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Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

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Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#151

Post by SeanDav »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #118
SeanDav wrote: post #107

In Europe many of the laws tend to try to follow good moral principles. In the USA it would likely be the same if Big Business didn't have such a massive influence on law making.

Business has its hand in the legislative process in Europe too. Europe's not some corruption-free idealistic utopia.

>Europe's not some corruption-free idealistic utopia

I never said it was. Just in general Europe is driven more by what is good for the people, not what is good necessarily for big business.

How else do you explain the gun laws of USA despite the numerous atrocities committed by people with easy access to huge quantities of ammunition and semi-automatic weapons? Can you say that the NRA has nothing to do with the gun laws in the USA?

How do you explain the inclusion of so many European banned substances in common food production in the USA? The alternatives are generally more expensive and less convenient, yet they are banned in Europe, not USA.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#152

Post by run4yourlives »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #137
Spooky23 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be right, if farmers were free actors. For poultry farms, farmers are essentially sharecroppers. They are paid a fixed fee to grow chickens owned by Tyson/Perdue/etc. For beef farms, ranchers birth and keep cattle for a specific period of time, at which point they are sold to feedlot operators. The feedlots have thousands of cattle are where many of the nasty issues with disease/etc come from. Farmers are not v…

Surely the same argument applies - mass agri-business can see the coming apocalypse too.

Sorry, you'll need to speak up. I can't hear you over next quarter's share price hitting the floor.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#153

Post by onemorepassword »

pcrh wrote: post #124
AlexMuir wrote: post #52

HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others. In Europe we can barely stop people from selling horsemeat as beef. I'm not sure how effectively we are implementing any of these rules, and I'm sure a farmer who wishes to do so can flout them at will. One positive thing to come from the rise of supermarkets…

The article is also a little slanted, in that the described only those practices permitted in the US, but banned in the EU. There are many practices where the reverse is true, such as the manufacture of certain cheeses from non-pasturized milk being permitted in some parts of the EU, which can lead to a number of diseases.

The example you're using applies to traditional products that otherwise couldn't exist, and who's consumers are well aware that it's made from non-pasturized milk.

That's a completely different issue from your standard supermarket meat of which consumer blindly assume that it's safe.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#154

Post by seabee »

EliRivers wrote: post #144
arrrg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, you always have to keep in mind why those laws exist. What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented? Creating a common market, of course! For a common market to exist it is obviously not enough to open up the borders to people, labor, goods and capital. It is also necessary to have common rules and regulations for the goods a…

"What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented?" I thought it was an attempt to stop Europe engaging in endless major land wars.

It was, but since then the means has become the end.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#155

Post by garblegarble »

baddox wrote: post #149
R_Edward wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Banned all forms of animal protein, including chicken litter, in cow feed in 2001. Saw a Dirty Jobs segment some time ago in which a Nevada pig farmer picks up all the waste from several casinos' buffets, hauls it out to his farm, hand-picks the plastic and other inedible crud out of it, liquefies it, steams it to kill off some of the bacteria, then feeds it to his hogs. My first thought was that it was pretty cleve…

Is there a health concern from pigs eating pig meat, or is it just something that seems gross?

My understanding is that it increases the risk of an infection spreading - any agent that survives the slaughter/cooking process could infect a much larger number of animals. See the BSE epidemic we had in the UK a number of years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#156

Post by arrrg »

EliRivers wrote: post #144
arrrg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, you always have to keep in mind why those laws exist. What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented? Creating a common market, of course! For a common market to exist it is obviously not enough to open up the borders to people, labor, goods and capital. It is also necessary to have common rules and regulations for the goods a…

"What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented?" I thought it was an attempt to stop Europe engaging in endless major land wars.

Well, yeah, but those two things are connected.

For Europe to not even want to have any war among themselves, for Europe to find the idea of war among themselves to be completely ridiculous and idiotic, it is necessary for Europe to be meaningfully interconnected and interdependent. Treaties have again and again shown to be not up to that task. Bilateral or multilateral treaties of the olden times are mostly political in nature, and anything that is just that can also be reversed through a mere political process.

That interconnection and interdependence has to be created on a deeper and actually meaningful level. The economy is really the obvious choice here, since no political process can even attempt to reverse interdependence of that kind easily.

Plus, it’s sort of obvious. Just as the industrial revolution was hindered by the many tiny kingdoms in what is now Germany (and the huge amount of borders you had to cross and tolls you had to pay if you wanted to ship a product from anywhere in what is now Germany to anywhere else in what is now Germany) – that is, until Germany was unified in 1871 – the many borders in Europe could have hindered Europe globally more had that process towards a common market not existed. It’s the same thing, really, only that I don’t think political integration (beyond creating a common market) has much of a future.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#157

Post by stinos »

onemorepassword wrote: post #153
pcrh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is also a little slanted, in that the described only those practices permitted in the US, but banned in the EU. There are many practices where the reverse is true, such as the manufacture of certain cheeses from non-pasturized milk being permitted in some parts of the EU, which can lead to a number of diseases.

The example you're using applies to traditional products that otherwise couldn't exist, and who's consumers are well aware that it's made from non-pasturized milk. That's a completely different issue from your standard supermarket meat of which consumer blindly assume that it's safe.

true, and also: the amount of people eating those cheese is nothing in comparision with the amount of people eating more 'normal' food, like meat.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#158

Post by ars »

jmj42 wrote: post #31
haliax wrote: post #2

Is there a good way to buy only products that avoid use of these chemicals?

Buy local. I live in central Illinois, so it's fairly easy to find local (within 30 miles) producers of most raw foods (meat/veggies/eggs), with the exception of milk. While this may be difficult in some parts of the country, I find getting to know local farmers and buying directly from the ones that do not use these practices (farmer's markets are great for making those connections) is the easiest. Though, as I said…

Hu? Why does the fact that the farmer is next to you have anything to do with his process?

So if I buy from that same farmer you go to, but I'm hundreds of miles away I suddenly get those chemicals but you don't?

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#159

Post by gngeal »

tsmarsh wrote: post #119
Xylakant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK was hit worst, but other european countries were affected as well. I was pretty young when that happened but I still remember the images of piles of cow carcasses being burned on the open field. The MCD was the reason to ban feeding animal proteins to cows. Before MCD it was common practice to feed ground animal (cow) bones and leftovers from the slaughterhouse to cows.

I did some work with a guy who was asked to figure out how much accelerant was needed to burn a pile of cows. I knew burning them was a last resort, I hadn't figured that it was actually hard to do.

There's a lot of water in animal bodies. I guess it's like trying to light a log of very wet wood, if not worse.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#160

Post by tss20147 »

shabble wrote: post #63
tokenadult wrote: post #10

The most sensible European regulations of those listed in the article kindly submitted here are "What Europe did: Banned all forms of animal protein, including chicken litter, in cow feed in 2001." and "What Europe did: In the EU, all antibiotics used in human medicines are banned on farms—and no antibiotics can be used on farms for 'non-medical purposes,' i.e., growth promotion." I'd like to see the United States fo…

> For the other regulatory practices mentioned in the article, especially washing chicken carcasses, I'd like to see more detailed evidence of the safety trade-offs involved in the practices of the United States and of Europe. There was the relatively recent story in Forbes[1] (HN comments at [2]) about the difference in US/UK treatment of eggs, where the UK standard is to leave them unwashed to protect a natural ant…

This is going to be a bad post because I'm not where I can look up and provide links to the supporting material, but from what I recall the cleansing of eggs also had to with different egg distribution models between the US and UK.
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