I think you are perhaps guilty of romanticising the level of dolphin intelligence. They are only adapted for their environment....highly intelligent in those terms...but limited in terms of any other adaptation of their environment.

Or perhaps I've forgotten about that giant undersea city that the dolphins don't have......maybe it's just a matter of time until dolphin Steve Jobs comes up with the next iphone.....made from fish scales.

When it comes to intelligence.....I think if you are calling the species that we hold in large tanks all around the world and gape at...as being more intelligent than us....Then perhaps being more intelligent isn't enough.

In reality intelligence is only worth something if something useful can come from it.

Edited by Stirlingsays (26 Jun 2019 12.06am)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

I think that price is the main driver as there is such a demand for cheap meat in this country that people demand it as a right.

Whenever a chef appears on TV to discuss the appalling treatment of chickens the sale of battery chickens falls for a week or two before everyone forgets about it.

In any event I'm guessing that the biggest customers of battery farmed chickens are the processed food companies

Is that how you live your life? In negative stasis?

The bigger the brand the more they have to lose by not being truthful or adhering to trading standards. It’s obviously not possible to know for certain unless you do some research, but if you live your life by the mantra ‘how do you know anyone is telling the truth about anything’ then how do you ever make it out of the house

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

I’m not entirely sure what class has to do with it. You can be working class and still want to eat decent meat. Similarly you can be working class and be affluent, to counter balance the implied reason for raising it in this context.

There is a reason expensive stuff is expensive, most of the time. My point is, much like Primark, Cocaine and a whole variety of things, there is often a massive ethical and in some cases health negative consequence to ridiculously cheap things. The old adage ‘too good to be true’ still holds water. Unless you’re on the poverty line there’s no reason to throw ethics and reason out the window.

Of course life expectancy being low in the US isn’t about Chicken. That point wasn’t made. The general danger is it’s mission creep - lower standards in one area (resulting in increased profit) and soon enough we’ll be back in the 70s. And Lets not be too romantic about the 70s, which was a terrible decade, the food offerings were basic, diets were atrocious and most people’s idea of exotic food was either fish and chips or sprayable cheese.

Cheap food can and is still of high quality. It just depends what you’re eating - fruit, veg, pulses, non processed items, don’t have to be expensive to be decent. But things like meat are a different story. It’s also the point that you simply don’t need to eat vast quantities of the s*** stuff. Eat less and better quality.

Also re. Top tier food - maybe at a commercial level but it’s always been available. It’s just more available now as people’s attitudes have changed and the market has cashed in.

Edited by SW19 CPFC (26 Jun 2019 10.16am)

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

haha

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

Sure I do, just being mischievous.

The implied purpose of existence is gene survival, which in turn requires the struggle of social positioning for success to best propagate your genes....even if some people don't consciously realize.

So, in my view....I doubt that there is a species, that if they gained hegemony over Earth's resources wouldn't end up also gaining a similar bleak assessment.

There is little doubt that continued scientific progress in the hard sciences of physics, chemistry and biology have inherent and eventually probably fatal consequences due to Murphy's law.

Perhaps this self destructive inevitability is a filter and a form of universal law and thus why we haven't detected any signals from highly evolved alien civilizations. I don't believe that personally but it's a possibility.

Access to the resources that enable species level wide-spread destruction need to be ring fenced......How best to achieve that in a realistic manner?....that's the question.

I certainly think species eugenics is required.....if if were possible to enable resistance to gamma radiation and the varied toxins that are most fatal and contagious (though we already do that on a limited scale).....but I'm venturing into sci fi here and also any mention of 'eugenics' gets you labelled with the 'nazi' tag because basic lies are easier to spread about ideological foes than complicated truths.

Even though if this species is ever going to venture out into the stars and survive long term....resistance to the various high energy cell destroying radiations are essential.

Edited by Stirlingsays (26 Jun 2019 11.58am)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Of course you can, anyone who works is 'working class'. However, you know I'm talking on the cultural level.

Also, you know what class has to do with it.....wonger.

A simple glance at Maslow's pyramid tells us that the less resources you have access to the less refined your concerns are likely to be.

In other words....if you're skint and worrying about paying the rent and energy bills....the quality of meat you are shoving down your neck takes a decidedly secondary position.

There are always valid points about profiteering that works against the public interest...which is why we have regulation. The question is where should that regulation be set at....it's not an area I know much about.

The 70s was a let down compared to the 60s....Some hairdressers must have gone out of business....things marginally improved in the early to mid eighties before crashing down into our continuing spiral of cultural western decline.....but god knows I waffle about that enough as it is.

I like fish and chips....come on....you must eat basic stuff all the time! When was the last time you had beans on toast?

I share your goal of a general idea that eating healthier is the better idea. I'm not of the view that cheap can be quality....not unless you're restricting yourself to a vegan type diet....and people need to feed families.

I'm also with the position of wanting an end to intensive farming both in the animal and land sense. Plenty of us are aware of how those in future generations will regard intensive farming.....However, without it humanity would still be hovering in the low millions.

Come the day when science allows us better methods we will transition. However this in of itself also has a human cost that would have to be carefully and fairly transitioned and handled......huh!...who am I kidding there.

We know that technologically and economically society isn't there yet to enable this vision on the kind of wider scales that many of us would like.....with us all eating quality nutrition.

Automation will get us there and it will be here faster than we realise...but we live in the here and now.....and for now, for better or worse, McDonald's isn't in danger.

Edited by Stirlingsays (26 Jun 2019 11.42am)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Yes maslows pyramid – my point was that there is no biological need to eat meat every day regardless of income, so eat less and spend the money saved on better meat.

Depends what you regard as basic. I regard basic as 'basic ingredients' like vegetables, rice etc. Not cheap processed or high fat/salt stuff. If by basic you mean things like brans on toast and fish and chips? Incredibly rarely. I couldn't tell you the last time I ate beans on toast. Fish and chips, possibly in Lewes last year. It was that long ago. The only time I eat stuff like that is when you're ring fenced at events or, frankly, completely smashed at a stag weekend.

Eating well is not expensive – the basics (in my terminology) can be obtained freely and relatively cheaply. The difference is convenience vs. effort. And that's where the issues are.

Intensive farming is a massive issue. We'll probably be eating a combination of synthesised and natural food in a hundred years – food will always need to be mass produced and pace and scale so the issue has to be solved somehow. Also that approach is much more efficient than having live animals in the food chain. And efficiency means profit.

Agree on automation. McDonalds will always be here – will simply pivot depending on what the latest synthetic yet indistinguidables burger trends appear over the next few decades.

Anyway, BREXIT THREAD

However I'd like to point out this is the sort of debate that should flow from someone brining up chlorinated chicken, rather than just posting links and balling out the same old lazy flatfooted rhetoric.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

People rightly worry about the middle east, Iran being the latest 'spin the wheel'. We worry about China's expansion and territory grabs far into the South China Sea. We worry about North Korea and a host of other potential flash points.

However population expansion is the elephant in the room....the human success story that is rarely raised.

It's a significant if indirect factor towards many of these problems.

We need the political will instead of technology to solve this particular problem....and unfortunately I don't see democracies managing to sell a one child policy.

And to be frank.....it isn't Europeans who need it.....They need the opposite policy.

Edited by Stirlingsays (26 Jun 2019 4.40pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Sterilisation is a bit strong. History shoes that's a short road to mass termination.

Stop foreign aid, leave the middle East to work itself out, heavily tax chairty going abroad and implement a sensible immigration policy (including deportation of all non-citizens) and hey presto, the problem takes care of itself.