What scares me is that with the new trade deal currently being hammered out between the EU and the US, there is a lot of pressure to "harmonize" the regulations, meaning the US will demand their chlorine-rinsed chicken, and hormone/antibiotics filled beef be allowed in the european markets.
The article talks about the Dutch stopping the use of anti-biotics as preventive measures, a practice where you feed animals antibiotics so that they cannot get sick in the first place. Once the animal is sick, they can still be treated with AB.
And to clear something up: Organic-labeled beef in the US is AB free, you can only label beef organic if no antibiotics were used full stop. Germany? Organic beef is allowed to have been treated with AB.
The world of food and animal safety is not as black and white as you might think. The FDA has instilled some pretty harsh rules that have not been adopted in the EU.
Same goes with cars btw, the rules on Diesel emissions are ways stricter in the US, etc. Different safety standards as well.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#E...
(And by Europe I meant the EU) Sadly, not all countries seem to respect the ban.
Is there no chance of it being the other way around?
People are people first and foremost and their current economic/social class is not the only determiner of their lifestyle choices.
>I am currently poor
>I do not really buy cheap foodI hope your health improves.
I was trying to avoid addressing what is a complex situation that has a history of getting me in social hot water. I do understand why, based on my earlier comment, you would draw this conclusion but that isn't really the case for me personally.
Granted, I think America should go to government paid healthcare for all citizens. I think the current system sucks tremendously.
My health is improving. Thanks for your well wishes.
Organic produce is priced just like any other good. What is the highest price I can charge that most (or enough) people will pay?
imho if we allow "cheap" treatments such as vaccination or preventive antibiotics, that also means we allow a cheaper way of keeping your animals healthy (cheaper than rigorous routines for hygiene/disease control/animal separation). if it's allowed to do so, it's a competitive edge, so it becomes standard practice.
I guess the downvoters believe that the artificial variety are magically different from the natural sort, despite being chemically and biologically indistinguishable.
The down voters believe your characterisation of them as utterly stupid is misplaced and adds nothing to the thread.
I'm slightly dyslexic, and my brain must be scrambling the word, because when I read through it again, I don't see it.
> The down voters believe your characterisation of them as utterly stupid
Then they've proved me right. The correct way to show me wrong is to actually compose a salient rebuttal, which would by its nature show me to be a fool. Hell, I might even end up so shamed I'd apologize. The only conclusion possible though is that they knew they could not do this and did not make the attempt like the cowards that they are.
> and adds nothing to the thread.
How can it not add to the thread? Well, unless you want the thread to be an echo chamber and demand conformity of opinion.
Or don't, because I didn't and you didn't and that's irrelevant.
The original post implies that American beef has added hormones and antibiotics compared to European beef, and the person posting considers that to be worse quality. A common concern is the addition of growth hormones and growth promoting antibiotics and the effect that might have in the food chain and the people eating it and so on.
Your statement that cows are animals with hormones doesn't touch on any of that, and your implication that people are only downvoting you because they think cows do not have hormones and refusing to prove you wrong because they're cowards is ridiculous trolling.
Oh. So you just brought it up because you couldn't offer a rebuttal on anything relevant to what I discussed?