[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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-13 23:01 UTC)