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Comment by notnaut | Hacker News Reader

I would much rather rely on data on this kind of question over vibes. Efficiency means things move quicker and cheaper, and a few people get richer. It does not by any means inherently increase safety. The effects of a fuckup in a hugely efficientized industry often scale directly with just how much efficiency was mined away from caution and human-interaction.

Bubba flipping burgers getting his dirty hands on your meal might make you sick, but Bobba inspecting the meatslop production line with constant pressure from upper management to be as efficient as possible according to whatever recent regulations were stripped back might accidentally spray the horse-meat product decontaminizer on the pig-meat product, generating a national pandemic.

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Data is incredibly clear that industrial-scale food production is cleaner than small-business food production.

But there isn’t one size of food producer. I would think there are diminishing marginal returns on food safety after a certain size. At that point perhaps the blast radius of mistakes offsets the advantage of scale. It’s a false dichotomy to consider only national producers and local producers.

Is it just a question of variance in the size of the issue? Is having 10 incidents of 10 people each the same as one with 100?

I’ve argued in systems reliability that once you are already high reliability you are better off lowering incident size vs total unavailability.

What data might that be? I've looked and there doesn't appear to be any authoritative source of long-term data for either # of reported foodborne illness outbreaks or # of individuals sickened in this way per year, either of which would clearly demonstrate a dip in sickness rates if industrial-scale food production does, in fact, result in cleaner production.

Why though? There’s nothing inherent about speeding production up, producing more at once, or increasing profits that makes things cleaner or safer, and the obvious argument is the opposite. If the regulations that force cleanliness and safety get peeled back too far, you could be left with all of the conditions for worst case scenarios because of how much more efficient the thing has become.

"I would much rather rely on data on this kind of question over vibes."

follows with wall of vibes

LOL

That's actually the point. Opposing vibes are just as easy to utter as the initial vibes.

Not really. The opposing vibes in this case seem really weak?

Don’t you just mean that one set of vibes resonates with your own vibes better than the other set of vibes?

Given the lack of research into the matter, I present the following pilot study for HN to use:

Number of times the lettuce I grew at home this year made me shit a tsunami: 0

Number of times lettuce I bought at the store this year made me shit a tsunami: 1

And did you grow enough lettuce to supply yourself for a whole year? If not the problem remains.

Containers. When it's nice out, they live outside. When it's not nice out, they move indoors. yeah yeah, not op, but it's possible. If you're growing food to sustain yourself for a whole year, I'm assuming you're willing to sacrifice some indoor space to accommodate.

Also, the GP doesn't read to me the way you're interpreting it. To me the GP has grown produce and purchased produce this year. The purchase hit him while the grown at home did not.

It would be... unusual... for an American home to contain enough space to grow the family's annual supply of lettuce.

> If you're growing food to sustain yourself for a whole year, I'm assuming you're willing to sacrifice some indoor space to accommodate.

It would be unheard of for it to contain enough space to produce the family's annual supply of food. And pointless. If you're growing that much food, there's no reason to build walls around it.

> It would be... unusual... for an American home to contain enough space to grow the family's annual supply of lettuce

I grow leafy greens in containers, and while not totally self sufficient, it provides a decent amount. I have multiple pots that I rotate through offsetting planting so new seedlings are going in as older plants are harvesting. If you're wanting head lettuce types then it's different, but if you just want leafy greens, you can totally do more than I think you're thinking you can.

A couple of things:

1) you're taking my comment too seriously.

2) assuming I had enough space to subsistence farm for my household (I don't), I wouldn't try growing lettuce year-round. Lettuce in the cooler months, peppers and tomatoes in the warmer months.

3) the majority of the lettuce I've prepared in my home this year did come from my patio

And you're lucky that a sick bird didn't shit on your home grown lettuce before you picked it.

My bad. I'll stop growing food to avoid birds shitting on it.

I'm going to give you a really strong counterexample to this. One of the most commonly acquired parasites that comes from gardening is toxoplasmosis.

But doesn't toxoplasmosis come from owning cats?

Nope. The correlation between cat ownership and toxoplasmosis is basically zero. Because toxoplasmosis comes from stray cats who poop in your garden and you catch them through the gardening. Something like 40% of toxoplasmosis cases come from gardening with people unaware that stray cats poop there. (The majority comes from eating undercooked food, like pork, because the pork grazed in fields where there was stray cat poop.)

So essentially doing your own gardening creates a risk vector that is significantly less present in industrial-level gardening of vegetables.

The FDA suggests that the proper preventative measure against this is "thoroughly wash your dishes and produce." which is something I was gonna do anyway, with both the store-bought lettuce and my own. Doesn't sound like a big deal to me.

https://www.fda.gov/food/people-risk-foodborne-illness/toxop...

Am I the only one who doubts how thoroughly anyone's ever washed produce at home?

Like, it's not like we're scrubbing every crevice of every leaf with soap. We're spraying some water on a whole pile of it, and then like shaking it off or spinning it. It feels like theatre more than it does food safety.

And I'll confess, I don't even buy or consume fresh produce normally, besides apples and bananas.

I agree.

Having looked into it, it's not clear at all how to do better at home than hosing it down with some plain water and spinning it dry-ish.

Soap ruins leafy vegetables. Dilute bleach seems strongly frowned upon. Vinegar doesn't necessarily kill enough things well-enough.

And water is just water. The efficaciousness of it reminds me of the handwashing scene from Pulp Fiction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4fDsq0k2rI

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