Quote:
Originally Posted by Laz116
You're starting to paint a picture that farmers are evil or something like that. I disagree. Most of them just try to get by imo. The responsibility lies just as much at the big corporations of the food industry, the governments for failing to regulate the industry and ultimately at the end consumer, who in most cases don't really care that much about the well being of the animals. If we aren't willing to pay for quality, we end up with crap. It's as simple as that. However if we were willing to pay for quality we still need the government to make sure that we're actually not just fattening the wallet of the food industry but are getting a better product.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread a farmer in Denmark got about 23 pence pr chicken in the fifties, today he gets twenty pence. That is an enormous difference when you take inflation into account. The only way for the farmer to make a living today is to increase volume and lessen the time it takes to grow a chicken - at the cost of animal welfare. Ultimately the reason for this is that there seems to be a higher demand for chickens that costs 4$ but are treated badly, than there is for chicken that costs 15$ and are treated well.
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I absolutely do not intend to paint that sort of picture about farmers. I know there are those out there that do things right, humanely, really enjoy it and aren't in it simply for the money. I'm just saying that unfortunately they are the small majority and are being pushed aside for the big factory type places.
However, my bottom line is I don't agree with the idea of killing animals simply for us to eat them. The bad farmer vs. big business argument is simply getting in the way of my original argument - that we shouldn't be carnivores at all.