this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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It's not about the pigs. The ecological damage done to the area around pig farms is horrible.
You live in a different place than me i guess
The organic pig farm i visited was pretty chill. Pigs roaming around in fruit plantations and grassy fields (as well as a few fields they had turned into a mud field..), with some “tents”for shade
That doesn't scale to prices you can afford. But yes, if you want to, and can afford to, buy pig products at 10x the price, then buy from local farmers whose farms you can see.
Well, that's the point. You can't have something cheap AND ethically and ecologically "good".
Oh man. I'm the one that gets to introduce you to science!
Yes, you absolutely can move all those needles in the right direction. It requires doing things differently, not just bigger. Companies LOVE to go bigger because it requires little thinking and you get economies of scale. But doing real thinking can help improve all the things.
I had a big paragraph here trying to explain to you that treating animals badly (as in less space, lower quality food etc) is resulting in massive cost savings that you CANNOT compete with if you treat your animals well. But halfway through, I've decided it's just not worth my time. Since you haven't even made an effort explaining how you "could move all those needles in the right direction", I genuinely don't see why I should.
Lab grown meat.
Lmaooo.
Lab grown meat is YEARS away from being as good as "organic" meat. While the concept is interesting, it's currently at the point where it can maybe grow something akin to a chicken nugget or ground beef, but not a steak or any "complete" cut of meat. Even comparing it to cheapest of the cheap meat, it loses in terms of quality while being dozens of times more expensive.
The second issue is that in order to grow meat without an immune system, you have to prevent ANY bacteria or anything from the outside get into the lab. Even the slightest contamination can completely ruin the entire "harvest". And from an engineering standpoint, keeping a couple of jars sterile is already hard enough. Keeping an entire lab sterile, well, that sounds like an almost impossible task.
Third, energy consumption. Having a bunch of cows on a farm doesn't consume any energy (as in, electricity). You might need some for the processing of the meat in the slaughterhouse, but not during the growth phase, which is the most energy intensive one. Sustaining the growth of meat including all the tech surrounding it over an extended period of time at a large scale would very likely rival AI datacenters in power consumption.
So no, lab grown meat is just not a solution yet. It will most likely take another decade until we have the tech that enables lab grown meat at a large scale.
So like I said. You can move all the needles by doing the hard thinking work. Is it surprising that would take time?
Yes, you certainly can. This isn't a "pick one" or even a "pick two" situation. A single example among millions: lentils are cheap, healthy, and rehabilitate the soil they are grown in. We are induced to make needless tradeoffs that do not benefit us, but rather benefit industrialists.
Lentils aren't bacon.
Yea the land is better off when pigs are free range and able to spread their fertilizer a bit better, but the pigs produced per square foot of land is much less and thus increases the prices, as well as additional labor to care for those pigs versus a factory farmed setting. If every pig on earth was raised that way at current demand we would need a significant amount of more deforestation to allow grazing room and prices would increase significantly as well.
Edit: ill also add that just visiting the farm doesnt pain the full picture. The pigs may still be fed some feed, which is cropland that could have been growing planta for direct human consumption. You also don't see other impacts such as pig shit liquifiying and flowing into a local creek during periods of high rainfall.
But that's the point. People will actively fight pollution from lots of sources. But when it come to bacon, all of a sudden pollution doesn't matter and we just want cheap bacon.
In my experience this is false. Most people will share a Facebook post or news article then proceed to continue living their life without making personal changes because "big oil pollutes anyway" and then they also don't go to any protests or take other actions. They won't change the way they vote for more environmentally friendly candidates.
I think "most" is doing a lot of lifting here. I think most people are eco conscious if you ask them about the details. But either don't have the means or are actively brainwashed into not doing the right thing.
Or to put another way, I think almost everyone will say that they don't want pig shit in a river. But half of them are brainwashed to believe that it's environmental regulation that's causing companies to do that, or that it's literally impossible to do better.
Obviously dont buy food you cant afford
The fuck it's not about the pigs. That's like saying child rape isn't about the children. What the fuck?
Comparing pig farms to child rape definitely won't immediately make people disregard your argument.
The animals we create ARE morally equivalent to our own children and are owed EXACTLY THE SAME unconditional love and protection.
no, they're not.
This is such a blatant thought-terminating cliche. Those people are already looking for any excuse to disregard their own cruelty and violence. Tell me, Courtney, what COULD I have said that would have moved your heart? Seriously, tell me. What could I say to you that would make you sit with your cruelty and violence for even a moment? The truth is, you don't fucking WANT me to make arguments that you will engage with, you don't want to engage with them in the first place. It's not the argument, it's fucking YOU, Courtney.
It's not only about the pigs. Of course there is an ethical aspect, but the ecological harm in terms of water/nutrient usage and CO2 emission are in the focus here. Your comparison is not helpful at all.
The pigs are sufficient all on their own. Or do you only help vulnerable individuals when there is something in it for you personally?
Most meat-eaters are content for animals to be raided and killed in order to eat them, so focusing on ecology doesn't require you to convince someone that animals have a moral value similar to that of human beings, which is a tall order.
I haven't weighed up the ethical against the ecological impact at all, I have just said what the focus of the comment was you have answered to.
If you are interested in my personal opinion - I am a vegetarian for 14 years now, because I cannot accept how we treat animals as a society in the context of factory farming, but also because of the ecological impact. I think eating meat consumes way too much resources.
From a philosophical point of view I don't think however that killing a pig is morally wrong, I just think the way we are doing it is wrong.
If you like we can start a dialogue on this topic! But let's exchange opinions and arguments and avoid being patronizing.
I don't see it. So you're saying that the six panels in the picture are meant to represent: pollution, pollution, pollution, pollution, pollution, and animal cruelty?
Why would they break the pattern?