AI gives workers PTSD by forcing them to review horrific images.
Beef gives workers PTSD by forcing them to kill, over and over.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Is there research of the psychological effects of butchering animals?
There is indeed
There is evidence that slaughterhouse employment is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. SHWs [slaughterhouse workers] have described suffering from trauma, intense shock, paranoia, anxiety, guilt and shame (Victor & Barnard, 2016), and stress (Kristensen, 1991). There was evidence of higher rates of depression (Emhan et al., 2012; Horton & Lipscomb, 2011; Hutz et al., 2013; Lander et al., 2016; Lipscomb et al., 2007), anxiety (Emhan et al., 2012; Hutz et al., 2013; Leibler et al., 2017), psychosis (Emhan et al., 2012), and feelings of lower self-worth at work (Baran et al., 2016). Of particular note was that the symptomatology appeared to vary by job role. Employees working directly with the animals (e.g., on the kill floor or handling the carcasses) were those who showed the highest prevalence rates of aggression, anxiety, and depression (Hutz et al., 2013; Richards et al., 2013).
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380211030243
Or for more qualitative research with quotes from slaughterhouse workers on effects
Thank you, that’s super fascinating. The way that people who work in the industry talk about animals is very unsettling, they have really convinced themselves that animals can’t feel the pain they inflict on them. So I had assumed that they had completely reduced animals to objects in their mind. Knowing that ptsd is common is somewhat relieving because it means that fully objectifying living beings cannot happen without consequences.
the economic pressure to destroy the environment in my country comes, among other things, in great part from western demand for beef.
Você é brasileiro?
eu não dificultei muito né
I’ve seen this argument used to justify the environmental impact of AI. Shit’s gross
I think the point is that people play the environmental argument selectively when they could make a bigger impact by reducing their meat meat consumption or even quitting altogether, assuming their body can function well on a different diet.
If we're talking about actual solutions, AI's biggest issues come from who owns it, who controls its expansion and who suffers from the negative impacts. It's capitalism rather than the tool itself.
Datacenters have always been an environmental concern and I feel like AI has highlighted the larger issue that old tech nerds have been yelling about for over a decade, people are not using the computer sitting right in front of them and instead using some other mystical computer out in the "cloud".
If everyone was using shitty little 8b param llms on their own hardware vs the 200b param llms on the "cloud" the environmental impact would not only be more spread out, but also in general consume far less energy.
I just want people to stop caring about water usage as a metric for environmental destruction by just listing an amount in liters. Its so much more complicated than that. What water are they using? Is it ultra clean or brown water? Where are they sourcing the water from? Are they taking it from a pretine natural spring in a rainforest or are they taking it from the ocean?
There are just so many veriables that its almost never an apples to apples comparison.
Carbon emmissions, detriment to workers and other things like that are much better metrics. I just hate when people say "did you know you empty a kajillion olympic sized swimming pools with every ai queory?"
Water where I live is a non renewable resource and is being drained from ancient aquifers at an alarming rate. Once it is gone we essentially have to leave this entire region and it is being drained for ranching and growing alfalfa.
Assuming we live in the same region West Asia, then I fully agree and it's refreshing to see someone worry about this too here.. AI, climate change and meat industry is catastrophic and will straight up destroy our region and force us all out, all in the name of treats and capitalism 
I hope we get to live to see us make a 180 (through a breakthrough, revolution or just capitalism crumbling) and save us from the brink of uninhabitance
Solidarity brother
Thats a pretty big yikes.
Cali?
I want people to stop assuming that simplified framing of a complex issue is the whole story.
Volume of water is an easy metric for people to understand. When people talk about wasting water they might mean literally moving water out of its water shed, like groundwater wells being pumped dry or they might also be thinking of the massive amounts of energy required to move and potentially treat that water and the (heat, nutrient) pollution the used water carries.
These impacts are not universal and which ones apply in which locations, and the impact they have will vary widely. So volume of water is an easy way to make it easier to understand and 'smooth' out the variations.
Water usage for beef's cattle feed in the US at least is quite often in water scarce areas
Correspondingly, our hydrologic modelling reveals that cattle-feed irrigation is the leading driver of flow depletion in one-third of all western US sub-watersheds; cattle-feed irrigation accounts for an average of 75% of all consumptive use in these 369 sub-watersheds. During drought years (that is, the driest 10% of years), more than one-quarter of all rivers in the western US are depleted by more than 75% during summer months (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and cattle-feed irrigation is the largest water use in more than half of these heavily depleted rivers
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=wffdocs
Thank you, that is an interesting point that actually shows the environmental destruction caused by beefs water usage.
The amount of land use is staggering also: 
I have a ton of similar vegan infographics. If you want I could make a vegan_infographics community on your server.
Preaching to the choir.
This landed on the all and local feeds of one of the largest lemmy instances for over a day, I think it served its purpose
Data centres don't fill local waterways with nitrates either.
This make me almost feel good with AI
Now seriously leaving meat is all advantages with general health