"What The Fuck, China?!" or "Bear Commits Murder/Suicide To Escape Torture"

[Kim]

Fishing done by tuna companies is an awful gross nightmare. Making a thing about the awful shit China does is rooted in some really gross nationalism. LOADS of countries do horrible things to animals.

[Osterbaum]

Fur farming being a pretty gross example too. Animals kept in terrible conditions and even skinned alive. Just so someone can have some fucking "real" fur. And this is something still practiced in Finland, supposedly one of the more 'advanced' (as in like progressive) countries in the world.

e: Norwegia and Japan do whaling. And basically everyone mass produces meat and practices over fishing.

[Seil]

Before anyone brings up the Newfie Seal Hunt, there was already a thread on that a while back.

[Osterbaum]

Originally Posted by Smarty

Fact: Just because you have always done something doesn't make it ok
Fact: Just because there is a market for something doesn't make it ok.
End fact!

Just quoting from the seal thread. This pretty much applies in relation to all of the different ways that we mistreat animals.

[Aerozord]

While I do agree our methods for harvesting tuna is less than ideal, especially considering its unnecessary, dont you think its abit unfair to compare accidentally killing dolphins in the process of fishing and caging an animal for years as you harvest fluids from its mutilated body?

Only thing I can think of as being close to that is what we do to veal. Since there the only difference is we don't also vivisect it.

Originally Posted by Osterbaum

It's all definitions and stuff, but I think it's safe to say that arhtropods, including crustaceans, do have central nervous systems. A central nervous system in some form basically exists in every animal phylum except for like Cnidarians (which have a sort of a nerve net), Poriferans (which are just sponges and lack any nervous system all together) and maybe a couple of other more obscure phyla. Some studies seem to point to at least some of them being able to feel pain, and to be honest I don't see why they wouldn't. I mean they certainly have to experience it somehow, otherwise how would they even know to avoid dangerous stimuli. And we do know that vertebrates experiece pain for certain.

Possibly its a more primitive awareness. Most animals have an instinctual programming to avoid certain things without it being pain driven. The feeler example for instance could also be the animal merely recognizing something outside their norm and wishing to correct it. In another thread we had people saying how they feel anxiety from missing their glasses. They aren't in pain but they still express distress over it.

Keep in mind I did say I'd error on them feeling pain. Though pain is not the sole root of anxiety and fear, it is not the only way to know to avoid something.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

While I do agree our methods for harvesting tuna is less than ideal, especially considering its unnecessary, dont you think its abit unfair to compare accidentally killing dolphins in the process of fishing and caging an animal for years as you harvest fluids from its mutilated body?

"Accidentally" doesn't count for shit when there are ways of avoiding this that tuna companies /actively choose not to do despite knowing their current methods are inhumane/ because capitalism.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Kim

"Accidentally" doesn't count for shit when there are ways of avoiding this that tuna companies /actively choose not to do despite knowing their current methods are inhumane/ because capitalism.

no its because consumers wont pay the extra 25 cents for the ones that dont. The option for tuna that doesn't use these methods exist but our culture cares more about low prices than ethics. If people would just stop buying this crap this problem wouldn't even exist in the first place.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

no its because consumers wont pay the extra 25 cents for the ones that dont. The option for tuna that doesn't use these methods exist but our culture cares more about low prices than ethics. If people would just stop buying this crap this problem wouldn't even exist in the first place.

Aerozord bravely takes a bullet for faceless, unethical tuna companies.

EDIT: To point out in more depth why leaping to defend companies is silly, because it always is, customers would in fact pay an extra 25 cents, particularly if such changes were made across the board for all US tuna.

Consumers generally aren't aware just how inhumane the methods are. Anyone who tries to bring this stuff up is dismissed as exaggerating the problem because consumers have been trained to do so. Even if they believe, they don't believe alternate methods are viable because they're told they aren't and trust that if they were companies would use those methods.

Consumers /would/ pay the extra 25 cents. There are just a lot of hurdles between them and that decision. Meanwhile, companies actively choose to make the awful inhumane decision to harvest tuna in this method in the greedy search for more profit, and US government refuses to enact laws preventing inhumane fishing methods.

Ultimately though, this doesn't matter, cuz it still boils down to one culture doing awful inhumane things while calling another culture awful and inhumane.

[Aerozord]

Its called willful ignorance. Like how people tend to ignore the fact that most of their goods come from sweat shops. Lets say the US did enact laws banning this method. Big deal, plenty of other nations wont, they will offer a cheaper product, and people will continue purchasing it.

Now we could make it a global thing, and in this case that would work. So go team, we solve this specific problem. However there are others that are inherently unethical like this bear bile. Best case scenario is you force it into the underground but as long as there is a demand for it then it will continue. To stop the practice you need to educate the populace and change the culture so they dont want it anymore.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Its called willful ignorance. Like how people tend to ignore the fact that most of their goods come from sweat shops. Lets say the US did enact laws banning this method. Big deal, plenty of other nations wont, they will offer a cheaper product, and people will continue purchasing it.

Now we could make it a global thing, and in this case that would work. So go team, we solve this specific problem. However there are others that are inherently unethical like this bear bile. Best case scenario is you force it into the underground but as long as there is a demand for it then it will continue. To stop the practice you need to educate the populace and change the culture so they dont want it anymore.

Thats not how market penetration works.

If you make a regional law stating all goods sold cannot use x method it doesn't matter what the other nations do their product can no longer be sold in your country.

given USA has a population size of nearly 400 millions thats a pretty monstrously large market no longer being supplied you can be sure as shit the companies would switch over rather than lose out on being able to sell product.

edit: Legislation works far faster for this kind of thing.