Not really sure what to put here…I usually put relevant excerpts, but that got this post deleted for doing that
The guy led a group that stole farm animals and Vox calls it a ‘rescue’. I wonder why he went to prison
Change “Farm animals” for “slaves” and you have your answer.
You don’t steal individuals who are held against their will. You free them.
Crazy that this is getting downvoted. We are still so far off from even basic general empathy towards non-human animals it’s making me cry…
Slaves are humans by definition. Every definition beings with
“A person who…”
Knowledge of definitions has nothing to do with empathy. It’s hard to take people seriously when they insist we don’t know the meanings of words.
This is one thing I really don’t understand, how can you think someone should go to jail for beating a dog, but be happy to fund the slaughter of hundreds of animals over your life.
You’re disconnecting from what is to be a human being, I feel sorry for you and hope that some day you can get back in sync with nature.
Because cruelty is the point when beating a dog, whereas it’s a byproduct in meat production
What about dog fighting rings where the motive is profit? Or workplaces that expose workers to carcinogens for profit?
Stop caring about climate change? Nope, I’ll still protest animal agriculture practices
Exactly. Some people think that if you have an altruistic goal, you’re exempt from the rules everyone else has to follow.
They’re not punished for the speech, they’re punished for breaking the law.
My eyes don’t define crime. That’s not how it works. The law defines it. And the court looks at the law. I’m not a child so I understand this.
Well, due to ag gag laws, you’re committing a crime by exposing animal cruelty. So.
Oopsie woopsie, guess we don’t like knowing that, huh
They are stealing sick animals of no commercial value in order to render medical aid. In cases where they have actually gone to trial for theft, they have won, because they show jurors footage of the awful condition these stolen animals were in.
Which was why the prosecutors dropped the theft charges, put a gag order on the footage, and instead threw a “felony conspiracy to commit trespassing” charge at the leader of the group, who didn’t even participate directly in stealing the animals.
It’s not illegal to “expose” animal cruelty in California, and no one has ever been charged with doing so. Animal cruelty is prosecuted all the time in California. The headline is stupid. The headline is wrong.
You an idiot. Read beyond the headline and you’ll see that in California activists are being charged for being attention to deplorable conditions in animal farms yet the farms they exposed have no charges against them.
Message board hypocrisy, a concerto in three movements:
-
Moderato: In which the villain claims someone who hasn’t read or understood the article is an idiot.
-
Adagio cantabile: the friendly townspeople read the article and lo! The villain himself did not understand the article!
-
Allegro scherzando: where it is revealed to all that, by their own criteria, the villain actually called themselves an idiot. Bravo!
was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor trespass and one count of felony conspiracy to trespass last week
Activists aren’t given carte blanche to break the law. That’s called vigilantism. And it’s illegal.
The first sentence literally contradicts the headline. Headline says you could get in trouble for “exposing animal cruelty” while the first sentence says an activist is being charged for “rescuing animals.” They did more than just expose cruelty; they took it upon themselves to stop it and in doing so broke the law. That’s what they are being charged for; not the exposure to the cruelty which is only being exposed because these activists are being arrested for trespassing and theft and it made the news.
The headline is wrong. The headline is stupid.
It is weird just how secretive the slaughterhouses are.
I don’t usually discuss this sort of thing very much with carnists IRL, because I tend to find their “arguments” and their positions rather tired and boring and in general completely irrational. The “but where do you get your protein?” type of questions or “I tried being a vegan/vegetarian but it didn’t agree with me because of my special DNA due to my ancestry of northern Europeans or whatever” conspiracy theories are especially fun. It’s usually the carnists that go out of their way to be activists about their choices, not me.
I’ll usually answer direct questions and leave it at that. I find there is a certain type of carnist that get especially defensive (almost always men suffering from toxic masculinity) around the very presence of veg*ns and want to get into arguments, especially while eating.
But there have been times where I’ve asked why slaughterhouses have so much secrecy in some of these “conversations” where the carnist just won’t drop the topic and I’ve noticed that gives them some pause. At least for a small glimmer of time. I think it is because these carnist activists are the ones with the most amount of guilt and they know that most (normal) people don’t want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses…
Sounds like you are doing a lot. I have found the phrase “the personal is political” became a very real thing for me years ago even when I just started cutting out certain meats (!) - when it came to the reactions of others as they found out, and also realizing in a very visceral way, that, with every single meal, there was a very concrete ethical, ecological, economical and health decision to be made.
I quickly found out that you have to “come out” at work (when food is being ordered out, restaurants are being decided on, etc) and for extended family, etc., even though you really don’t want to necessarily answer all the questions, parry all the nonsense in that particular moment. Most people are fine, maybe a small subset groan and roll their eyes, but keep their opinions to themselves, but there is that small percentage that seem to keep harping on it.
I have seen similar reactions to early adopters of hybrid vehicles. Save for EVs later. Or, as a kid, when someone with a legit extreme dairy allergy refused all dairy. It’s like there is a certain type of personality that really gets actually offended when someone decides to deviate from whatever system is handed to them as “the norm”, whether it’s ridiculously high meat and dairy consumption (no matter how harmful it is to themselves, even), or a standard internal combustion engine. Some people seem to really get worked up about it.
Anyway, I do what I can. I have not removed all dairy entirely, nor eggs. I view both as rather harmful to health, given the information we have (and the evidence seems to keep piling up on that), so I don’t make them a central component in any meal. I never drank milk anyway even as an omnivore - it’s been fairly clear that they are marketing that stuff as a “health drink” (lol) for a reason. Sometimes it’s very difficult to assess whether a given food is vegan or even at least vegetarian, but labeling/awareness has grown with time, so that has gotten a bit easier.
I find that so weird and illogical, because what does anyone else’s personal and internal choices have to do with me? The only reason I could care would be if I invited you to dinner I was cooking myself and you waited until serving time to mention you don’t or can’t eat something, and that’s because I’d feel bad not being able to feed you. You are a grown ass man (place hyphen(s) wherever tickles your fancy), and get to make your own decisions and life choices. Plus there’s more for me.
Maybe it’s from growing up in the 90s and 00s, but asking about food allergies, sensitivities, and restrictions should be just another Tuesday for anyone ordering food for a group. But I’d also never expect the group to cater an entire meal around my preferences or restrictions. Grown ass man is successful hunter gatherer.
Now all bets might end up off the table if that respect doesn’t extend both ways though, because again, every grown ass man (everyone regardless of gender and older than 18-21 gets to be a “grown ass man”, with bonus “grown ass man” points if over 80 and a grandmother (Betty White being the ultimate grown ass man and I’ll die on that hill)) gets to make their own decisions and life choices. Now this doesn’t apply if you got local recommendations for ethically raised and delicious food that you’re just passing along because better ingredients make better food. _itarian choices are like religion: follow what you believe, don’t mock and detract others, there is a time and place for mutual debate based on mutual interest, and if you act like a Jehovah’s Witness that showed up at the door then expect to get treated like one.
In my country it’s not a secret how these places operate, I went to a slaughter house as a class trip back in high school + one of our relatives owns a massive chicken and cow farm. The animals’ conditions are vastly different here than what I see from these terrifying documentaries.
Are slaughter houses secretive?
I was raised in an agriculture focused community and did the whole FFA thing in highschool. I’ve since moved to another state and am now living the life of a city slicker, so maybe I’ve just become out of touch, but back then none of the “how the sausage is made” stuff was hidden from us. Hell we had a whole field trip to tour a pair of meat processing plants (one for poultry, one for beef).
Have things changed over the last 5-10 years? Is my experience just an outlier?
I think they’re referring to this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
Not necessarily the slaughtering part, but the living conditions that these animals are stuck in, sometimes for years, is barbaric. Imagine being in a cage where you can’t walk and you have to stand in your own shit for days on end.
The ethics of animal slaughter and how it’s done are almost a separate conversation imo. No living creature deserves to be tortured (and outright torture does occur, see Earthlings or Dominion for the details)
The ethics of animal slaughter and how it’s done are almost a separate conversation imo
It is a separate conversation, and I’m glad you pointed it out because it’s an important distinction and one that is far too frequently overlooked.
people don’t want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses
That’s exactly why they’re secretive. It’s also true of many other industries and processes. There are a lot of things we benefit from that have unpleasant origins. When it comes to meat, you can make a relatively easy choice about it.
My favourite kind of carnists are the ones who say “Because you eat none, I’m going to eat two hamburgers!”
Uh, okay. Is that supposed to spite me? Enjoy your heart attack, dickhead.
Oh, right. I didn’t even mention how the tired old Dad “jokes” get very boring, very fast. Especially when repeated nearly every time, by the same set of people, at almost every meal. That, or they nearly reflexively have to talk about how much they love meat, love to hunt, love to fish, love to grill, yadda yadda. No one brought up vegn anything mind you, it’s just the mere presence of any vegn(s) that seems to cause this…shrug.
