i say this with all my heart, from one person who cares about animal welfare to hopefully many others:

please take the term “factory farm” out of your vocabulary when discussing animal welfare

talking about the welfare of livestock and livestock production is incredibly important! all animals deserve to have the best welfare possible, regardless of if they’re going to end up on a plate or not

but the term “factory farm” does not actually discuss animal welfare in the way so many people seem to assume it does

for starters, “factory farm” is not an actual industry term. it doesn’t actually mean anything, because what constitutes a factory farm is completely subjective. you will never see the phrase “factory farm” in any kind of published research or official article because, again, it doesn’t mean anything

sure, the phrase definitely has connotations. and the connotation is the issue here. people use the term “factory farm” as a shorthand for… well, typically, “farming practice i don’t understand but think looks bad”

the term isn’t something neutral. it is specifically designed to create a negative image when you hear it. someone says “factory farm” and most people imagine large amounts of animals kept in bad condition

the key here: large amounts of animals

the size of a farm does not dictate the welfare of the animals on it. there are plenty of large farms with hundreds, thousands of animals that take stellar care of their livestock. there are small farms with only a couple animals that live horrible lives

the size of a farm is not the issue when it comes to animal welfare, but rather the practices used on the farm. sometimes they do go hand in hand, yes. there are some practices that are only necessary because of the amount of animals present

but say that

there are other terms that are actually industry terms that work better for these scenarios. try “conventional farming” “industrialized farming” “commercialized farming”. these actually have meanings that you can then jump off of into talking about animal welfare practices on these farms

“factory farming” is just a term used to paint farming in an entirely negative light, when what actually makes a farm have good or bad welfare depends on so many other things

ALT

Vulgate: Lancelot Part I | More quotes at Arthuriana Daily

silly

the nearest depiction of an animal or other sentient fantasy creature to you at this moment comes to life right where it is (i.e. cat photograph, shark plushie, dragon painting, etc)

assume it doesn’t know you (unless it’s actually a specific animal you’ve met) and that it’s normal for its species and would do whatever was natural for it. including being too giant for and destroying the room it’s in. as well as dying immediately if its environment can’t support its life

One of the most up-and-coming genres on YouTube entertainment these days is the "car rescue." Some intrepid folks with a bunch of tools and probably too much time pull some massive turd out of a farmhouse, or river, or swamp, and then spend a 40- to 160-minute long video turning it back into a working car. While I can only watch YouTube videos at the public library, I have been exposed to this phenomena the hard way.

My city, which is devoid of its former industrial base and really any other kind of major employment, is kept aloft by what the kids call "hustle culture." Folks delivering burritos at the behest of anonymous benefactors. Picking groceries off shelves in accordance with the demands of a little text field saying "no shitty avocados." And striving to launch their YouTube careers, which will surely lead into a steady source of sponsored income, and not at all a terrifying series of oscillations between poverty and mania. It's this last group that's the problem.

You see, these restoration videos need a constant source of broke-ass cars to make them possible. Any major urban centre could easily provide enough supply for one channel's demand. After all, you can only fix broken cars so quickly, even if they're desirable ones. As you may recall from the preceding paragraph, however, my city is ninety percent YouTubers by volume, so there's always folks on the prowl for badly-maintained cars. Badly maintained cars like the ones I own several dozen of.

Every morning, I awaken to find a new set of notes on my crap-cans, offering to buy them. I field pitches, some recorded, at my front door, looking to save my valueless Plymouths for The Content. Sometimes they even offer to do it for free and drop it back off at my place, where it is hoped that natural entropy will produce another video on the same car. Naturally, I say no. I'm going to get around to fixing all of these properly, I explain at length, while pop-riveting a "Thin Ice" road sign into the spot where my passenger floorboard used to exist. Besides, I don't need any additional fame, because cops watch YouTube too.

Most of these entrepreneurs leave, their heads hanging in sadness that I will not help them start their journey to the promised land of automotive journalism. Some get a little sneakier. Just last week, I caught a pair of kids trying to replace a rear drum brake on one of the Mercury Bobcats I left too close to the property line. Little shits did a pretty good job, but their editing sucks, especially how they failed to include the part where I chased them off with a torque wrench in the thumbnail. You'll never get that gold play button with a hustle like that.

plant knights