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Comment by spraak | Hacker News Reader

First of all, why does it need to? It's so tiring when a solution is thrown out just because it doesn't solve everything. A very common argument against vegans is "well, animals (like rats, mice) are still (accidentally) killed in harvesting grains". Yeah, so? That could be prevented with better care harvesting, and also not eating animal products is a massive reduction already vs. the amount of animals kill from grain harvesting.

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I think the argument is that our entire food supply is corrupted / adulterated so switching your diet from one type of organism to another doesn't improve the issue since both organisms are being treated with "corruptions" (genetic modification, pesticides, chemicals that aid growth). Unless you are saying that the adulteration in vegetables and grains is less harmful to humans than that in animals the solution proposed doesn't improve "adulteration".

(I don't really agree with either viewpoint I'm just trying to explain the argument)

Animal tissue unlike plant tissue accumulates stuff magnitudes more.

Bioaccumulation of harmful substances as we rise through the food chain is a known issue.

Using our best antibiotics to produce 60 billion chickens per year is a state financed suicide and not at all a free market mechanism.

A grain sprayed with herbicide or a fruit sprayed with an insecticide is going to accumulate in your meat just as well as it will in a chicken, but I agree it will concentrate in predators (like salmon) and omnivores (like humans).

What I don't understand is how the unregulated shipment of of a antibiotic from one country (where it is controlled) for a chicken industry in another country (one of whom was actually bought by pharma company in India) to increase profits of both private companies is "state financed suicide and not at all a free market mechanism". It sounds exactly like laissez faire capitalism exploitation due to bypass of state regulation.

Much of India is already vegetarian and it doesn't solve the problem of unscrupulous vendors, see vegetables [3] above. So not only are there e.coli on your vegetables, but they contain human active hormones because of an unregulated market. No one is arguing that meat consumption is better for the environment, just that the post you're responding to explicitly refers to the vegetable issue as well.

> Why does it need to?

I'm sure you'd rather your romaine not come with a free side of E. coli.

If the majority of the food supply is tainted, your choices from within it doesn't affect the rest.

Who at all is using antibiotics to prevent E. coli on vegetables? I thought that's why vegetables need to be washed first.

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