can home-farmed meat be a part of solarpunk?
can home-farmed meat be a part of solarpunk?
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.
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.
Hi, I get what you mean on practically everything you're saying here. I raise chickens for meat and eggs.
Most people who keep backyard chickens are banned from having roosters at all, so I think that explains a lot of the male surplus. That's mostly HOA ridiculousness. Roosters aren't that loud imo.
Sexing chicks can be a little more reliable than that, though. For sexing chicks, there's autosexing breeds and sexlink hybrids that take advantage of the ZW male chicken chromosomes and WW of the females. For sex links, a solid color male mates a barred colored female. The males inherit one W from the females, resulting in a barred chick (white dot on head). The females have solid coloring. But, those males are subject to the various disposal methods of male chicks, as you say.
And the female chicks, having heterozygous coloration genes, can't produce reliably sexed chicks. So for my purposes I don't consider them sustainable, as I would like to be able to subsequently hatch chickens from orginal stock. I don't want to rely on hatcheries. Idk if you had seen this, but hatcheries were SLAMMED this year, with many orders of cornish cross (meat bird hybrids) being cancelled from many different hatcheries.
For autosexing breeds, it can be a bit more hit and miss. Typically they also take advantage of solid / barred genetics. Some of these include California Grey, Creme Legbar, Crele Penedesenca, Welsummers, Bielefelders, and Dorkings. But these must be very purebred (inbred) to maintain the autosexing. So... Idk. I like many of those breeds and plan on bringing some into my flock, but I also plan on eating surplus roosters.
Seeing the rooster rehoming also an irritation of mine. I feel like if people insist on not having their roosters eaten, they need to provide that home for them, themselves. Bachelor flocks are a possibility. But it's also very possible to just... allow people to eat them? But I see people rehoming roosters for $50 to prevent someone "just eating them" as though feeding someone could possibly be an ignoble end for a rooster.
Anyway for the wider discussion, I think domestic animals have a large role to play in solarpunk. Even raised for meat. I think there can definitely be a better collaborative, symbiotic relationship with animals and the earth with homereared animals.
Some hatcheries will sell the male chicks (cockerels) as meat birds instead of just culling them. But supply vastly outstrips demand...
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. [email protected]. 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.
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.