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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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On the other hand, there's something that feels wholesome about eating natural food, even if a ton of suffering goes into it.

Hmmm not sure 'natural' food is the source of most of the suffering.

The argument would surely be that factory farming is just as unnatural as growing the stuff in a vat, if we compare to the state of nature.

If factory farming is unnatural, is 19th century farming also unnatural? Where do you draw the line? Seems to me you could argue all food, being a product of agriculture, is unnatural, which kind of makes the label pointless.

At the very least, lab-grown meat is a big deviation from the status-quo. I'm not sure it would even count as raw/unprocessed food.

If factory farming is unnatural, is 19th century farming also unnatural?

Yes, but I guess that depends on how much you think the "domesticated" animals in question differ from their wilder ancestors.

A lot of the animals we eat were 'bred' for captivity. But not the mechanized, energy intensive, close quarters type that typifies the factory farm.

Where do you draw the line?

I think an intuitive spot would be around when we started to inject chemicals into the animals to ensure their survival. That's a clear introduction of 'artificial' products of civilization as I can imagine.

That is, when the conditions change such that the animals would no longer be able to survive in the environment we've set up for them without human intervention.

We could of course have a decent discussion about this, or whether the natural/artificial' divide is even a meaningful thing.

Seems to me you could argue all food, being a product of agriculture, is unnatural, which kind of makes the label pointless.

I mean yes, but see the point above. If the products of agriculture would be unsuited for survival in the wilderness environment that their ancestors thrived in, that's a decent indication we've moved pretty far from the conditions of nature untouched by man.

And applying this to lab grown meats, if the meat can't survive outside of the very specific conditions set up for it by humans, that's also indicating that it is pretty far from the conditions of untouched nature.

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