
Chile’s salmon farms may use more antibiotics than any other meat industry - okket
http://oceana.org/blog/chile%E2%80%99s-salmon-farms-may-use-more-antibiotics-any-other-meat-industry-%E2%80%99s-big-problem
======
swombat
Do you feel helpless to stop the problem of antibiotics use in the meat
industry?

You’re not! Here’s a simple easy trick you can use to reduce its impact on the
world: eat less meat.

You don’t need meat in 3 meals a day. Reduce it to 1 meal a day and you’ve
already reduced your antibiotics impact by 2/3\. Cut down to one meat meal a
week and that’s a 96% reduction.

You’re not powerless. Vote with your wallet and your stomach.

~~~
enord
When has this attitude _ever_ been the solution to a shared-resource problem?
I'm not being snarky, I want to know. It feels like solving traffic mortality
by pasting a "drive carefully"-sticker inside the windshield, doing nothing
other than establishing who is morally responsible.

~~~
chrischen
It's like solving traffic mortality by telling people not to drive.

~~~
akoncius
no, it’s like telling people to stop driving cars at 100 miles per hour inside
city. makes sense.

~~~
enord
We do that, but with laws and signs and police and stuff. Not with stern
admonition.

~~~
akoncius
so if there would be a law restricting meat consumption then everything would
be fine?

~~~
megaman22
It's been done in the past. Church laws forbidding the eating of meat on
certain days have been a thing. Of course, most people who have the means
would choose to eat meat as often as possible, and so you get things like fish
not being classed as meat (leaving aside other considerations like these sorts
of restrictions acting as subsidies to merchant fishing fleets, with knock-on
effects for early modern naval preparedness).

Or people just ignore stupid, unenforceable laws and net respect for the law
as an absolute is decreased.

------
jopsen
> Consumers are key to change

Consumers are given responsibility for too many things. When I buy something I
have to check how it impacts the environment, animal welfare, fair trade,
worker impact, company social responsibility, price, antibiotic usage, palm
oil usage, health impacts, allergens, various toxins, suspected list of toxic
substances, company reputation, etc.

When will it end? IMO this doesn't scale... This needs regulation, I'm fairly
sure the EU is doing it's part, where is the US?

~~~
macspoofing
>When will it end?

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

~~~
jopsen
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.

~~~
macspoofing
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.

------
fpoling
The article does not mention that Chile received a lot of investment from
Norwegian fish farm industry. After strict regulation and enforcement in
Norway started to affect profits the industry looked for other countries where
local laws are not that strict or can be ignored.

------
partycoder
"The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally
responsible for the death of the man who succumbs to infection with the
penicillin-resistant organism."

\- Sir Alexander Fleming

------
notadoc
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.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> rapidly growing superbugs

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

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

~~~
throwaway5752
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)

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

------
partycoder
In 2016, Chile had a massive algal bloom that killed an unprecedented amount
of fish.

The salmon industry was held accountable for it, but the issue was just
deflected and blamed on El Nino.

------
petecox
Salmon seemed abundant and cheap, relatively, at Chile's coastal restaurants
and I guess now I know why.

Perhaps I'll pick something else on the menu the next time I visit. I wasn't a
great fan of deep-fried seafood empanadas or ceviche but paila marina was
tasty!

------
sandov
Ok. so, as a Chilean, what can I do, other than stop eating salmon altogether?

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sifoo
Fish farms are concentration camps for fish, same goes for the rest of the
meat industry. The reason they need all the antibiotics is because the animals
are so sick they just wouldn't survive without. Many still don't, it's just
more effective to let 20% or so die if it allows stuffing more animals in the
same space. Did anyone really think we would get away with treating animals
like that and not have to face the consequences? Just say no, really. It's a
disgusting, harmful habit; much more so than tobacco and alcohol. And down-
voting me for telling you what you already knew isn't going to save you.

~~~
linkmotif
I don’t think you need to invoke concentration camps here, true as it may be
in some cases.

They use antibiotics to make them grow faster. That’s half the reason.

~~~
sifoo
What's the difference then? Piling up living beings in awful conditions to
kill them in the most cost-effective way is pretty much the definition of a
concentration camp. And making them grow faster than they're supposed to at
the expense of everything isn't very nice either.

~~~
enord
They're not people. Concentration camps are for people. At least we don't eat
them alive, like their other natural predators.

~~~
sifoo
At least they have a chance to fight for their survival, which makes all the
difference. If it's horrible when done to humans, it's horrible when done to
animals. And as long as we keep doing it to animals, we shouldn't expect to
escape the same fate ourselves; Karma 101.

~~~
enord
Fair enough, if you fear karmic retribution that makes sense. I don't, so for
me the shoe remains on the same foot. Other people are more valuable to me
than animals, and also more dangerous. The stakes are higher and therefore the
moral considerations are more prudent (or karmic, if that's your bag).

~~~
sifoo
Karma has nothing to do with revenge, karma is just another word for
consequences. Every action leads to reactions; if they didn't the universe
would have descended into chaos in no time at all. And thats how we learn, by
acting and studying reactions until we get it. One of those lessons is
recognizing the value of all living beings.

------
jp555
What is the antibiotic? How long does this compound last when deployed? If
something is highly reactive (causing the death of bacteria) is it not a
reasonable starting assumption that it would not last long once deployed? If
it is long active, where is the evidence of this compound causing antibiotic
resistance?

