even though it is considered vegetarian. There is always tomorrow.

There really is. And it's worth making the effort! Wishing you luck.

Another option is to go organic. There is organic yoghurt, milk, eggs and of course meat. At least you know that the animals have had a better life.

Yeah that is good when shopping at a local grocery store, but more difficult when you want to make good choices at the local coffee shop, which has more limited options even though they do have some available that are vegan or/and organic.

Sadly that is not entirely true. Many farms will make such claims.. until secret “inspections” happen and you realize they are skirting around the rules.

In theory yes it’s better, in practice, not always.

You're still doing more than most, and if everyone in the world made choices like yours it would still cash out in massive changes to animal welfare even if it was short of 100% perfect.

I think an unfortunate thing that has poisoned too much of the talk of animal welfare has been what I consider a small minded and frankly frivolous accusation of hypocrisy. The "hypocrisy" is the price of agreeing to be accountable to a much higher standard. The "consistency" of not even bothering to try is not morally preferable.

Trying to go plant-based too much at once is really difficult and almost always leads people to this all or nothing mentality (and speak for you directly obviously—just my observations).

I’d love to see people take a statistical model. I currently get 50% of calories or maybe protein from animals. If I reduce that to 40%, what would that look like? Maybe 1 fully-plant-based meal a week? That way I can test out a recipe or learn how to make tofu yummy.

Or maybe you’ve heard “I can’t live without steak” or “cheese.” Well, trend towards plant-based except for steak or cheese (while not increasing your consumption of that).

+1. I phased out meat over almost like 6 months before being completely vegetarian. It made the transition much easier when I did this about 12 years ago.

I eliminated types of meat (e.g no more chicken, then no more beef, etc). Slowly adapting my diet over time.

I think that made it easier to stick with it.

I am still allowing myself to make an occasional mistake, because if you do not read the ingredients carefully it can be hard to say what is (for example, finding out a brand name chicken ramen bowl is artificial chicken and is actually vegan friendly) and what is not vegan (for example, a brand name candy I previously enjoyed, sadly), but rather than giving up I hit the reset button and start again the next day until I get it right. Everyone gets a mistake!

Doing less than 100% is not a "mistake." Self-castigation only undermines your efforts. The change you do make still matters. I have started aiming at 80% because it is attainable. Doing so sets an example for others that it doesn't need to be a radical lifestyle change, which in net terms may be more effective than doing 100% but scaring people off by making it look unattainable and uncomfortable.

I quit animal products pretty abruptly and on a personal level I wouldn't say doing it all at once is necessarily the difficult part. I was unprepared for the sudden lop-sidedness in favour of needing to plan and prepare meals. The shift to not being able to eat unprocessed on-the-go and restaurant meals because the plant-based options were mediocre to non-existent is quite drastic. I've gotten used to accompanying people who are eating without partaking myself.

Go at your own pace. It's more important to succeed a little than to risk failing. Cheese and yogurt still lack really great vegan alternatives. But I switched to oat milk, which lasts longer, is cheaper, and (IMO) tastes better, and I haven't looked back.

Wait until you're comfortable with the changes you've made, and only then introduce more.

Flax eggs are a good substitute for eggs in many recipes.

If you end up needing to keep dairy, you can do things like only buy dairy from 100% grass-fed, pasture-raised cows. Cheese from Europe is more likely to meet (or approach) that criterion, and yogurt is very easy to make, especially if you have a temperature controller (though it's not critical).

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

Quantitatively, yes, but some of the things allowed in pharmaceutical research are more horrible than anything in farming. I'm skeptical that we're any closer to replacing animal cruelty in pharmaceutical research than we are to doing so in meat production -- articles like this understate the difficulties -- but I hope I'm wrong.

On the contrary I would say. Animal welfare laws explicitly exclude farm animals, while animal scientific research at least requires an ethics panel review, etc. The types of farms in the US that house many many animals, and hence end up in the majority of the meat supply, often have a truly dire existence before death.

Vegan food is like Star Trek replicators. It is the future. Can’t wait for vertical farms and world being overwhelmed with beans and fruits all picked by AI floating robots.

It is funny how future is here yet it takes centuries to come. Human’s still sticking to their slaughter instead of using replicators. Klingon much.

Lab-grown meat is starting to become feasible and it's already being turned into a cultural issue just like electric cars were. It's pretty embarrassing.

Ok factory farming has some appalling quality of life issues for the animals but I'm really struggling to figure out what the comparison is to 9/11 unless you're just a troll.

Frankly, with how pigs are killed, they could have said the holocaust and it would have made more sense (at least to me)

"The Horror of Unfathomable Pain" [1]

[1] https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-horror-of-unfathomable-p...

I can't find it (looked for 10 minutes), but there was an article at some point talking about a video that activists took after sneaking into a certain slaughterhouse. It showed cows (or was it pigs?) being put in a cage and slowly lowered down into a pit full of hot smoky gas. They were freaking out all along the way down, and as they were being pushed into the cages. Call me pathetic but it made me think of the people having to choose between burning to death and jumping to death, except in this case there was no choice at all for the animal. And no more than a few thousand people died this way on 9/11, but at just that one slaughterhouse probably orders of magnitude more animals have died in that way.

Here's a recent one about the CO2 stunner at UW-Madison, where a student snuck in and recorded it being used on pigs.

https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2026/09/uw-madison-gra...

I love that you posted this. Going to listen to Propagandhi now.

Not just their living conditions, but their cruel slaughter in the name of religion ought to get banned, too. Countries claiming to have animal welfare laws, roll out special exemptions for religion for killing them in a fashion than can only be described as deliberately cruel.

To the larger point, all exemptions in the name of religion must stop. You don't get special treatment just because you read Harry Potter.

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