Post #4198812
2026-07-29 12:35 UTC
I'm honestly a bit surprised at how much outrage this study is causing, I thought we'd pretty much accepted by now that sometimes it's hard to balance different harms against one another. More intensive farming uses fewer resources but is worse for animal welfare. Cotton takes loads of water and pesticides to grow but doesn't release microplastics when you wash it. We have this problem with sterilising contaminated wastewater in the lab, do we autoclave it, suing huge amounts of electricity, or use chemical disinfectants and contribute to water pollution.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/29/organic-eggs-climate-caged-chickens-carbon-emissions-environment
And the solution where every option causes some harm but it's hard to directly compare different harms is to try and use less - buy fewer new clothes, if you have the financial freedom and can do so without health implications consume fewer animal products. We should just be eating fewer chickens and eggs as a culture in the first place really.
#AnimalAgriculture
Replies (2)
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@simonzerafa@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 07:07
@afewbugs@social.coop I wonder what the tradeoffs would be if we replaced 50% poultry meat protein with other protein sources, such as pulses or insects? 🤔🤷♂️
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@afewbugs@social.coop 2026-07-29 12:43
Like this video shows how dramatically the amount of meat in the Dutch diet suddenly increased over the generations, from his grandmother born in 1937 when people were eating 19.7 kg of meat per year, when his mother was born in 1960 it was around 22kg per year and when he was born in 1991 it was 40.5 kg a year. We really don't need as much chicken and egg as we're currently producing. https://imginn.com/p/DYFGoD3IxCD/