Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#181

Post by jopsen » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #159

petepete wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is doing its part. The UK media ridiculed and undermined it constantly for "red tape". Now we're leaving; things will only get worse.

How about they stop demanding paperwork before any production is made, and instead go after actual trespassers by doing blind tests? Because, you know, as a consumer I fail to see how paperwork protects me from anything. Being expert at paperwork doesn't mean you're an expert of being a fair tradesman. Paperwork collectors mentality is precisely what we should beat off of bureaucracy.

Interesting idea...

Catching things with blind tests as a way to increase compliance while reducing the burden of documentation.

If it could be done efficiently, that would certainly be better.. I suspect that tests might be expensive to scale, and not offer sufficient precision... Antibiotics might disappear over time, for example.

IMO we should always strive to improve regulation and make it more efficient.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#182

Post by macspoofing » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 12:32 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #179

macspoofing wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When will it end? When you want it to end. You're putting those burdens on yourself.

No, the people who say that this is up to the consumers, rather than being a regulatory issue. Those people are doing big-corporations a favor, by trying to shift the burden to me, who we all know can't possibly do this.

Except we don't operate in some sort of unrestricted free market. There are agencies like the FDA that enforce food and pharma standards - so you can trust that nothing at a grocery store will poison you. There are laws, regulations and trade deals that govern how commerce is conducted. What you're doing is injecting personal, arbitrary and capricious standards on top of the already existing massive regulatory framework and then complaining it is too hard. No kidding! Don't do that then or at least don't be a martyr about it.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#183

Post by thriftwy » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #181

thriftwy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about they stop demanding paperwork before any production is made, and instead go after actual trespassers by doing blind tests? Because, you know, as a consumer I fail to see how paperwork protects me from anything. Being expert at paperwork doesn't mean you're an expert of being a fair tradesman. Paperwork collectors mentality is precisely what we should beat off of bureaucracy.

Interesting idea... Catching things with blind tests as a way to increase compliance while reducing the burden of documentation. If it could be done efficiently, that would certainly be better.. I suspect that tests might be expensive to scale, and not offer sufficient precision... Antibiotics might disappear over time, for example. IMO we should always strive to improve regulation and make it more efficient.

If you're not doing tests know nothing about antibiotics in meat, who grew this meat and where, and whether it's meat at all.

No amount of paperwork provides even a tiny bit of compliance. Just look at VW.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#184

Post by swombat » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #81

swombat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporarily I guess it would drive the price down, and then production would adjust to meet the lowered demand. Think about it this way: if the number of meat eaters halved overnight, meat would be really cheap for a while, then a bunch of producers would go out of business and prices would rise again, and prices would stabilise again once production was half what it used to be.

You're assuming that the remaining meat eaters' consumption would remain constant. It would almost certainly increase (I know mine would increase, or rather, I'd eat more expensive cuts of meat more often, like cote de boeuf); and I'd expect substitution effects - it's hard to predict what the final outcomes would be. Lobbying for regulation would be a more effective use of your time. Or something that converts indiv…

I think it's unlikely that the remainder of the population would double their meat consumption.

The more obvious failing point might be the fact that as the price of meat goes down, people (e.g. in developing countries) who weren't able to afford meat now can afford it and so consumption goes back up, so actually the production doesn't go down, instead standards drop as the consuming population becomes even less discerning as to the way the meat is produced. Grr.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#185

Post by natecavanaugh » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 10:01 AM UTC

lawlessone wrote: post #171

natecavanaugh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a shared resource problem though? The problem, as I see it, is one of a questionable food supply or at least a contamination issue, in which case, each person should decide what matters to them, and is how this particular problem is solved in the micro, which in aggregate, does lessen the macro aspect. I'm thinking of cases like cigarettes and alcohol. However, where this falls apart is that consumers don't a…

>Is this a shared resource problem though? The shared resources is the limited amount we can use an antibiotic before it becomes useless.

That's an interesting angle I hadn't considered. Thank you :)

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#186

Post by notadoc » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #3

notadoc wrote: post #2

Humans are squandering antibiotics for the most inane uses, rapidly growing superbugs and resistance along the way. This will become a major public health crisis if nothing is done about it sooner than later.

> rapidly growing superbugs We can outsmart them. We have biochemistry and flocks of 30 year old PhD students. They have a random number generator.

So why aren't we then?

The market is failing on this.

Re: Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry

#187

Post by erikpukinskis » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #7

dokein wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "a" random number generator, but rather trillions of random number generators running in parallel.

The sad thing is that this understates the parallelism of the evolutionary process by ... many orders of magnitude. A single human gut has on the order of 100 trillion bacteria. Also, the gp poster seems to be unaware of plasmids and conjugation process, too. (unless it was sarcasm that went over my head, which it very well may have been)

I would gladly take 1000 vacuum tubes over 100 trillion random number generators.