Switzerland Referendum on Banning Intensive Breeding

[Emrie]

On September 25th, we'll be voting on a popular initiative to ban intensive breeding in Switzerland, and ban imports of animal products that were produced with intensive breeding.

I don't know if that's the exact term in English, I used deepl to get that phrase. I'm referring to the practice of putting thousands of chicken inside a single barn and whatnot.

This initiative wants to ban that, specifically the idea will be to put in place the rules for the Swiss organic label as of 2018 (at the time the initiative was created, this was the most recent one), but for all animal products. There will be a transitory period of 25 years to implement this.

So I'm curious, what do y'all think about it? Do you think it's a good idea to just implement a blanket ban?

IMO it's too disruptive to the current system. Meat is already incredibly expensive (as in, if you can find steak for less than 25 Francs a kilo at the supermarket, congrats) and forcing it to be organic will make it even worse. Of course if that gets people to eat less meat, that helps with climate change, but still.

There's also the problem of borders. There's actually a significant amount of people who live quite close to the borders with France, Germany, and Italy (Basel, the 3rd biggest city, is literally in the middle between France and Germany), so what prevents people from going and buying their cheap animal food in those countries? Will we have to implement border controls? Technically there are limitations right now regarding what you can cross the border with, but controls are rare and people don't care.

Also, you know the Swiss organic label has its own rules, and other countries have their own rules themselves for their organic labels, I don't know about you but I know this will absolutely not go well in any way, shape or form. How are we supposed to enforce our rules and what kind of leeway can we really allow? Of course, for the most part, we can assume that any organic label worth its salt will prevent intensive breeding, but still I'd assume it could be a point of contention.

Now, despite all this, I'm going to vote yes, because of course I want to ban intensive breeding, and who knows perhaps it'll inspire the EU to join in and ban intensive breeding themselves. Just because it's disruptive to the system doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, it means the system is broken and we need a new system. Or just eat less meat, plant-based protein powder is an alternative (I haven't really looked into it too much though). Unfortunately it also means it's not going to pass.

[Scholar]

People don't need to consume meat. I love how everyone always says "Well yes they should ban factory farming, that's torture!", but then when it comes to it, and the prices are about to slightly rise, everyone is completely fine with torturing innocent individuals by the billions?

That tells you everything about the state of consciousness of people today, we truly live in the dark ages.

 

By the way there were excellent arguments made for why a ban of slavery was bad for the US and the slaves at the time, and infact it turned out that many of them were correct. A large number of slaves died a terrible death, of disease, hunger and so forth after slavery was abolished, because they suddenly were forced to fend for themselves in a system that rejected them.

 

You don't need plant-based protein powder, unless you want to restrict your calories while still getting enough protein to body build and remain lean at the same time. Though at that point you will probably be consuming protein powder anyways.

 

Progress always comes with new challenges, don't use that as an excuse not to change.

[Emrie]

Yeah obviously none of these are excuses to actually prevent us from doing it. It's much better in the long run to ban it.

I'm just wondering if there couldn't be a way to do it with less friction and without threatening the whole system.