Hi, I escaped from r/solarpunk. Content Warning, this post is about raising animals for their meat, so may be upsetting to some. I’m putting this under farming because I couldn’t identify a better community (maybe food?) but I’d be happy to move this topic into a new, specific community if that can be done.
Something that’s been going in my mind for a bit is the role of backyard farming and homesteading in solarpunk. First caveat, I think vegetarianism/veganism for 99-100% of the diet of 99% of the population is a fantastic goal, but I think we need to have solutions for the interim where society is still coming around to the idea. Even people who want the best for the planet and animals might be intimidated by the prospect of veganism or even vegetarianism, whether or not they have sound reason for this.
While we’re still reliant on animal meat, I think that moving our animal raising from big factory farms into local smallholdings or even our backyards would help immensely. On one hand, the welfare of a factory-farmed chicken pales in comparison to that of a chicken who grew up knowing love and foraging. Also, each meat-based meal that is grown at home or on a well-run smallholding diverts business from the factory farms that are killing our planet.
Quite frankly, I’m hoping to own chickens soon, mostly so I can have fresh/ethical eggs and share the same eggs with my community. But I’m not averse to raising chickens for meat either. In fact, my goal would be to stop eating meat entirely unless it came from my flock or a flock that I knew first hand was cared for to the same standards.
In my eyes, meat should be something you eat as a treat, and only if you can psychologically grapple with how it got to your plate and give due respect to the animal who provided it.
There’s a lot I’d like to discuss about this, and I think it’s important to discuss. I know the subject of veganism or lack thereof can get heated, but I think we need to have these hard conversations if we want to come together as a community with proper solutions for the future.
So tl:dr; does discussion of home-reared meat belong here? If so, does this align with anyone else’s goals?
Sure, why not?
Solarpunk is not explicitly vegan or vegetarian, in fact it strongly objects to attempts to put the blame for climate-change and environmental destruction on individual actions aka “don’t use plastic straws” etc. that just distract from where the real problems are.
In this case, the problem is IMHO clearly the industrial meat production and the resulting meat over-consumption of our societies and not the chickens someone grows in their backyard for small-scale consumption.
I think you will be fine posting here, but please don’t get into arguments with people in /c/vegan.
Hey, I created c/vegan on this instance, but think this is a reasonable discussion!
I would want to reduce any reliance on animals to a minimum, but I also think some animals can contribute to a healthy ecosystem and reduce other negative contributions drastically. Likely those animals are not the ones predominantly found in industrial animal farming.
I don’t see anything wrong with eating an animal generally, but the way most meat is oroduced appals me and I realized that I can do without animal products quite well, so I feel obliged to continue doing that.
This sums up how I feel almost to a T. I also feel like continuing to raise meat animals contributes to the tapestry of breeds that exist, which like you say, aren’t the ones predominately farmed. We raise a lot of one kind of chicken, whose breed currently eludes me, on factory farms. But a home grower can preserve heritage breeds by way of raising and breeding their own food, and I think that’s really neat. I do wonder what a fully vegan society would do in order to preserve the diversity of breeds that currently only exist because of historical meat needs (imagine a chicken zoo!), but that’s a whole hypothetical rabbit hole…
I’m honestly tempted to start a community on this subject, but I’ll refrain for now while I learn the ropes of Lemmy. I do think separating it from “food” and/or “farming” would be the kindest thing for the vegans here though, folks who want to avoid those discussions should be safe here of all places.
Are you in favor of animal rights? What is veganism to you?
I don’t see anything wrong with eating an animal generally […]
Does that include killing them for food, or are you talking about eating something like roadkill?
In the context of the post, I mainly mean eating the animals that lived on your farm and die from natural causes
Also I don’t want to do that, but I think this can be a reasonable thing to do for others
In the context of the post, I mainly mean eating the animals that lived on your farm and die from natural causes
Mainly? What else do you mean then? In my opinion the only way meat could be considered vegan is if the animal dies of natural causes, by accident, or by euthenasia that is genuinely in their best interest. Would you agree with that?
Mainly? What else do you mean then?
Your point with roadkill would be a similar thought (and there are more for sure). While the morality of driving metal boxes at high speed that way too often kill people and animals is a whole other issue though.
I would never consider meat to be vegan, no matter the circumstances.
I also think it is immoral to eat an animal, period. In my previous answer I used “nothing wrong”, by that I don’t mean it is moral to do so. I just meant it is natural to a degree.
For me personally, it comes down to: An animal should not be raised for my consumption in any form (but I also have the privilege to easily do so, therefore I feel obligated to)
Thanks for this input! (I especially agree regarding the blaming-the-individual thing, that’s part of why I love solarpunk)
And yeah no worries, I have no desire to argue with my comrades in arms.
I think its an interesting topic. Sometimes I wish there was a term for someone who critically thinks about what they consume/eat. Maybe there is and I just know the term?
Full disclaimer: I’ve been vegan for 20+ years now, but I’m not going to make the assertion that everyone who critically thinks about what they eat and the ethics of what they eat, are going to come to the same conclusion as I have and decide to be vegan. IMHO critically thinking about things is the most important part.
I think your goal of raising chickens for eggs *and * meat is a realistic one. IMHO including meat as a part of the egg process is necessary. I often see people trying to raise chickens for eggs but not meat and it seems complicated. You have to buy sexed chicks which generally is a part of the industrial meat complex (the very thing people are often raising chickens to avoid) and inevitably your going to end up with roosters even with sexed chicks. Then your spending all these resources on food for the rooster just because keeping it alive is more “humane”. To me meat/death is just a part of the process, so why try and remove it.
I’m really curious if there is a term for it, I don’t think there is, at least I’ve never heard it! It seems like a lot of the homesteading/home-reared food community is strangely at odds with solarpunk, more reactionary and doomsday-preppy than hopeful for a good future, so I’d love to find a term to build this kind of caring, critical food community around.
Also I really agree about how we need to include meat as part of the egg process, for the reasons you list. It is very complicated to raise chickens for “just eggs” ethically. Most chicks can’t even be sexed until quite a few weeks have passed, and even those that can be sexed on day 1, well you need a plan for the male chicks. It’s one thing to say “well I just buy the female chicks from my supplier” but then I feel you need to grapple with what’s happening to the male counterparts. And personally, I’d rather grapple with them myself so I know they’re treated well.
There’s a huge phenomenon around this time of year when everyone’s posting on facebook to “please rehome my lovely rooster, free to good home”. They simply hatch a half dozen chicks and let someone else deal with the roosters, which no matter how often they say “good/pet homes only” realistically most people only have room for a rooster if they plan to eat him. So basically they get to feel good about not killing their roosters… because someone else, whom they have no governance over, is doing it.
But yeah, my opinion is that death is inevitable, and therefor so is meat (much like you say). In the cases where it needs to be at human hands, I’d rather they were mine.
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Thank you for this response, I’m admittedly a chicken noob still so I really appreciate this deeper dive. (And just, full agree on it being HOA nonsense. I’m fortunate enough to be in the UK where we don’t seem to have HOAs and have better protection for backyard chicken keepers. But even then the NIMBYs of the world will unite against a rooster…)
I had no idea about the issue with female chicks not being reliable for sex-linking down generational lines, but it makes a lot of sense. And I feel the same about not wanting to rely on hatcheries, but then that’s more because I do want to get into the breeding crossbreeding side of things in its own right.
Yeah I feel like I wouldn’t be bothered if they were coming at rooster “rehoming” through the lens of “Well I have enough birds for my family, maybe someone else needs some” (after all sharing is very solarpunk!) but it’s always as you say, “please don’t eat him” like its shameful to nourish another living creature.
Anyways I think you’ve summed up how I feel about it in general, I want to collaborate with animals and live with them the way we would if we hadn’t tried to separate ourselves from “the beasts” philosophically. We’re not intrinsically better creatures, we’re just really, REALLY good at tools and words, and I think we should stay in sync with nature.
Whoops, I screwed up some info in that post so lemme try and redeem myself.
I screwed up the chicken chromosomes… The Rooster has ZZ and the hen has ZW. When I was typing it up, I was like… “hey is this right? This is right, right?” I should have just checked…
Anyway, it’s only relevant to sex link chicken breed hybrids and has practically nothing to do with a typical breed. I was just trying to demonstrate that sex links (which can be sexed reliably at day one) don’t solve anything about the surplus male chicks, and only results in one generation of chicks which can be reliably sexed.
Here’s a quick punnett square, I guess. The barred gene is located on the Z chromosome.
So a barred hen has ZW in this example and a solid non barred rooster has zz, just for legibility. So the males resulting from the breeding of a solid rooster to a barred hen would inherit one barred Z from the hen and one solid z from the rooster.
Z W z Zz zW z Zz zW However, the resulting chicks cannot be used to produce more sex linked chickens. The female chicks have no barred Z, and the males have only one solid z. Barred to solid doesn’t work as it results in all chicks being barred.
z W Z Zz ZW Z Zz ZW But yeah… I mean, if it doesn’t matter if you have female or male chicks, because you have purposes for both, then you don’t need to sex them so quick, so you can just have a normal, sustainable breeding population.
Meat birds like cornish cross have this same problem. You can’t reliably have a cornish cross through breeding cornish crosses. I mean, there’s more problems with cornish crosses than that, as typically they’re not able to reach breeding age, anyway. When they live much longer than their intended slaughter date, they usually have heart attacks or break their legs. It’s also possible to overfeed them to weights that will crush their organs.
I got my rooster for free, and didn’t end up eating him. I’m allowed to keep roosters and he does a good job looking after his flock. And, I want fertile eggs. So, not every free rooster finds himself in a cookpot.
In general, I really enjoy having chickens, and they’re fun to have around. They do an excellent job keeping my property free of ticks, and they also eat maggots out of cow patties, which keeps the flies down.
Some hatcheries will sell the male chicks (cockerels) as meat birds instead of just culling them. But supply vastly outstrips demand…
Home-raised meat sounds like the best option for people who like to or have to eat meat. Without any interest in discussing veganism or not, I think that raising meat hens, meat rabbits, or any other healthy, sustainable meat source is good. I think I saw someone discussing meat rabbits over on /animal_husbandry?
The meat industry itself is incredibly suspect, and being able to provide your animals with a healthy, enriched life before they provide you with nutrients in turn seems perfectly solarpunk and sustainable to me.
The hardest part of backyard livestock is humane euthanasia. In some states and cities, dressing your birds in your own yard may be illegal (due to coyotes or health concerns) Have you looked into a butcher who can humanely kill & dress the birds for you? There are plenty that will do that service for larger animals (sheep, cattle, any wild game carcass you bring in) for a small fee. My local butcher will do birds in small batches, too.
There’s a lot I’d like to discuss about this, and I think it’s important to discuss. I know the subject of veganism or lack thereof can get heated, but I think we need to have these hard conversations if we want to come together as a community with proper solutions for the future.
Hi! I don’t doubt you have the best intentions, but as a vegan I think what you are proposing is still immoral (although obviously much less so than factory farming). I hope that you are willing to have a discussion with me, if not, feel free to say so or just ignore me.
First caveat, I think vegetarianism/veganism for 99-100% of the diet of 99% of the population is a fantastic goal, but I think we need to have solutions for the interim where society is still coming around to the idea.
What do you you think that would take? What would it take for you personally to come around to that idea?
Even people who want the best for the planet and animals might be intimidated by the prospect of veganism or even vegetarianism, whether or not they have sound reason for this.
I agree that it seems very intimidating. It certainly was for me. I could not imagine myself giving up meat, eggs and dairy. However it turned out to be much easier than I expected.
What I think however, is that when we set the long term goal right at where we want to get to, you are still more likely to have a greater impact. This video explains why that is probably more effective, citing scientific research.
While we’re still reliant on animal meat, I think that moving our animal raising from big factory farms into local smallholdings or even our backyards would help immensely.
Are we still reliant on meat? Maybe some people, but I think most people could switch to a healthy plant based diet if they wanted to. We would have a problem if everyone went vegan overnight, but that is not going to happen. As veganism gains in popularity, demand will change as a result, so will supply.
From an environmental perspective, you could argue that factory farming is better because it is more efficient. It has both downsides and upsides compared to backyard/organically raised animals. It would probably be very hard to create a world where backyard animals are accessible to most people.
Quite frankly, I’m hoping to own chickens soon, mostly so I can have fresh/ethical eggs and share the same eggs with my community. But I’m not averse to raising chickens for meat either.
Although the ethical concerns may be more obvious for meat, there are still concerns for eggs. Even from backyard chickens. That has to do with 1) Where do the male chicks go? Are you going to raise those too? Or will you only buy hens, in which case the male chicks are probably killed by the seller of the hens. 2) Chickens have been artificially selected to produce an insane amount of eggs compared to their wild ancestors. This has negative health implications. For example, they often struggle keeping their bones strong because a lot of calcium is needed for the egg shells.
In my eyes, meat should be something you eat as a treat, and only if you can psychologically grapple with how it got to your plate and give due respect to the animal who provided it.
I think this is better than being completely disconnected from the animals. But I would argue that you can’t respectfully kill an animal that does not need to die.
Like you, I just created a community. The idea of mine is to have discussions like this about the ethics over there. !debateavegan@slrpnk.net. If you are interested, maybe we can continue over there since I’m not sure it really fits here.
Hey! Thanks for engaging on this, I like the idea of moving it to the debate a vegan community, so I’ll reply in length there. But the spoiler is: I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, and can see your position on the stuff I don’t align with. But I’ll give details in my post on the debate community.
- Chickens have been artificially selected to produce an insane amount of eggs compared to their wild ancestors. This has negative health implications. For example, they often struggle keeping their bones strong because a lot of calcium is needed for the egg shells.
Even more so today than a century ago. Feed formulations from 100 years ago list a prize leghorn (the most prolific egg layers, and what most egg laying factory farms keep) producing about 100 eggs a year. Contrast that with today’s typical leghorns which produce 280 eggs a year. That’s what an average leghorn today can lay. Most of that can be attributed to how good we’ve gotten at feeding them over the years.
However, a chicken will cease laying eggs before she begins to struggle with weak bones. Typically it’s the eggshell which becomes weakened first. Or she may lay a shell-less egg. Or cease laying entirely.
This year there has been a shameful amount of people claiming that their chickens have stopped laying eggs because the feed producer is allegedly putting something in the subpar cheap feed to cease them laying. These people claim that once they put the chickens on a homemade feed-- which is often even worse than the already subpar commercial feed-- the chickens begin laying again. It’s a total lack of knowledge about chicken biology and embarrassing to watch. Chickens slow or stop production of eggs naturally during the winter or during molt. They may also stop when it becomes too hot. I’m not exaggerating when I say that each individual claiming this was feeding subpar, cheap, 16% protein layer feed with no additional supplemental calcium.
Anyway I’m getting too far in the weeds. I don’t particularly take issue with veganism, so I’m not trying to debate. Just offering some info.
