[nostrademons]

Also imagine that there are no truck drivers to drive the bananas from the plantations to your local stores, and no ships to bring fertilizer to the banana plantations. Even when they start growing again, it's going to be a while before you can get one.

Supply chains in general are in shambles. We had mass COVID outbreaks at the ports that shut down unloading, as well as outbreaks at see. Truck drivers are quitting because it ain't worth their while anymore. Countries closed their borders. Patterns of consumer demand changed, so all the containers got stuck in North America.

Chips are the most obvious manifestation of this because the supply chains for them are long and complex, but we're going to see it in many other products as well once inventory buffers run out.

[mschuster91]

> Also imagine that there are no truck drivers to drive the bananas from the plantations to your local stores, and no ships to bring fertilizer to the banana plantations.

In the UK, the situation is even worse: because there is an acute shortage of truckers to truck pigs from farms to slaughterhouses and a lack of butchers, 100k pigs are set to be killed and burned - they simply grow each day, and butchers have limits on how big/heavy the pigs may be: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958663/Farms-set-k...

Turns out, no one but immigrants wanting to send or set aside money for their home country wants to do the job for the wage the companies are paying. And companies can't pay better wages because customers are conditioned on cheap meat. And politicians haven't done anything to curb that because tolerating rising food prices is one of the fastest ways of not getting reelected.

Brexit really hit at the worst possible time, and now innocent pigs have to suffer for society's failures. What a damn tragic waste.

[jaywalk]

> now innocent pigs have to suffer for society's failures.

They were going to be killed no matter what. I don't think it matters much to the pig what happens after it's dead.

[autoexec]

It should matter to us when the inevitable killing of the animal (along with the environmental harm incurred by raising it) take place without any benefit to us. Our society has decided those terrible costs are worth it in exchange for bacon and hot dogs. When these animals are raised and wasted they'll have suffered for nothing and the rest of us will suffer for it.

[sleepybrett]

Yes but it's a huge waste of resources that only the farmer is paying for. They paid to house, feed, innoculate, etc those pigs. Killing them to burn them realizes no profit for them.

[imtringued]

Although we are conducting a perverted form of nature, there is nothing wrong with eating animals. The problem is the poor treatment of the animals and eating too much meat in general.

When you abuse animals for nothing then you are basically killing for sport.

[zarzavat]

I don't agree. If humans needed to eat animals to survive then it might be reasonable to argue that killing animals for any reason other than food is wrong. Because then you could argue that you are inflicting the minimal possible amount of suffering.

But since humans don't need to eat animals, I don't see much difference ethnically between killing them because they taste good vs for no reason. If anything, that seems to be more about welfare of the human psyche than welfare of the animals.

[vkou]

> And companies can't pay better wages because customers are conditioned on cheap meat.

Are customers conditioned to cheap meat, or no meat? These customers surely live in a market economy, and understand that no matter how much they may bitch on Facebook, prices... Fluctuate..?

The reason nobody wants to raise wages during a labour shortage isn't because they are afraid of hiking prices. Prices hike up all the time. It's because they are afraid of being stuck with high wages after the labour shortage ends. Wages are stickier than prices, and are much more difficult to lower.

[mschuster91]

> Are customers conditioned to cheap meat, or no meat?

To cheap and always available meat. Throughout history, a rise in wealth has been closely correlated with a rise in meat consumption (as seen e.g. in China, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/may/30/food.chi...).

> These customers surely live in a market economy, and understand that no matter how much they may bitch on Facebook, prices... Fluctuate..?

And politicians are highly afraid of the public bitching on food prices. Revolutions have often begun with a public pissed off about food prices!

> It's because they are afraid of being stuck with high wages after the labour shortage ends.

The never ending history of "corporate whining": http://leftycartoons.com/2009/09/04/a-brief-history-of-corpo...

[avs733]

Chips are also obvious because they are a discrete thing that is at the end of one long supply chain and then beginning of other long supply chains.

[vkou]

Countries have closed their borders to casual travel, but not to shipping.

[thehappypm]

China, notably, closes ports to end outbreaks.