Sfdebris.net

Remember how earlier in the year we got a bunch of contaminated romaine lettuce?

Well, it happened again.

Might have something to do with the Neelix Administration rolling back FDA protections on dirty farm water. https://www.wired.com/story/the-science ... g-us-sick/

Deregulation kills people.

My seventeen-year-old friend loves the idea of deregulating government. He thinks it will free everyone up... somehow. That makes no sense. I'm personally in favor of a strong central government for certain things, and I can't imagine a single person that isn't. Though I also like the idea of direct democracy, but the sad truth is half the country doesn't vote, so that doesn't seem plausible.

Deregulation is certainly the direct culprit in this case, but it's worth remembering the course of events for how this happens.

It begins with bullshit.
Okay cattle manure generally, but indulge me.

Anyway, so while chemical fertilizers are standard, runoff and use of traditional fertilizer both happen, meaning that leafy crops do tend to get manure on him. And are nigh-impossible to clean depending on just how saturated they are. And this is where e Coli comes from: e Coli is just the general species of bacteria that make up mammal intestinal bacteria. And indeed it's only specific varieties that are harmful (shiga toxin producing e coli is how you'll see this parsed in the food code and the like.)

So the trick there is that cows don't just have toxic e coli rolling around in there. It's produced as a reaction to eating grains they have trouble digesting. That is, corn. A grass fed cow basically doesn't have shiga toxin e coli, and a grass finished cow will usually clear them out in about two weeks. This doesn't help with contaminated crops, but would solve a lot of problems with contaminated beef.

The lesson here though is this is a problem with a known, predictable, and man-made cause. The regulations normally in place are there precisely because inspectors and scientists have worked out where the contamination happens and what steps prevent it.
Which also means that the big industrial agriculturals know when they're playing with fire. And do it anyways.
Basically at every step in this process, such outbreaks could be prevented.
We could move away from corn-based feed and reduce the number of cows carrying shiga toxin e coli.
We could put in place stricter rules for the management and sterilization of manure and runoff.
We could not roll back previous regulations about placement of dairy/beef farms relative to crop farms.
We could more strictly enforce what regulations remain.
Because the problem is very well understood and we have options on where to intervene depending on what our broader goals as a society are.
Instead we just let businesses rule their fiefdoms as elder gods and just eat the public health costs I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyr_ec6etjo

Sorry, I had to!