[geddy]

What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we’ll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren’t some inanimate object.

[oblio]

We need to be realistic. Reeducating several billion people from something very addictive, culturally engrained and with no direct negative effects for consumers is almost impossible.

[snarf21]

The more these discussions progress, the more I wonder if there is really only one solution. We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. We need to raise the standard of living in countries that reproduction rates > 2. We could also remove tax breaks for kids after the second in developed countries to mitigate the incentives for extra children. Maybe if we only had 4 billion people, we might be able to have everything be sustainable. Such a hard problem to solve.

[jaybeeayyy]

Overpopulation is a racist myth. Developed countries use far more resources and waste significantly more food than developing nations and wealthy people have a larger footprint than their working class counterparts.

https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/chart-of-the-day-thes...

https://theconversation.com/emissions-inequality-there-is-a-...

[oblio]

The thing is, fertility rates are going down across the world.

What are you going to do with the current people? They will all want a decent quality of life. Will you sacrifice your life and quality of life to achieve this greater goal you mention? Or do you just want "others" to sacrifice themselves for it?

[pjc50]

Fish farming is a disease disaster that can harm wild populations. This gets discussed a lot in relation to Scottish Salmon, for example.

[philg_jr]

Salmon is general is a bad fish to farm because it consumes more protein than it produces. There are better fish (in terms of sustainability) that can be famred, and proper regulations (which the US has, compared to other countries) exist to help. In general, I don't believe the US is the problem with overfishing or polution problems caused by fish farming, compared to other countries who don't have or want the ability to keep things in check.

[mymythisisthis]

I'm thinking fish farming in urban centers, maybe tied to hyrdoponic greenhouses. I can picture more urban parks, with many fish ponds. The fish pond water used to grow labour intensive cash crops like raspberries (that are hard to pick).

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. Last thing we need here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[tidenly]

It's a uniquely western thing to pontificate about how enlightened we are about animal welfare while simultaneously funding the majority of the global meat industry - maybe. While it's true some Asian countries eat animals "taboo" to eat in "the west", large parts of these industries comes from countries pulled out of the brink of famines just a few generations ago and many young people/adults in the developed parts of those countries have already moved away from consumption them or cruelty certain animals viewed as "companions". Spare the preaching about us caring about other animals though. I don't see why eating, say, a horse is any more ghoulish than eating a pig.

[MichaelApproved]

There are many western slaughter houses that don’t give a damn about animal wellbeing.

Videos have come out, a few wrists get slapped, and the abuse continues. The western masses continuing to consume their product is tacit approval.

This isn’t a western vs eastern thing. It’s a human thing.

[Falling3]

Ah yes. The birthplace of several religions that that introduced the moral worthiness of animals centuries (if not longer) before the West and the origin of all mock meats up until a few decades ago has no interest in animal well-being. Absolutely.

[droopyEyelids]

Do any of the Woke/critical theory people know if it's acceptable to say something like this ^ if you explicitly tie it to culture? Is it OK to say some regional cultures place more emphasis on animal cruelty than others?

[huffmsa]

And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Eating other animals is what got us here. Until we can print actual, chemically identical meat on a conveyor belt, our reliance on animals will continue.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

> And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Am I? I became 100% vegetarian a year ago. No one around me was vegetarian. I saved money. I never ate so well and I'm in my best physical form ever. What is magical?

[Falling3]

Humans don't require animal products to live (or thrive). And your "what got us here" comment is a Naturalistic Fallacy.

[surajama]

400-500 million people in India are vegetarian [1]. Are these all magical creatures?

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/the-food-habits-of-a-na...

[high_density]

aren't there lab-grown meat researches going on?