[HN Gopher] Big meat can't quit antibiotics
___________________________________________________________________
Big meat can't quit antibiotics
Author : atlasunshrugged
Score : 188 points
Date : 2023-01-13 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| benj111 wrote:
| Can't or won't.
|
| The EU manages fine without so much antibiotics.
| rpaddock wrote:
| Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics such as Cipro are often given to
| animals because they are cheap. They are in no way at all safe
| for people or animals. Sadly as the parent article shows, the FDA
| doesn't care.
|
| The book: "Taking On Big Pharma: Dr. Charles Bennett's Battle"
| was released this week.
|
| I was asked to go with Dr Bennett to speak to members of Congress
| about the dangers of Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics. As these were a
| significant contributor to my late wife's suicide. Alas that was
| right as the world changed at the start of the pandemic and
| derailed those plans.
|
| I have the many FDA warning for Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics here:
|
| https://www.kpaddock.com/fq
|
| People just don't expect side effects like permanent psychoses to
| come from their antibiotics, as one of the most recent FDA
| warnings documents.
|
| Dr Bennetts new book:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Big-Pharma-Bennetts-Childrens/...
|
| His related interview:
|
| https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/doctors...
| dml2135 wrote:
| I personally experienced the negative affects of
| fluoroquinolone as well. I did a full course of Cipro and
| experienced horrible back pain, which was minimized by my
| doctor until he put me on Levaquin a few weeks later and I had
| to stop after a few days because the pain was so bad. Six years
| later I still have some lingering back pain from that incident,
| seems like it did at least some permanent damage.
|
| It was incredibly hard to deal with, on top of the chronic
| infection causing me to take the antibiotics in the first
| place. The most frustrating thing was the seeming indifference
| I got from many (not all) of the doctors I saw about it.
|
| Condolences for your loss, and my deepest sympathies.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Ugh Levaquin. One of the well-known side effects is a
| spontaneous Achilles tendon rupture. Horrifying, and I hated
| taking it.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| That's a terrifying side effect.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Don't forget about the chronic neuropathy! Some people
| have hands and feet that will burn and sting until their
| death.
|
| I had to take moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin at two
| different times in my life. Besides the achilles, feet
| and hand tendon pain, both times I would have severe
| stinging pain in my scalp for months after taking them.
| Blessed as I am it went away again.
| notafraudster wrote:
| I'm sorry you lost your wife. My wife had a near-death medical
| experience last year (a stroke, completely unrelated) and I was
| never as emotionally empty and destroyed as I was during the
| ten minutes I thought I lost her and subsequent days worrying
| about her recovery.
|
| You linked an interview with Childrens' Health Defense, an
| organization whose primary purpose is to argue, categorically,
| that all vaccinations are dangerous and do not work. They are
| the largest such organization and their activism has been
| directly responsible for the growth in resistance to MMR
| vaccination and later to COVID-19 vaccination.
|
| This does not mean that the point about a class of antibiotics
| is incorrect, and I understand that there's a possibility of
| "strange bedfellows" here because of the potential agreement on
| the matter of, uh, "big pharma". As I see it, one possibility
| is that you linked the CHD article not knowing this. Another
| possibility is that you linked the CHD article knowing this,
| but figuring just because they're wrong about vaccines doesn't
| tarnish them on this issue. Another possibility is that you
| generally agree with their position on vaccines.
|
| I'm not here to judge or change your mind, I'm just telling you
| that I don't have any prior view about whatever fluoroquinolone
| antibiotics are. I read the first half of your post wanting to
| do more investigation. Because of the CHD link inclusion, I am
| now predisposed not to believe this is a real issue. I am a
| non-medical social scientist but I have spent a lot of the
| COVID period publishing work about vaccination. Anti-vaxx stuff
| is a complete deal-breaker for me. And if your reason for
| posting was to persuade an audience, I think that's the
| opposite of what you want.
| wolfprogramming wrote:
| [flagged]
| rpaddock wrote:
| The interview is where it is, which I have no control over. I
| would have posted Dr. B's interview where ever it was as it
| is related to the Big Pharma book release. He is considered
| one of the worlds experts on drug adverse advents.
|
| That there are adverse advents with multiple (All?) Big
| Pharma products is also something I have no control over.
|
| I supplied a link to my late wife's page where all the FDA
| warnings are linked to directly. The other links can be
| ignored if that is your desire.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I agree that when people cite bad sources, it harm's their
| argument. Yes, dead commenters, the messenger matters.
|
| I'll also state I think deleting vaccine skeptics does more
| harm on HN than good. Let their ignorance be argued, lest
| they get a persecution complex and dig in more deeply. Only
| delete, in my opinion, those that cite disinformation or
| misinformation.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Let their ignorance be argued_
|
| eh, "Disprove [the situation you just said was emotionally
| gutting] wasn't caused by [nonsense I can write down in 5
| seconds but will take 2+ orders of magnitude to respond
| to]" is pretty classic sealioning/asymmetric trolling.
| Maybe if they put up a claim with evidence, otherwise it's
| just low-effort shit posting and not worth much more than a
| downvote.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| There are many different numbers floating around, but let me
| give you a source that claims a 0.14-0.4% "prevalence of FQ-
| induced tendon injury". That's at least one in a thousand.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921747
|
| They are also absolutely known and proven to cause permanent
| pain in the hand and feet (neuropathies) in some patients and
| "long lasting" anxiety, depression, hallucinations.
|
| Those are just a few of the serious long term side effects
| they can cause.
|
| Here is a good overview.
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4087/2/3/17
|
| Let me conclude that sometimes they are the right choice to
| save someone's life or prevent serious health consequences
| due to infection, but in the majority of cases there would be
| alternative antibiotics available.
| camccar wrote:
| [dead]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| [flagged]
| devwastaken wrote:
| The FDA warnings read like any other medication. This article
| does not point out why this is specifically worse, or how
| "rare" of an occurrence it is is or isn't. I can't know from
| this article wether the cause is this antibiotic.
| wizee wrote:
| Speaking of Fluoroquinolones and Cipro (Ciprofloxacin)
| specifically, I personally had bad experiences with it causing
| tendon damage and severe back pain, though fortunately the
| damage healed and the back pain cleared within a couple days
| after stopping my Cipro course early and switching to a
| different antibiotic.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| My condolences for your loss... And thank you for the important
| information!
| culi wrote:
| Interesting. What is the mechanism of action that could be
| causing this? Are other antibiotics safer in this regard? What
| are the most commonly used antibiotics?
|
| Extremely sorry for your loss
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > What is the mechanism of action that could be causing this?
|
| It is barely understood. Fluoroquinolones are known to cause:
| Mineral and metal chelation, permanent DNA damage,
| permanently changed unhealthy epigenetic state changes,
| increased oxidative stress, permanent damage to mitochondrial
| DNA.
|
| > Are other antibiotics safer in this regard?
|
| Besides aminoglycosides like gentamicin which is now
| liberally used topically because internal usage causes
| permanent hearing loss, most antibiotics in use generally do
| not carry a notable risk of lifelong disability.
|
| > What are the most commonly used antibiotics?
|
| That very much depends on the infection being treated, but
| let me just guarantee you that there would almost always be
| an antibiotic available that is a safer alternative to
| fluoroquinolones.
|
| Unfortunately, those antibiotics are generally strictly
| controlled reserve antibiotics you get IV in a hospital,
| which you would only get to avoid death or other serious
| consequences, and just won't get for that treatment resistant
| gonorrhea, where fluoroquinolones can already indeed be the
| only freely available alternative. Then there are also
| substances that just aren't available everywhere, like
| streptogramins which in Europe you can probably only get in
| France.
| rpaddock wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| No one really knows what causes these issues.
|
| Any other antibiotic is safer. These should have been removed
| from the market a long time ago. Just read the other comments
| in this tread for examples.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > As these were a significant contributor to my late wife's
| suicide.
|
| I can't even imagine how hard it is for you. I am sorry for
| your loss.
| paxys wrote:
| A significant chunk of people in this country would give up (or
| at least wayyy reduce) meat consumption if they toured an average
| factory farm. Opening up this industry for public scrutiny would
| be a great first step, but many states now have laws banning
| people from even photographing them.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| May I go into your house and start taking photos?
| paxys wrote:
| May I take pictures of abuse at my workplace and share it
| with people without going to jail?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Up front- I'm all for opening these "farms" up to more
| public scrutiny but I'm not sure sneaky activists with
| cameras is the answer. The USDA should do a better job and
| Congress could pass more animal welfare guidelines.
|
| The problem is that factory farming doesn't harm people and
| it keeps meat cheap. Expensive meat hurts poor people and
| minorities the most. It's a disturbing and tough issue.
| Spivak wrote:
| The, now famous, video of the guy trying to get kids to not eat
| chicken nuggets after showing them what they're made of and
| failing miserably I think means it won't be as much of a slam-
| dunk as you predict. Doubly when you ask them to give up milk,
| butter, cheese. Because were a cow I would take slaughter to
| milk producer every day of the week.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm afraid this earns a "well, duh" from me. For a minimal cost
| to ranches, they can increase both their output and the
| reliability of that output. And the externalized costs? The
| ranches aren't held accountable for those, so they may as well
| not exist.
|
| And you can bet those ranches will fight tooth and nail against
| being held accountable; it is, after all, the most "logical" way
| to spend their resources to protect their revenue. Imagine the
| shareholder response if the profits were to drop significantly,
| and permanently.
|
| It's simply how we've trained corporations to behave.
| snarf21 wrote:
| This our biggest problem in the US, externalities are never
| priced in. Always easier to pay fines for pennies or to declare
| bankruptcy and start again.
| willnonya wrote:
| By externalities you seem to mean the choices that other
| people make.
|
| unless the choice is to not biy their product how or why
| woukd these get factored in? how would you do so and retain a
| nominally free society?
|
| How would you justify this being our biggest problem?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Externalities refers to the economic concept of external
| costs:
|
| "An external cost is a cost not included in the market
| price of the goods and services being produced, i.e. a cost
| not borne by those who create it".
|
| The less real costs are factored into a product, the less
| the market able to efficiently price it. Many of our
| greatest modern problems could be ameliorated if we handled
| external costs better: pricing industrial runoff, CO2
| emissions, antibiotic resistance, etc.
|
| We mostly choose not to price in those costs, because the
| consequences of such are generally delayed, and it allows
| us greater standard of living for the moment. When given
| the options "meat will be cheaper but infections harder to
| cure in 20 years", or "energy will be cheaper but large
| scale climate disasters will be common in 50 years", we've
| chosen cheap meat and energy.
| xoa wrote:
| > _The less real costs are factored into a product, the
| less the market able to efficiently price it. Many of our
| greatest modern problems could be ameliorated if we
| handled external costs better: pricing industrial runoff,
| CO2 emissions, antibiotic resistance, etc._
|
| I'll add to this that in many cases this also eliminates
| a lot of the subjective/contextless moralizing around
| spending of energy/mass surplus that goes on, resulting
| in more individual freedom. It's common in environmental
| discussions for example for someone to complain about
| <xyz> form of transportation, often cars or aircraft but
| I've also seen it come up in rockets. This can lead down
| all sorts of rabbit holes in terms of cost/benefit etc.
| But the entire discussion could be avoided as far as AGW
| if we'd simply make all hydrocarbon fuels CO2 net neutral
| (either via producing them directly from atmospheric CO2
| with renewable energy or scrubbing an equal tonnage of
| emissions from the atmosphere for every ton CO2
| released). Then whatever price the fuel was would fully
| reflect the CO2 cost, which would naturally filter out to
| all users, and everyone would be free to spend on that or
| not as they wished. All sides would optimize to the
| pricing, producers would search for ways to make the net
| neutral hydrocarbons cheaper, users would seek ways to
| use them more efficiently, and those buying services
| would do the same. That's a Free Market at work, the
| emergent result of lots of decentralized individual
| decisions is a much more efficient allocation of
| resources, and without any central judgement around "oh,
| that's not a _worthy_ usage " needed.
| lovich wrote:
| Nah man, externalities here means externalities. In this
| specific instance the meat producing corporations are not
| paying for the increased risk of producing antibiotic
| resistant pathogens, which is a cost the rest of the planet
| has to bear. Price them in the same way any insurance model
| prices in risk.
|
| > how would you do so and retain a nominally free society?
|
| Nominally free doesn't mean you can do whatever you want.
| Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, as the
| saying goes. If you want to take actions that affect
| everyone negatively then you should be paying for that.
| Inversely there are also positive externalities and we
| should probably subsidize/pay groups who produce those
| biorach wrote:
| That's not what externalities means.
|
| Google "pricing in externalities"
| aqme28 wrote:
| Not to stir the pot, but I've long believed that a big
| problem with conservative ideology is that it does not seem
| to believe in externalities--either good or bad. Positive
| societal effects couldn't possibly arise from investments in
| education or infrastructure. Likewise negative externalities
| from increased emissions
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Anyone who is Economics literate - which is more common
| among conservatives - knows about externalities.
|
| They also know that when there are negative externalities,
| government action to try to counter them is often a cure
| worse than the disease.
|
| Also "my proposal will be costly, but the positive
| externalities will outweigh them" is often stated, but
| rarely proven.
| bumby wrote:
| Even the most die-hard libertarians I know (which I'm
| using here as a proxy for the most conservative)
| recognize one of the fundamental roles of government is
| to account for and price in externalities.
|
| The OP indicates that the incentives of corporations
| driven by a profit motive is not to price in
| externalities. If not the government, what other
| mechanisms do you suggest?
| Spivak wrote:
| Genuinely curious, in a conservative world, how do you
| deal with externalities without some kind of intervention
| that distorts the market or the natural order?
|
| It makes total sense to have debates over what things
| rise to the level of problem and what the best fix is
| but, at least in my state politics, Republican's seem to
| just abandon their principles for pragmatism (which is
| good) but I can't seem to figure how this doesn't cause
| an identity crisis. Having a "how a conservative
| evaluates market interventions" seems less taxing than
| getting pushed to a breaking point and then begrudgingly
| doing things not in line with your ideals.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| How to deal with (negative) externalities depends a lot
| on the nature each specific externality, and what the
| alternatives are.
|
| It's important to recognize that both markets and
| government action sometimes fail, and why, to have a
| grownup conversation about options.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| As someone who is not a conservative, but is interested in
| what and why people think and believe thing, I don't think
| that's a fair characterization. It seems to me that
| conservative care a great deal about negative externalities
| that effect the existing social order, or may do so in the
| future. I think the problem is two-fold some of those
| negative externalities were baked into existing
| institutions or don't directly effect them, and the
| "culture wars" in the US cause people to take up positions
| that don't make any rational sense in their worldview.
|
| You can make really good conservative arguments for say
| fighting climate change as it could upend traditional
| social order, but partisan polarization has made it an
| issue of "the other side" so mainstream conservatives
| aren't making those arguments IMHO.
| kevincox wrote:
| Yeah, the question isn't so much "can't" as "prefers not to".
| Unless the premium that people will pay for meat without
| antibiotics is more than the reduced output costs them they
| won't do it. Alternatively if they are forced to pay for the
| externalities and that costs them more than the extra profit.
|
| It's simple math to do. Expecting "big meat" to change it's
| behaviour without changing the inputs to the equation is
| ridiculous. That isn't how businesses work.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Its always a choice - here is some cheap junk with mediocre
| taste. Here is some significantly more expensive, less junky
| stuff with +-same taste, sometimes worse. Rest is sales
| history.
|
| If we want to actively shield population from eating shit, we
| would have to remove more than half of items in shelves in
| most supermarkets, I suspect even more in typical US one. But
| then why the heck should things like cigarettes or even sugar
| be legal, we know now pretty well how they slowly kill
| everybody involved.
| themitigating wrote:
| Cigarettes are heavily regulated in fact California just
| banned flavors.
|
| There's also been proposals about a sugar tax and limits on
| the size of soft drinks but they are difficult to implement
| due to conservative/right wing pushback.
|
| Your comment is whataboutism but not even that good of a
| counter since actions are being taken
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Didn't Coca Cola bribe NAACP to call sugar taxes racist.
|
| https://thepostmillennial.com/coca-cola-accused-of-
| paying-na...
|
| Is NAACP right wing?
|
| A lot of left wing groups also oppose sugar tax calling
| it racist
|
| https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/taxing-bubbles-or-
| cas...
| themitigating wrote:
| No idea, what does that have to do with my comments? I'm
| pointing out that actions are being taken to curtail
| usage to counter the person who what using whataboutism
| with sugar and cigarettes
| icf80 wrote:
| next step in human evolution, just give up meat
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I feel like we're living through the death of democracy because a
| list of issues (from gerrymandering to demographics) mean that
| small groups wield oversized power. Agriculture is <6% of the US
| economy and only about 10% of the US workforce is related to it.
| Yet whole federal elections are decided based on candidates
| comments about corn and it receives huge pointless subsidies and
| is very badly under regulated. The same is true here in the UK.
| The same is true of other groups too.
|
| A core political issue in the 2020s will be how to deal with tiny
| groups holding oversized political power as we cannot afford to
| just keep paying them off (or worse, letting them "wag the dog"
| as they did with Brexit) anymore.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| sonthonax wrote:
| Agriculture may be a small constituency, but you'd rather the
| food supply continues to flow.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| No one is proposing a famine. Just that, maybe, we should
| have some safety standards?
| nikanj wrote:
| Who's "we"? The poor people don't have any power, and the rich
| people don't want to stop buying large subsidies with small
| campaign donations
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's also because of the Iowa caucuses. Why is that continued
| to wield such outlandish control of the Presidential Election
| Process?
| milliams wrote:
| When I see a graph like [1] with the y-axis not zeroed I stop
| reading. Furthermore, the assertion that it "ticked back up" is
| not really supported by that graph any more than saying "it
| ticked back up and then it ticked down again"
|
| [1] https://cdn.vox-
| cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24341618/K...
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yes, that's a deceptive graph, very likely intentionally
| deceptive in order to reinforce the clickbait headline.
| runarberg wrote:
| I agree it is totally unnecessary in this case, but sometimes
| truncating the y-axis serves a purpose. Many times it is for
| stylistic reasons, but also if the trend is more interesting
| then the scale, e.g. most stock charts truncate the y-axis
| because people don't really care how much a stock has dropped
| relative to the value, but are more interested in the overall
| trend in the time period and the specific times when the trend
| reversed (I think, I don't trade in stocks).
|
| It is unnecessary to do that in this case because the scale
| isn't that vast and you can easily see the trend on an absolute
| scale. However, this graph serves the same purpose as--I gather
| --stock charts do. They are interested in what happened while
| the trend was downwards, and the specific time at when the
| trend stopped (or at least halted).
| remarkEon wrote:
| There's a lot of red flags in the article for me as well.
|
| I'm genuinely amenable to the idea that mass antibiotics is bad
| because it makes intuitive sense. But the article starts out
| with "For decades..." and then the relevant plot has the X-axis
| start in 2012 for some reason. I strongly suspect, but don't
| have time to confirm, that if you extended that axis back to,
| say, the 90s you'd see more nuanced trends that would threaten
| the doom-porn nature of the standard Vox "explainer".
| jweir wrote:
| The article is terrible.
|
| At the very least break down the use by animal and mass.
|
| Never mind cows are not raised like pigs which are not raised
| like chickens. To lump them all together is silly and
| insulting.
| callalex wrote:
| But they don't lump them together, and they acknowledge your
| concern specifically.
| jweir wrote:
| What I would like to see a break down by animal mass. For
| meat production the US produces almost equivalent amounts
| of beef and pork. But the US also has about 10 million
| dairy cows. The FDA report is for food producing animals -
| which includes dairy cows.
|
| Unfortunately the FDA report does not include mass either,
| but I reckon if you were to look at the antibiotics/animal
| mass you would see that swine is a huge outlier.
| timeon wrote:
| Still waiting for antibiotics-resistant bacteria pandemics.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Sibling comments point out some pretty serious conditions that
| have been caused by antibiotic resistance. However, antibiotic
| resistance is more likely to cause isolated problems than
| pandemics. We haven't had antibiotics for very long, and most
| of the pandemics before we had them were viral, not bacterial.
| However, before we had antibiotics, we had the problem that
| cuts, scratches, surgery, and similar could get infected, and
| then you would lose a limb or likely die. We are slowly
| returning to that state.
|
| We live with a huge amount of bacteria around us, and in our
| guts. Our skin generally protects us from them very well, but
| those same bacteria that are harmless outside the body can kill
| when inside the body.
|
| Antibiotics not only improved survival rates from silly trivial
| injuries. They enabled a whole world of surgical interventions,
| because after surgery you can just give antibiotics to kill off
| any inadvertent infection you may have introduced. (Yes,
| sterile operating conditions help too.)
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Tuberculosis? Gonorhoea? MRSA in hospitals?
| vibrio wrote:
| it is here, and as it grows, much of the pain of drug
| resistance won't be chaos and screaming in the streets. It
| won't happen all at once. It will increasingly impact people
| getting routine procedures, or otherwise minor injuries.
| Someone who got a wisdom tooth removed or a a deep cut
| stitched up may find it doesn't heal, and there is no longer
| a magic pill available to clear an infection. It has been a
| challenging economic problem. There are poor/complicated
| incentives for R&D or venture investment into this area.
| MandieD wrote:
| Childbirth will once again be the most dangerous thing an
| average woman does, when a Caesarean becomes far too risky
| for any but the most dire cases and tears that have to be
| sewn up will often lead to childbed fever again.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Common sense would suggest to use probiotics instead because,
| like AI, they adapt and overcome with the same genetic variations
| these pathogens use to mutate and create their offensive
| capabilities. Bacteria are advanced biological machines that
| evolve so it does not make sense to fight them with static
| defense mechanisms.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Yeah, but that's more expensive. Farming corps aren't going to
| just accept that and open their wallets. Profit is everything
| for them.
| jdfedgon wrote:
| Another excellent overview of the wider problem that's behind the
| usage of antibiotics in that scale can be found in the Meat
| Atlas, published by Heinrich Boll Foundation.
|
| https://eu.boell.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/MeatAtlas20...
|
| It delivers an excellent compilation of the issues at play that
| will keep the problem going. As long as there's no change in
| policies, consumer behavior and/or some mad disease that brings
| down the meat industry, it's going to keep continued.
| willnonya wrote:
| "Big meat can't quit antibiotics"
|
| Nor should they. The impact would be more far reaching than
| what's being discussed in the article.
| xsmasher wrote:
| They could quit using antibiotics on animals that are not sick;
| quit using them just to make animals grow faster. But that
| would hurt their bottom line, so they won't do it unless
| regulated to do so.
| biorach wrote:
| No one is calling for a total ban on antibiotic use. They're
| calling for a ban on routine mass administration, along the
| lines of what the EU has done. There are very compelling public
| health reasons for this.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| For a slightly higher cost we can rear animals like cattle and
| chicken humanely and produce better quality eggs, beef etc. I
| don't understand this factory farm model.
| autokad wrote:
| this part:
|
| > I don't understand this factory farm model
|
| is prven by this part:
|
| > For a slightly higher cost we can rear animals like cattle
| and chicken humanely
|
| I think a better statement would have been, you know nothing
| about this topic but have strong opinions on it.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Take chickens, you can simply have them walk around in a yard
| and have a coop for them to go to sleep in at night, rather
| than keep them in caves their entire life and feeding them
| antibiotics. It's a bit more space, which there's plenty of
| in South Africa and the USA, but otherwise your capital
| expenditure shouldn't be more.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| IMO the only solution to the big "meat problem" be it CO2, land
| use, antibiotics resistance, ethics of slaughtering animals,
| treatment, is probably cultured meat.
|
| More government sponsored investment is definitely needed. The
| CO2 externality alone of cattle is a significant portion of
| humanity's CO2 emissions, something like 15%.
|
| The land use for meat production between feed and grazing is
| very large as well, google says 33% of farmland is dedicated to
| animal feed production. That's a huge amount of land consuming
| water resources, steadily losing topsoil, and removal of
| natural habitats and potential carbon sinks.
|
| Grazing is 35% of US land. Again, just a huge amount of land
| that is denied natural habitats.
| pookha wrote:
| You can buy meat sourced from ethical ranchers. You don't
| need to bite the bullet and be an early adopter for some
| science experiment. And you seem to have no issue with the
| millions of acres of land dedicated to growing genetically
| modified soy crops. That genetically engineered habitat
| killed off the original "natural habitat". And the answer to
| C02 has always been simple. Nuclear power.
| myshpa wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/soy
|
| "More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to
| livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest
| is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7%
| of soy is used directly for human food products such as
| tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh"
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| You don't fix industrial food systems with more industrial
| food systems. It's the industrial scale and the drive of
| capitalism to externalize costs and risks, and aggregate
| profits that is the problem.
|
| I would prefer a traditional vegetarian diet to a "cultured
| meat" diet. I don't want industrial food poducts in my body.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well, another solution to the industrial meat system is the
| industrial fake meat system. That may be a lot more viable
| in the short term than cultured meat.
|
| Vegetarianism is a far far harder sell to Americans than
| "give up your practically worthless pointlessly large
| Trucks/SUVs that you almost never use for what the
| advertising portrays you using them as". It may be harder
| than "give up soda", "use bikes more", "don't live in the
| suburbs", etc.
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| I like tofu and seitan and tvp, but my stomach has some
| limits on it's ability to process them. I really
| appreciate what vietnamese cuisine can do to imitate
| meat, but in general I find it best to not try and to let
| the ingredient do it's thing.
|
| I know I'm talking about meat in this thread, and
| sourcing it, but just wanna also acknowledge that
| reducing intake of it, and making sure it's good is the
| strategy I think is best and scalable. Seems to be some
| consensus forming around it too.
| pookha wrote:
| At one point in my life I was an avowed socialist. It look
| years for me to see through the bullshit to understand that
| "Capitalism" is really just negotiated (unplanned) order
| and sometimes that order is high-jacked by moron's. In the
| case of food production in the US the USDA is severely
| restricting the ability for small to medium sized
| operations to survive in the market and have tipped the
| scales in favor of giant multi-national corporations. those
| company's can have the on-site inspection overhead. A small
| business cannot. Thus they cannot sell their product across
| state lines. And so you wind up with aggregated industrial
| food systems.
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| We run into that very issue in our local food system.
| It's a cap on the ability to grow the local food economy.
| The solutions people have tried include making shared
| USDA kitchens for food processing, but that is very
| complicated and I have heard more of them fail than
| succeed.
|
| In capitalist systems, "sometimes" seems to be happening
| very often. Frequently enough now, and over history, that
| some very believable and actionable critiques of capital
| have been written, re-written, re-discovered and re-
| packaged -- at their root being the insight that this
| alienation, capture and monopoly is the result of class
| differentiation, capital accumulation, and production
| under the commodity form. That's not bullshit.
| pookha wrote:
| By all means start the business. You'll soon realize that the
| regulatory overhead is draining your resources (can't pay the
| bills) and the FDA doesn't have enough mobile inspectors
| available to inspect the beef. Of course these aren't problems
| for Tyson Foods Corp... Crony capitlism is heavily entrenched
| in the US.
| adh636 wrote:
| > For a slightly higher cost...
|
| > I don't understand this factory farm model
|
| Seems to me like you understand it just fine. Or maybe you are
| underestimating the cost difference or people's
| ability/willingness to spend more on these items.
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| I encourage people to look for alternative sources for their
| meat, for all food, really. Local food systems get you a better
| product, and nowadays they can also be quite cheaper with all of
| the profit taking and fuel/energy cost driven inflation in the
| industrial food supply chain.
|
| We are blessed to be in Vermont, which has strong local food
| systems. We can get nearly all our produce and meat from local
| farms. We have been purchasing grass fed, pastured beef from
| Squier Family Farm, in Wallingford VT for years. We can get lamb
| and pork from the Bur-Ger family farm or any of a half dozen
| other families that show up at the local farmers market or sell
| in the coop.
|
| We recently had some Omaha steaks, claiming to be grass fed,
| shipped to us by a family member. They absolutely sucked in
| comparison. I have had Butcher Box steaks that were comparable,
| but also much more expensive, and way more material in packaging.
|
| For produce, we have a half dozen farms to choose from. It means
| eating more seasonally, but the quality of the veg is just so
| much greater.
|
| Now you can see this as privilege, but it's also the result of
| hundreds of neighbors making the conscious decision to support
| their local food system. While everyone was complaining about
| food price increases, the local food systems were WAY more stable
| in their pricing, and we even saw the price of grass fed ground
| beef drop around here. It requires more thought and planning, but
| it really pays off, IMO.
| standardUser wrote:
| For those who live a little father out from the source, these
| are two labels that actually mean something: Certified Humane
| Animal Welfare Approved
|
| Of course lots of small producers cant afford these
| certifications, which doesn't meat they don't have high
| standards for how they raise their animals.
| pacaro wrote:
| I think that you correctly identify this as a privilege.
|
| This points to another deeper problem that drives this.
| Americans expect to be able to eat meat, even when eating cheap
| food.
|
| Historically the food of poverty has either not included meat,
| or has used less desirable parts of the animal.
|
| If meat production was all done humanely, then a large section
| of society wouldn't be able to afford to eat meat, or not
| often.
|
| The subsidies, both explicit and implicit, in the meat industry
| in the US helps disguise income inequality
| standardUser wrote:
| "If meat production was all done humanely, then a large
| section of society wouldn't be able to afford to eat meat"
|
| We might eat less meat, but you can buy meat today that is
| humanely raised for marginally more expensive than the
| factory farmed stuff. And that's with the overhead associated
| with small producers in a niche industry. If we were to make
| humane standards universal, cost savings would obviously
| follow. Just look at Europe.
|
| This is a solved problem that only persists due to mass
| American indifference to how our meat is tortured and
| poisoned before we eat it.
| Thlom wrote:
| Meat production is not that much more humane in Europe to
| be honest.
|
| It's difficult to humanely produce meat at the same scale
| and price as industrial meat production.
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| I think regulatory capture and the power of absolutely
| massive monopolies in our industrial agriculture systems
| are what makes the problem persist. Awareness of the issue
| is not the obstacle. We can all be aware of it, people
| regularly complain about this or that part of the food
| system, but when we organize and fight to improve it, we
| meet incredible power arrayed against us. We can win, and
| do, but that poeer, not our lack of awareness, is the
| problem, IMO
| goodpoint wrote:
| > a large section of society wouldn't be able to afford to
| eat meat, or not often.
|
| US has the highest obesity rate. Even more among the poor.
|
| Eating healthier food sounds like a big improvement.
| [deleted]
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| The definition of humanely includes compassion and sympathy.
|
| Even if you raise a cow on a 'happy' farm, at the end the cow
| will end up in a slaughter house where the cow experiences
| immense terror and fear.
|
| To be humane would mean not to eat animals if our survival
| doesn't depend on it and in most parts of the world we don't
| need to eat animals anymore.
|
| I think 'less cruel' would be a more apt description - but
| eating animals that came from a happy farm is still cruel.
| pacaro wrote:
| This is an important perspective. We all have to find our
| own peace with how the food we eat is produced.
|
| Temple Grandin discusses this in "Animals Make Us Human:
| Creating the Best Life for Animals" [1]. She discusses the
| distress she felt when the first slaughter house that she
| had designed opened, and she watched the cows calming going
| to be slaughtered. Even with the reduced distress, or
| perhaps because of it, that she felt like a betrayer. But
| she also talks about how she comes to terms with consuming
| ethically produced meat. Prey species like cattle -- or the
| nearest wild equivalent -- live with high stress levels,
| with threats from predators, and the constant search for
| food. On a farm the food is assured, and the environment is
| less stressful. Her thesis (which I hope I am representing
| correctly) is that this can be a trade. The animal lives a
| calmer safer life, without cruelty, and in return, we eat
| it.
|
| Not everyone will be happy with that argument. The world
| would be arguably be a better place if more people thought
| about this
|
| [1] https://a.co/d/bQwSb4q
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Interesting. If all animals currently consumed would be
| treated like that - then yes suffering overall would be
| reduced. But it's not realistic to feed the world with
| these farming methods.
|
| And 'ethical farming' is not without cruelty. Cruelty is
| still applied at the end.
|
| And I wouldn't call it a fair trade either.
|
| These cows are being bred because we want to eat them. If
| there wasn't a demand then the cow on the ethical farm
| wouldn't exist or experience cruelty.
|
| Animals in nature are free and yes are being hunted by
| other animals who need to eat other animals to survive.
| It's the nature of things.
|
| Most of humanity don't need to eat meat anymore and hence
| have the choice of not causing suffering or being cruel.
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| Interestingly, on my last visit to the farm stand picking
| up beef, the owner was talking about how made their choice
| of butcher based on those principals. They take them to one
| whose operation was designed with consultation from Temple
| Grandin. She takes the cows she has raised there herself,
| and witnesses the operation.
|
| I've processed chickens and ducks that I have raised. Much
| smaller scale, and actually when it comes to duck I'm much
| more about the eggs than the meat 8^)
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| If there is no other way to survive - yes raising or
| hunting animals and doing the best we can to minimise
| suffering is essential.
|
| There are videos of farmers who gave up farming animals
| because they realized 'there is someone in there'. In the
| BBC docu series 'dark side of dairy' a farmer starts
| crying when he's asked to explain what happens to the
| baby cow.
|
| Chickens are deeply social animals and can create deep
| bonds with humans. You might have seen the video of a hen
| waiting for her human friend coming back from school and
| running towards him.
|
| Or how about Monique - the hen that traveled around the
| world and 'kind of saved my life' [0] of her human
| friend.
|
| Cows are these gentle and curious giant creatures and yet
| we betray their trust by killing them in the end. [1]
|
| Also, why are we not using the actual words like killing
| and butchering vs processing. The meat industry comes up
| with all these words to soften what is actually happening
| to animals.
|
| Humanity will eventually give up killing & consuming
| animals for pleasure and future humans will see what we
| are doing now to other sentient beings as barbaric [2]
|
| [0]https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/apr/21/why-
| did-the-c...
|
| [1] https://moustache-farmer.de/en
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS7NRtEJBcA
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| I hear you, but I also think that something must be said for
| the fact that I am getting all the meat I want, at prices
| that are competitive with and in many cases cheaper than the
| heavily subsidized industrial farms, but I am doing it with a
| family that gets none of those subsidies, and processed at a
| butcher in my county that doesn't get those subsidies either.
|
| This could not scale to feed my old neighborhood in Chicago,
| for example. In that place, sourcing this way would be so
| much more expensive. I pay other prices for living in a very
| small city in the mountains, but this is a perk.
|
| I guess I just want to caution us from applying the usual
| "privilege" critiques and pretending like only super-scalar
| universal solutions are worth considering.
|
| I agree with the whole of your comment. Subsidies of
| industrial food systems shape our collective diets.
|
| My diet includes bulk purchased lentils and chickpeas, rice,
| home-ground wheat and other very cheap staples that are the
| majority of my calories. We're eating lentils, beans, rice,
| making our own bread, and the meat is in about 1/4 our meals.
| I feel like we eat very well, perhaps better than I have in
| my whole life if I measure it by health and ethics. I spent
| years in Chicago where my corner bar had a Michelin star, and
| there were dozens of equally good places and man did I enjoy
| my privilege of being a well paid single remote working
| hacker there.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >The subsidies, both explicit and implicit, in the meat
| industry in the US helps disguise income inequality
|
| This right here is the key and its just not meat. So many
| foodstuffs are nothing but sugar and corn. It makes you think
| that you are wealthy since you have so much food to choose
| from. The reality is that it is disguising the increasing
| devaluing of the dollar + decades of income stagnation.
|
| Now you got me on a rant:
|
| With the rising costs of everything due to what CEOs claim is
| "inflation", we are seeing this reduction in quality in
| everything we buy.
|
| I would protest this by only buying locally and spending as
| few dollars as I can just to stick it to the man and this
| captured government that we have but the fact that year after
| year the currency is being whittled away to 0 means I lose no
| matter what I do.
|
| So what can I do to preserve the effort spent to earn that
| wealth? Can't invest in stocks, the market is down and so I
| could lose, don't want to spend the money and reward all
| these CEOs who have been price gouging and selling us
| products with quality fade. Maybe buy real estate? I will
| probably lose on that as well. There seems to be no escape, I
| am trapped with no recourse.
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| I think you are just recognizing that capital is not
| wealth, and that the instinct to grow and preserve it is
| alienating you from solving the problems and generating the
| wealth thru cooperation with your neighbors. Buying
| locally, keeps more money circulating locally.
|
| It wont offset inflation, but it makes a bigger impact on
| the people around you, who grow your food, ship and
| transport your food, sell you food and goods, install your
| heat pumps or wood stove, maybe even build the wood stove.
| The fabric of social relations that drives modern
| production, light industry as they sometimes call it, is
| what makes us collectively wealthy.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Fair enough, I seen "money" as a store of the work effort
| that was done to earn it...sort of like storing energy in
| a battery. Yes the "energy" needs to be able to flow. And
| yes it is a net benefit of the community to circulate the
| money among itself. I didn't rule this out as in my
| comment I did mention buying locally.
|
| However what you describe is largely out of my control
| and this is where my frustrations lie. The locally
| sourced money eventually finds its way heading in one
| direction: the portfolios of all these elites who have
| the capacity to shape policy and help accelerate this one
| way flow of capital. In my 30+ years of living I have not
| seen this trend reverse. Like I mentioned, any attempts
| to stem this flow is futile since even my outflow is
| reduced to 0, I lose that "energy" stored in the battery
| anyway in the form of inflation. I guess in a way if you
| think about it, a real battery cannot hold energy
| indefinitely (as far as I know) but still...how do I
| reconcile with the fact that the effort used to generate
| that money is either stolen by these people, either by it
| moving in one direction from me to them or by their
| monetary policy that makes it eventually worthless?
| cbrozefsky wrote:
| Yah, I mean, that's one take on it. A take that I still
| think confuses money with wealth and energy. That kind of
| metaphor works because it's still putting money as a
| stand-in, a generalization, an abstraction, for the
| social relations that reproduce our culture, that feed
| and clothe and educate and entertain us. It's a useful
| metaphor sometimes, but we should not mistake the map for
| the territory, the accounting for the experience.
|
| The wealth is in the social relations and material goods
| even (you are not wealthy because you have the money to
| buy a house, you are wealthy because you have a well
| insulated, sturdy house). Turn the abstract capital into
| the means of production and (social) reproduction.
|
| Just trying to give a pep talk, not disagreeing with your
| sentiment 8^)
| ROTMetro wrote:
| My grandparents ate tons of meat despite their income level.
| Why? Because they lived in a small rural town. City folks not
| wanting to pay the true cost of living in a city and be able
| to live like they live in a small rural ag town (while making
| fun of people who chose to live in rural ag towns) is just
| like meat producers not wanting to pay the true costs of
| creating antibiotic resistance, it is an unspoken cause of
| these sorts of discussions.
| m000 wrote:
| > Big meat can't quit antibiotics
|
| But you _can_ quit big meat.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| It is one of the easiest things to do that has a sizeable
| impact on the world.
| detroitcoder wrote:
| It is my understanding that you quitting big meat, doesn't
| affect your risk. If you are exposed to a new drug resistant
| pathogen that was the result of anti-biotics in cattle,
| chicken, pork, etc, it doesn't matter if you even eat meat.
|
| That said am I interpreting this right? How much of a risk does
| the use of antibiotics in meat present to a vegetarian?
| biorach wrote:
| long-term yes, you're right - everyone is at risk due to
| over-use of antibiotics
| barbazoo wrote:
| > How much of a risk does the use of antibiotics in meat
| present to a vegetarian?
|
| Whatever the exact value, it's most likely much lower. At
| least you're not ingesting whatever is left in the meat
| which, by reading some of the responses here, seem to come
| with significant risk.
| ornornor wrote:
| You can also quit meat entirely.
| nszceta wrote:
| Do these antibiotics and their metabolites stay in the meat post
| slaughter and make their way into the food supply?
| xnx wrote:
| Even if they don't, broad/inessential use of antibiotics helps
| evolve antibiotic resistant pathogens, which is everyone's
| problem.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Yes, but in negligible amounts that should not cause illness or
| emergence of antibiotic resistance in consumers.
|
| "Although intake was estimated to be low and exposure can be
| considered safe, the dietary habits among consumers vary and
| increased consumption of several foods that are burdened with
| antibiotics can raise the risk. Furthermore, low and long-term
| exposure can have severe effects for gut microbiota which in
| turn is related with severe consequences for health and
| diseases that sometimes are not directly correlated with
| antibiotics exposure."
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/10/8/456
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Yes, which is why giving antibiotics to livestock that are
| going for slaughter is illegal pretty much everywhere except
| the US.
|
| If you actually need to dose some to treat an illness, there
| are protocols to follow to ensure that they're clean before
| they go off to market.
| willnonya wrote:
| That's not even based in reality.
|
| If you wait until after animals are sick to treat then
| depending on what disease it is you've lost all or most of a
| herd due to the way existing regulations require them to be
| handled.
| nszceta wrote:
| Do you see any problems with prophylactically dosing
| antibiotics yourself? Anything?
| NegativeK wrote:
| Human living conditions are nowhere near those of
| livestock.
|
| If we want to drop antibiotics, we're going to end up
| with significantly increased prices of meat due to
| increased land usage requirements. This would be
| ecologically good, but socially disastrous.
| timeon wrote:
| Sooner or later it is going to be socially disastrous
| anyway.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Perhaps that means that industrial meat production is not
| sustainable and maybe never can even can be.
| runarberg wrote:
| Given a choose between faster onsets of more antibiotic
| resistant bacteria and a higher price of meat, I think a
| smart policy choice would be the latter, as the former
| disaster seems a lot harder to manage then the latter.
|
| But maybe this is why I'm not a politician.
| nszceta wrote:
| Central Europeans eat a lot of meat and somehow they
| manage to keep prices under control without slamming
| animals with antibiotics prophylactically. Land and
| regulatory compliance costs are much higher than in the
| US too.
| cesnja wrote:
| Yes, because they the EU farmers are given ridiculous
| subsidies.
| count wrote:
| lol, so are US farmers.
| biorach wrote:
| It's far from that simple.
|
| US farms are also subsidised. Maybe to a lesser extent
| than the EU but it's significant.
|
| There are plenty of farms in the EU that house animals
| permanantly. I can't speak as to the differences in
| conditions between US and EU regulations regarding animal
| housing.
|
| It's not at all clear that banning indiscriminate
| antibiotic use in the US would render farms financially
| unviable. There are significant trade barriers that mean
| that meat producers are somewhat insulated from world
| competition.
|
| There would probably be a rise in the price of meat, but
| how significant is hard to say - there may be some
| research done on this, maybe not. I don't believe that
| meat in the EU is significantly more expensive than in
| the US
| michael1999 wrote:
| The article reports that US producers want this because
| their stock handling is weak, and improving their practices
| would be inconvenient. Lots of people raise chickens,
| swine, and cattle without prophylactic antibiotics. But
| running the herd through to vax is tougher work than adding
| cipro to the feed.
| benj111 wrote:
| anti biotics arent preventative, you have to give them when
| they actually have the infection, else it doesnt do
| anything.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I believe the animals are given antibiotics to make them
| grow faster. I don't know what the mechanism of action is
| for that though.
| biorach wrote:
| Based on reality...? Here in the EU we have managed not to
| loose most of our herds.
| troyvit wrote:
| You're being down-voted, but you're describing exactly how
| the U.S. handles outbreaks like this. The avian flu egg
| shortage is a good example [1][2]
|
| I'm not saying those rules are bad, I honestly don't know,
| but I do wonder how necessary they would be if high
| concentration livestock operations weren't so prevalent in
| the U.S.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/n
| earin...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza#Culling
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Avian flu and antibiotics have nothing to do with each
| other. Influenza is a virus.
| troyvit wrote:
| Sure but the bigger picture re: the industry and its
| oversight is what we're talking about in this thread.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Yeah, maybe in the US, where your livestock practices are
| pretty suspect at best.
| xsmasher wrote:
| Antibiotics are used to make the animals grow faster. This
| is not a case of "we want to keep these animals healthy" it
| is "we want more meat per animal, and this is a cheap way
| to get it."
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Right, which is only a thing in the US.
|
| Over here we have better livestock rearing practices, and
| we choose better breeds.
| andrewmatte wrote:
| I am not a doctor - I just write code... I remember being up in
| arms about weird stuff in my food when I first heard about it but
| now I think about the wellbeing of the animals while they're
| alive and shit, man, if I were sick I'd want antibiotics too.
| When is it excessive? Is it because they're all so close together
| in the factory "farm"? What do the veterinarians say about this?
| zabzonk wrote:
| i am not a doctor, i am a programmer, i used to be a
| microbiologist. the big problem with stuffing domestic or wild
| animals or humans with antibiotics for no good reason (ie
| without testing if they actually have an infection that the
| antibiotic can or should treat) is that it encourages the
| development of antibiotic resistance in _all_ bacteria in the
| treated animal/human.
|
| it's only been 100 years since the very first development of
| effective antibiotics. before this, bacterial diseases were
| deadly. if we go on with this misuse, they will become deadly
| again.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| It's not given to sick animals, it's constantly given to all
| livestock because it's cheap and it's seen as a sort of
| "preventative maintenance". Which is bad for all kinds of
| reasons 1) a lot of it makes it into your meals 2) it reduces
| the efficacy of antibiotics by constantly exposing it to
| bacteria (allowing them to eventually become resistant).
|
| Probably other reasons it's bad as well (I'm also not a doctor
| and just write code).
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| Giving antibiotics to animals also makes them grow bigger.
|
| It's billions of Petri dishes. It's a white swan in the
| making.
|
| It's really a shame that now humans are not given antibiotics
| to combat antibiotic resistance, when humans do not even
| consume most of the antibiotics produced.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not all antibiotics and diseases are the same. It still
| makes sense to not overprescribe powerful antibiotics that
| humans use for human diseases. Even if agriculture is
| recklessly using cheap antibiotics in animals.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| [dead]
| yboris wrote:
| It's because they are close together in the factory farm. I
| don't think you need to consult what veterinarians say - seeing
| photos of how animals are treated should be enough for you to
| just stop consuming meat (if you "think about the wellbeing of
| the animals").
|
| Consider watching _Earthlings_ (2005) -
| http://www.nationearth.com/ - I'd say a _must watch_ film for
| anyone who cares about animals.
| myshpa wrote:
| I would also recommend newer version named Dominion (2018).
| Hard to say which one is better. If unsure, watch both! :)
|
| https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
| falcolas wrote:
| I hate to be that guy, but not all ranches.
|
| Ranches surrounding me (I live in relatively rural Montana)
| don't even come close to resembling the kinds you mention.
| The cattle are given the run of hundreds of acres, and also
| they often graze from those fields, etc.
|
| Yeah, there are a shitty minority of ranches that produce a
| large amount of meat in terrible conditions. But they are not
| the norm, not in my experience.
|
| And for a tangent, I'd like also call out that it's not just
| beef being produced by ranchers. We're not just tossing
| carcasses in the landfills. We use the whole animal. Calcium,
| leather, feed, gelatin, medicine, etc.
| yboris wrote:
| You are going by your personal experience which is _very
| dangerous_. As far as I understand statistics (taken across
| the US), If I remember right, at least 97% of all meat
| comes from factory farms (depends on animal, this may not
| be aggregate across all animal types).
|
| So, most people want to believe _their_ meat comes from
| somewhere nice, but on average, basically all meat in the
| US comes from animals that are living in horrible
| conditions (I suspect living lives not worth living -- a
| life of suffering).
| falcolas wrote:
| I'd love to see your source for the 97% statistic,
| because it doesn't match with anything I know about it.
|
| > So, most people want to believe their meat comes from
| somewhere nice
|
| I have the ability to _know_ mine is, because our grocery
| stores get their meat locally.
| myshpa wrote:
| https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-
| estima...
|
| "We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in
| factory farms at present. By species, we estimate that
| 70.4% of cows, 98.3% of pigs, 99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of
| chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens
| raised for meat are living in factory farms."
| falcolas wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| Being honest though, it's sus as fuck, and not just
| because of the source, or that these are "rough
| estimates" to use their terms.
|
| A simple read through the spreadsheet shows some pretty
| odd (and significant) discrepancies. A single example: A
| row with "2500-4999" animals per farm has farm counts and
| "total animals" that amounts to over 6.5k animals per
| farm.
|
| Also, note that CAFO - the farms we're (legitimately)
| concerned about - is not based solely on the animal
| counts+, though that's the only part of the definition
| that the "Sentience Institute" uses because "the public
| may consider it bad too".
|
| It strikes me as straight up lying with numbers -
| presenting real numbers in a way which tells the story
| the institute wants to tell.
|
| + "has a manmade ditch or pipe that carries manure or
| wastewater to surface water; or the animals come into
| contact with surface water that passes through the area
| where they're confined."
| myshpa wrote:
| > A row with "2500-4999" animals per farm has farm counts
| and "total animals" that amounts to over 6.5k animals per
| farm
|
| Do you mean line #69 (Inventory, Table 14) ?
|
| ----------------------------------------------
|
| Animals per farm | Total farms | Total animals
|
| 2500 to 4999 ..... | 1,973 ...... | 6,681,843
|
| ----------------------------------------------
|
| 6681843 / 1973 = 3386 animals per farm
|
| > It strikes me as straight up lying with numbers
|
| Do you have better source ?
| yboris wrote:
| This is why I _super_ appreciate and love the book
| _Animal Liberation_ (1975) by Peter Singer -- a classic
| that started modern-day vegetarianism.
|
| The author, my favorite philosopher, uses industry
| booklets and instruction manuals as examples of what
| happens at the farms (and you _know_ worse things happen
| than what is described). It 's horrific stuff, enough to
| make the reader want to decrease their meat consumption.
| I'm 99% sure that since its publication, the % of animals
| coming from CAFOs has increased. And since then various
| other problems appeared (chickens genetically engineered
| to grow so fast that often their bones break -- resulting
| in more suffering than before).
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Liberation-Definitive-
| Classic-...
| [deleted]
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| And yet this only happens in the US.
| elil17 wrote:
| EU did it until last year, when they banned it. The US should
| follow their lead.
| biorach wrote:
| My understanding is that even before the EU ban it was much
| less common in the EU than in the US because most EU
| countries regulate antibiotic use in agriculture.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Also there's less need for it in the first place as welfare
| conditions are usually better. Who could have expected that
| livestock that's not kept unhealthy conditions tends to be
| healthier.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Except in Denmark where they use, or perhaps used to use,
| vast quantities of antibiotics intensive pig rearing.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| No doubt; same in Netherlands (more pigs than people in
| the country). But there's been improvement over the last
| 20 years on the animal welfare front, at least in the
| Netherlands and presumably Denmark too. And routine
| administration of antibiotics is banned everywhere in the
| EU now, AFAIK without too many exceptions.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Some countries in Europe (e.g. the Nordic countries) banned
| the practice a decade or more ago already. What's new is that
| EU as a whole bans it.
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-use-in-
| livesto...
| hammock wrote:
| I hear about antibiotics in meat constantly, but all of the
| biggest meat suppliers I know don't use them. For example, Perdue
| and Tyson both don't raise chicken with antibiotics. So where are
| antibiotics being used?
|
| Edit: why is this downvoted?
| mokash wrote:
| suggest you read the article.
|
| _The sea change in chicken production demonstrated it was
| possible to quickly scale down antibiotics in farming, but it
| didn't do much to reduce overall use, as the chicken industry
| only used 6 percent of antibiotics in agriculture in 2016. And
| the momentum didn't spread to other parts of the meat business,
| like beef and pork, which together account for over 80 percent
| of medically important antibiotics fed to farmed animals._
| hotdogrelish wrote:
| I think that this is sometimes misleading marketing-speak.
|
| For example, Perdue says, "All of the animals for our branded
| products are raised in no-antibiotics-ever programs"; as a big
| company, surely this leaves enough vagueness for them to raise
| and sell animals with antibiotics under other brands/products.
| Since it's a private company, consumers can't know really what
| percentage of animals fall under one category or the other.
|
| https://corporate.perduefarms.com/news/statements/antibiotic...
|
| Though it is interesting that such a big company would move
| towards that direction at all.
| no_wizard wrote:
| If we follow the EU lead on this and it does take, I expect in
| short order the US government to pass some Farm aid bill that
| further passes the cost on to taxpayers, and for enforcement to
| be haphazard for ~decade or more.
|
| We can't regulate anything correctly in the US, it seems. Only
| recently have I ever seen, in my entire adult life, the FTC have
| any real teeth, and I doubt it'll last
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Don't worry, the EU can't regulate effectively either, they
| just end up making life harder for everyone, while the
| insiders, large producers and corrupt politicians continue to
| make out like bandits, just like here. They are just better at
| throwing you a couple of morsels to distract you at what's
| really going on. Prime example my relatives experience daily:
| they can't do anything to stop trade fraud with extra virgin
| olive oil or cheeses.
|
| I'm tired of everyone romanticizing the EU here, it's full of
| all the same corruption and regulatory capture issues as
| America. I question whether even a fraction of you have ever
| lived there.
| eppp wrote:
| You will pay for it in taxes or at the meat counter. You are
| going to pay either way and likely both.
| callalex wrote:
| This assumes that everyone has to purchase meat. The reality
| is that nobody has to purchase meat.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Thats my point in not so many words (typical American
| fashion!). We'll likely pay for both while the businesses
| don't actually have to bear any real due to subsidies but
| they won't get passed on to the consumer, they'll just
| capture the profits
| dylan604 wrote:
| >in my entire adult life, the FTC have any real teeth, and I
| doubt it'll last
|
| It's one of those situations where the people involved are so
| over powered by those they are meant to govern/regulate, that
| there's little chance of them being anything but toothless. The
| only time they seemingly act is when the acts are so large and
| publicly visible, that the only way to save any face is to
| publicly react. For the things that slide under the public's
| radar, they don't have resources for it and just let it go. At
| least, that's how it appears to me.
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