Cows driven to extinction in the US by eugenics

Vegan message board for support on vegan related issues and questions.
Topics include philosophy, activism, effective altruism, plant-based nutrition, and diet advice/discussion whether high carb, low carb (eco atkins/vegan keto) or anything in between.
Meat eater vs. Vegan debate welcome, but please keep it within debate topics.
Post Reply
User avatar
plant
Newbie
Posts: 28
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 8:05 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: gmodebate.org

Cows driven to extinction in the US by eugenics

Post by plant »

How many cows are in the field? Just 1 in 180,000 according to genetics!

While there are 9 million cows in the USA, from a genetic perspective, there are just 50 cows alive.

Quote:

"Chad Dechow – an associate professor of dairy cattle genetics – and others say there is so much genetic similarity among them, the effective population size is less than 50. If cows were wild animals, that would put them in the category of critically endangered species.

“It's pretty much one big inbred family,” says Leslie B. Hansen, a cow expert and professor at the University of Minnesota. Fertility rates are affected by inbreeding, and already, cow fertility has dropped significantly. Also, when close relatives are bred, serious health problems could be lurking."


(2021) The way we breed cows is setting them up for extinction
https://qz.com/1649587/the-way-we-breed ... extinction

Selective breeding is a form of eugenics that resides on the essence of inbreeding, which is known to cause fatal problems.

I've been philosophically questioning the nature of GMO for decades and my first consideration was that GMO would be a form if incest that results in a situation by which humanity figuratively speaking would stick its head into its anus.

Summarized view: “An attempt to stand above life, as being life, logically results in a figurative stone that sinks in the ocean of time.

The fact that today cows are critically endangered due to eugenics confirms this view.

With eugenics, one is moving 'towards an ultimate state' as perceived from an external viewer (the human). That is opposite of what is considered healthy in nature that seeks diversity for resilience and strength.

A quote by a philosopher in a discussion about eugenics:
blond hair and blue eyes for everyone

utopia

-Imp
The topic animal-eugenics seems to receive fairly little attention from animal rights activists, while the impact of GMO on animal welfare is extreme.

What is your opinion on animal eugenics or GMO on animals? Did you give its effects on animals serious consideration? If so, since when and by what motivations?

Thanks in advance for your insights!
User avatar
plant
Newbie
Posts: 28
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 8:05 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: gmodebate.org

Re: Cows driven to extinction in the US by eugenics

Post by plant »

Silence... on a philosophy forum where likely many animal rights advocates are active.

What could it mean?

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein ended his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with the proposition "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" which means that there are limits to what can be expressed through language, and that 'some aspects' are beyond the scope of language.

Wittgenstein: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.". It describes the root of the problem of anthropocentrism ('a human-centric view of the universe').

To facilitate a due respect for animals and plants when it concerns a practice such as GMO, the boundary of language needs to be broken. This is a great challenge and may explain why there has been silence in my topic about animal eugenics on this forum, despite hundreds of views.

The book ☯ Tao Te Ching by Chinese philosopher Laozi (Lao Tzu) was written as a poem to unlock philosophical insights into a concept that cannot be spoken of. The book starts with the following:

"The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name."

What is the meaning of an insight that language would attempt to unlock (an insight into the origin and purpose of existence itself) when the insight that it unlocks cannot be said?

(2018) Immoral advances: Is science out of control?
To many scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... f-control/

Science is fundamentally neglecting the moral good and eugenics is therefore theoretically based on the mistaken idea that the scientific truth is separate from the moral good, while, as philosopher William James (the father of psychology) mentioned, truth is a facet of the moral good.

Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.

Therefore it can be concluded that animal well-being is neglected when it concerns animal eugenics and that animals urgently need intellectual protection that is currently missing!

In 2021, the scientific establishment in the form of organizations such as American Council on Science and Health, Alliance for Science and Genetic Literacy Project stated that "the GMO debate is over" and that anti-GMO activism was fading away.

"While the GMO debate has been percolating for nearly three decades, data indicate it's now over. The anti-GMO movement used to be a cultural juggernaut. But as time goes on, the activist groups that once held so much sway seem increasingly irrelevant. Though we still hear some moaning and groaning it primarily comes from a small group. Most people simply aren't concerned about GMOs."
https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/05/18/3- ... -out-15523

With the idea that the intellectual debate about GMO is over, the GMO industry will consider itself to have carte blanche to do whatever it wants with animals.

Pending questions for animal rights and well-being advocates and defenders:

What is your opinion on animal eugenics or GMO on animals? Did you give its effects on animals serious consideration? If so, since when and by what motivations?
User avatar
plant
Newbie
Posts: 28
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 8:05 am
Diet: Vegan
Location: gmodebate.org

Re: Cows driven to extinction in the US by eugenics

Post by plant »

A philosopher on an other philosophy forum once shared an insight that may help to understand what 'the boundary of language' is about.

User @thrasymachus in topics Philosophy of 💗 Love and Should Schopenhauer's Will have been named Energy?.

Respect [for animals] is metaphysically demanded in the face of the Other. Levinas is telling us, and he certainly helped me understand with real clarity, that this world is a metaphysical "place" and that our relations with Others is "first philosophy."

I think Jean luc Marion is right regarding what is "there" that defies assimilation into the representative "totality" (Levinas borrows this from Heidegger) that holds a grip on our existence implicitly, with every spontaneous thought of engagement. Marion asks, what is there, then, that is there, that "overflows"--there is a thesis here, constructed by Sartre, see his Nausea and the Chestnut tree, that tries to illustrate this "radical contingency" of existence-- representation? Wittgenstein calls for silence. So does Heidegger. Marion writes:

... in passing from Wittgenstein to Heidegger, in speaking from the starting point of philosophy (or almost) and not from that of logic (or almost): “Someone who has experienced theology in his own roots, both the theology of the Christian faith and that of philosophy, would today rather remain silent about God [von Gott zu schweigen] when he is speaking in the realm of thinking.”

This is a major argument in this French theological turn, so called. It plays off of Husserl's epoche, which reduces the world to it pure presence(s). The "realm of thinking" does not permit this. The question is, what does this Wittgenstienian "silence" (Heidegger called it the Nothing and the anxiety of taking thought to its death, its terminal point of meaningful application) actually "say"? What is intimated at this precipice of "authenticity" in which one has ascended, in the reduction (epoche) to a great height where all that is average and familiar has fallen away?


How would one be able to protect animals from eugenics and GMO when aspects of relevance cannot be 'written down'?
Post Reply