Kurzgesagt has the same „we’re fucking awful but feel good about it” vibe to every video about humanity.

This video genuinely came off as satire to me. Like ‘If you spend, $20 more you can reduce the sum total suffering of this animal (before we kill it) while still giving money to us (the very corporations that engage in those practices). That is, if any of these labels even mean anything (which they don’t).’

Like, the premise of, ‘I don’t like it when animals suffer so how can we make them suffer less (while still suffering cuz I like to eat meat)’ is such an morally bankrupt starting point for an argument.

I appreciate that they highlighted the insane cruelty of factory farms on a popular channel but ffs if your going to mention the importance of individual purchasing power in determining market trends and not say ‘You could also, y’know, just not fucking eat animal products,’ then I feel like the arguments you’re making are a bit spineless.

Felt like they were catering to the most cognitive dissonant people out there

“Imagine if it was a dog!” Bruh, it’s already pretty fucking awful for a pig, I don’t need to imagine puppy mills too

“You love animals, you love meat, both are true” helllll naahhhhh

Shame on Kurzgesagt for whitewashing “family farms”

The mussels suggestion is wild to me. I get it, they try to provide a suggestion that’s still technically meat, but mussels are also so much more exotic and presumably expensive than e.g. beans. You can eat beans without converting to full-time veganism.

“Pastured” and “factory” are not opposites, they’re the same thing with a different scale of intensity. There’s no meaningful ethical difference, but there are points to make about the environment and the climate, such as the basic fact that “grass fed” means more enteric CH4 emissions, making “factory farming” better for the environment due to efficiency. No amount of “regenerative grazing” is going change that, the methane is tied to the amount of fiber in the rumen, and grasses & forbs are full of fiber.

For a more detailed explanation see: Grazed and Confused

Economically speaking is when you see how this is scam on meat eaters. Most of the animal flesh comes from CAFOs. That’s not because grasslands are ugly and CAFOs are beautiful, it’s because that’s the most efficient way to exploit those animals, which means it’s the most efficient way to keep production costs low, which means that it’s the most efficient way to come to market with the lowest prices, which is how “the market” is expanded to a large part of the population (who expects cheap meat). The productive grasslands are already maxed out in most of the World and overgrazing is very common.

The US is plagued with ranchers going into natural parks and other places where they compete with wild herbivores (and call on state agencies to exterminate predators). Put simply, if CAFOs disappeared, then the average meat eater would find animal flesh to be very expensive - a food that is afforded a few times per month in “main dish” quantities, or even a few times per year (traditionally at Easter and Christmas holiday feasts). I would be glad to see that happen, but it wouldn’t be enough, and it fails to teach the ethical lesson, to do the moral work. It only makes animal-based meat a more obvious luxury (it has always been one), creating black markets and creating economic demand to deforest land and to occupy cropland and turn it into pasture – and that’s something that wars have been fought for, for thousands of years.

The only sensible option is to go vegan globally (don’t let animal farmers get away with exports). That frees up plenty of cropland to be reforested or used in more extensive ways.