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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28258 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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I wanted to write about my state banning non-"cage free" eggs

The blatant lying aside, where do you stand on animal rights? Chicken cages do look fairly torturous.

It's another one of those bills that tweaks definitions just enough to put the lobbyists' competitors out of business. Chickens now need exactly 116 square inches of space, and if yours have 115 your investment is now worth nothing.
You can guess how the 116 number was arrived at.

But the general point of my post is why we even waste time saying things like "the blatant lying aside" when the blatant lying is the driving force behind all the individual examples.
We could spend days arguing about how many chickens can lay on the head of a pin despite none of us having any relevant experience in chicken housing (all mine were free-range when I bothered--it wasn't worth it).

But what would be the point of that? We've been doing it for over a decade and things just keep getting more and more insane as the same people keep lying to our faces about it until it's too late to stop them.

It's another one of those bills that tweaks definitions just enough to put the lobbyists' competitors out of business. Chickens now need exactly 116 square inches of space, and if yours have 115 your investment is now worth nothing. You can guess how the 116 number was arrived at.

Wait, 116 square inches? That's less than a square foot of space per chicken, how is that a "cage-free" environment? Are they all just packed into a large barn like Japanese salarymen into a train carriage? That's doesn't sound like a material QoL improvement for the birds.

Certified Humane mandates 6lbs of chickens per square foot, so a full-grown ten-pound broiler should have at least 1.67 square feet of space. Their definition of "free-range" requires two square feet per bird in addition to 1.67 square feet of shelter, but even that doesn't sound like much of an improvement. You have to go all the way to "pasture-raised" (108 sq ft per bird) to get something that doesn't resemble a death camp.

You have to go all the way to "pasture-raised" (108 sq ft per bird) to get something that doesn't resemble a death camp.

You realize they're all death camps, right, including the ones with 108 sq ft per bird?

That doesn't mean the poor things can't enjoy their lives while it lasts.

You know that PETA slogan about farms being Auschwitz? You know that neonazi talking point about how Auschwitz had a swimming pool for the prisoners? Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis? Eh?

Chickens now need exactly 116 square inches of space, and if yours have 115 your investment is now worth nothing. You can guess how the 116 number was arrived at.

You can make this argument against any minimum area restriction.

You should make this argument against any minimum area restriction, unless you have solid evidence that the minimum area restriction was arrived at through an impartial and objective process. Under no circumstances should the evidentiary basis and objectivity of such a process be simply assumed.

I don't know what kind of evidence would possibly be considered 'solid' for something like this for people who disagree with the whole project to begin with.

I don't know what kind of evidence would possibly be considered 'solid' for something like this for people who disagree with the whole project to begin with.

I'm not generally a fan of "studies show", but this seems like an area where a study showing things might be helpful. If the idea is to reduce chicken misery, some objective definition of how we measure/recognize chicken misery and a demonstration that enclosures over the specified size reliably reduces it would be appreciated.

For that matter, pointing out that the enclosure size is being set by proxy via California's import regulations settles much of the question, and updates me against taking the OP's narrative on this point seriously.

Not really. If it was an obviously large number set at an obviously round number, it would be pretty unlikely that it was set based on regulatory capture.

AFAICT 116 square inches originates with California rules issued in 2013. I would assume that other states copied the number because it's the smallest number that still grants access to the Californian market (previous laws required compliance with prop 2 (2008) to sell eggs in California, which didn't actually specify a cage size but it seems producers mostly play it safe and follow the 116 square inch rule). Maybe you can blame California for making up a dumb number, but that's not why other states are following suit now.

Since then, Washington and California have passed a law requiring 144 square inches (which I am sure will be unobjectionable to the OP since this is a round number) with a lengthy phase in (so no, the investments don't disappear overnight).

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