Marxist Animalism
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Small-scale farmers in Chiapas are learning to raise crops and cattle without damaging the forest.
During the 1980s, there was a boom in dairy farming, which was far more profitable. Villagers let their cattle roam free in the La Sepultura Biosphere Reverse, with devastating consequences for the forest. And as the forest suffered, so did its people – from drought, and a decline in biodiversity and plants to forage.
Mexico: Forest-friendly dairy farming in Chiapas | Global Ideas | DW | 01.12.2020
Greyhound racing has always meant putting down healthy animals but this article highlights the reality of this cruel ‘sport’
16,000 greyhounds are born in Ireland every year – the place where the British greyhound racing industry sources 83 per cent of its dogs. 6000 are culled because they aren’t fast enough.
A puppy for Christmas and coronavirus?
Breakingviews – Pet craze may pump up puppy-sized financial bubble | Reuters
The average price of a British pedigree is 1,875 pounds ($2,500). Breeders flooding the market just as economic hard times bite has all the ingredients of a canine crash.
Every Cavapoo puppy (a cross between a poodle and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) listed on UK website Pets4Homes had almost 1,900 prospective buyers.
An English bulldog now costs 50% more than the average Brit’s monthly take-home pay.
$79 billion animal health giant Zoetis, whose shares hit a record high in November.
But what happens when the puppy bubble bursts?
This is a good historical piece.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/10/spoiled-meat-the-beef-industry-in-the-united-states/
Solution or problem?
The North Carolina hog industry’s answer to pollution: a $500m pipeline project | North Carolina | The Guardian
Eastern North Carolina has about 4,000 storage pools of pig feces, urine and blood as a result of the hog industry, where 9m pigs produce over 10bn gallons of waste annually in the state. When the waste lagoons reach capacity, excess waste is sprayed on to nearby fields. In 2000, Smithfield Foods agreed with state officials in North Carolina to finance research to find and install alternatives to the waste lagoons and spraying systems, but none were deemed economically feasible.But now – instead of implementing safer waste systems – Smithfield Foods is pushing to use the hog waste lagoons to collect, transport and sell the methane gas they produce. That terrifies many local people and environmental activists who see it as seeking to profit from an ecological problem rather than fix it.
“It only lines their pockets. They’re trying to sell it as renewable energy.”
…approval for an industrial-scale biogas project in North Carolina, which would cap waste lagoons from industrial pig farms in the state, capturing the methane and transporting it through pipelines to a processing plant.
The product, called biogas, is being proposed by a $500m joint venture between Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy, Align RNG, as a solution to the hog waste pollution problems plaguing North Carolina, but residents and environmental organizers are raising concerns that the project will worsen the problem.
The Grady Road Project includes trapping methane gas at 19 industrial hog waste sites in Duplin and Sampson counties in North Carolina, where over 30 miles of pipelines will be constructed to a central processing facility and distributed through existing natural gas pipelines. Duplin and Sampson counties are the top-hog producing counties in the US. The project is one of several biogas proposals being pushed by Smithfield and Dominion Energy.“The biogas is a false solution,” said Naemma Muhammad, a community organizer and resident of Duplin county. “It doesn’t solve the problems … We don’t need anything to encourage this industry to continue business as usual.”
Organic meat – no solution to the climate problem
Organic meat production just as bad for climate, study finds | Environment | The Guardian
Some here are aware of my criticisms of the waste of resources in what is the growing insustainable pet-ownership trends and the increasing anthromorphism.
Ben & Jerry have developed a pet ice-cream product in two flavors: pumpkin with cookies and peanut butter with pretzels.
The number of U.S. households with pets is 84.9 million in 2020. Spending on just dog treats is $5.5 billion.
https://apnews.com/article/ben-and-jerrys-frozen-dog-treats-e06b685bb618c2128d907741ce33627d
‘king hell, you’re a miserable, sanctimonious bunch on here. I have three cats and wouldn’t part with them for the world – more than I can say for most humans I know.
I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t joined this forum.
H.
Pets give enormous happiness to their keepers and surely in a socialist society it is the happiness of individuals (and their animal companions) that should count. My partner and I have a little dog and like Zusammenhang with his/her cats, would not part with it for the world.
I think this is an unhelpful line of argument to pursue, to be honest.
H. Are you aware of the ecological damage pet cats and dogs do?
First, the decimation of birds and small mammals. In the UK alone, felines catch up to 100 million prey items over spring and summer, of which 27 million are birds. It is very much conservative number. Feral cats not being included in any count.
Secondly, the clay-pits for cat-litter most often produced by strip-mining and the end-product sent to land-fill contaminating it with potentially harmful bacteria.
Thirdly, the consumption of protein. People assume that because the tins have ‘not for human consumption’ it is all meat and fish by-products waste being used. Increasingly as a selling point, some cat food is now edible quality and classed as organic. It is a long known marketing strategy…you sell to the pet-owners weaknesses, hence the appetising sounding ingredients.
Fourthly, the diversion of medical resources. Ever since pet insurance became a standard requirement, vets have up-graded to more and more elaborate and sophisticated technology for their surgeries and many possess equipment that in the undeveloped and developing parts of the world, hospitals and clinics for people would dearly wish to have available.
Fively, the growth of pedigree cat and puppy farming with regulatory over-sight only now being passed,
Sixth If we really lack company and social interaction and are so in need of that pet-human bonding as a substitute for family and community relationships, then there are more environmental-friendly pets such as vegetarian-diet rabbits and guinea-pigs or a budgie (one of my co-workers would swear by the affection and intelligence of his little ‘Bluey’)
H, My view is a minority of one so far on the forum, so don’t fear. I presently have two dogs and one cat, a drop from three dogs and five cats – all rescue animals.
I’ll answer your first point, alanjjohnstone. I may address the others later.
Despite the large numbers of birds killed by cats in gardens, there is no clear scientific evidence that such mortality is causing bird populations to decline. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds.
We also know that of the millions of baby birds hatched each year, most will die before they reach breeding age. This is also quite natural, and each pair needs only to rear two young that survive to breeding age to replace themselves and maintain the population.
It’s likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations. If their predation was additional to these other causes of mortality, this might have a serious impact on bird populations.
Those bird species which have undergone the most serious population declines in the UK (such as skylarks, tree sparrows and corn buntings) rarely encounter cats, so cats cannot be causing their decline. Research shows that these declines are usually caused by habitat change or loss, particularly on farmland.
And keeping rodents under control is a laudable feline service which should never be underestimated.
Hannah x
Ahhh…you, i think, went to the source of my statistic, i think.
But there other opinions on the impact,
https://www.dw.com/en/your-cat-is-killing-the-earth-but-you-can-prevent-it/a-40003245
Marius Adrion, part of the team for bird protection with the German Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), underscores this risk. “There is a clear influence of cats into birds’ population,”
Like ship rats, cats have been an invasive species and contributed to the extinction of some native birds and are a continued threat to rare creatures in Australia
https://www.animalwised.com/cats-killing-birds-separating-fact-from-myth-1366.html
But i will happily concede that most damaging to nature and birds in particular is not cats but is the expansion of human settlement and farming methods such as monoculture, and the accompanying pollution.
Hannah
I agree with your arguments although some of the points raised by Alan are valid too. There may be a middle ground position in this debate which acknowledges that there is validity on both sides
My main concern is that we should not feel ashamed of keeping pets. Pets are a source of immense pleasure to human beings even if there are aspects of what might be called the pet industry that are questionable – like the example Alan gave – of Ben & Jerry developing a pet ice-cream product in two flavors: pumpkin with cookies and peanut butter with pretzels. I mean that is a bit OTT, isn’t it?
Of course there are opportunity costs involved in everything we do and keeping pets is no exception. But I would be inclined to be more relaxed about this. When it comes to diverting resources etc there are far pressing things to be worry about under capitalism – like the diversion of resources for military purposes
In a post scarcity socialist society will the diversion of some our resources to keeping pets matter that much? Even to frame the question in this way – is slightly misleading. For what are these resources being diverted from? What is the purpose of life if not human happiness which is precisely what pets give to their owners in such abundance, I would sooner have a dog than a Daimler but also, Alan, I would sooner have a dog than a budgie. I personally don’t like the idea of caged birds
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