If You Eat Meat You Should Know This
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a clear, evidence-backed introduction to the economics of animal welfare in meat and egg production.
What it is
A Kurzgesagt video on the conditions in which most farm animals are raised. It argues that cruelty is for cheaper rather than better meat, and that a small price increase per meal could avoid most of the suffering.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2025 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec stared · 2025-03 · on “The Origin of the Pork Taboo”
Also, I highly recommend this Kurzgesagt video on how paying just a bit more for meat or eggs drastically improves animals' living conditions: [this video] Additionally, while (pun intended) I am not religious about this, I try to avoid eating pork - as pigs are among the smartest animals humans eat (with intelligence comparable to dogs). For a similar reason, I avoid eating octopuses as well. Also, as a rule of thumb, "less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint", [LINK] .
Recommends manquer · 2025-03 · on “How the U.K. broke its own economy”
And all of those numbers pale in comparison in how we cruelly we treat birds used in the food supply chain (eggs, chicken etc). The recent kurzsesagt video is a great intro to the topic ( [this video] )
Recommends stavros · 2025-05 · on “The US has approved CRISPR pigs for food”
Could we not just... not confine the pigs in spaces about as big as their bodies? Kurzgesagt had a very interesting video[0] about the fact that it wasn't really that much more expensive to make sure we ate torture-free meat. [0] [this video]
Cites capitainenemo · 2026-04 · on “40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal”
Yeah, the kurzgesagt episode on meat production did note that overall cows have a pretty good life right up until the final fattening feed lots which is pretty bad. [this video] They did note though, that it wouldn't cost that much, relatively, to give chickens pretty good lives. That really we're doing this just to drive the price down by pretty small amounts.