Pesticides are killing the world's soils

Post by mlindner » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

yummypaint wrote: post #191

mlindner wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing antibiotics use I think is cruel and wasteful as you're going to just instead cause culling of livestock and increased greenhouse gas emissions per piece of product from livestock. Also "artificial pesticides" are better for the environment than "natural pesticides" for equivalent effect. Natural pesticides are less effective and more frequent spraying which has additional problems associated with it.

Removing antibiotics as a cheap default option (as it is in the US) creates an economic incentive to ensure livestock health and welfare. In practice antibiotics are used mostly to compensate for unhealthy conditions and to increase yield (i think only by about %10 for milk, for instance). Keeping livestock on broad spectrum antibiotics continuously for their entire lives is not only medically unnecessary, but deeply…