The Python wrote:Erm, who told you that factory farming is good for the economy?
OOC: Nobody's claiming it's good for the economy, just that it is largely the reason why food price is so low. Over here in Europe meat is much more expensive than it is over in USA, exactly because you need to treat meat animals better and can't feed them antibiotics and hormones all you want. So fairly obviously increase of regulation will make prices go up. If it was
cheap to farm organically, then "organic" wouldn't mean an immediate price increase. As it's not (more losses to pests, less prevalent fertilizer use and whatnot), then the better you want farming to be, ethically and environmentally, the more you're going to end up having people unable to afford healthy food.
I would suggest checking out the resolution that requires member nations to not create food shortages. I don't remember what it's called, but I don't think it's been repealed yet. You might want to check that out before mandating all nations to hop onto the lab-grown meat wagon, whether or not they have the capability to do so.
Now, on the current version of the proposal as it stands, the definition of factory farming sounds a bit off, as "an
industrialized system of producing commodities from farm animals which are characterized by one or more of the following aspects" sounds (the underlined bit especially) more like what happens to animals once they've reached the size/maturity after which they are killed for processing. I think you might have meant "the process of breeding and raising animals for the production of commodities" or something similar, to specify you mean what happens to the animals when they're being grown (or bred or both), instead of what happens when they're taken to the slaughterhouse or whatever. Or even define it as "an agricultural environment characterized by one or more of the following aspects" since your farm animal definition refers to "an agricultural environment". You want to ban specific kind of animal keeping, remember? Not all of it.
As for 1.b.i., "keeping farm animals in spaces where they are unable to exercise their full range of motion" needs an addition similar to what 1.b.ii. and iii. have about animal healthcare. I don't know if you've ever seen cows being examined and medicated, but you tend to really want them confined in a space where they can't hurt the veterinarian.
1.b.iv. on the other hand could simply be shortened to "the routine use of antibiotics or growth hormones on farm animals". There's no reason to specify what the excuses given for the practice are, "routine use" is bad enough.
And 1.b.v. to "intentional abuse or neglect towards farm animals". There's, again, not really that much reason to specify what and why. Not making sure they're as healthy as possible, is already included in the neglect. Hurting them unnecessarily (again not including veterinarian things done to them for their own sake) is intentional abuse.
And actually, you might remove the "where such is not necessary for the health or welfare of said farm animals" from all the subclauses and make a separate clarifying clause that such reasons are not included in the definition.
But the elephant in the room, the preamble...
Consider
not using "factory farming" in the "resolved" bit as is, because in RL that includes a variety of farming practices, many of which would fall outside of your definitions. So maybe instead go for "uncaring factory farming" or some similar modifier, to specify you're not trying to ban ALL factory farming, but instead are trying to ban the inhumane form of it. Believe me, it'll make it easier to pass in general.
is almost universally considered cruel and inhumane, as it holds no regard for the welfare of animals, and also profits off of their abuse,
Here especially - factory farming is none of
those things except the kind of factory farming that you define later on.
has significant, demonstrably negative environmental effects on wildlife and flora,
This is false in general, so consider carefully if you want this whole proposal to be dismissed as "hippie nonsense" or whatever, or actually go for the REAL reasons why meat-eating public might want to care about animal welfare, such as animals that are kept more humanely simply tasting much better.
has been shown to increase the risk of infection and other health dangers to consumers,
Another falsehood. If you do strict enough testing on food safety, this isn't a major problem. And actually if you want to, say, avoid salmonella issues for chicken eggs, you
want to minimize any contact the chickens have with the outside world, since wild birds can spread it, and it's also easier to take care of animal cleanliness if they're in cages instead of walking around on the yard.
fosters anti-competitive practices and the cartelization of the farming industry, and
...how? Because, again, isn't it more the fault of whatever anti-cartel methods the nation's supposed to have, than specific kind of farming? What's to stop organic farmers from forming a cartel? (As I half suspect they already have.
)
often results in particularly egregious exploitation of laborers and the destruction of small-scale farming livelihoods
Yet you don't give a shit about these in the mandates. Again, what's to stop a freerange farmer from abusing their labourers? Or ousting smallscale farmers out of the market?
And finally, like was already pointed out, this reads more like Moral Decency (using ethical arguments) than Environmental (actually doing something to improve environmental protections).
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:36 am