CORONAVIRUS PANIC WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE

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I guess you're right. I mean I can tell the difference, but I very rarely eat processed chicken in things like nuggets. But I do realise a lot of people do.

People who are shopping for their Sunday roast, they're mostly buying good quality chicken. And I prefer to buy good quality eggs, too, but again most eggs will be in processed meals and cakes etc.

But still, if people are outraged by poor animal welfare standards, it's up to the consumer to change their eating habits. If they don't, then they have no right to complain about it. If you're against the mistreatment of animals, you have a moral duty to do your research. Not doing so is de facto acceptance of the status quo.

Yeah, I mostly agree, but again I'd like to point out how important market dynamics are. If there's a healthy market for ethical meat, it's at scale, and so the difference in cost is truly reflective of preference, then fine. However, if unethical meat reaches such a scale that it can be on the shelf next to the ethical stuff at 1/4 the price, people are being heavily incentivized to go with feedlot chicken. And I'm not sure I believe free range chickens' quality of life is increased to a degree that's commensurate with a 300% increase in price.

[OngBonga]

Yeah, I mostly agree, but again I'd like to point out how important market dynamics are. If there's a healthy market for ethical meat, it's at scale, and so the difference in cost is truly reflective of preference, then fine. However, if unethical meat reaches such a scale that it can be on the shelf next to the ethical stuff at 1/4 the price, people are being heavily incentivized to go with feedlot chicken. And I'm not sure I believe free range chickens' quality of life is increased to a degree that's commensurate with a 300% increase in price.

So long as ethical food isn't prohibitively expensive, it doesn't matter how cheap the alternative is. People have a choice. If you want to virtue signal about animal welfare, fair enough, it's better than most causes. But what matters to me is that people have a choice.

If I had a choice between paying a pound for half a dozen eggs from my local farm, or paying 10p for battery eggs, I'd take the farm eggs every time. I'd have to be pretty poor to buy the cheap eggs, and if it came to that I'd be grateful they're so cheap and wouldn't really give a flying fuck about a bunch of idiot birds. Chickens are basically food for humans. That's their purpose in today's world. If they didn't have this purpose, they'd be extinct because they're dumb and tasty. Every predator wants a piece of it. They're lucky we're clever enough to farm them instead of just brutally hunt them.

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So long as ethical food isn't prohibitively expensive, it doesn't matter how cheap the alternative is. People have a choice. If you want to virtue signal about animal welfare, fair enough, it's better than most causes. But what matters to me is that people have a choice.

If I had a choice between paying a pound for half a dozen eggs from my local farm, or paying 10p for battery eggs, I'd take the farm eggs every time. I'd have to be pretty poor to buy the cheap eggs, and if it came to that I'd be grateful they're so cheap and wouldn't really give a flying fuck about a bunch of idiot birds. Chickens are basically food for humans. That's their purpose in today's world. If they didn't have this purpose, they'd be extinct because they're dumb and tasty. Every predator wants a piece of it. They're lucky we're clever enough to farm them instead of just brutally hunt them.

Yeah, I don't disagree, but I guess I'm just trying to point out that it's not a static market, and I believe enough droolers will go "10p for eggs? SOLD!" causing the ethical egg market to shrink, increasing price, downward spiral, and we end up having $1.75/dz eggs vs $7 eggs. Then there's the issue MMM brought up that I was avoiding to keep things simple: regulatory shenanigans make it very hard to trust that there's really any ethical difference between the cheap eggs and the ones that cost 4x.

Another wrinkle is that traditional producers have bought up free range/organic/whatever producers and integrated the operations. So when an organic dairy cow gets sick, they simply drive it across the street to the conventional operation, pump it full of antibiotics, and keep the milk flowing. This means their "ethical" operation is subsidized and dependent on their conventional operations-- meaning an independent ethical operator will always been priced out of the market-- meaning the market only has the illusion of the possibility of being ethical, but will forever be underpinned by unethical production.