If you're horrified by animals dying on a farm during a disaster then consider why they are on the first place. It's not a kindness to breed them in to a life of suffering, cages forced breeding only to be slaughtered. The real solution here is to stop the cycle of harming an animal for human pleasure.
(which is also the same reason dog/cock fighting is wrong)
I think a much better question to ask is why should we reframe the topic at hand to not include its root origin? It’s kind of like asking why people want to talk about wealth Inequality when you talk about poverty: the two are intrinsicly linked together
To produce at scale, other animals will essentially have to be seen as solely a means. Factory farming is the inevitable outcome of mass meat consumption. There is not much way around that. Any system like that - rooted in the idea of minimizing other animals’ value as individuals - will consistently produce exceptionally cruel outcomes.
To go a bit into the why factory farming is the inevitable outcome.
Let’s look at just cattle for the moment. Many often trumpet grass-fed production, but in practice just doesn’t scale. For instance, the US would require a 75% reduction in beef consumption just for it to have enough grassland for it. That’s while increasing method emissions and also creating high deforestation pressure if we came anywhere close to that. Not to mention the legal and logistical headaches involved in getting all that land
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Taken together, an exclusively grass-fed beef cattle herd would raise the United States’ total methane emissions by approximately 8%.
For instance, the US would require a 75% reduction in beef consumption just for it to have enough grassland for it.
Aren’t you looking from the wrong end here? Ban anything but grass-feeding, put high import taxes on beef (the latter should be easy to sell: protect domestic farmers!), and consumption will go down automatically, because the supply drops by 75%.
How can you think veganism isnt relevant to a discussion about the cruelties of animal agriculture. This type of thing is specifically part of what vegans are fighting against
Rather than relocating animals every disaster, wouldn’t prevention be cheaper and a lot more effective? Flooding, for example, is only a surprise as to when it occurs: we have tons of data as to where they will and won’t occur, and at what height to expect floodwaters. Even on floodplain properties there are methods to combat disasters: levees, raised platforms, stilts, etc.
As many hundred-year floodplains are turning into ten-year floodplains thanks to climate change, investing in anti-flood improvements where possible (and relocating the entire operation where not) just seems like an inevitable move. We’re seeing this in the home insurance market: highly disaster-prone locations can’t be insured anymore, making them financial liabilities rather than assets. The biggest favor the government can do the farms (and taxpayers) is to encourage and subsidize anti-disaster improvements, while phasing out payouts to farms that stay in high-risk conditions.
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