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Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

usda.gov

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Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#181

Post by tptacek »

b112 wrote: post #171
chris_wot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this particular bad thing was bad before DOGE, then it’s far worse under DOGE. It’s a particularly ridiculous argument.

Knowing how and why a thing happened, is far more important than political grandstanding. The doge cuts may affect the future of this program, but have absolutely positively nothing to do with the situation now. Nothing. Not a thing. It is fine to say doge will make this neglect worse, but the neglect happened for a decade. And that's important. That's vital to understanding why, and how it happened. And that is abso…

I don't know about "not a thing"; have to be careful about overcorrecting the other direction. The thing I'm wary about is just shutting down discussion of complicated things as soon as Trump appears. The screwworm situation is interesting!

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#182

Post by xipho »

zwnow wrote: post #147
xipho wrote: post #141

Very hard to escape biology unless you invest in understanding it. Ticks, mosquito-born diseases, agricultural pests, they don't care about AI, politics, or space-races or geo political boundaries. We, on the other hand, require life to go on, it's asynchronous. This is why natural history collections, and taxonomists are going to be more critical than ever, at some point we'll need to re-invest in knowing what's out…

I highly doubt big pharma will intervene. Humans only care about the foreseeable future. Our interest and actions regarding climate change shows that openly to each and everyone of us.

Big pharma will intervene when they realize that life is one big chemistry experiment, and it's running longer than any lab has. AI to predict, nature to produce, then you need to figure out how nature produced. Understanding the pathways in nature -> quicker time to product.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#183

Post by xipho »

paulcole wrote: post #152
xipho wrote: post #141

Very hard to escape biology unless you invest in understanding it. Ticks, mosquito-born diseases, agricultural pests, they don't care about AI, politics, or space-races or geo political boundaries. We, on the other hand, require life to go on, it's asynchronous. This is why natural history collections, and taxonomists are going to be more critical than ever, at some point we'll need to re-invest in knowing what's out…

In what is it “asynchronous”?

Child comment is probably right, "asymmetrical" was likely going through my mind, or some chimera of both. I mean to say that whatever humans do, their actions ("requests"), don't get a response from "nature" immediately, the "response" is unpredictable, particularly as to when it will come back. If we get a break down SS, we get no response. Request(s) -> nature impacted -> some time passes -> response comes back, but not all nice and linear, nor always what we expected. "Promises" only coming with deep understanding.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#184

Post by croes »

echelon wrote: post #167
croes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the edit of parent. And I wrote „just nature“ because parent used it’s nature as a justification. Hence the moral part.

We evolved to eat. We did not evolve to rape. Eating, fundamentally, reduces some other organism's population. All of nature does it. We consume life and the byproducts of life. Even the high energy gas exchange we rely upon is 100% a waste product that we consume. Life is fundamentally about consuming and repurposing the materials of others. You don't need to have sex. You need to eat to survive. Our bodies are natu…

Your word analogy is wrong.

It‘s not eat : rape, it‘s eat: fuck, so for some the equivalent for rape is eating meat or more specific killing animal : rape.

We evolved to eat and we evolved to fuck.

But like sex doesn’t mean rape so does eating not necessarily mean meat or at least no much and not without consideration who the animal is raised before we kill and eat it.

A long time in many societies we didn’t really care what women felt during sex or if they were even willing to.

But we evolved further and learned women have the same rights as men and rape is a bad thing. We even redefined what is considered rape. It’s not that long ago that raping your wife was impossible from a legal point of view.

We also changed our view on factorial farming, at least many of us. At least we want meat from a happy cow that lived on the pasture and not penned up in the barn without sunshine. The next step isn’t that far, no animal should be killed if nutrition is possible otherwise. We already spare some animals as food. In the west it’s cats and dogs, in India cows. And some include all animals in the don‘t eat category.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#185

Post by gruez »

jncfhnb wrote: post #140
gruez wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this supported by the data? During the pandemic people were also blaming "monopolization" or "consolidation" for the rise in grocery prices, but in reality the margins of publicly traded supermarket companies went up by a percentage point or two.

Profit margin increasing by a percentage point on a low margin business is potentially significant

It's certainly meaningful for the company involved, but a 1% increase in grocer margins means a $100 grocery bill becomes $101. It's at best an incomplete explanation for the ~20% price increase on grocery prices between 2021 and 2023.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#186

Post by alephnerd »

HillRat wrote: post #164
alephnerd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's due to issues around monopolization in the Dairy and Cattle industry in the US [1]. 70% of all processors in the dairy and cattle industry are now owned by 3 companies. Processors don't own cattle - they just process raw material like dairy and meat into cheese and pasteurized milk and handle the entire supply chain. But because they control the supply chain, distribution, and even the feed [0] used they can s…

Packer and ag consolidation is a huge problem, but the underlying issue here is climate change and long-lasting droughts; some of the issues with herd size — the smallest since about 1950 — come from COVID hangover when cows weren’t getting processed and price-per-head plummeted, but the immediate problem is that ranchers can’t support large herds due to lack of rain and cost of feed. We’re looking at long-term cost…

> the immediate problem is that ranchers can’t support large herds due to lack of rain and cost of feed

Ranchers that can support large herds (2,000+) are those who earn a net profit [0] and are consolidating because processors do not want to support small farms.

While environmental factors do play a role, saying it's the primary reason is greenwashing of the real oligopolies tendencies arising in American Ag industry.

[0] - https://www.thebullvine.com/news/will-your-dairy-farm-surviv...

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#187

Post by croes »

echelon wrote: post #167
croes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the edit of parent. And I wrote „just nature“ because parent used it’s nature as a justification. Hence the moral part.

We evolved to eat. We did not evolve to rape. Eating, fundamentally, reduces some other organism's population. All of nature does it. We consume life and the byproducts of life. Even the high energy gas exchange we rely upon is 100% a waste product that we consume. Life is fundamentally about consuming and repurposing the materials of others. You don't need to have sex. You need to eat to survive. Our bodies are natu…

You could also say we evolved to lie but nowadays it’s considered a bad habit.

The crucial point is the morals of society.

Being has was once a sin, now nit so much at least in the western world even if some try to turn that back.

We also evolved to kill especially with weapons because our natural one aren’t that great. We kill lots of other humans, of course the evil one is always the other side because killing is bad nevertheless we evolved to do quite effectively.

Evolution is a explanation not an justification.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#188

Post by 20after4 »

Numerlor wrote: post #73
andsoitis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not essential. We can eat less beef. Better for health, the environment.

Screwworm also infects wildlife and occasionally humans, it's really not something you want to have in the area if you can help it

It sounds like it's more than occasionally infecting humans: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#189

Post by orwin »

belter wrote: post #158
f1shy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had lots of discussions with people who insist in eating all raw. I have been in a restaurant where a teenager ordered a raw beef right beaid us. Made me sick just of seeing, feeling the raw meat smell, and hearing the chewing. I have seen enough “chefs” handling raw meat in tv, putting it literally seconds in heat, and basically eating raw. There is no agenda, but I do see a trend.

The french steak tartare is very common in France, in many corporate canteen.

'tartare' you see in corporate canteen (and a lot of restaurants sadly) are from Metro, and are absolutely safe: after being cut, it's flash-freezed in its can, and the can is only opened seconds before the meat is prepared, minutes before being served.

They're not really good, but they're safe.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#190

Post by fc417fc802 »

timr wrote: post #174
throwup238 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding was recently cut but this infestation has been building for years. The key failure that caused this current outbreak was during COVID. The lockdowns shut down both the release flights by the US and the mosquito breeding facilities in Latina America, grinding the whole pest control program to a halt.

From the other link on the front page about this subject [1]: > Illegal cattle smuggling, long considered one of the most efficient money-laundering routes for the drug cartels which terrorised San Pedro Sula, is regarded as the main reason for the accelerating advance. Up to 800,000 cattle a year are illicitly raised in nature reserves, such as the UNESCO-protected Rio Platano Biosphere in Honduras, and then smuggle…

> So for those who keep trying to make the connection, it has little, if anything, to do with US politics.

I follow your intended meaning (USAID & etc cuts). But taken literally it's US policies and propaganda that enable the drug cartels. Our dysfunctions are still ultimately the root of the problem.

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