This is why a competent and well staffed bureaucracy is so important. Screwworm is really easy to eliminate by flooding their population with males sterilized by radiation (females only mate once in their lifetime so their population falls off fast). There are factories in Latin America already set up to do so at large scale, all it would take is a contract with the USDA to guarantee enough supply for the states.
Edit: Hah, I get to eat my words. Turns out USDA and APHIS have been trying to fly planes over Mexico to release the sterile flies, but the Mexican government has been restricting the flight days and denying landing permission, which has hampered the program. Looks like the Mexican bureaucracy is the one failing here, and USDA/APHIS might be running pre-emptive releases in the US (but I can't find a source on that). They just agreed to lift those restrictions and cooperate more at the end of April.
It was partially the new tariffs that put a stop to the program and the April 30 agreement puts an end to tariffs on equipment associated with screwworm treatment program.
That competent and well-staffed bureaucracy is important also because they patiently work through these problems with their counterparts on the other side of the the Rio Grande.
Except they got fired, so now there's no one to do that work. We got what we wanted. God help us all 'cause no one else is.
> There are factories in Latin America already set up to do so at large scale, all it would take is a contract with the USDA to guarantee enough supply for the states.
According to the article the cases are in Mexico, so I don’t know that “Latin American origin” is a silver bullet.
Hatred is a more powerful emotion than desperacy. Votes will continue to flow towards the man, even in the face of their very own livestock being decimated.
It clearly did, evidence: the exact situation we are discussing.
Other evidence includes the worst measles outbreak of the last 30 years and the second largest three-month economic contraction since WWII only topped by the last iteration of this administration.
What were some specific problems caused by this spending? Seemed to work quite well.
Up until our international image was destroyed two months ago, we were in a privileged position allowing deficit spending while the rest of the world absorbed the negatives.
Trump certainly doesn't have a solution, but I'm also not convinced he has correctly identified a problem. Nation-state debt from the country whose currency is the de-facto international standard for the world, is categorically different than your mortgage or your credit card debt.
It's clearly unsustainable. Eventually it leads to a run on the dollar and inability to refinance the debt. At that point, the debt gets inflated away.
I ask you: do you imagine it can continue forever, with debt reaching arbitrarily high multiples of GDP?
I agree that the system can become unstable. Clearly; it's being made unstable currently.
I disagree that it must become unstable, especially on a time frame relevant to anyone currently alive. Perhaps certain resources could be sheparded more sustainably than they have been but I do not think we were previously heading towards a consequence worse than we are currently experiencing.
That argument applied to current administrative actions is like saying "we all die someday, therefore we should all commit suicide right now".
What on earth? Trump and other republicans are famous for increasing government spending while decreasing revenue, that's, like, their whole thing, isn't that why people vote for them?
That's true, and I expect Trump won't solve the problem either. He's a liar and a fraud, after all. But that doesn't mean the issue wasn't what got him in office.
Who exactly do you think staffs this part of a science institute? Bureaucracy is just another word for the kind of well-staffed administrative system that can handle these tasks.
I think a lot of the objections here aren't really bureaucracy in terms of government employees doing things. A lot of what people mean when they complain about "government bureaucracy" is really that it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should take 5 people 6 weeks. So discussions on this tend to get confusing.
Regular people (including me) think the same thing about why software projects take so long. In fact I consider engineering to be a form of bureaucracy. And I've had long conversations about it with friends who are developers, but it's still hard for an outsider to fully grasp why it's so hard. In turn, they can't understand why my job can't be replaced by AI.
Maybe there's an equivalent of Knoll's Law for non-media concepts.
Everything I know how to do is complicated and people don't understand why it's complicated. Everything else is obviously excess bureaucracy and could be done with a LLM running on a ZX80.
The reason bureaucracies seem efficient is that they must be able to (1) complete the mission reliably over long periods of time, in the face of (2) staff churn and loss, without (3) collapsing the first time a critical mass of experts leaves the org. This means you have to sacrifice systems that rely on the enthusiasm of "10x experts" in favor of systems that can reliably recruit talent (at GS salaries.) And this is before you get to the mountains of political crap placed on an org by elected leaders.
It is incredibly challenging to create orgs that reliably stay on-mission over many years.
Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it).
As for the terrible salaries and mountains of political crap, that's the real issue here. But these are changeable and shouldn't just be accepted as inevitable as is so often done by defenders of government bureaucracy.
It's also worth mentioning that governments and companies inherently must operate differently. Governments are not set up to recoup investment; in fact, proponents of small government (as opposed to no government) generally recognize that the role of government is to assist in preventing "tragedy of the commons" by funding initiatives and programs that fundamentally do not make sense for a single market player to address. I.e. government helps when there isn't a good path for a single market player to see a good/reliable economic and market-competitive return from their investment.
>> generally recognize that the role of government is to assist in preventing "tragedy of the commons"
Not anymore. Great many now believe that there should be no commons, that everything should be owned by someone and leased back to those who use it. Such people see it as the duty of government to efficiently disperse the commons to the highest bidders. Those bidders will then "protect" their asset by ensuring it is put to the highest economic use.
> The report examines evidence from nine sectors - electricity, health, waste management and water, prisons, buses, ports and airports, railways and telecom,.
Yeah, if you examine only utilities and monopolies they are not more efficient than the government. That's not a surprise because they don't face competition and are heavily politically controlled.
Only every single interaction with the government I have ever had and the experience of everyone I know who works in industries where they have to deal with the government on a regular basis.
If lived experience is the only bar of evidence you will consider, there are plenty of stories of fraud, corruption and anti-competitive behavior in industry that have hurt real people. Insurance (duh), devs who get shafted by Apple store policies or other entities without recourse to a human, outright scams and spam i.e. cryptodumps, every major game release that seems to either get delayed or released with show-stopping bugs, etc
A profound number of companies fail every year and cease to exist, which is probably more inefficient (and also not an outcome that many would consider acceptable in a government context.)
Of the ones that survive[1], some may be more efficient, but whether they remain efficient, effective and extant in the long term is not a given.
Leadership can reform enterprise IT, sometimes including staffing cuts while also improving productivity. I have personally seen this happen. It can actually get better.
This is why some people are optimistic about recent efforts at doing the same in government bureaucracy. It's possible to trend upwards.
You think that would be sufficient? Did you read the article?
I did, and I have previously read an article in (iirc) The Atlantic about the screwfly program when it was working. It was a monumental effort to push screwflies back to the Darien Gap, involving widespread coordination of cattle ranchers and government workers, constant flyovers of planes dropping huge numbers of sterile flies, and a massive breeding program.
Two university students in a van can get about as much done as it sounds like. Some problems require coordination, government involvement, and yes, the organization — i.e., bureaucracy — that implies.
How is a bureaucracy not required when the solution involves coordinated multinational logistics to produce and distribute hundreds of millions of flies?
This is surreal. The evil bureaucracy has successfully been doing it since the 1960s. It worked. And yes, it was efficient.
Now, the problem is that if you alienate your neighbours they stop wanting to play nice. Also, bureaucracies do not work when you fire civil servants indiscriminately. It’s not the bureaucracy doing this, it’s the guy who told you that the country would work better without it.
Bureaucracy, as per Weber, is nothing but the rational and impersonal administration of resources and exists in any sufficiently large institution, private or public. It is in fact so efficient that it is omnipresent to the point of being the defining feature of modernity, having replaced familial, personal or arbitrary rule.
Whether it's the old aristocracies of Europe replaced by the Prussian state, workshops replaced by Fordist factories, Guanxi in China replaced by modern administration, all of that is simply introduction of formal management and organization, i.e. bureaucracy.
I did not mean in it in the dictionary sense, and please do not let us delude ourselves that bureaucracy has much to do with what the dictionary says so.
I mean, have you ever had experiences with the Government? Have you been to court? Do you know how long everything takes? It speaks volumes. It took 3 years (!) here for someone to be finally given a sentence who almost killed 3 people (and it is on CCTV). This is just one instance, there are zillions.
I see from your link that you mentioned a specific: that court takes a long time.
What do you think the optimal system would be in that specific case? If you could design it, how would it look? It doesn't have to be realistic, but like an ideal system of justice. Are there any precedents you think are ideal or is there something you have in mind that would make it work better?
I think the answer to this cannot be summed up in a comment, and what would I even gain by really doing so? Most likely nothing. If you think bureaucracy does not slow things down or is not slow, God speed. I hope you will never have to directly get into situations that involve it.
I am trying to determine if you just hate something and want to destroy it without considering the effect it would have, or if you have actually put effort into thinking about how to solve the problem that the thing you hate is trying (perhaps poorly) to solve.
If you haven't thought about the consequences of tearing down parts of the system and what will replace those parts, than I think the entirety of your conclusions about this matter should be disregarded and I think most everyone reading this would agree.
First we would have to determine what you and I mean by bureaucracy. It does sound good, who does not like organization? Problem is, if you ever worked for the Government, or dealt with them in some meaningful way, you should have realized it is not so.
I truly hope you will not be caught up in the meat machine of the Government.
The science is done. We know how to deal with this insect, the American government successfully eradicated it from North America ~25 years ago. Now it’s only logistics and diplomacy.
This topic always leads me back to reading about the Darién Gap [0]. When eradication was working successfully, they had managed to push the screwworm population all the way back to the Gap and keep it out of major population/agriculture areas. There were (or are) yearly efforts to perform the sterile insect technique [1]. Expensive to perform, but worth it for all the damage they'd otherwise cause if left unchecked.
Salon had a lovely article last week, on how deteriorating relationships between US and Mexico is threatening the effective work the US had been doing of creating and spreading sterile male flies that have successfully stopped the Screwworm invasion. https://www.salon.com/2025/04/28/we-once-rid-the-us-of-this-...
>Outside a bar in southern Arizona in 1890, a stagecoach driver stumbled into the night and fell asleep in the open air, unknowingly becoming host to hundreds of screwworms while passed out drunk. The parasitic insects made their way through his nose, into his throat, and eventually killed him — a grim but once relatively common occurrence.<
From
"Screwworm eradication lessons from a longtime veterinarian"
An excellent article on the realities of screwworm in USA. It also speaks of topical treatments! Unfortunately though and to our great loss no doubt, it does not go into detail about "the scrotal area post castration" of unsnap_biceps fascination on these posts nor "lambs ...licking the topically applied ivermectin" so titillating to 8note. (FWIW ivermectin pour-ons contain ethanol.)
Is ivermectin not an option? My fat pet rat got mites and was miserable, itchy and too painful to scratch. One grain of rice dose from the infamous horse tube cleared him right up.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3840994/ Seems to show that it does, but I guess the logistics of keeping a herd of cattle covered by giving shots every two weeks may be difficult. And there still is damage to the animal
The article you referred to (and I've seen linked elsewhere in this thread) is about "regular" screwworm (Chrysomya bezziana). The recent outbreak is of New World Screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax). The article I've linked suggests that it is much harder to kill than regular screwworm (29% of calves developed myiasis even when treated with ivermectin).
Googling "Cochliomyia hominivorax and ivermectin" yields
"Ivermectin can be an effective treatment for myiasis, a condition caused by the larvae of certain dipterous flies, including Cochliomyia hominivorax (the New World screwworm). Studies have shown that ivermectin, when administered orally or topically, can help eliminate the larvae and reduce the severity of the infestation, especially in cases of orbital or oral myiasis.
"
The study I linked to showing the effectiveness of Ivermectin was only done subcutaneously. I did not find a study on the effectiveness of non-subcutaneous Ivermectin treatments on screw worms.
Given one of the areas they focused on the study is the scrotal area post castration, I don't expect that a pour on would cover that area well enough to be an effective treatment. Happy to read other studies if you have them showing otherwise.
There are injectable and transdermal (pour-on and ear tag) forms for cattle and pigs. I'm not aware of an oral formulation for food animals, even though that's pretty common for horses.
is quite funny, where they found that the lambs were licking the topically applied ivermectin, but also that they didnt notice any decrease in parisites for any of the ingestion/injection/topical
they also say theres nothing showing any applicability to cattle
You still need to remove them, otherwise you have decomposing maggots in an infected would, which is a great way of killing whatever you were trying to save.
This is going to be a test of the "new improved" post Doge USDA. We'll see how well it copes with a real agricultural crisis with reduced staffing and funds.
indeed. it will also not be limited to one agriculture crisis. the number of things these departments do that we don’t realize is crazy. putting out fire after fire.
since these departments generally don’t brag about non-sexy things like … screwworms, a certain type of person with tunnel vision, who imagines themselves to be smarter at everything than everyone else that has ever lived, they will imagine they failed not because of their own dipshittery but because of an imaginary ghost foe.
this is perhaps one of the greatest failures of that generation, so many of them seem to have a complete inability to see that other people may be intelligent at something. their tunnel vision is crazy af to see.
it’s gonna be hilarious to watch them cry about the messes they caused. they’ll try to blame everyone else for the mess they created.
> live demonstrations on how to handle cattle to reduce stress.(Every cow pie released by a stressed-out cow before it gets weighed by meat processers amounts to $6 in lost profit.)
Ranchers get paid a flat per pound price for whole animals. When they take a shit, their total weight goes down and thus the ranchers lose the flat per pound price for that pile of shit, which evidently is about $6.
There's a big difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_animal_feeding_op... and traditional family farms. In a traditional family farm, animals can live happy and relatively full lives while offsetting a tremendous amount of petroleum products in the form of fuel, insecticide, herbicide, fertilizer, equipment, etc.
Thanks to point out the difference between industrial and family farm. However I'm not sure what farms in particular you have in mind but anything commercial has non incentive to let the animal live a "relatively full life": the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce. Some producers add a few weeks to the legal minimum to let them grow a bit more but nothing near their natural expectancy. Lets take chickens for exemple, here in EU:
- standard are harvest 35 days (32 if for export)
- certified (floor, outdoor) at 56 days
- highest quality (Bio and local certifications): 81 day
- egg poultry final harvest: around 1 year and half when egg production slow down
- natural life expectancy of a chicken: 8-10 years.
> can live happy
"happier" would be more accurate IMHO but as some people point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess. What we can do is remove the farm fences and do not force them onto the slaughter house. They'll choose themselves to go to what makes them happy.
I come from Mennonites. Plenty of animals on the farm are allowed to live full lives. Anything doing any kind of work can be, which all animals on the farm are capable of. Milk and eggs don't require culling. Even layers past their prime will still eat pests and scratch manure into the soil and teach the young to do same.
The figures you quote are not for heritage breeds. They are for breeds which have been selected for extremely rapid growth, often to the detriment of the health of the animal (and presumably the person consuming them).
> the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce
You don't get it at the supermarket, that's for sure. But I can get it at my local farmers market. You may be able to too. I would argue that it's entirely feasible, but depends on priorities. Most people prioritize profits, convenience, and speed.
Our poultry didn't last more than a year either, and we weren't factory farming. We bought 15 chicken every year, 3 male to eat before they were fertile early spring, 12 female that we ate during the next winter. And half a dozen rabbits too. Then my grandparents grew too tired and started to travel instead of farming/taking care of poultry.
The animals might have been happy (or, at least happier than in a factory farm), but clearly their life were short.
What I'm reading here is that you feel cruel and selfish, and some sort of restrictive diet is your self-punishment. And denying other people's lived experiences is necessary to reinforce the self-punishment.
You don't know me, or my experiences, or circumstances. Only your own. So I don't see how it could be any other way. I hope you feel better, friend. And that whoever made you feel that way learns better.
You ever watch a plant filmed in time lapse? They're active just like animals. They feel and communicate and are our relatives just the same. Everything on this planet eats a living cousin, save for the photo and chemosynthesizers. Such is life. The similarity of our proteins and other molecules is exactly what makes us nutritious to each other. I sleep just fine. The backyard garden is fruitful. The chimkins are happy and laying eggs. Thankful for the opportunity to enjoy it!
I once watched a film of a persistence hunter approaching the prey he'd chased for miles. He spoke to it, approached it calmly, sat with it and caressed it, put it's head on his lap and held it for a minute, petting it like a dog and shushing and whispering to it. And then he cut it's throat, and cried as it died.
That's what living on the farm is like. That's real life, fully and authentically felt. In my opinion, all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence for furthering my life.
You can feel differently. Lots of folks do.
> You wouldn’t be saying these things if the aliens came and harvested your children for food.
What if the aliens look like plants? What if they're here already? What if they're your distant cousin?
Funny thing - when you look at single celled organisms like bacteria and yeasts under a microscope, they engage in behaviors which seem shockingly like animal behaviors. They seem to explore their environment, have senses, hunt and eat, reproduce, and notably, they seem to dislike specific stimuli. They really meet every definition I can think of for a being which appears to be conscious, including memory, and we eat them by the billions without even knowing.
You can take the panpsychic view if you want (with no actual evidence), but it doesn't change the fact that we know non human animals suffer. Countlessly exploiting their entire population, for what?
> all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence
How does that help them when you're consuming their flesh without consent? Let's all fornicate with these animals, just make sure to show respect after!
I can kinda understand how factory farming is the bad bit as opposed to a traditional farming, but you have to stop and think, who are we to decide these other beings lives?
OK, now apply what you just said to plants and fungi and single celled organisms.
Get yourself out of your human-centric, mammal-centric, animal-centric point of view and realize that at the cellular level we're effectively indistinguishable. We can't even talk to Dolphins, who we know are intelligent, and you expect me to discount the intelligence of every other living thing? Laughable. We're all made of the same stuff, all the way down, and humans aren't exceptional.
” Now, after being eradicated from the US since the early 1980s and largely forgotten, top veterinarians expect the screwworm could be back as soon as the summer. More than 950 cases have been reported in Mexico so far this year, including one within miles of a livestock checkpoint in Chiapas. A resurgence in the US would have devastating consequences for farm animals and wildlife”
I was surprised to learn recently that we import a LOT of cattle. It's the reason many other countries will not take US beef, because the provenance of our beef isn't as precise as it needs to be, for those foreign consumer laws.
This is true of a lot of our food. Trump, now and in 2016, has been trying to force the UK to buy US chicken and the Brits are NOT having it because US food standards are below that of the UK.
The UK has very strict requirements around certain foods that their farmers have to meet. Allowing US farmers to bypass those requirements will undercut those domestic farmers and while individual consumers may still opt for the more expensive domestic option, restaurants and takeout businesses will usually opt for the cheapest option which introduces it to the country even if the consumers don't want it. It's not like McDonalds has a sign that says "Made with US Chicken!" on your nuggets. Secondly, allowing cheap US chicken just penalizes the poorest in your country that will go for the cheapest option to survive. Some people don't have choice and food standards help bring the bottom up.
> It's not like McDonalds has a sign that says "Made with US Chicken!" on your nuggets.
I'm not sure whether this is still the case, but the cardboard boxes that McDonald's packages its burgers in in Australia used to have '100% Aussie beef' printed on them, but the beef was actually imported from South America by a wholly-McDonald's-owned subsidiary called '100% Aussie'.
>restaurants and takeout businesses will usually opt for the cheapest option which introduces it to the country even if the consumers don't want it
Restaurants are free to advertise that they use domestic chicken. You can even legislate mandatory labeling if you're so inclined. The fact that you think consumers need to be actively prevented from getting US chicken, because they don't have the capacity to decide for themselves contradicts your claim that "Brits are NOT having it".
This is the silliness of the pure free-market libertarianism, with its stray man of "oh, you're being paternal and saying they can't decide for themselves!".
No. A society, which has chosen its government, has decided that it would like to outsource the individual work of tracking food provenance and safety in the form of ensuring that the only food available is food that meets the standards that the society has decided to set.
This is specialization at work, which is in fact one of the primary drivers of civilization and progress.
No one is saying that people can't make these decisions by themselves. People are saying they do not want to, especially in an environment that is heavily information-asymmetric.
I'm a well-educated, intelligent software engineer. Sure, I could go looking into the details of the production facility for all of the meat that I buy, maybe, at the grocery store - but I certainly don't want to. And if I go to a restaurant, I absolutely do not want to have to spend hours researching their supply chain first.
This is not incapacity. This is intelligent division of labor.
While we’re at it, why not let manufacturers reintroduce lead into paint and toys and let consumers choose what they want there too? The problem is that “consumer choice” is frequently a shield for amoral companies to take advantage of information asymmetry to externalize problems onto individuals. Individual consumers do not have time to deeply research every purchase they make and so it is not reasonable to expect them to handle these things themselves. Instead we have the Hobbesian contract where it is much more efficient to empower a government to centralize the handling of these common goals. It’s not smart or edgy to argue for the “free hand of the market” in these one-off topics, because none of these decisions are made in a vacuum but rather are part of a continuum of choices that the governed are mostly happy with (no such safety regime can ever be perfect).
Because we know the implications of poor quality food, and we also know those who would buy it have no choice but to buy the cheapest. So, no thanks. I'd much rather the state intervene here and keep this crap out. This "let consumers choose" argument is tiring when consumers don't have the ability to choose. They are just trying to survive
>and we also know those who would buy it have no choice but to buy the cheapest. So, no thanks. I'd much rather the state intervene here and keep this crap out.
Having "the state intervene here and keep this crap out" isn't going to magically make the domestic chicken cheaper for those people who "have no choice". You're not improving the chicken quality for them, you're preventing them from buying chicken at all.
Why do you suppose that chicken quality would be tied to price? Do you know where your chicken comes from? If you buy expensive, high quality chicken, do you know it's actually high quality and not just a fancier package with a higher price tag? Do you want to research every single product you eat to make sure it's safe?
They’ve decided as a group that they would rather people eat less better quality food than more poorer quality food. I don’t understand the hang up. Is it the idea that people can collectively decide something? Presumably if it’s such a big problem people in the UK can elect a different government.
even poor people are able to manage and prioritize their spending.
in america, you could just sell the ultra poor people a piece of dirt you picked off the ground for a couple cents. theyre still buying "chicken" but its not at all what people want when theyre wanting to buy chicken.
I'm not claiming such food safety laws are illegitimate, I'm only claiming that the idea that British consumers have rejected chicken is laughable, as evidenced by the government feeling the need to ban them.
And the problem of concentrated benefits (for domestic chicken farmers) and diffuse costs (for everyone else) is a well known problem for democracy. If you're going to invoke this, you might as well also argue that Americans are "are not having trade imbalances", because they elected Trump.
Domestic farmers are not all in the same company. They compete amongst each other under the same set of rules they must all abide by. I have no idea why they would agree to sell an inferior product that doesn't have to abide by the same set of rules.
The whole idea of "race to the bottom" implies at least some portion consumers are going to choose the inferior product, which directly contradicts the original claim that British consumers have rejected US chicken, and the US needs to force them to buy it.
You're one of these people that get off on being technically correct even though it has no value to the discussion at large. No, 100% of Brits were not surveyed and all said no and as I said in another comment, the poorest of the country would likely buy it because it would be the cheapest option.
This kind of bunk is why I outgrew being a libertarian four decades ago. Transparency, anti-fraud laws, and standards make markets work. Fantasies about "network states" do not.
I appreciate the attempt to ground the discussion in research, but as MillironX pointed out elsewhere, ivermectin turns out to be less effective on Cochliomyia hominivorax (which the article is about) than on Chrysomya bezziana (which the paper you cited is about).
That is interesting, although I'm not seeing the comment you're referencing. I read the article this morning, but I hadn't noted that there were possibly multiple types of screw worm. Looks like the Cochliomyia hominivorax is only one that the Americas typically have to deal with, so that was the only one that made sense in the context. However, that a anti-parasitic is more effective at killing one type of screw worm than another doesn't mean much by itself. That statement would hold true even if it had 99% efficacy against one type vs 98% efficacy against another.
The comment I referred to is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43881065#43882771. It links to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9403981/. Looking at the abstract now (I hadn't before) it claims that injected doramectin was fully effective while ivermectin had limited effectiveness (29% of cases not treated). It doesn't seem to give a comparison between types of screwworm.
A bunch of internet commenters, regardless of how informed, generally have no sway in policy. It’s text on a page that can be easily —- and in almost all cases -- be safely ignored.
However, a government administration’s stance to actively eliminate entire segments of a government that are responsible for disease management is an actual problem.
redserk says >... It’s text on a page that can be easily —- and in almost all cases -- be safely ignored.<
No, b/c to ignore something one must first read it and, in it's reading, waste one's time and effort. Our intellectual lives would be better if the text were never placed on the page to start.
15. Assuming 5 per wheel and applying the proverb of "three men make a tiger"*, they just have to be the new cars of three famous people who are likely to get in the news for a wheel falling off.
That might work for once-off vaccinations of precisely targeted animals in densely populated areas but not delivering periodic high doses of medication to treat parasites to animals across 100s of millions of acres.
You have two types of screwworms, the common, and the south American. Are you sure ivermectin is as efficient against the species they're talking about?
With this and bird flu and inflation, it wouldn’t hurt people to learn to eat less meat throughout the week. A day or two vegetarian so if any of these things escalate at least you have a feel for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The screwworm cases are in Mexico according to the article, threatening Texas / US cattle. So the framing would be pretty straightforward. One can imagine the word “vermin” rearing its head.
https://archive.is/ul6JR
This is why a competent and well staffed bureaucracy is so important. Screwworm is really easy to eliminate by flooding their population with males sterilized by radiation (females only mate once in their lifetime so their population falls off fast). There are factories in Latin America already set up to do so at large scale, all it would take is a contract with the USDA to guarantee enough supply for the states.
Edit: Hah, I get to eat my words. Turns out USDA and APHIS have been trying to fly planes over Mexico to release the sterile flies, but the Mexican government has been restricting the flight days and denying landing permission, which has hampered the program. Looks like the Mexican bureaucracy is the one failing here, and USDA/APHIS might be running pre-emptive releases in the US (but I can't find a source on that). They just agreed to lift those restrictions and cooperate more at the end of April.
Good job the US is on such good terms with Latin America at the moment
It was partially the new tariffs that put a stop to the program and the April 30 agreement puts an end to tariffs on equipment associated with screwworm treatment program.
That competent and well-staffed bureaucracy is important also because they patiently work through these problems with their counterparts on the other side of the the Rio Grande.
Except they got fired, so now there's no one to do that work. We got what we wanted. God help us all 'cause no one else is.
And now those positions are listed as open. Disruption, but to what end. Sigh. https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5384961
> There are factories in Latin America already set up to do so at large scale, all it would take is a contract with the USDA to guarantee enough supply for the states.
According to the article the cases are in Mexico, so I don’t know that “Latin American origin” is a silver bullet.
Why wouldn't the USDA pay to eliminate pests in another country if it meant preventing those pests from reaching US farmers?
> Why wouldn't the USDA pay...
Maybe because there is an executive body hell-bent on the slashing expenditures regardless of any perceived benefit?
Perhaps their supporters should reconsider the burn-the-world-despite-who-it-hurts philosophy.
Hatred is a more powerful emotion than desperacy. Votes will continue to flow towards the man, even in the face of their very own livestock being decimated.
It's not like the alternative worked very well.
It clearly did, evidence: the exact situation we are discussing.
Other evidence includes the worst measles outbreak of the last 30 years and the second largest three-month economic contraction since WWII only topped by the last iteration of this administration.
I mean, it's not like the alternative got out of control spending under control.
We wouldn't be having Trump had that happened.
What were some specific problems caused by this spending? Seemed to work quite well.
Up until our international image was destroyed two months ago, we were in a privileged position allowing deficit spending while the rest of the world absorbed the negatives.
Trump certainly doesn't have a solution, but I'm also not convinced he has correctly identified a problem. Nation-state debt from the country whose currency is the de-facto international standard for the world, is categorically different than your mortgage or your credit card debt.
It's clearly unsustainable. Eventually it leads to a run on the dollar and inability to refinance the debt. At that point, the debt gets inflated away.
I ask you: do you imagine it can continue forever, with debt reaching arbitrarily high multiples of GDP?
I agree that the system can become unstable. Clearly; it's being made unstable currently.
I disagree that it must become unstable, especially on a time frame relevant to anyone currently alive. Perhaps certain resources could be sheparded more sustainably than they have been but I do not think we were previously heading towards a consequence worse than we are currently experiencing.
That argument applied to current administrative actions is like saying "we all die someday, therefore we should all commit suicide right now".
What on earth? Trump and other republicans are famous for increasing government spending while decreasing revenue, that's, like, their whole thing, isn't that why people vote for them?
That's true, and I expect Trump won't solve the problem either. He's a liar and a fraud, after all. But that doesn't mean the issue wasn't what got him in office.
They did exactly that for decades.
Better if all parties who benefit also pay.
Doge probably saw it as anti male propoganda. THEYRE STERALIZIN OUR FLIES
Mexico is just a small portion of Latin America; A few places I can think of is Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil which have huge stockyards…
> their population falls off fast
Superexponentially fast.
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> This is why a competent and well staffed bureaucracy is so important.
Try: "This is why a competent and well staffed science institute is so important."
Bureaucracy not required.
Who exactly do you think staffs this part of a science institute? Bureaucracy is just another word for the kind of well-staffed administrative system that can handle these tasks.
I think a lot of the objections here aren't really bureaucracy in terms of government employees doing things. A lot of what people mean when they complain about "government bureaucracy" is really that it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should take 5 people 6 weeks. So discussions on this tend to get confusing.
Regular people (including me) think the same thing about why software projects take so long. In fact I consider engineering to be a form of bureaucracy. And I've had long conversations about it with friends who are developers, but it's still hard for an outsider to fully grasp why it's so hard. In turn, they can't understand why my job can't be replaced by AI.
Maybe there's an equivalent of Knoll's Law for non-media concepts.
Everything I know how to do is complicated and people don't understand why it's complicated. Everything else is obviously excess bureaucracy and could be done with a LLM running on a ZX80.
The reason bureaucracies seem efficient is that they must be able to (1) complete the mission reliably over long periods of time, in the face of (2) staff churn and loss, without (3) collapsing the first time a critical mass of experts leaves the org. This means you have to sacrifice systems that rely on the enthusiasm of "10x experts" in favor of systems that can reliably recruit talent (at GS salaries.) And this is before you get to the mountains of political crap placed on an org by elected leaders.
It is incredibly challenging to create orgs that reliably stay on-mission over many years.
Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it).
As for the terrible salaries and mountains of political crap, that's the real issue here. But these are changeable and shouldn't just be accepted as inevitable as is so often done by defenders of government bureaucracy.
> Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it).
Have you… never worked for a large company? They’re incredibly inefficient! And also, the staff cost a whole lot more.
> Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it).
Do they?
The first two results on Google for "government vs private efficiency" are https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publicati... and https://www.epsu.org/article/public-and-private-sector-effic..., which both suggest that it is a myth that companies are inherently more efficient than government.
It's also worth mentioning that governments and companies inherently must operate differently. Governments are not set up to recoup investment; in fact, proponents of small government (as opposed to no government) generally recognize that the role of government is to assist in preventing "tragedy of the commons" by funding initiatives and programs that fundamentally do not make sense for a single market player to address. I.e. government helps when there isn't a good path for a single market player to see a good/reliable economic and market-competitive return from their investment.
>> generally recognize that the role of government is to assist in preventing "tragedy of the commons"
Not anymore. Great many now believe that there should be no commons, that everything should be owned by someone and leased back to those who use it. Such people see it as the duty of government to efficiently disperse the commons to the highest bidders. Those bidders will then "protect" their asset by ensuring it is put to the highest economic use.
> The report examines evidence from nine sectors - electricity, health, waste management and water, prisons, buses, ports and airports, railways and telecom,.
Yeah, if you examine only utilities and monopolies they are not more efficient than the government. That's not a surprise because they don't face competition and are heavily politically controlled.
Do you have evidence suggesting a clear discrepancy in efficiency in other sectors?
Only every single interaction with the government I have ever had and the experience of everyone I know who works in industries where they have to deal with the government on a regular basis.
I think once you join the workforce and are employed you'll start seeing some company inefficiencies.
I see it every day and it doesn't come close to the insanity of government
If lived experience is the only bar of evidence you will consider, there are plenty of stories of fraud, corruption and anti-competitive behavior in industry that have hurt real people. Insurance (duh), devs who get shafted by Apple store policies or other entities without recourse to a human, outright scams and spam i.e. cryptodumps, every major game release that seems to either get delayed or released with show-stopping bugs, etc
EDIT: s/accept/consider
Can you tell me which companies have run very, very large financial systems in the US for the last 250 years?
A profound number of companies fail every year and cease to exist, which is probably more inefficient (and also not an outcome that many would consider acceptable in a government context.)
Of the ones that survive[1], some may be more efficient, but whether they remain efficient, effective and extant in the long term is not a given.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Efficiency and resiliency are generally at opposite ends of a spectrum. COVID supply chain disruptions demonstrated that in spades
> it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should take 5 people 6 weeks
Sounds just like "enterprise" IT to me, tbh.
Leadership can reform enterprise IT, sometimes including staffing cuts while also improving productivity. I have personally seen this happen. It can actually get better.
This is why some people are optimistic about recent efforts at doing the same in government bureaucracy. It's possible to trend upwards.
Sure, it's possible, but unlikely. And nobody ever notices or appreciates the efficient and effective goverment agencies.
Honestly the main problem is the fed gov has terrible pr.
Leadership needs to be seen as both competent and trustworthy by employees to pull this off. Otherwise it’s the death spiral.
I’ve seen that happen in government too: GDS. As a rule it does not though.
the administrative parts - managers and approvers, aren't doing the science or the application thereof.
a couple university students in a van going around releasing flies every 10 miles is not a bureaucracy, nor a stand in for a bureaucracy
You think that would be sufficient? Did you read the article?
I did, and I have previously read an article in (iirc) The Atlantic about the screwfly program when it was working. It was a monumental effort to push screwflies back to the Darien Gap, involving widespread coordination of cattle ranchers and government workers, constant flyovers of planes dropping huge numbers of sterile flies, and a massive breeding program.
Two university students in a van can get about as much done as it sounds like. Some problems require coordination, government involvement, and yes, the organization — i.e., bureaucracy — that implies.
(Edit: it was The Atlantic, not The New Yorker. Comment further down has the link, but here it is: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...)
How is a bureaucracy not required when the solution involves coordinated multinational logistics to produce and distribute hundreds of millions of flies?
Yeah because bureaucracy (in its original term) is efficient at that. /s
Wait a couple of years, and then maybe.
This is surreal. The evil bureaucracy has successfully been doing it since the 1960s. It worked. And yes, it was efficient.
Now, the problem is that if you alienate your neighbours they stop wanting to play nice. Also, bureaucracies do not work when you fire civil servants indiscriminately. It’s not the bureaucracy doing this, it’s the guy who told you that the country would work better without it.
The Government is inherently ineffective, and bureaucracy, as a term, pretty much says so.
Plenty of evidence has been piling up with regarding to it.
Feel free to down-vote, does not make your Nanny State any more efficient. :D
You should read more about economics. I can give you resources.
>bureaucracy, as a term, pretty much says so.
Bureaucracy, as per Weber, is nothing but the rational and impersonal administration of resources and exists in any sufficiently large institution, private or public. It is in fact so efficient that it is omnipresent to the point of being the defining feature of modernity, having replaced familial, personal or arbitrary rule.
Whether it's the old aristocracies of Europe replaced by the Prussian state, workshops replaced by Fordist factories, Guanxi in China replaced by modern administration, all of that is simply introduction of formal management and organization, i.e. bureaucracy.
I did not mean in it in the dictionary sense, and please do not let us delude ourselves that bureaucracy has much to do with what the dictionary says so.
In what sense did you mean it, then?
I mean, have you ever had experiences with the Government? Have you been to court? Do you know how long everything takes? It speaks volumes. It took 3 years (!) here for someone to be finally given a sentence who almost killed 3 people (and it is on CCTV). This is just one instance, there are zillions.
how big is a zillion?
Very big.
How did you come to your conclusions?
https://mises.org/library/book/lessons-young-economist
https://mises.org/mises-daily/myth-efficient-government-serv...
https://mises.org/journal-libertarian-studies/austrian-theor...
https://mises.org/library/book/bureaucracy
I didn't ask for resources backing up your conclusions, I asked how you arrived at them.
Through rational and critical thinking and personal experiences? I am not sure I understand your question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43888836
I see from your link that you mentioned a specific: that court takes a long time.
What do you think the optimal system would be in that specific case? If you could design it, how would it look? It doesn't have to be realistic, but like an ideal system of justice. Are there any precedents you think are ideal or is there something you have in mind that would make it work better?
I think the answer to this cannot be summed up in a comment, and what would I even gain by really doing so? Most likely nothing. If you think bureaucracy does not slow things down or is not slow, God speed. I hope you will never have to directly get into situations that involve it.
I am trying to determine if you just hate something and want to destroy it without considering the effect it would have, or if you have actually put effort into thinking about how to solve the problem that the thing you hate is trying (perhaps poorly) to solve.
If you haven't thought about the consequences of tearing down parts of the system and what will replace those parts, than I think the entirety of your conclusions about this matter should be disregarded and I think most everyone reading this would agree.
No, I do not hate nor want to destroy.
First we would have to determine what you and I mean by bureaucracy. It does sound good, who does not like organization? Problem is, if you ever worked for the Government, or dealt with them in some meaningful way, you should have realized it is not so.
I truly hope you will not be caught up in the meat machine of the Government.
The science is done. We know how to deal with this insect, the American government successfully eradicated it from North America ~25 years ago. Now it’s only logistics and diplomacy.
This topic always leads me back to reading about the Darién Gap [0]. When eradication was working successfully, they had managed to push the screwworm population all the way back to the Gap and keep it out of major population/agriculture areas. There were (or are) yearly efforts to perform the sterile insect technique [1]. Expensive to perform, but worth it for all the damage they'd otherwise cause if left unchecked.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique
Not expensive at all. 10s of millions of dollars a year is my understanding.
$200 million in total, approximately the cost of two (2) F35B fighter jets
https://cr.usembassy.gov/sections-offices/aphis/screwworm-pr...
Arstechnica reports it "is estimated to have saved US farmers $900 million every year." Not sure where they source the number from.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/screwworms-are-coming...
Ah thanks. I thought it was lower, but in the scheme of things it's still cheap and it prevents people from getting it too.
I had confused botflies for screw worms, but they are different.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botfly
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia
More on the screwworm barrier and how it was established. This is one of my favorite “magazine style” feature stories.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
Salon had a lovely article last week, on how deteriorating relationships between US and Mexico is threatening the effective work the US had been doing of creating and spreading sterile male flies that have successfully stopped the Screwworm invasion. https://www.salon.com/2025/04/28/we-once-rid-the-us-of-this-...
Ars has an article on screwworms - 1 guess as to the writer.
see https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/screwworms-are-coming...
The last word of the article has a link to a video with very unsettling imagery involving screwworms.
>Outside a bar in southern Arizona in 1890, a stagecoach driver stumbled into the night and fell asleep in the open air, unknowingly becoming host to hundreds of screwworms while passed out drunk. The parasitic insects made their way through his nose, into his throat, and eventually killed him — a grim but once relatively common occurrence.<
From
"Screwworm eradication lessons from a longtime veterinarian"
https://www.agdaily.com/livestock/screwworm-eradication-less...
An excellent article on the realities of screwworm in USA. It also speaks of topical treatments! Unfortunately though and to our great loss no doubt, it does not go into detail about "the scrotal area post castration" of unsnap_biceps fascination on these posts nor "lambs ...licking the topically applied ivermectin" so titillating to 8note. (FWIW ivermectin pour-ons contain ethanol.)
Is ivermectin not an option? My fat pet rat got mites and was miserable, itchy and too painful to scratch. One grain of rice dose from the infamous horse tube cleared him right up.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3840994/ Seems to show that it does, but I guess the logistics of keeping a herd of cattle covered by giving shots every two weeks may be difficult. And there still is damage to the animal
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9403981/
The article you referred to (and I've seen linked elsewhere in this thread) is about "regular" screwworm (Chrysomya bezziana). The recent outbreak is of New World Screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax). The article I've linked suggests that it is much harder to kill than regular screwworm (29% of calves developed myiasis even when treated with ivermectin).
Googling "Cochliomyia hominivorax and ivermectin" yields
"Ivermectin can be an effective treatment for myiasis, a condition caused by the larvae of certain dipterous flies, including Cochliomyia hominivorax (the New World screwworm). Studies have shown that ivermectin, when administered orally or topically, can help eliminate the larvae and reduce the severity of the infestation, especially in cases of orbital or oral myiasis. "
> Googling ... yields
What source are you referring to currently?
Ivermectin liquid "pour-on" is poured along the backbone of cattle (just as you do in cats and dogs with flea medications).
The study I linked to showing the effectiveness of Ivermectin was only done subcutaneously. I did not find a study on the effectiveness of non-subcutaneous Ivermectin treatments on screw worms.
Given one of the areas they focused on the study is the scrotal area post castration, I don't expect that a pour on would cover that area well enough to be an effective treatment. Happy to read other studies if you have them showing otherwise.
You can use it topically but typically it's an oral dose.
There are injectable and transdermal (pour-on and ear tag) forms for cattle and pigs. I'm not aware of an oral formulation for food animals, even though that's pretty common for horses.
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from your google lin
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221132072...
is quite funny, where they found that the lambs were licking the topically applied ivermectin, but also that they didnt notice any decrease in parisites for any of the ingestion/injection/topical
they also say theres nothing showing any applicability to cattle
There’s also resistance to worry about if used widely.
You still need to remove them, otherwise you have decomposing maggots in an infected would, which is a great way of killing whatever you were trying to save.
This is going to be a test of the "new improved" post Doge USDA. We'll see how well it copes with a real agricultural crisis with reduced staffing and funds.
indeed. it will also not be limited to one agriculture crisis. the number of things these departments do that we don’t realize is crazy. putting out fire after fire.
since these departments generally don’t brag about non-sexy things like … screwworms, a certain type of person with tunnel vision, who imagines themselves to be smarter at everything than everyone else that has ever lived, they will imagine they failed not because of their own dipshittery but because of an imaginary ghost foe.
this is perhaps one of the greatest failures of that generation, so many of them seem to have a complete inability to see that other people may be intelligent at something. their tunnel vision is crazy af to see.
it’s gonna be hilarious to watch them cry about the messes they caused. they’ll try to blame everyone else for the mess they created.
Tangential aside but what does this mean:
> live demonstrations on how to handle cattle to reduce stress.(Every cow pie released by a stressed-out cow before it gets weighed by meat processers amounts to $6 in lost profit.)
Ranchers get paid a flat per pound price for whole animals. When they take a shit, their total weight goes down and thus the ranchers lose the flat per pound price for that pile of shit, which evidently is about $6.
It's a great day to be heavily punishing imports!
Heavily punishing your own citizens for buying imported goods in a highly-integrated global economy.
good day to be a vegan.
It’s always a good day to not participate in the cruelty and evil that is animal farming.
There's a big difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_animal_feeding_op... and traditional family farms. In a traditional family farm, animals can live happy and relatively full lives while offsetting a tremendous amount of petroleum products in the form of fuel, insecticide, herbicide, fertilizer, equipment, etc.
> traditional family farms.
> relatively full lives
Thanks to point out the difference between industrial and family farm. However I'm not sure what farms in particular you have in mind but anything commercial has non incentive to let the animal live a "relatively full life": the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce. Some producers add a few weeks to the legal minimum to let them grow a bit more but nothing near their natural expectancy. Lets take chickens for exemple, here in EU:
- standard are harvest 35 days (32 if for export)
- certified (floor, outdoor) at 56 days
- highest quality (Bio and local certifications): 81 day
- egg poultry final harvest: around 1 year and half when egg production slow down
- natural life expectancy of a chicken: 8-10 years.
> can live happy
"happier" would be more accurate IMHO but as some people point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess. What we can do is remove the farm fences and do not force them onto the slaughter house. They'll choose themselves to go to what makes them happy.
I come from Mennonites. Plenty of animals on the farm are allowed to live full lives. Anything doing any kind of work can be, which all animals on the farm are capable of. Milk and eggs don't require culling. Even layers past their prime will still eat pests and scratch manure into the soil and teach the young to do same.
Joel Salatin practices the sort of farming I'm familiar with: https://www.youtube.com/@farmlikealunatic
This is what happy chickens look like: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VHvDEzpD5es
and happy pigs: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B6qk0IbCC5U
The figures you quote are not for heritage breeds. They are for breeds which have been selected for extremely rapid growth, often to the detriment of the health of the animal (and presumably the person consuming them).
> the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq_au_vin has been the definition of a peasant dish for a century or two at least.
> but as some people point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess.
Anyone who's spent time with animals knows. As surely as you know if your dog is happy. People are the ones who hide their feelings.
This can be true, but for the commercial side of things it is both not what generally happens and not what is generally feasible to happen.
You don't get it at the supermarket, that's for sure. But I can get it at my local farmers market. You may be able to too. I would argue that it's entirely feasible, but depends on priorities. Most people prioritize profits, convenience, and speed.
Our poultry didn't last more than a year either, and we weren't factory farming. We bought 15 chicken every year, 3 male to eat before they were fertile early spring, 12 female that we ate during the next winter. And half a dozen rabbits too. Then my grandparents grew too tired and started to travel instead of farming/taking care of poultry.
The animals might have been happy (or, at least happier than in a factory farm), but clearly their life were short.
That's fair. Most animals raised expressly for slaughter will be culled young.
No there isn't. This is just stuff y'all tell yourselves to make ya feel better about your cruelty and over consumption.
What I'm reading here is that you feel cruel and selfish, and some sort of restrictive diet is your self-punishment. And denying other people's lived experiences is necessary to reinforce the self-punishment.
You don't know me, or my experiences, or circumstances. Only your own. So I don't see how it could be any other way. I hope you feel better, friend. And that whoever made you feel that way learns better.
Whatever lets you sleep at night my friend.
You ever watch a plant filmed in time lapse? They're active just like animals. They feel and communicate and are our relatives just the same. Everything on this planet eats a living cousin, save for the photo and chemosynthesizers. Such is life. The similarity of our proteins and other molecules is exactly what makes us nutritious to each other. I sleep just fine. The backyard garden is fruitful. The chimkins are happy and laying eggs. Thankful for the opportunity to enjoy it!
Please stop lying to yourself. You know damn well eating a plant and an animal are completely different things.
You wouldn’t be saying these things if the aliens came and harvested your children for food.
Not to me they aren't.
I once watched a film of a persistence hunter approaching the prey he'd chased for miles. He spoke to it, approached it calmly, sat with it and caressed it, put it's head on his lap and held it for a minute, petting it like a dog and shushing and whispering to it. And then he cut it's throat, and cried as it died.
That's what living on the farm is like. That's real life, fully and authentically felt. In my opinion, all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence for furthering my life.
You can feel differently. Lots of folks do.
> You wouldn’t be saying these things if the aliens came and harvested your children for food.
What if the aliens look like plants? What if they're here already? What if they're your distant cousin?
Funny thing - when you look at single celled organisms like bacteria and yeasts under a microscope, they engage in behaviors which seem shockingly like animal behaviors. They seem to explore their environment, have senses, hunt and eat, reproduce, and notably, they seem to dislike specific stimuli. They really meet every definition I can think of for a being which appears to be conscious, including memory, and we eat them by the billions without even knowing.
You can take the panpsychic view if you want (with no actual evidence), but it doesn't change the fact that we know non human animals suffer. Countlessly exploiting their entire population, for what?
> all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence
How does that help them when you're consuming their flesh without consent? Let's all fornicate with these animals, just make sure to show respect after!
I can kinda understand how factory farming is the bad bit as opposed to a traditional farming, but you have to stop and think, who are we to decide these other beings lives?
OK, now apply what you just said to plants and fungi and single celled organisms.
Get yourself out of your human-centric, mammal-centric, animal-centric point of view and realize that at the cellular level we're effectively indistinguishable. We can't even talk to Dolphins, who we know are intelligent, and you expect me to discount the intelligence of every other living thing? Laughable. We're all made of the same stuff, all the way down, and humans aren't exceptional.
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology) Your chief take-away should be that plants know when they're being eaten, and take actions to defend themselves.
The necessity of death in order to further life is why every religion has thankfulness rituals around meals.
These aren't new thoughts, or thoughts unique to me. Look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
> who are we to decide these other beings lives?
Some folks, who've asked that question, decided they didn't have the right, and aren't available to talk to any more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
These infect humans too, vegan or not.
I first learned about these delightful creatures after reading The Screwfly Solution by Alice Sheldon:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution
” Now, after being eradicated from the US since the early 1980s and largely forgotten, top veterinarians expect the screwworm could be back as soon as the summer. More than 950 cases have been reported in Mexico so far this year, including one within miles of a livestock checkpoint in Chiapas. A resurgence in the US would have devastating consequences for farm animals and wildlife”
I was surprised to learn recently that we import a LOT of cattle. It's the reason many other countries will not take US beef, because the provenance of our beef isn't as precise as it needs to be, for those foreign consumer laws.
We also treat our cows with antibiotics that a lot of countries ban. A lot of our meat is also treated with chemicals that other countries ban.
It's why Europe won't import a lot of US beef.
This is true of a lot of our food. Trump, now and in 2016, has been trying to force the UK to buy US chicken and the Brits are NOT having it because US food standards are below that of the UK.
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The UK has very strict requirements around certain foods that their farmers have to meet. Allowing US farmers to bypass those requirements will undercut those domestic farmers and while individual consumers may still opt for the more expensive domestic option, restaurants and takeout businesses will usually opt for the cheapest option which introduces it to the country even if the consumers don't want it. It's not like McDonalds has a sign that says "Made with US Chicken!" on your nuggets. Secondly, allowing cheap US chicken just penalizes the poorest in your country that will go for the cheapest option to survive. Some people don't have choice and food standards help bring the bottom up.
> It's not like McDonalds has a sign that says "Made with US Chicken!" on your nuggets.
I'm not sure whether this is still the case, but the cardboard boxes that McDonald's packages its burgers in in Australia used to have '100% Aussie beef' printed on them, but the beef was actually imported from South America by a wholly-McDonald's-owned subsidiary called '100% Aussie'.
I have hard time believing this actually happened. Any references?
>restaurants and takeout businesses will usually opt for the cheapest option which introduces it to the country even if the consumers don't want it
Restaurants are free to advertise that they use domestic chicken. You can even legislate mandatory labeling if you're so inclined. The fact that you think consumers need to be actively prevented from getting US chicken, because they don't have the capacity to decide for themselves contradicts your claim that "Brits are NOT having it".
It really doesn't but you're free to think that the only way to determine that is to allow complete free market access and just see what happens.
and it's not a free market, the animals are fed with federally subsidised corn
it's classic dumping, the sort that Trump gets upset about
you can look at canadian stores as of late, which are taking to relabelling "made in the USA" with maple leaf stickers.
the US is free to make non-chlorine chicken, and then sell it to places that demad non-chlorine chicken
This is the silliness of the pure free-market libertarianism, with its stray man of "oh, you're being paternal and saying they can't decide for themselves!".
No. A society, which has chosen its government, has decided that it would like to outsource the individual work of tracking food provenance and safety in the form of ensuring that the only food available is food that meets the standards that the society has decided to set.
This is specialization at work, which is in fact one of the primary drivers of civilization and progress.
No one is saying that people can't make these decisions by themselves. People are saying they do not want to, especially in an environment that is heavily information-asymmetric.
I'm a well-educated, intelligent software engineer. Sure, I could go looking into the details of the production facility for all of the meat that I buy, maybe, at the grocery store - but I certainly don't want to. And if I go to a restaurant, I absolutely do not want to have to spend hours researching their supply chain first.
This is not incapacity. This is intelligent division of labor.
While we’re at it, why not let manufacturers reintroduce lead into paint and toys and let consumers choose what they want there too? The problem is that “consumer choice” is frequently a shield for amoral companies to take advantage of information asymmetry to externalize problems onto individuals. Individual consumers do not have time to deeply research every purchase they make and so it is not reasonable to expect them to handle these things themselves. Instead we have the Hobbesian contract where it is much more efficient to empower a government to centralize the handling of these common goals. It’s not smart or edgy to argue for the “free hand of the market” in these one-off topics, because none of these decisions are made in a vacuum but rather are part of a continuum of choices that the governed are mostly happy with (no such safety regime can ever be perfect).
Because we know the implications of poor quality food, and we also know those who would buy it have no choice but to buy the cheapest. So, no thanks. I'd much rather the state intervene here and keep this crap out. This "let consumers choose" argument is tiring when consumers don't have the ability to choose. They are just trying to survive
>and we also know those who would buy it have no choice but to buy the cheapest. So, no thanks. I'd much rather the state intervene here and keep this crap out.
Having "the state intervene here and keep this crap out" isn't going to magically make the domestic chicken cheaper for those people who "have no choice". You're not improving the chicken quality for them, you're preventing them from buying chicken at all.
Why do you suppose that chicken quality would be tied to price? Do you know where your chicken comes from? If you buy expensive, high quality chicken, do you know it's actually high quality and not just a fancier package with a higher price tag? Do you want to research every single product you eat to make sure it's safe?
I sure don't.
They’ve decided as a group that they would rather people eat less better quality food than more poorer quality food. I don’t understand the hang up. Is it the idea that people can collectively decide something? Presumably if it’s such a big problem people in the UK can elect a different government.
even poor people are able to manage and prioritize their spending.
in america, you could just sell the ultra poor people a piece of dirt you picked off the ground for a couple cents. theyre still buying "chicken" but its not at all what people want when theyre wanting to buy chicken.
We have decided, we elected a government and had it pass food safety laws.
I'm not claiming such food safety laws are illegitimate, I'm only claiming that the idea that British consumers have rejected chicken is laughable, as evidenced by the government feeling the need to ban them.
> I'm only claiming that the idea that British consumers have rejected chicken is laughable
it's not laughable, it's a huge political point mentioned constantly
the average UK consumer specifically does not want US products entering our food supply
They kinda did using that representative democracy gizmo
And the problem of concentrated benefits (for domestic chicken farmers) and diffuse costs (for everyone else) is a well known problem for democracy. If you're going to invoke this, you might as well also argue that Americans are "are not having trade imbalances", because they elected Trump.
Domestic farmers are not all in the same company. They compete amongst each other under the same set of rules they must all abide by. I have no idea why they would agree to sell an inferior product that doesn't have to abide by the same set of rules.
america is not a democracry though, its a union of states.
the states have decided to address the trade imbalance, rather than the people
Why enable a race to the bottom? They don't take our dubious food colorings, either.
The whole idea of "race to the bottom" implies at least some portion consumers are going to choose the inferior product, which directly contradicts the original claim that British consumers have rejected US chicken, and the US needs to force them to buy it.
> The whole idea of "race to the bottom" implies at least some portion consumers are going to choose the inferior product
Yup.
> directly contradicts the original claim that British consumers have rejected US chicken
No it doesn't.
> the US needs to force them to buy it
Why let the US force foreigners to buy an inferior product?
Better solution: block inferior products from being imported. Then people choose to purchase not-inferior products.
You're one of these people that get off on being technically correct even though it has no value to the discussion at large. No, 100% of Brits were not surveyed and all said no and as I said in another comment, the poorest of the country would likely buy it because it would be the cheapest option.
This kind of bunk is why I outgrew being a libertarian four decades ago. Transparency, anti-fraud laws, and standards make markets work. Fantasies about "network states" do not.
Why would a citizen want their representatives to allow bad meat into the country? What would their thought process be here?
Chlorinated chicken has become a big talking point in the UK and there is overwhelming public support for continued ban.
Same deal in Germany - if you asked a German about American chicken, I can almost guarantee you that "Chlorhuhn" would be their first response.
because the US always insists on changing labeling rules so consumers can't
even if this wasn't the case, the substandard US product will end up replacing UK product in everything that isn't labelled (processed foods)
Quick, get those cattle a special preparation of carrot juice, cod liver oil and turmeric, stat!
Ironically I bet ivermectin would actually be useful here.
Wrong type of worms. These are fly larva. Invermectin is useful against intestinal and heartworms.
This old study found ivermectin efficacious in treating screw worm infected cattle:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-0813....
I appreciate the attempt to ground the discussion in research, but as MillironX pointed out elsewhere, ivermectin turns out to be less effective on Cochliomyia hominivorax (which the article is about) than on Chrysomya bezziana (which the paper you cited is about).
That is interesting, although I'm not seeing the comment you're referencing. I read the article this morning, but I hadn't noted that there were possibly multiple types of screw worm. Looks like the Cochliomyia hominivorax is only one that the Americas typically have to deal with, so that was the only one that made sense in the context. However, that a anti-parasitic is more effective at killing one type of screw worm than another doesn't mean much by itself. That statement would hold true even if it had 99% efficacy against one type vs 98% efficacy against another.
The comment I referred to is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43881065#43882771. It links to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9403981/. Looking at the abstract now (I hadn't before) it claims that injected doramectin was fully effective while ivermectin had limited effectiveness (29% of cases not treated). It doesn't seem to give a comparison between types of screwworm.
It is, but there is no "silver bullet" for idiocy, as you can see.
There is: stop measuring intelligence.
We're getting there. Soon numbers and statistics will be meaningless.
I don't understand what you mean by that.
What I'm saying is that intelligence is impossible to measure.
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These aren’t remotely on the same level.
A bunch of internet commenters, regardless of how informed, generally have no sway in policy. It’s text on a page that can be easily —- and in almost all cases -- be safely ignored.
However, a government administration’s stance to actively eliminate entire segments of a government that are responsible for disease management is an actual problem.
redserk says >... It’s text on a page that can be easily —- and in almost all cases -- be safely ignored.<
No, b/c to ignore something one must first read it and, in it's reading, waste one's time and effort. Our intellectual lives would be better if the text were never placed on the page to start.
You say this as if people aren’t the ones enabling the government.
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How will you treat the wild animal population?
Or are you assuming that just treating livestock will solve the problem?
Lots of things hurt cattle, but they do not threaten our domestic beef supply. They are just things for farmers and ranchers to deal with.
Think of it this way: Leaving lug nuts loose in new cars does not threaten our nation's auto supply.
Sure it does if you loosen enough of them to create hysteria.
Spoken like a true saboteur.
But how many lug nuts must you loosen to create hysteria?
And why do I have the peculiar feeling that you've never held a lug wrench in your hands?
15. Assuming 5 per wheel and applying the proverb of "three men make a tiger"*, they just have to be the new cars of three famous people who are likely to get in the news for a wheel falling off.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger
You can set out free (medicated) food for the wildlife. That will treat the vast majority of them.
That might work for once-off vaccinations of precisely targeted animals in densely populated areas but not delivering periodic high doses of medication to treat parasites to animals across 100s of millions of acres.
Loughla says: "How will you treat the wild animal population?"
Hunt 'em and eat 'em, yummm! If you're tough enough, as I do not doubt, you can eat the screwworms too, once cooked!8-))
You have two types of screwworms, the common, and the south American. Are you sure ivermectin is as efficient against the species they're talking about?
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(Which is why it worked in that region of the country against covid
Human hosts already had the worms too
and it still killed the worms, allowing their own immune system to function correctly again)
With this and bird flu and inflation, it wouldn’t hurt people to learn to eat less meat throughout the week. A day or two vegetarian so if any of these things escalate at least you have a feel for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh well, we can just import beef with our renowned free trade policies.
> “New World Screwworm: The Threat Returns.”
I love this. The whole country is like movie theme parks patched together seamlessly.
I wonder how the king will frame this.
> I wonder how the king will frame this.
The screwworm cases are in Mexico according to the article, threatening Texas / US cattle. So the framing would be pretty straightforward. One can imagine the word “vermin” rearing its head.