As people have become more concerned for the welfare of farm animals, new farm practices and terms have become increasingly familiar because of consumer demand. Free range, grass fed, cage free, cruelty free, in addition to organic among many other terms dot the food landscape. What do these terms all mean? More importantly, do these terms give us a sense of humane, more ethical treatment that is not true?
What happens if practices that we think are better for the animals are actually worse? Is there an ethical way to consume animals or animal products? If so, how do we determine it? Below are a few articles about the topic of cage free eggs.
Eggs That Clear the Cages, but Maybe Not the Conscience
“Aviary-raised hens had less foot damage but dirtier feathers. One of the main causes of death among hens, hypocalcemia, or low blood calcium levels, was most prevalent in aviaries.
“Conditions for workers and the environment were also worse. Ammonia concentrations, dust levels and particulate matter emissions were higher in aviaries than in conventional battery-cage systems.”
The Insanely Complicated Logistics of Cage-Free Eggs for All
“As it turns out, going cage-free requires much more planning, money, and logistical engineering than the seemingly simple notion of setting some hens free would suggest. Ironically, this massive supply chain overhaul stems from consumer demand to return to the egg-producing practices of our pre-industrial past, but without undoing all the positive benefits of scale, affordability, and safety that were achieved through industrialization. It actually took farmers a really long time to figure out how to put the bird in the cage—and it’s going to take a while to figure out how to get it back out.”
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-insanely-complicated-logistics-of-cage-free-eggs-for-all/
Are Cage-Free Eggs All They’re Cracked Up to Be?
“Giving hens the simple ability to move around prevents many of the worst health problems associated with battery cages, Shapiro says, by strengthening brittle bones and allowing them to act on their natural instincts to roost and forage.
“But in these large, industrial aviaries, the birds “don’t typically go outside,” says Shapiro. And letting a flock of birds roam within a closed, confined aviary presents its own concerns. A three-year study produced by a consortium of egg providers, academics, and advocacy groups found that aviaries had nearly twice the death rate of caged systems. Most of the difference had to do with aggression between the birds and outbreaks of cannibalism.”
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2016/02/corporations-are-going-cage-free-whats-next-hens
Massachusetts Voters Could Have Egg on Their Faces
“But laws also must also ensure that livestock operations can continue to operate. Imposing needless, costly, counterproductive, and unconstitutional burdens on our nation’s livestock farmers will harm consumers, farmers, and animals alike.”
http://reason.com/archives/2016/07/23/massachusetts-voters-could-have-egg-on-t
When considering the ethics of hunting and wearing animal skins, how do we balance our society’s ethics with the traditional practices of indegenous communities that rely on hunting and wearing animal skins? This issue connects to both ethics and indigenous knowledge systems and is an interesting case to examine how we can balance the ethics of different communities and whether we can come up with a defensible way to find balance.
“But an amendment to the Marine Mammal Act of 1972 exempted “Indians, Aleut, and Eskimos (who dwell on the coast of the North Pacific Ocean) from the moratorium on taking provided that taking was conducted for the sake of subsistence or for the purpose of creating and selling authentic native articles of handicraft and clothing.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/fashion/sea-otter-fur-hunting-alaska-fashion-debate.html
Petition to have Edward Snowden pardoned along with white house response
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden
Pardon Edward Snowden
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/opinion/pardon-edward-snowden.html
Op-ed: Why President Obama won’t, and shouldn’t, pardon Snowden
A former US gov’t lawyer and current Harvard Law professor makes the case.
Edward Snowden makes ‘moral’ case for presidential pardon
Why Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden
https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-obama-should-pardon-edward-snowden
Three Years Later: How Snowden Helped the U.S. Intelligence Community
https://www.lawfareblog.com/three-years-later-how-snowden-helped-us-intelligence-community
No Pardon for Edward Snowden
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440096/edward-snowden-pardon-opposition
Another Pardon Snowden website
https://www.pardonsnowden.org/
No pardon for Edward Snowden
“When people are dying and you can only save some, how do you choose? Maybe you save the youngest. Or the sickest. Maybe you even just put all the names in a hat and pick at random. Would your answer change if a sick person was standing right in front of you?
“In this episode, we follow New York Times reporter Sheri Fink as she searches for the answer. In a warzone, a hurricane, a church basement, and an earthquake, the question remains the same. What happens, what should happen, when humans are forced to play god?”
“When a surge of patients — from a disaster, disease outbreak or terrorist attack — overwhelms hospitals, how should you ration care? Whose lives should be saved first?”
A site that allows you to judge how you’d respond to various moral dilemmas created by “intelligent” machines like driverless cars.
“As Adam Elkus has argued in Slate, the trouble with imparting “human” values onto computers is that different humans value competing things under varied circumstances. In that sense, the true lesson of Moral Machine may be that there’s no such thing as a moral machine, at least not under the circumstance that the site invites its visitors to explore.”
“Out drinking with a few biologists, Jad finds out about something called CRISPR. No, it’s not a robot or the latest dating app, it’s a method for genetic manipulation that is rewriting the way we change DNA. Scientists say they’ll someday be able to use CRISPR to fight cancer and maybe even bring animals back from the dead. Or, pretty much do whatever you want. Jad and Robert delve into how CRISPR does what it does, and consider whether we should be worried about a future full of flying pigs, or the simple fact that scientists have now used CRISPR to tweak the genes of human embryos.”
http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/
“Consider that for state-run lotteries as a whole, only about 60 cents of every dollar goes back to ticket buyers in the form of winnings, an analysis of United States Census Bureau data shows. The flip side is that in the long run, players as a group lose about 40 percent of the money they put into the lottery, and the chances of a big win are vanishingly small.”
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