1. I believe the initial change from 12 to 131 ng/kg was science-based. Based on the literature and science process 12 ng/kg was the wrong number.
2. This change won't matter. The amount of chemical required per use leads to concentrations that are 10-100 times the new limit.
SEPA rules require a prediction showing that the average concentration within the predicted deposition area is less then the limit. Regardless of the increased limit it will not be possible.
What literature? The article just says this is based on a private report that the regulator didn’t even see. Is there published science that backs up your assertions? Would love more information either way.
At either limit, the levels added to the environment from a single treatment of a farm will cause deposition higher than the limits.
I have linked the SEPA regulations for aquaculture
and a report for the modelling program (NewDEPOmod) used. On page 32 on the second link there are plots showing the observed and modelled concentrations, both of which are above the allowed limits.
I feel that this type of story is never punctuated by the fact that this is the mechanism by which we feed all of humanity - industrialization. All industrialization being painted as largely evil is counterproductive to finding the optimum point of trading off unnatural interventions and sustainable preservation. The goal is to feed the planet efficiently rather than preserve practices that work only on small farms.
The counterpoint is that this isn't a step that is being taken because we are desperately trying to feed all of humanity.
Its a step thats being taken because these providers want to increase their profit margins.
The question is whether thats a good enough reason to take whatever risks are being taken here.
The underlying point was never discussed enough. We just had too many people on earth and our technology is not good enough to feed all while being sustainable
And the counterpoint to that is that it’s searching for profits that push for greater efficiency in the presence of competition. They aren’t searching necessarily for larger profit margins, just more profit. Sure if they have a monopoly either in practice or classically they’ll just pocket more of the money, but ideally someone will realize they could make even more money by lowering prices. Ryanair is successful not because they have a huge profit margin, but because they move a lot of people.
Did I say anything about John Deere or about capitalism being flawless? Though there is a recent trend of companies selling things at a loss, game consoles are probably the biggest example, and planning on making it up in later sales and indeed while John Deere’s profit margins are up, they aren’t dramatically so as far as I can tell and it seems to have more to do with the general post pandemic trends. I totally support making it obvious when your buying vs renting vs acquiring a right of use to something though. I hate that for example I can click a button that says buy on Amazon and receive an ebook that I don’t in a practical sense own. My understanding of the John Deere, right to repair situation is that it’s similar.
For example is it capitalist or socialist to have a national bank and currency? Should each private bank print their own currency?
When government provides employees protections against unfair dismissal we call that government intervention.
But we regularly prosecute and imprison employees for 'stealing intellectual property' at the taxpayer's expense, or enforse non-competes using the power of the state, and thats never called government intervention.
The way I see it, people who use term 'government intervention' are trying to have their cake and eat it.
If government should not intervene when Amazon pays no taxes and abuses its monopoly position, then it should also not expend taxpayer money to protect them from shoplifting.
It's intervention if it's done without consent. You're free to have a national bank, it's intervention if you force me to pay for it or use it.
If you and your employer agree to have a contract enforced by the government then enforcement of the contract is not government intervention (and you should be forced to pay for the cost of that contract, not the taxpayer). There is also no such thing as stealing intellectual property.
Shoplifting violates the 'force is only justified in response to force' principle, which arguably the government's only purpose is to prevent. Not paying income taxes or being a monopoly does not. Not wanting to give you something is not the same as taking something away from you, as much as you wish it was.
> You're free to have a national bank, it's intervention if you force me to pay for it or use it.
I am not clear what you are saying.
Are you currently forced to use the US Dollar, and by extension national bank (the Fed) in the United States? Would you prefer to see every private bank create it's own currency?
Given that: "Under 18 U.S. § 486, it's a criminal offense to make or pass any metal coins "intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design."
> There is also no such thing as stealing intellectual property.
According to the FBI official website: "Preventing intellectual property theft is a priority of the FBI’s criminal investigative program. It specifically focuses on the theft of trade secrets and infringements on products that can impact consumers’ health and safety, such as counterfeit aircraft, car, and electronic parts."
At this point and seeing the way you argue, I’m not interested in debating about what I would prefer private banks to do. I simply stated that it’s intervention to force me to use some currency, and yes I am forced to use the USD. As is any business in the United States, which is legally required to accept it.
I don’t see the relevance of “it’s illegal” to anything in this conversation.
If I “take” something from you and you still have it, nothing has been stolen.
More pesticides means more pollution. The farms are in the open rivers. Which means damage to the ecosystem and to the wild life (i.e. pesticides are to fight infection and that infection affects the wild fish population).
So, basically getting more profits by introducing more issues for "someone else to solve".
I’m replying here just to the person above. I don’t have an opinion about if this single action was a good policy or not. Though, I am generally supportive of capitalism as a system that has moved a huge number of people out of poverty, but I obviously acknowledge that externalities at least need managed by counties (along with lots of things actually). But it is wrong that companies merely act to maximize profit margin. It feels like it’s part of the same recent trend of acting like the reason we have global warming is because of a handful of selfish people. There are trade offs. Turning the world into a organic farming utopia would be forcing billions to starve. Banning pesticides here would likely result in higher fish prices. Turning off oil right now would mean trillions dying as the world’s economy stopped. That doesn’t mean we can do nothing, but we can’t pretend like problems in the world are created exclusively by bad selfish people because then we’ll pretend we never need to change
This is basically intervening in the market though, by papering-over negative externalities. A true market efficiency scenario would mean that more sustainable upstarts have their shot. But if we keep giving established industries a pass, then we're essentially giving them an unfair advantage and removing the very competition that capitalism prides itself on.
It isn't like farmed salmon is a crucial staple food without substitutes - nobody will starve without it. There are plenty of other fish breeds that are less damaging across their production lifecycle.
Farmed salmon is a luxury good and we shouldn't be harming the environment for that.
that's likely larger and more mature presorted units. Salmon can eat smaller ones. You can tell from the price that those cost more than actual salmon.
I am not expert, I am just speculating that if you dig into details, picture can be very different.
I didn't get who are those "we" and where it was stated and by who, and why that who is an absolute authority in this discussion that any other opinions are labeled as "irrelevant"
Industrialization without regulation is bad. Industrial fish farming seems to be bad in general. Salmon farming feels like stealing from the poor to feed the rich in some ways. They use cheaper nutritious smaller fish that people eat directly in other parts of the world to feed the Salmon.
Unfortunately a lot of industrialized farming does not seem to be about feeding the planet efficiently.
Part of the reason why we have many of these regulations in the first place was because rampant industrialization in the pre-modern age lead to many foods being adulterated with many unsafe replacements or poor food standards quite literally poisoning people. The goal of any company lobbying to reduce limits isn't for the safety of the consumer, it's for increasing profit margins even if it has bad downstream effects (because slight increases to cancer rates or whatever would not have a measurable effect on a company that will be dead in 10-20 years). Things like nutritional value or health concerns are secondary to making money.
If that was actually the goal, we would be investing into bioengineering salt-water tolerant crops, like China is doing. Or into permaculture, like many environmentalists are advocating. Or at least we would legally mandate interoperability and repairability of farm hardware, like right to repair advocates.
But really the goal is to allow the established industrial players to continue their existing business practices, even thought they are harmful and thoughtless.
Industrialization is rife with short-term thinking.
The idea that this will help humans long term has not been proven.
The only people who are SURE not to be negatively affected by this kind of thing are the super rich, who are not getting their salmon from the same places as you and I do.
I don’t think it’s as evil as it is myopic. This story is specifically about ignoring long term effects to an entire ecosystem to sustain operations that are apparently not sustainable without sacrificing an entire ecosystem in the long term.
Industrialization is nearly always the practice of punting long term issues to another part of the world or to another generation.
I would assert that most industrialists are looking to maximize profit through economies of scale with little to no concern for sustainability. That’s how it started and I think that’s how it ends.
Animals developing resistance to medication. Evolution in action.
We should note to start that this seems exclusive for UK.
The targeted animals are blood sucker crustaceans that multiply exponentially in cages and also affect wild fishes, therefore even if we don't like to eat animals, we should want to do something about it.
Is a well known old problem, causes huge economic loses in the sector (436 million dollars lost only in a year) and is not fully solved still. There is a promising way to attack it with zero chemicals, but is not easy.
Lobbying: >In politics, lobbying or advocacy, is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials
Corruption: >Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with companies trying to influence government policies. It's only a problem when government officials abuse their office for personal gain (eg. taking bribes). In this case it's not really obvious that such improper behavior has occurred, other than a vague kneejerk reaction of "pesticides bad, therefore the only possible reason why the regulators approved it was that they were corrupt".
you can find $2/lb ham, but you can't find salmon for that price.
lb/$10 will be transformed into something like 300g after cooking process, and for person with minimum wage, it means he needs to work for 1h after taxes to get 300g of product, this is like pre-industrial level of productivity and income.. And there are people outside US with even lower wages.
All that means is that US wages are too low. But, be they what they are:
- 300 grams is not a bad serving.
- for the folks on minimum wage, its only 12% of their income which Im not sure if its a bad ratio historically.
- "man does not live on bread alone" ie, you can't eat cheap ham everyday, nor should salmon be a daily staple. But variety of food is a necesity, not a luxury.
- ham at $2/lb sounds disgusting and probably causes more health problems (nitrates) than just eliminating animal protein.
- My wife used to live on minimum wage with no external help padding her income. She still ate a serving of fresh salmon every week.
Im sorry, but if farmed salmon is a luxury, as a society our standards of living have collapsed.
On top of that, pesticide application and environmental effects are the dangers of pesticide application, not human consumption. Most pesticides are just CO2 by the time they get to the shelf and ALL pesticide residues that don’t become co2 must be verifiably 100% safe for people to eat.
More great food science from the folks that brought you aspartame, hydrogenated vegetable oils, red-40, and canola oil as the healthy alternative to eggs, dairy, fruits, vegetables and meat
nah, in this case lobbying "pesticides" is done to pack even more fish in the hellish conditions. Which is bad because it increases chances to get some new viruses/bacterias. Alternatively, it is to fight new infections which are already "bullet-prooffed" against the old amount of pesticides.
Money can buy higher quality and higher amplified speech, in fact there's an argument that is the primary reason for accumulating money for anyone interested in politics, at least in the US.
And it's not surprising that most people pay more attention to whatever they perceive to be better value for their time.
So it's not really those with less money getting 'end of a baton' but those with less convincing speech. It's unfortunate that the least convincing and credible are at best treated as outcasts, and at worst as criminals.
But how could a democratic society be structured differently? People can't be forced to treat every single individual the same.
My take on US democracy is that the level of representation needs to get back to the levels seen in the 18th century.
35000 people per representative. That would mean we would need a larger capitol building - but at least it would be harder to gerrymander and to bribe/lobby all of these people.
In this day of technology we could manage a large congress quite well.
Legitimacy by jingoism: funneling trips, gifts, money, and jobs through an intermediary is a curtain of complexity patronizing credulity to misdirect and conceal criminality.
Climate change is a problem that needs to be solved, but things like this to me are a much more pressing issue. We are poisoning ourselves because of industry and no one seems to think about it.
We can't eat fish more than once a week because fish are so poisoned. I have a close friend who had to go through chelation therapy because her blood had so many heavy metals from eating sushi 2-3 a week for a year.
Industries that create pollution need MORE regulation, not less and things like this is depressing, where industry is able to corruptly change laws to benefit themselves and poison the people around them.
There problem is if there’s any more politically powerful force than “the children” it’s “the farmers,” despite the fact almost all farming is done by large corporations exploiting migrant labor and blasting the earth with chemicals to induce low quality substances that resemble vegetables and grains but lack almost all the nutrition. If we stopped today it would take a generation to make the soil independently viable again.
Large scale mass farming as a consequence of consolidation is also responsible for the massive reduction in insects and birdlife biodiversity. Basically, miles upon miles of monoculture, that's a food desert for the insects, and the birds don't have any habitat as there are no bushes, no shade, nothing. And on top of that come the issues with deadly pesticides that kill off bees and other pollinators and leach into groundwater.
People keep asking me why I'm so strongly opposed to GMO in food, outside of stuff like Golden Rice. The reason is that we can't trust Big Ag to not do the wrong thing: for one, there are serious questions on monopolies and dependence of farmers, even entire nations in the end upon suppliers, and it's almost exclusively about introducing resistence against pesticides, with the aforementioned effects on biodiversity.
You could just make a law that farms will be ranked by some biodiversity metric - for example, how many unique species of plant and animal were found by an inspector on an annual inspection. Any farm in the bottom 50% of rankings would need to pay perhaps 1% of revenue as an extra fee/fine for being insufficiently wildlife friendly.
Clearly people will game this metric, but most ways to fake having hundreds of species of animal on your farm are good for wild animals too.
I suspect a 1% of revenue fee for being insufficiently wildlife friendly would have a huge impact.
For many businesses, 1% can be the difference between profit and loss, and if slight adjustments to farming practice can get them some biodiversity and save them a 1% fee, they will.
Being wildlife-friendly entails significant societal changes.
In agriculture, it means reducing animal agriculture, expanding forests, and adopting plant-based diets. Nut orchards replacing dairy farms. Regenerative practices like syntropic agriculture, natural farming, and permaculture to nurture soil. No pesticides or herbicides, limited fertilizers, compost over manure, smaller diverse fields, hedgerows, companion and nitrogen fixing plants.
Think vast untouched forests, biodiverse corridors, and thriving meadows.
It's not merely a 1% revenue concern; it's about safeguarding the Earth and prioritizing biodiversity. Such a profound shift requires prioritizing the well-being of our planet over short-term financial implications.
There are 8B of us homie. Big Ag, mono culture, pesticides all come with the territory.
Have you ever kept a garden? Did you do it on natural soil, with no pesticides? The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. (Consider crickets if you think otherwise)
GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
First of all, your account seems to be shadowbanned, you might want to email the mods.
> The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible.
Indeed it is, and modern agriculture has drastically improved human life from the situation of just a century ago.
The thing is, we've gone too far - in our quest for more and more and more food production, we have endangered nature itself. Soils are degrading because the crops use too much nutrients and because the wildlife - particularly small burrowing animals - get killed off by pesticides directly or because their food got killed off by pesticides. On top of that, heavy farm machines compress the soil... and so it can't soak up water any more, leading to flood and drought issues (it can't retain water because the soil is too compacted for the water to seep through, so no buffer for drought times, and when rain falls it just washes the topsoil with it and is gone). And that doesn't even mention insects and their role in food chains.
> GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
You didn't get my point: pesticides kill everything but the GMO plants that are designed to be resistant, thus impacting the food chain of nature as an ecosystem. We've engineered places that are literally inhospitable to wildlife, with serious and far-reaching consequences. We barely understand food chains and anchor species as a concept, we only discovered just how huge a role wolves and beavers play in nature a few decades ago [1]. And yet, despite the warning signs (such as insect free car windshields despite driving through the countryside for hours), we keep on and on doing what we know is likely harmful!
2 things:
1. Modern agriculture is generally better for the soil than traditional. Look up the difference between till and no till. You just can’t do no till at the scale needed to feed the world unless we all start picking weeds full time.
2. The point that they are making is that there are ways to create biodiversity within modern ag that are actually required by law. You are not supposed to plant gmo or spray your whole field to keep a remnant of the original population, riparian buffers, cover crops (voluntary), and other voluntary buffer zones (pollinator fields etc). These can all preserve biodiversity and prevent resistance while still outputting the food needed at the price we all want to pay.
> Big Ag, mono culture, pesticides all come with the territory.
I am getting the impressing that you are not familiar with corrupt practices of Big Ag, most which have nothing to do with producing more food, and have everything to do with padding their profit margins and abusing their power.
For example, farmers hire agronomists, but actually agronomists make more money from kickbacks from producers of pesticides / agrochemicals than they do from farmers. Many of them are actually undercover pesticide pushers, rather than trusted professionals.
We have metric tons of research that shows that pesticides are overused, and poorly targeted. Not unlike the opioid crisis in US
Totally possible to raise animals without this though. There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume, leaving more biologically diverse land available for other species.
The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes).
We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.
Without meaning to suggest that there's no much better ways to raise animals for meat, it's still a fundamental truth that the land area needed to support animals is much higher than crops. If we were to only eat meat from animals that were raised in a biodiversity sustainable fashion, we'd all have to eat far less meat (which I totally support as a flexitarian).
I wholeheartedly agree. There is no possible way to raise animals the way we do at a scale that can sustain the current demand for meat. But at my small scale, I can make a profit while matching the sales price of mass-produced animal products, and I do that with no government subsidies.
My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.
> There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs.
Things may seem that way since those areas have been cultivated since prehistory, but this is not correct in general. Also, commercial fields (aka green concrete) and naturally grazed steppe/savannah are very different.
Yes, I am in favor of doing our best to return America's savannahs back to their previous state, though that state was not quite "wild" as you rightly point out, as Native Americans tended to the land and practiced regular burning of both the forests, savannahs, and plains. Likewise, bison did a huge part and sadly they cannot do that huge part anymore. But we can still get the land back to something healthier for everyone.
My cattle (Jerseys, I do not raise commercial beef cattle) prefer my savannah land. I have approx. 100 acres of oak savannah which I have worked hard to restore to its former glory. My savannah (I don't call it pasture, it's not) is far more productive and biodiverse. I do have to remove my herds from it because trees cannot handle the constraint weight and trampling of large animals, and so I do also have a small 20 acre pasture that I keep for the off-time. I also have a 5 acre lot I keep for the winter months (Jan-April) so my cattle don't destroy dormant plants and so the grasses have time to mature in the spring.
Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable
A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.
Actual UN FAO says it is 33% of croplands used for crops production for animals, and other land is not necessary can be used for other type of aggrecalture: https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf
It looks like you've been using HN primarily, if not exclusively, to post about basically one topic. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed because pre-existing agendas are the opposite of curiosity, which is what we're trying to optimize for. I appreciate that you know a lot about this topic and have good reason to feel strongly about it, but I need to ask you to stop using HN this way because in the end it degrades what the site is supposed to be for. Pre-existing agendas are repetitive and predictable, and that's the essence of what we're trying to avoid here.
I appreciate your perspective. My focus on environmental topics is driven by my genuine interest and the belief that they're under-represented here. I've observed climate denial, and given the urgency of these issues, I felt the HN community might benefit from more exposure. If this appears as a single-topic agenda, I'll diversify my posts in the future.
it is believable that humans currently consume majority of calories from plants (likely wast majority from white rice and sugar), thought the questions is about animal agriculture land usage, and also how healthy/efficient are those plant calories.
> other land is not necessary can be used for other type of aggrecalture
Why does the land have to be used at all?
> I am more wondering about protein intake
Seitan, tofu, TVP are the obvious high-protein plant foods. People without a taste for those things or uninterested in leaving their comfort zone can seek mock meats.
yes, but the topic of discussion what is the share of those nutrition in consumption for plant vs animal today and not hypothetical case when everyone switch to plant based diet.
Also, it is not clear if whole chain of seitan production is much better than animal protein in term of efficiency.
Are you suggesting that meat might be more efficient than wheat or soy foods? These are foods we feed to animals for a tiny return on those calories.
Seitan is just wheat gluten. You can take wheat flour off your shelf right now and wash out the starch so just the spongy gluten is left which is pure protein. And that's just one protein-concentrated food.
I think you need to look these numbers up for yourself because it doesn't seem like you have a grip on how inefficient meat is, and I think you need to see the numbers for yourself to believe it.
yeah, I looked, internet search says that seitan costs $15/lb in walmart, which is way more expensive than some chicken tighs, and I use this comparison as benchmark for efficiency and economical viability.
Your hand-wavings and personal attacks are ignored.
Store-bought prepared and flavored seitan is a speciality item because it's not a staple of US cultural cuisine. It doesn't mean wheat gluten is expensive to produce.
Why would you look at that and not just at the cost of wheat flour? Wheat gluten is dirt cheap to extract from wheat. Once again, you can make it in your home at the cost of wheat flour.
Another example is soy beans where the majority of soy is fed to animals instead of consumed directly as products like tofu, TVP, and soy chunks.
As for "hand waving", I suppose I can google meat inefficiencies for you. First google result: https://www.wri.org/insights/sustainable-diets-what-you-need... -- You'll notice that wheat is the most efficient source of protein especially when considering GHG emissions.
wheat flour has much smaller protein content than proper cuts of meat, so you just shift all this processing from industrial complex to your body with side effect of calories over consumption, blood sugar spikes etc.
> soy beans
uncooked soy beans also costs like 3-4$/lb in walmart, while having lower quality protein than meat.
> majority of soy is fed to animals
you can think that animal are doing your industrial processing: extracting proteins from raw soy/grains and converting it to well preservable and digestible form.
Wheat gluten (seitan) is protein isolated from wheat flour by rinsing it with water. Wheat gluten is more protein-dense than meat, even beef, while being much more efficient to grow per calorie. So, no, you actually would consume fewer calories of wheat gluten to get the same protein you would from beef.
Remember, it takes 25 calories of cow food (like wheat or soy) to grow one calorie of meat.
You can eat those calories (wheat or soy) directly at 25x more efficiency, and that's just calorie efficiency without looking at water or land use efficiency.
Finally, price doesn't tell you how much it costs to make something nor the financial viability at scale. Just like the price of beef doesn't show you subsidies, the price impact of basic demand, nor externalities.
In a hypothetical world where we switch 100% beef consumption to wheat gluten and tofu, why would it be more costly when we aren't losing 24 calories for every 25 calories we feed to cows anymore?
Even when you wash the starch from wheat flour to isolate wheat gluten, the starch is used as inputs into other foods. When we talk about the energy lost through tropic levels, it's lost as unrecoverable metabolic energy.
beef is by no mean the best way to grow animal protein. Turkeys and chicken will be much more cost efficient.
> Remember, it takes 25 calories of cow food (like wheat or soy) to grow one calorie of meat.
I answered you already that calories intake is by no mean the important metric of nutrition value, and not interested to jump into this discussion again.
My point was simple that you can do that while still raising animals for food. They taste great, have a wealth of nutrients, and they can improve the ground they are on at the same time.
Grass-fed beef isn't necessarily better for the environment than beef from CAFOs. While grass-fed systems offer benefits like soil health, they often require more land, potentially leading to deforestation. They can also be less efficient in terms of resource use and have variable effects on carbon sequestration. A comprehensive assessment considering land use efficiency, resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions is essential to fully understand the environmental impact of different beef production methods.
"This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use.
'Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.’"
I think that a good dietary solution would be for us to get more culinarily creative with algae in food dishes. Most of the important nutrients such as omega-3s (DHA), micronutrients, and and apparently one of the most effective antioxidants that is Astaxanthin, are all picked by fish directly or indirectly (via other fish) from eating algae.
While algae may not have the same taste-profile or texture as fish, at least we would be able to make a difference (particularly with climate change and better preserving our environment from toxins as described by the article) by making socially-normal algae-based options for people who currently choose to eat fish on a more regular basis for nutritional reasons.
Chemicals used for animals/fish farming seems to be an underestimated issue, for example see the recent HN post about the vulture populations dwindling in India due to anti-inflammatory medicine given to cows. In the above article, the pesticide use is to prevent lice from killing the salmons.
And nintendo should make only boring and educative games in ascii that nobody wants like Donkey Kant or Super Marx kart.
I suspect that a sector that has been running before Christ dumped his pacifier, had thoroughly explored yet the idea of breeding strictly vegetarian fishes (get-rich-simpler-faster)... and discarded it. Some decades ago.
There is a problem with vegetarian fishes. They taste awful. Algae dislike being eaten and love to design new chemical deterrents. Salmon on the other hand is delicious.
Marine farms are simply giving people more of the product what they want to buy at a premium price. Strict market logic.
The sad truth is that most of the absolute solutions that are preached in this thread are either untested, unproved or proven as non-viable in the real life since 90's. Those are "cargo-cult solutions" that people still keep parroting again and again; replacing critical thinking with faith. Fueled by a lack of real knowledge on the area.
I am sorry but I thought that heavy metal poisoning is due to eating fish that eats other fish, thus distilling the heavy metals in their own body. i.e. eating shark is worse that eating salmon.
Is that not correct? I feel like the post above is completely misunderstanding the issue
Yeah, they're different issues, but similar causes.
I can't remember the exact cycle, but essentially fish kibble in farms is made of small fish with heavy metals and farm fish that are fatty retain those metals in their fats to a much higher rate then other fishes.
And it also ends up in dog food? It gets a little wild when your food chain is contaminated.
"... because of the toxins dolphins accumulate in the oceans we have polluted, their uterine environment and breast milk are so toxic that it kills their first-borns. Later-born offspring have a better chance ..."
"Children who breastfed were much more likely to get leukemia before the age of two when their mothers had been exposed to pesticides. And in turn, breastfeeding is one of the few measures that may provide women protection from breast cancer, possibly because the toxicants pass out of the breast fat with the milk"
A simple solution to keep using pesticides and polluting the ocean may be switch human babies to formula, switch dolphin babies to human pumped milk, solving the cancer issues and the dolphin first-born problem except for the dolphin uterine environment which could possibly be fixed with cane toads.
Yes fish bioaccumulate heavy metals (mainly mercury) particularly tuna, still
Much (an estimated 40%) of the mercury that eventually finds its way into fish originates with coal-burning power plants and chlorine production plants.
Some marine fishes are "so poisoned with heavy metals". Farmed salmon is a different category of food, and can help with that problem.
> poison the people around them
Honest question. It is really poisoning people or are we just assuming it? Just because some stuff can kill a shrimp does not mean that is also able to harm human metabolism.
not to mention the fact that there are safety intervals on industry, because this is aquaculture, not fishing. Treating a cage on spring does not mean than you will be able to buy that fish before Christmas.
> chelation therapy because her blood had so many heavy metals from eating sushi 2-3 a week for a year.
Was this because of a blood test showing levels indicating chelation therapy or was this for some other reason? What heavy metals? What is the evidence that it came from sushi? What kind of fish?
Mercury in fish is partially, but not fully, humanity’s fault, and the evidence that it’s problematic (at least if you’re not eating whales) is mixed.
For a surprising and fascinating rabbit hole, there are papers like this:
That paper only says that the danger of mercury must always be estimated by also taking into account the content of selenium.
Some fish contain enough selenium that it will combine with a part or even with all mercury, making that part of the mercury non-dangerous, so reducing the effective content of mercury.
A few fish may contain so much selenium that it may make the mercury non-dangerous, but the selenium will be toxic itself, making the fish unfit for consumption.
The main problem with polluted food like fish is that normal people cannot afford to have a chemical analysis laboratory, to check whether the food they want to eat is healthy or harmful.
So they can only hope that there are adequate laws about the content of pollutants in food and that they are really enforced. Enforcing such regulations for fish is particularly difficult due to the great differences in effective mercury content that may happen between individuals of the same kind of fish, so even when a few fish from a vendor are sampled for chemical analysis, that does not reduce much the risk of eating fish with too much mercury. The same happens with seeds and nuts that may contain too much lead and cadmium, and so on.
So even when you are aware of the dangers of eating toxic food, it is difficult to make choices that would significantly reduce the risks, because any choice that decreases some risks increases others.
After 90% of my apple harvest gone to garbage due to Apple Maggot/Railroad Worm, I'm not surprised by the extensive use of pesticide in the agriculture industry. Probably like half of human population would die from starvation due to failed crops if we didn't use pesticides.
Could we use less toxic ways to keep our food safe? I don't know.
I am probably in the minority here, but I think GMOs are an amazing advancement. We’ve been “genetically modifying” crops for years with selective breeding, we have now just been able to speed up the process.
Genetic engineering has enabled us to grow potatoes, corn, and cotton that contain some DNA from bacteria that encodes (I.e contains the recipe for) a protein, referred to as Bt Crystal Toxin, that disrupts the metabolism of some major pests. They are regarded as safe for humans because it requires both a higher pH (alkaline) and specific receptors that humans lack in order to do damage to an organism.
GMOs as technology, and the effects of GMOs on food sovereignty, are two very different things. I don't want multinational biotech companies to be the only ones able to compete.
Though the technology isn't harmless either. Let's assume sufficient care is and perpetually will be taken to avoid major disasters. What remains is amoral for-profit companies that now have far more ability to engineer food for market fit. Why is this bad? Because carrots and apples will slowly turn into the equivalents of Snickers and Cheetos - those are the products we get when not constrained by nature.
You may not really get carrots and apples either, those are domesticated. You might just be left with tiny labor intensive wild carrots and crab apples or something to keep it fully natural.
The real issue that I see with GMO is the reason for it, namely creating crops immune to poison. I am all for GMOs that produce a better plant but the practical result of GMO is a plant that can tolerate poison.
Apple, cherry, pear are all hard crops because of bug predation. My rudimentary understanding (I am a farmer just not a fruit farmer, so I just know what other farmers tell me) is that these non-native fruit trees have to contend with bugs it has no defense for. The native fruits are far more successful.
My personal experience matches. Our apple and cherry and peach harvests are hit or miss. Our pawpaw, hickory, and passion fruit harvests ae always exceptional.
Yes, maybe it's the non-native tree issue. So I'm in Canada now, but I clearly remember as a child in Belarus/USSR that we had so many apples trees and never had issues with bugs. We would collect many boxes and have them stored until early spring.
There's another crucial aspect to this which is that most orchards you see are absolute monocultures. There's an enormous value in planting a diversity of companion crops and staggering species in orchards, and you see a lot less ruin in these types of orchard designs.
The problem with monocultures is you have no breaks where competition from other bug species, birds, animals, etc, keeps an ecosystem in balance. So you end up creating this environment where a pest can take off without any resistance.
This is usually not done out of a desire to maximize yields. Farmers don't want to take up space with trees that are 'not producing'. But the other way to look at it is that those other plants and trees are producing a ton of value, they're just not producing a crop per se. That said, many companion plants can also be valuable crops in their own right.
We have a few acres of fruit trees and the truth is, it's possible to grow sustainably without chemicals, but most people don't do it because it's a lot of work. You need to pay extra attention to pruning to allow sunlight to hit all of the fruit, and you need to thin aggressively, hang non-toxic maggot traps, etc.
The reason why most people don't do that is because it's expensive. So, the reason that spraying is more conventionally popular is not because it's the only way, but because it's cheaper. And the reason it's cheaper is because – as I've mentioned elsewhere – the negative externalities are not paid by the producer, but are rather covered by society.
That is to say, if food producers aren't having to pay the cost on society's health, or on the ecosystem's health, then it's the road most farms are going to take. The solution would be for society to cover the equivalent cost in not doing those practices. I.e., dramatically increasing funding for farms that take sustainable approaches.
> Probably like half of human population would die from starvation due to failed crops if we didn't use pesticides.
Half the food that is produced ends up wasted, and a serious amount of crops isn't even counted in that total figure because it's destined from the start for fucking biofuel.
Get rid of that waste, get rid of fossil fuels, and you can feed the world comfortably without having to turn farms into chemical weapon dispensers against all kinds of wildlife.
Y'all could just look at Europe. The US wastes approximately 40% (!!!) of their entire production [1], Europe only around 20% [2]. The average American drives 21.000 km/a, Europeans ~15.000.
If you need it spelled out what you need to do: limit portion sizes in restaurants (where a lot of the food waste happens, also contributing to the insane rat infestation issues [3]) by law since Americans seem to love extensive portions, educate people how to cook and how to plan cooking, ban ultra large food packaging that no reasonable family can use before the product goes bad, and introduce actual public transit on all levels from local over regional to interstate to reduce your dependency on fossil fuels.
As for food waste in developing countries, it would be a good starter idea to invest into electrical grids and microgrids, it's hard to keep food from perishing when you don't have a stable grid to run a fridge. But that's a monumental task that needs international cooperation.
You can coat red Christmas ornaments in tanglefoot and hang them on the apple trees. It seems to cut down on the number of apple maggots since the flies get stuck to them.
Well I did the Christmas ornament to protect from birds which helped a lot but did not protect from the fly. Next year I will buy some stick paper that is supposed to fight the fly.
Planting hedgerows and wildflower strips within or around orchards can provide habitats for predators of apple maggots, such as ladybugs and parasitic wasps. These predators help control the pest population. This involves providing suitable habitats and avoiding the use of broad-spectrum pesticides that harm beneficial insects.
Additionally, avoiding monoculture orchards and incorporating diverse trees, such as oak, known for enhancing biodiversity, could be beneficial.
One can also use Ballan wrasse and lumpfish to control salmon lice. Don't know if that is possible in freshwater Scottish lochs, but both species feed on salmon lice. It's not easy, but it's possible.
Fukushima isn't going to affect radioactivity in the ocean in any measurable way. Whoever said that hasn't done any research on the matter other than watching protestors in the news.
What could be a exercise in improving and vetting an international brand of "healthy" Scottish farmed salmon instead becomes a class in "how to make people stop eating farmed salmon at all". Pathetic levels of short sightedness.
telling that noone broached the topic of why we are farming salmon in the first place. There is no biological need for humans to eat fish in the first place.
Probably because is a exceptionally, top healthy food for humans, plus the procedure has a sense economically also for the maker. We could be breeding hemlock instead but it could be sold only once to each customer, and it does not have omega 3
1. I believe the initial change from 12 to 131 ng/kg was science-based. Based on the literature and science process 12 ng/kg was the wrong number.
2. This change won't matter. The amount of chemical required per use leads to concentrations that are 10-100 times the new limit.
SEPA rules require a prediction showing that the average concentration within the predicted deposition area is less then the limit. Regardless of the increased limit it will not be possible.