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Comments |
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 | Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 17:17:31 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
On your Point 2 re: drug company rights, does that mean you are a supporter of intellectual property rights such as patents? I've heard arguments both for and against IP, each side claiming it to be the more capitalist and rational position. It's a wider topic, to be sure, but IP law is the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry, and deserves a separate discussion at some point, as well.
More on point to this thread, is there anything inherently irrational with the widespread use of factory farms? Certainly they have improved yields, reducing costs, freeing up land for other uses, and making products such as meat and eggs available to a larger market. While I generally favor free-range and legitimate "organic" products, they are more expensive for a reason. Oddly enough, the "environmental" crowd tends to favor organic, perhaps not realizing how much more farmland is necessary to produce such products. Not being an environmentalist, I have no such qualms, but I also have no qualms if someone opts for lesser-expensive goods provided that the production thereof doesn't infringe on my rights.
Regarding antibiotics, I agree they are overused, however, I tend to take "antibiotic free" claims on food products with a grain of salt. For starters, lots of products, such as pork, are never raised with antibiotics, even in farms, so the claims of the "organic" claims are somewhat misleading to the extent they imply something better than the local grocery store product. At the same time, if vegetables have residual antibiotics, it seems apparent that there is likely to be cross-contamination on lots of "antibiotic free" products. |
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| Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 19:22:35 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Nicholas Provenzo
E-mail: nprovenzo(at)capitalismcenter.org
URL: http://www.capitalismcenter.org
It's my understanding that livestock is given antibiotics due to the health fallout from switching the animal's diet to corn and other grains instead of the grasses it ordinarily consumes. Feeding livestock corn makes economic sense in as much as it allows farmers to bring livestock to market faster (and fatter) than nature would otherwise allow. It also makes economic sense in as much as corn production is heavily subsidized by our government.
Thus I see two key obstacles to the return of grass-fed meat: the incentive created by the faster growth of corn-fed livestock and the incentive created by crop subsidies. I wonder if you knock out the latter just how compelling the former would be for American farmers. |
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| Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 22:42:26 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: (my last name) (at) math.umn.edu
So you're an environmentalist now..... |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 7:38:40 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
I don't want to get into a debate about the practices of factory farming; however, I think the danger of antibiotic resistance is highly overstated, and your post does not draw an appropriate confirmed causal chain all the way to what is observed.
As you have pointed out, antibiotic resistance is normally not a problem, except in someone who has a compromised immune system. I think the evidence points to the fact that the danger of superbugs is one that has a very specific locus, namely the hospital environment. One then has to ask how much is the antibiotic resistance contributed by our food, as compared with the prevalence of antibiotic resistance strains of bacteria within the hospital environment, a use which you yourself said is "valid." We don't see superbugs out in the general population being an issue. There are two key issues there.
1. antibiotic resistance is specific to the mechanism of the antiobiotic that created it. That is, antibiotics work through all sorts of bio-chemical mechanisms, and more mechanisms that are valid for antibiotcs are being discovered everyday. Resistance is specific to one class of antibiotics, and does not imply resistance to all classes. I would suspect then that what you would see is that industrial antibiotics, and medical antibiotics would tend to segregate over time.
2. Antibiotic resistance is not a fixed feature. That is, once the evolutionary stressor of the feedlot is removed, one would expect bacteria in circulation in other areas to lose that resistance over time. This is basic mutation. The stressor of periodic antibiotic use in humans, or hospital use is different than the feedlot so I would expect to see in "the wild" some sort of blended effect at equilibrium, NOT a growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Resistance is not additive, unless all possible antibiotics are being fed to both humans and animals continuously, a laughable case. The superbug outbreak is a myth.
I really think this whole issue is a non-issue, and see no problem with the continued use of antibiotcs in industrial food production settings. We simply do not see in the broad population today a broad loss of efficacy of the entire classes of antibiotics. And even if we did, novel antibiotic innovation (assuming pharma companies are allowed to make profit!!!) would take care of it. Here private pharma companies have an incentive to segregate, especially if novel antibiotics are high cost, and it is actually shown that food borne resistance contributes to hospital resistance. What pharma company would sell to both markets (one being a low volume, high value and the other a high volume, low value) the same product knowing that sales into one would deactivate it's value in the other? That is a recipe for commoditization.
As to your point one on litigation, the fact that we have a broad non-point source of antibiotic resistance bacteria (which as of yet I don't see the causal link being demonstrated) being produced almost inherently means that causation won't be shown. I.e. who do you sue? As to your other points, that is certainly something one could do voluntarily, as to whether it would have broad impact, I'm not sure.
I'd really like Paul to comment on the incidence of antibiotic resistance and the issues associated with it. Based on my limited research in the pharma industry, the strikes me as a problem, but one as I said that is confined to a very specific venue (i.e. market) and for which it is unclear what the contribution of food-based resistance vs. the direct treatment-based resistance in that venue provides.
I'm sorry to see you taking a speculative approach here. My understanding of Rand's stance on smoking was that when she saw the causal evidence demonstrated she stopped smoking. This is not a form of evasion but a form of not jumping to hasty conclusions. I certainly see valid questions being raised by many on this whole food issue, but I think we should get worried when the research actually shows the link. If Paul has some epidemiological data showing broad antibiotic resistance in the general population (vs a localized hospital population), then maybe we start to see an issue. I think the rest is speculative at best. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 7:41:49 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
I missed point 2. I've argued elsewhere that a time limit on patents is actually not at all needed and patents could and should have much longer lives up to an including infinite. This would also contribute to the segregation effect between the commodity feedlot antibiotics and specialized novel ones. I'm behind point 2 all the way! |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 7:54:51 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
One other issue. Your characterization of "filthy" is needless emotionalism. Monica did the same thing here when she referred to the hydrogenation process of unsaturated oils as disgusting or nasty or some such thing. I'm a chemical engineer and the hyrdogenation process doesn't strike me in anyway as questionable, *as a manufacturing process per se*. Neither does a feed lot. Filthy is a relative term. A "free-range" pig farm is a filthy place in my estimation, but I still eat bacon, and ham.
Let's deal with the *nature* of the product created an not an emotional evaluation of the process used to create it. If by filthy you mean only that the animal is exposed to more pathogens which requires the use of antibiotics it may be relevant. But then the tone of the word is unnecessary. Many people consider unpastuerized whole milk "filthy" and "disgusting" and they are wrong. Bacterial presence is a good thing or bad thing, depending on the context of the situation. Don't resort to the same emotional characterizations as they do to make your case as well. It doesn't become you. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 8:27:52 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Monica Hughes
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://fa-rm.org
Diana, I believe you have opened up the floodgates. Prepare thyself. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 9:27:38 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Monica Hughes
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://fa-m.org
"More on point to this thread, is there anything inherently irrational with the widespread use of factory farms?"
There is to the extent that industrial agriculture creates a great deal of erosion and doesn't return nutrients to the land -- and according to the research I've done, it generally doesn't since it's focused on macronutrients N, P, and K and doesn't supplement soils with trace minerals. Studies have shown that the mineral content of our food has declined greatly since WW II. Nick is correct that government support of agriculture is responsible for feedlot practices, but it's also responsible for the depression of farmland prices that "free up" land for other uses. Feedlot practices are economical largely because they shorten the amount of time to bring an animal to market. Grass-fed does not actually require much more land considering that most animals winding up on feedlots were pasture-fed at some point in their lives, but it does take a longer time. I've written about the amount of land required for grass-fed vs. grain-fed here: http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/pondering-return-of-buffalo.html
I suspect feedlot practices would still be common in the US, even without government regulation or subsidies, but their size would be limited because they wouldn't have money to control the manure pollution under the EQIP program -- spending on which has spiralled out of control since 1996. See here: http://farm.ewg.org/farm/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=totaleqip
KPOM, not all "environmental" types are opposed to more farmland. There's a difference between rational concern for our environment and environmentalism. I'm personally not as concerned about the antibiotic issue as I am the nutrient loss issue. The reason so many people moved to the midwest in the 1800s was because the soil was depleted. The fact that the same thing is now happening in the midwest isn't encouraging. We're removing topsoil and nutrients far faster than soil can be regenerated, and so long as people remain ignorant of the issue of micronutrients in their food, there's no economic incentive for a farmer to shift his practices or crop types. I've done research in forest plots adjacent to farm fields in the midwest and have seen the effects. The waterways are usually smelly with a lot of algae due to the eutrophication process (the adding of nitrogen and phosphorus into the watershed). A return to pastured, rotational grazing and even a shift to perennial grain crops would have enormous environmental and human and animal health benefits.
Kendall -- wow, so bossy. I don't think that's going to go over well. I can tell from your description that you've never seen or smelled a feedlot in your entire life, but that's so typical of most people who have no idea how their food is produced. I wonder, would you approve of confining 100 humans in a 5000 square foot house, removing the toilet, and letting them stand in their own waste for months on end, with a janitor coming in once weekly to shovel most of it out and let it sit in the front yard, regardless of the neighbors? Your preaching to Diana about her evaluation is insulting given that she has grown up her entire life around farm animals. Here is an animal in a feedlot. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2045/2343086879_d287086527.jpg?v=120 ... It is standing in its own waste, which is periodically shoved off into a giant pond and usually left untreated unless residents sue or the owner applies for an EQIP grant: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_JH0ves52aPE/SBnWm9EL1tI/AAAAAAAAADE/V600rI_Qf ...
Here is an animal on pasture at one of those filthy "free range" farms. http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-15600768.jpg?size=572&uid={FC9A ...} The waste decomposes naturally on grass rather than posing a health risk to the animals and the animals aren't confined so that epidemiologic problems are far fewer. These farmers usually receive no government money whatsoever.
It's not a universal ethical issue, particularly since the government promotes the process. However, Diana doesn't need to be beat around the ears by ignorant people for revealing the truth. FYI, that bacon and ham you are eating comes from a feedlot operation if you bought it in a grocery store. It almost certainly did not come from a free range farm, even if the USDA says it did. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 10:08:31 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Kendall --
It is not true that resistant strains of bacteria only affect people have compromised immune systems or only develop in hospital settings. That's might have been true 10 years ago; it's not the case today. Healthy people can become infected with flesh-eating bacteria (a strain of MSRA) from the ordinary environment; often such an infection is life-threatening and requires major surgery to treat, precisely because MSRA is resistant to multiple drugs. And, according to reports, the problem is growing, not waning. See, for example:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/507869
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_Enviro_Manage.html
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_public.html
Paul was involved in the diagnosis of some of of these very bad cases of flesh-eating bacteria in San Diego, so that's how I originally learned about them. They're really damn scary.
Blogger Katie Allison Granju recently reported that her family has had a series of small staph infections; the source is likely somewhere in their house; none are involved in the medical profession; they'll all healthy people. So far, they've been able to treat it with antibiotics, but they could have acquired a more virulent strain by similar methods.
By all accounts, MSRA seems to be form of resistant bacteria that developed in hospitals, but the problem has since spread to the wider community. It's a major risk to human life and limb -- literally. And, in other civilized countries, strains of MSRA have developed in factory farms and spread to human populations:
Here's a quote from the Michael Pollan article in the NY Times to which I linked:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1& ...
The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS -- 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in 2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical Association. For years now, drug-resistant staph infections have been a problem in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics can create resistant strains of bacteria. It's Evolution 101: the drugs kill off all but the tiny handful of microbes that, by dint of a chance mutation, possess genes allowing them to withstand the onslaught; these hardy survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant superrace. The methicillin-resistant staph that first emerged in hospitals as early as the 1960s posed a threat mostly to elderly patients. But a new and even more virulent strain -- called "community-acquired MRSA" -- is now killing young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital. No one is yet sure how or where this strain evolved, but it is sufficiently different from the hospital-bred strains to have some researchers looking elsewhere for its origin, to another environment where the heavy use of antibiotics is selecting for the evolution of a lethal new microbe: the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals' growth also commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the crucial fact is that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production practiced on the scale and with the intensity we practice it could not be sustained for months, let alone decades.
Public-health experts have been warning us for years that this situation is a public-health disaster waiting to happen. Sooner or later, the profligate use of these antibiotics -- in many cases the very same ones we depend on when we're sick -- would lead to the evolution of bacteria that could shake them off like a spring shower. It appears that "sooner or later" may be now. Recent studies in Europe and Canada found that confinement pig operations have become reservoirs of MRSA. A European study found that 60 percent of pig farms that routinely used antibiotics had MRSA-positive pigs (compared with 5 percent of farms that did not feed pigs antibiotics). This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study showing that a strain of "MRSA from an animal reservoir has recently entered the human population and is now responsible for [more than] 20 percent of all MRSA in the Netherlands." Is this strictly a European problem? Evidently not. According to a study in Veterinary Microbiology, MRSA was found on 45 percent of the 20 pig farms sampled in Ontario, and in 20 percent of the pig farmers. (People can harbor the bacteria without being infected by it.) Thanks to Nafta, pigs move freely between Canada and the United States. So MRSA may be present on American pig farms; we just haven't looked yet.
***
Did you catch that quote from the CDC? "MRSA from an animal reservoir has recently entered the human population and is now responsible for [more than] 20 percent of all MRSA in the Netherlands." It hasn't happened in America yet -- that we know. However, it's a very real risk.
In short, my concerns are not based on mere speculation.
Unfortunately, we cannot depend on the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies to protect us -- not today. It's hard enough to develop new antibiotics, but the regulatory burdens on them make that even harder. And short-term thinking has become the norm in American business. So too many companies might only focus on the fact that 40% of their sales of antibiotics are for use in animals -- and that if they don't provide them, another company surely will. (Health insurers have declared themselves willing to sell Americans into socialized medicine for just a few years of far slimmer profits. Financial planners invested their client's money with Madoff, despite explicit orders not to do so. And so on.)
As you know, I'm not calling for any kind of regulation. I just don't want to buy or eat milk, meat, or eggs from animals treated with routine antibiotics. And, as I mentioned, public health concerns are not my only reasons. I like animals enormously -- more than most people -- and so I don't wish to support a method of farming that treats them poorly. And the taste of pastured meat, eggs, and milk is vastly superior.
One final point, perhaps the most critical of all:
Based on what I've read so far, the whole method of factory farming is not even remotely a product of capitalism. It is the product of massive government intervention in agriculture spanning decades. Farmers are paid to allow their land to go fallow. The corn fed to cows in feedlots is subsidized by the government, then the government pays millions and millions of dollars farms to clean up the vast manure reservoirs that are created by keeping such large numbers of animals in such close confinement. Small farmers are killed by burdensome government regulations: only large operations can afford to stay in business. (NAIS is the big regulation on the horizon that would massively raise costs for small farmers, putting many of them out of business.)
In short, Objectivists need to do some research before they defend our current system of food production. Agriculture is a *hugely* regulated and subsidized industry. It is the product of statism, not freedom. A free market in agriculture would look very, very different than what we have today. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 12:09:14 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
To Monica,
I'm an Indiana boy. Trust me, I've seen a feedlot. My reference to a "free range" pig farm was just such a reference (pigs don't really graze, and "natural methods of farming them consist of them living in such "disgusting" conditions) It's irrelevant to the discussion, *as such*. I don't care for the "welfare" of my food as it's being produced, unless it has an impact on my welfare. Pointing to a picture of a feedlot is irrelevant to the argument. That was my point. I apologize if my tone was off putting, but I certainly did not speculate about what someone else does and does not know, and then lecture down to them on that assumption as you have done.
To Diana,
The issue I have here is not that you haven't identified something that happens in nature, but you need to provide more quantification to show me that magnitude of the issue and the magnitude of the contribution. Your statistics get at the smallness rather than the largeness of the issue. I don't consider AIDS an epidemic or a "major" problem. In addition, as I said, the venue for these deaths is smaller, and you have not provided information as to what contribution of the problem is derived from hospital antibiotic practices vs. the anti-biotic strains which I bring in my gut when I come into the hospital. The devil is in the quantification of those effects. You have not provided details there. You need to do this analysis *on the margin* before you advocate for this effect as a key driver of easing up regulation. I think you do a much stronger service to advocate for easing up regulation on the basis of rights violations that this particular line of analysis.
Let me illustrate by what I mean by on the margin since I spent a good deal of time doing business development work in pharaceutical markets. 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths from this staph strain. Well, ok. Staph was killing people before this. How many deaths and infections were there before? (no answer) Subtract that off. What is the marginal increase? Can't be 0? Must be some? It will cut your "major problem" down by some factor. Now, how much of that mortality can be alleviated by changing the food production practices? no data there? Can't be all of it, since we know that "valid" hospital usage antibiotics contributes to this effect in a significant way. See, what you advocate for doesn't remove the problem, it only removes some of it's marginal impact so comparing the absolute magnitude of deaths from this strain doesn't tell the story of what could be done by changing practices. But let's be conservative and say incidence and mortality have both quintupled (that is before staph incidence/death would have been 20,000/4,000, and the marginal increase is 80,000/16,000 - which I highly doubt). Furthermore, that antibiotic farming practices can be shown to marginal contribute to 80% of that new figure. So that the marginal contribution from such practices is 0.8 of that figure or 65,000/12,000.
So before we get to the distortions caused by regulation, which I fully agree with you are real, let's try to think about what sort of magnitude of a problem this is. Or in other words look at this form the perspective of a pharma company. That is, purely as a commercial opportunity. If it is a "major" opportunity, then there is "major" value to be obtained in solving the problem. I want to do this because something is amiss with the claims of "major" health problem when you look at it this way. What can I say about a market with incidence/mortality rate of 65,000/12,000. Well I can say two things. One, mortality in itself is a very high value problem. That is, a single person cares very much whether they live or die and in such an acute setting will be willing to pay large amount to prevent it from happening. THat much is true. But, what can I say about a market size of <100,000? The commerical reality for a pharma company is that the whole field of antbiotic treatment is a "micro" market. This is the kind of market that gets orphan drug status because it is TOO SMALL to put significant development effort against. The whole field of antibiotics in general suffers from this condition. I've studied numerous drug markets, cancer, cardiac, metabolic, etc. And the answer is, that that sort of health impact in the whole scheme of things, given what pharma companies can focus on, and what people will pay money (i.e. derive value from), this issue is an itty, bitty, teeny, tiny health impact. Now one approach is to say, "Oh my gosh, NO ONE WILL FOCUS ON THIS PROBLEM because it is minor." Or you can see the key issue and think about it as "no one will focus on this problem BECAUSE IT IS MINOR." I would like you to consider this fact since when you use characterization such as "major" without putting it into very well integrated context you look like you're inflating the impact. I liken this sort of thing to discussions about marginal changes in risks of aircraft operations. Yes, falling from the sky and dying is a very scary very horrendous and probably sure outcome if your plane has a problem. But when looked at on the margin, one realizes that if an aircraft company chooses practices that double this risk of this happening, that it probably will make very little difference in your choice of airline, because on the margin you're doubling a small problem. SO yes, I agree with all the statistics you've provided. This is happening, but when you look at it on the margin there is far far more to defend than detract about our food supply today. The fact is that current practices contribute to our health, and do so in such a way as to have these effects not be nearly as big. I think you're far from making the case otherwise.
Now all that is before regulation. Would more companies put more effort against such efforts if they could make more profit or have patent protection longer, sure? But it wouldn't suddenly make it a big attractive market if regulations were dropped. By the same token, would farming practices spread out if land wasn't fallow, sure. But you are a far way from making that case that no one would be getting food that wasn't raised this way. Why? because of cost. This is why I have a big issue with your statement that current techniques aren't a "product of capitalism". This is an economically sloppy statement. They are a product of a mixed economy, sure. They are distorted for sure. But the reasons they are used, as a boost to productivity is a direct result of self-interested actions and they go directly to economies of scale a very capitalist and very self-interested concept. As such showing that such practices wouldn't exist is a difficult analysis, and not a good way to make the argument for the deregulation. How many fields are fallow? Could we raise enough food at a similar cost as we do now? What would be the incremental increase in costs or would there be one? No one has come close to making this case yet, and fact is it's irrelevant. I don't violate rights by giving antibiotics, and as such if it lowers my cost I'd rationally do it in a free market. I feel really strongly that this line of thought is a really bad way of making the case for deregulation. It ends up making it on utilitarian grounds, not on philosophical grounds, and it mires you in a debate of what is the scientifically correct practice that would result.
I dealt with Evolution 101 in my post, and offered two competing issues from evolution 102 that drive in the opposite direction. This is part of the issue. Rememeber to claim "major" I think you'd have to show that some breakout bug is going to start killing hundreds of thousands of people. However, the 2 factors I provided which are also evolutionary truisms counter those effects. Evolutionary effects are self-checking to a much greater degree than you give them credit for. It doesn't go to your claim that these things are happening, but it does go to your claim that they are and will be major. And in fact that is what we see in reality. For years I've heard these dire predicitions of "major" issue, and for years it's been a continues to be small. In order to really sound alarm you have to make a case for the "tipping point" factor and you don't do that. Your discussion of public health experts having been warning for years, is also telling. They have been warning for years, and even now the impact is small, slow and only just starting to emerge, all these means NOT a major health threat and one that can be dealt with. (By the way, are these the same public health system that advocates for the food pyramid, and other such practices you and/or Monica have come out against - but that raises a whole other issue - whose dire predictions do I believe.)
I defend the industrialization of food production, not because it doesn't have issues associated with, but empirically, by nature, those issues *must be* smaller than the issues which were resolved by the industrialization of food. It's not that I have to do more research *before* I defend such practices; it's that I'll defend such practices on the basis of the good they have contributed, and also acknowledge new information that raises new questions, and then ask you to provide evidence that suggests that the *magnitude* of the problem is so large that the damage they are doing outweighs the benefits of that they've done. All that *before* I change my practices. You have the approach backwards. Now I certainly am health conscious and continually try to be aware of the issues and questions, but I think you're way out in front of the issue and I have yet to see the causal connection as a reality. Like Rand and smoking, I'll continue in my ways until you (or those who would advocate for the case you make) have made your case. Like her I might suffer for it in this particular instance, but the claim that we should deviate on as of yet un-causally linked grounds is an epistemological approach that will do me far more harm in the long run than good in this specific case since in every aspect of my life, just as in diet I soon will not know who's partially speculative / partially science-based approach to believe, and which fad diet to adopt. In short, Objectivists should defend current practice, and advocate more research to address the *marginal* impacts that arise from it, and most importantly where you and agree, advocate for pure laissez faire.
I'm glad that you're choosing to not eat antibiotic fed beef and drinking whole milk. I don't know what you pay, and how much you forgo to obtain this health benefit. Frankly I hope you don't pay too much extra because I'm not convinced you're really doing yourself a significant favor in terms of health outcomes, but it's your choice. You may get far more benefit by buckling your seatbelt than by trying to prevent staph infections by avoiding such products. You may have the standard of living that affords you the luxury. The fact is, there is a market out there for cheaper beef, these practices may get used by someone in that market, you really can't make the case that such practices won't happen in a pure capitalistic case, and to really make that case that they *shouldn't happen at all,* you're going to have to show a hell of a lot more health impact than you have for me to stop defending the practice.
I fully agree there are distortions, and that every market would look different if it wasn't, but you are a long long way from making a case on this basis. Please understand this, I'm not trying to destroy the issue, but I think you've adopted some odd ways of arguing them in this case that don't help the issue.
Finally, one aside on your comments re: animals. I am an animal person as well, and I care very deeply for my pets. I think it behooves us to not put animals through anything that isn't necessary. That said, the animals you're talking about are *food*, and if a practice is necessary given the existing context in order to produce food at the productivity necessary to achieve a certain cost, then *as far as the animal is concerned* I could care less, and have no moral obligation to care. This is another problem I have with your stance. If you make the direct case that government intervention is directly causing unnecessary inhumane treatment of animals because they wouldn't undergo it if farmer could be freer, you have a very difficult time separating it from the use of the exact same practices that a farmer undertakes to compete and achieve a successful enterprise which he would be *fully moral* in adopting. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 12:18:43 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Monica Hughes
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://fa-rm.org
"pigs don't really graze"
BULL! http://www.naturesharmonyfarm.com/georgia-pastured-pork/
I didn't simply point to a picture of a feedlot. I explained it rationally, in words. You're not interested in facing that reality, and your evasion is not my problem. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 13:20:35 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Monica Hughes
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://fa-rm.org
"Could we raise enough food at a similar cost as we do now? What would be the incremental increase in costs or would there be one? No one has come close to making this case yet, and fact is it's irrelevant."
The actual fact, Kendall, is that I've discussed and researched such issues extensively on my blog promoting individual rights in agriculture, and these questions are not irrelevant at all. Perhaps you should read all of my posts on fa-rm.org/blog and attempt to offer intelligent objections to my arguments before speculating yourself on what free market agriculture would look like. And perhaps you should investigate the health benefit or costs of such products before insinuating that these questions are purely hypothetical, that no one knows the answer, or that such products are exorbitantly expensive. None of that is true. And while no one can predict what a truly free market would provide, a vision of free-market agriculture is actually much clearer than you'd like to believe.
You've presented certain opinions as fact (the natural history of pigs, for instance) without really knowing what you're talking about. You've paraded opinion and personal experience as truth and insinuated that food without additives has little to no nutritional difference without doing one ounce of good research on the issue. I'm not going to provide those facts for you because I don't think you're actually interested anyway. I can say that with confidence based on your statement about pigs, which tells me that you're just bandying about your personal opinions as facts and hoping that no one knows better or will call you out on it. That's almost completely discredited you in my mind on anything else you have to say on this issue, and leads me to believe you're just trying to rationalize your calcified position, which is a defense of the status quo of modern agriculture (largely not even around before subsidization, BTW).
"I'm glad that you're choosing to not eat antibiotic fed beef and drinking whole milk. I don't know what you pay, and how much you forgo to obtain this health benefit. Frankly I hope you don't pay too much extra because I'm not convinced you're really doing yourself a significant favor in terms of health outcomes"
How condescending. As to "lecturing down", you're the one who entered this thread telling Diana what to write and how to write it on her own property. Unfortunately, such attitudes are all too common in online Objectivist circles. Thankfully, they're not the majority.
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 14:27:35 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
OK Monica. I've given you and Diana a very thought out discussion. I'm not evading it Monica. I said it was irrelevant to the argument Diana is making, and in addition it complicates your discussion.
The practice may be magnified or distorted, but you yourself admit that you cannot say that it would not be put out of operation. Nor it seems would you advocate that it be mandated to be that way. So, focusing on the filthiness of it would be problematic since it is still "filthy" and still might exist under a laissez faire system.
It's good of you to take one sentence out of a post I spent an awful lot of time writing, and not deal with any of the other integrations or issues I've discussed, as it relates to Diana's argument. You've got me there. Pigs graze. Next. You've hardly addressed the argument. So I won't respond to those sort of quips in the future.
I'm in complete agreement that there are distortions and subsidies that may even make concentrated production methods seem less costly than they are.
So let me see if I can try this one more time. Here is the way I understand the thrust of an argument on this basis.
P1: Current food production practices create "major" health costs.
P2: Those practices are mainly the result of government generated distortion.
P3: If we got rid of those distortions, then the market would be free to eliminate those practices
P4: elimination of those practices eliminate the corresponding health costs.
Therefore we should let the free market work, and get government out.
This whole line of discussion is a utilitarian sort of thought process,and it's premises are debatable.
You admit that the practice would not necessarily go away (so P3 is in question), so is the new level that it goes to enough to mitigate the costs (i.e. stop antibiotic resistance)? (P4 comes into question). Are the costs really major? I'm unconvinced, and I think I've presented a case to helps explain why. P1 is in question.
The problem I have with this is, and the reason it is very important in this analysis to think about whether these added costs are really important or not, really large or not relative to context. Why is this so? Because *every* decision an industrialist make to adopt a particular practices comes with new costs, new risks. So if I single out the practice itself as "filthy" or "nasty" I am dropping the context of the place where it would be rationally chosen. If I magnify the costs beyond their actual value in context, then I provide food for those who would say that because the free market wont' eliminate the nasty practice, that it must be regulated. In addition, those choices by industrialist generally create more value than the cost the create, (which goes directly to P1!) or thy wouldn't take them on.
So I read through your post on pasture land, and I find it also not providing enough of an argument to convince me that there would be a reduction in feedlot practices. The reason is because of what I know about commodity economics. Your argument that it's not that much more land required would go against basic comparative advantage. That is, when I'm selling a commodity, as an industrialist I'll do whatever I can to get even small amounts of comparative advantage over the rancher on the next pasture. And of course, as long as I'm not violating anyone's rights to do this, it would be a very very moral thing to do.
So the analysis would need to look at the increase in demand for pasture land, relative to it's supply, try to look at a new price for land. Then remove corn subsidies, factor in the steep drop in demand for all things corn as a result of and the resulting price drop. Then factor in the cross effects of freeing up land currently used for corn as increase in the supply of pasture land. You're making big shifts in big commodity markets with those changes. Only after you do that can you start to talk about the relative new economics of beef (or bison) production. You've not done that, and it's unclear to me where all of those interlocking effects would land, and whether we would or wouldn't still have antibiotic resistance effects that are in any way contributing to real health costs.
Certainly if the resulting economics would point to grass fed as most cost effective, then you'd see that practice win. If not, but we come to learn about long term health effects of grain fed beef, then my guess is you'd probably see some sort of split of the market. Higher cost, "healthier" grass fed beef would command a price premium while lower cost, "less healthy" beef would still be sold at a lower price.
Note also that long term health effects are tricky things to work with economically. What I know of consumer behavior comes from the pharma market, but I think it's a reasonable proxy. Let's say that there is some sort of significant health issue in the long term (more than 10 yrs out) that you can eliminate by paying an extra cost today, what would the average consumer (and in fact this works for the average life insurance company today) pay in premium to adopt a therpy today that could avert a serious health risk over time in the future. In a developed country such as the US, that figure is about $2-3/day (I can get into all sorts of details why this is true) It turns out it doesn't really matter what the health issue is as long as it's serious (so forcast the direst outcome including eminent death), and as long as it's long term, the figure is roughly the same. So that's your window. If you could show that given the "unregulated" regime that grass fed beef could stay within that window on the equivalent $/lb produced in terms of productions cost, then I would agree that the practice would decrease. If it remains above that sort of window then it's a good bet that the "healthier" beef would remain a very "nichy" sort of luxury product, available to those whose are brand conscious and have plenty of extra disposable income.
This health aspect is a tough way to argue to deregulation when there is a much shorter way to do it, and that is on the basis of direct rights violations, then on the basis that the costs of production are hidden due to subsidies. Only then might you get into the idea that food would get healthier... |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 14:28:16 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Kendall -- You originally claimed that my concerns were purely speculative, without any basis in fact. You said:
"...antibiotic resistance is normally not a problem, except in someone who has a compromised immune system. I think the evidence points to the fact that the danger of superbugs is one that has a very specific locus, namely the hospital environment. One then has to ask how much is the antibiotic resistance contributed by our food, as compared with the prevalence of antibiotic resistance strains of bacteria within the hospital environment, a use which you yourself said is 'valid.' We don't see superbugs out in the general population being an issue."
That is false -- as I showed. So now you've switched to claiming that my concerns aren't "major." Honestly, I have no idea why you latched on to that word. It's not something that I used, except to say that if you get the nasty form of MSRA, it poses a "major risk to human life and limb." So you're knocking down a strawman.
Personally, I don't know how serious the risks of widespread antibiotic use in agriculture are. However, I do think I have ample cause for concern. The fact that 20% of MSRA cases in the Netherlands are traceable to a strain developed in agriculture seems pretty significant. The following examples from the NY Times article I linked to in the original article ( http://tinyurl.com/8je8xn ) are also good cause for concern:
***
In some cases, the resistant bacteria may be harmless, but live on in the gut and cause trouble later by passing their genes for antibiotic resistance to other bacteria, ones that cause disease. Or, if a person's immune system is weakened by illness, what seemed like harmless bacteria can turn dangerous.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers said they had detected increases in levels of drug-resistant bacteria in people with gastrointestinal illness from the microbes salmonella and campylobacter, which are most commonly contracted from meat or eggs.
Last May, a team from the centers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that the prevalence of a salmonella strain resistant to five different antibiotics increased from 0.6 percent of all specimens from around the country tested by the centers in 1980 to 34 percent in 1996.
Similarly, drug resistance in campylobacter bacteria rose from zero in 1991 to 13 percent in 1997 and 14 percent in 1998, said Dr. Fred Angulo, an epidemiologist in the food-borne and diarrheal disease branch at the centers. He said epidemiologists had been alarmed by the campylobacter figures, because the resistance was to fluoroquinolones, the very drugs the F.D.A. was trying hardest to preserve.
Dr. Angulo said that he and his colleagues had attributed much of the increase in fluoroquinolone resistance to the drug agency's approval of the drugs to treat a respiratory infection in chickens in 1995. It was an approval that the disease control centers opposed, because it would lead to tens of thousands of the birds being treated at one time.
Dr. Angulo said he thought the rising levels of resistance in bacteria taken from sick people had been caused by the heavy use of antibiotics in livestock. ''Public health is united in the conclusion,'' he said. ''There is no controversy about where antibiotic resistance in food-borne pathogens comes from.''
A recent study, scheduled to appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, offers strong evidence that people pick up drug-resistant bacteria from chickens. In that study, researchers at the State Health Department in Minnesota found that fluoroquinolone-resistant campylobacter had increased to 10.2 percent of cases in 1998 from 1.3 percent in 1992. The sharpest rise began in 1996, a year after fluoroquinolones were approved for chickens.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, a former state epidemiologist in Minnesota, said in a telephone interview that the health department had also found campylobacter in 88 percent of the chickens they bought in supermarkets in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Twenty percent of the chickens had a resistant strain, and it matched the strain isolated in people.
Healthy people recover from campylobacter, often without even being treated, Dr. Osterholm said. But in patients whose immunity has been lowered the infection can be deadly.
***
Of course, I'm not an expert in this field, so I cannot say just how serious the risk is ultimately. My point all along has only been that it seems worth worrying about to me, in at least the same way that I worry about people misusing antibiotics. In most cases, I can't do anything about that, but when I can do something, I do it. For example, I recently admonished a friend definitely not to stop her antibiotics early without consulting her doctor. If I were a doctor, I wouldn't prescribe antibiotics indiscriminately. And as a consumer, I don't want to support that kind of practice in agriculture.
Of course, my not buying products from animals not treated with antibiotics won't do much if anything to eliminate the practice -- but that's not the point. In general, consumers in free markets do need to vote with their dollars; they need to take responsibility for the kinds of practices that they're promoting by buying certain products rather than others.
Personally, in choosing to avoid meat, eggs, and dairy from animals give routine antibiotics, I'm purchasing foods consistent with my values. At the very least, they taste much, much better. (That has always been my primary motivation.) That alone is worth the small increase in cost. I also support farmers who choose to engage in free capitalist trade with consumers -- as opposed to those who demand regulation of competition and subsidies for themselves. (That's important to me!) And I support farmers who treat their animals as the sentient beings they are, rather than meat-carrying automatons. (Cultivating the latter attitude does real psychological damage to people.) Plus, my food is healthier for me, e.g. grass-fed beef has a better omega-3 to omega-6 ratio than corn-fed beef. (Again, that's important to me, and the health benefits of that are not mere speculation.) By buying my grass-fed beef in bulk (1/4 cow) from a local supplier, I didn't pay much more than I would have paid for the low-quality meat from the grocery store.
Do I think that someone is immoral for buying ordinary grocery store meat? Of course not. But it's a matter of integrity for me: consuming the standard fare of meat, eggs, and dairy would be a sacrifice for me. It would be inconsistent with my values. (And yes, I do know darn well what my own values are here -- and that the cost I pay is worthwhile. I'm not an idiot.) I'm certainly not under any obligation to "defend current practice," as you claim.
As for my claim that our current agricultural system is not the product of capitalism, I stand by that. Without massive government subsidies and regulations, I'm doubtful that factory farming would be profitable. Just as I won't defend our current insane system of employer-based health insurance, even though businesses and insurers are responding to incentives in doing what they do, I won't defend farming practices that are highly dependent on massive government subsidies and regulations. The idea that cheap food requires factory farms is an unjustified presumption: it's cheap because it's heavily subsidized and because pasture-based farms are regulated out of existence, not because it's more efficient on its own. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 14:31:02 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
OK Monica. I've given you and Diana a very thought out discussion. I'm not evading it Monica. I said it was irrelevant to the argument Diana is making, and in addition it complicates your discussion.
The practice may be magnified or distorted, but you yourself admit that you cannot say that it would not be put out of operation. Nor it seems would you advocate that it be mandated to be that way. So, focusing on the filthiness of it would be problematic since it is still "filthy" and still might exist under a laissez faire system.
It's good of you to take one sentence out of a post I spent an awful lot of time writing, and not deal with any of the other integrations or issues I've discussed, as it relates to Diana's argument. You've got me there. Pigs graze. Next. You've hardly addressed the argument. So I won't respond to those sort of quips in the future.
I'm in complete agreement that there are distortions and subsidies that may even make concentrated production methods seem less costly than they are.
So let me see if I can try this one more time. Here is the way I understand the thrust of an argument on this basis.
P1: Current food production practices create "major" health costs.
P2: Those practices are mainly the result of government generated distortion.
P3: If we got rid of those distortions, then the market would be free to eliminate those practices
P4: elimination of those practices eliminate the corresponding health costs.
Therefore we should let the free market work, and get government out.
This whole line of discussion is a utilitarian sort of thought process,and it's premises are debatable.
You admit that the practice would not necessarily go away (so P3 is in question), so is the new level that it goes to enough to mitigate the costs (i.e. stop antibiotic resistance)? (P4 comes into question). Are the costs really major? I'm unconvinced, and I think I've presented a case to helps explain why. P1 is in question.
The problem I have with this is, and the reason it is very important in this analysis to think about whether these added costs are really important or not, really large or not relative to context. Why is this so? Because *every* decision an industrialist make to adopt a particular practices comes with new costs, new risks. So if I single out the practice itself as "filthy" or "nasty" I am dropping the context of the place where it would be rationally chosen. If I magnify the costs beyond their actual value in context, then I provide food for those who would say that because the free market wont' eliminate the nasty practice, that it must be regulated. In addition, those choices by industrialist generally create more value than the cost the create, (which goes directly to P1!) or thy wouldn't take them on.
So I read through your post on pasture land, and I find it also not providing enough of an argument to convince me that there would be a reduction in feedlot practices. The reason is because of what I know about commodity economics. Your argument that it's not that much more land required would go against basic comparative advantage. That is, when I'm selling a commodity, as an industrialist I'll do whatever I can to get even small amounts of comparative advantage over the rancher on the next pasture. And of course, as long as I'm not violating anyone's rights to do this, it would be a very very moral thing to do.
So the analysis would need to look at the increase in demand for pasture land, relative to it's supply, try to look at a new price for land. Then remove corn subsidies, factor in the steep drop in demand for all things corn as a result of and the resulting price drop. Then factor in the cross effects of freeing up land currently used for corn as increase in the supply of pasture land. You're making big shifts in big commodity markets with those changes. Only after you do that can you start to talk about the relative new economics of beef (or bison) production. You've not done that, and it's unclear to me where all of those interlocking effects would land, and whether we would or wouldn't still have antibiotic resistance effects that are in any way contributing to real health costs.
Certainly if the resulting economics would point to grass fed as most cost effective, then you'd see that practice win. If not, but we come to learn about long term health effects of grain fed beef, then my guess is you'd probably see some sort of split of the market. Higher cost, "healthier" grass fed beef would command a price premium while lower cost, "less healthy" beef would still be sold at a lower price.
Note also that long term health effects are tricky things to work with economically. What I know of consumer behavior comes from the pharma market, but I think it's a reasonable proxy. Let's say that there is some sort of significant health issue in the long term (more than 10 yrs out) that you can eliminate by paying an extra cost today, what would the average consumer (and in fact this works for the average life insurance company today) pay in premium to adopt a therpy today that could avert a serious health risk over time in the future. In a developed country such as the US, that figure is about $2-3/day (I can get into all sorts of details why this is true) It turns out it doesn't really matter what the health issue is as long as it's serious (so forcast the direst outcome including eminent death), and as long as it's long term, the figure is roughly the same. So that's your window. If you could show that given the "unregulated" regime that grass fed beef could stay within that window on the equivalent $/lb produced in terms of productions cost, then I would agree that the practice would decrease. If it remains above that sort of window then it's a good bet that the "healthier" beef would remain a very "nichy" sort of luxury product, available to those whose are brand conscious and have plenty of extra disposable income.
This health aspect is a tough way to argue to deregulation when there is a much shorter way to do it, and that is on the basis of direct rights violations, then on the basis that the costs of production are hidden due to subsidies. Only then might you get into the idea that food would get healthier...
That said, I have now spent the bulk of my day on this thread, and given it more value than it deserves. Diana thanks for your thoughtful reply. My intent is not to in any way defeat a pitch for laissez faire since you and Monica and I violently agree on it. I think this sort of analysis though is what a more mainstream, studied critic would come back with and I'd like to simply toss out the idea of whether or not it will stand up. I think rights violations arguments make much clearer the case for laissez faire, and I want you to make the strongest and best arguments that you can because I believe in the end result to much. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 15:09:01 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Kendall -- One final comment, as I too have to get to work.
In addition to your strawman of "major health costs," you have seriously misunderstood the whole purpose of my original blog post. It was simply to explain why I don't wish to consume meat, milk, and dairy from animals raised with routine antibiotics. (I included the comment toward the end about being opposed to further government regulation only because that was the suggestion of all the articles to which I linked.)
My purpose has not been to defend free markets in agriculture by the convoluted argument you've sketched. I don't know why you thought that; if you read the post again, it's pretty clear that my purpose was to explain a personal choice, not to make a political argument.
As I've indicated, I will not defend the practice of factory farming as an expression of capitalism. However, that certainly doesn't mean that I'm arguing for freedom in agriculture because I suppose that it would eliminate some seeming health costs of factory farming. That would be bizarre, but it's not an apt criticism of me, because I've not argued any such thing.
Given these two major misunderstandings, I would ask that you take a bit more care to argue against views and arguments I've actually presented. You seem to have wasted an awful lot of time arguing against strawmen, and I've wasted time in replying to you, and that's unfortunate. It would be better for us to have productive debates based on real disagreements! |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 15:38:34 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
Diana just a couple of comments on your response. I can see we're chewing out the ideas, and regardless of whether we agree.
1. I didn't switch the argument because I never said that you were "purely speculative." What I said was that you have not "drawn a confirmed casual chain" to observation. That is if the hypothesis is A - B - C - D - E, you may have provided correct back-up statements for A and C, but if you have not for let's say B, and you make a speculative leap, then the whole method becomes a "speculative method" which is what I did say you were using. While there is truth in some of what you say, you can't get from A to E without speculating. I think you have done that in several cases and pointed to arguments against it. Your argument about "major" (or some other claim of magnitude) which you used several times as a qualifying statement simply goes to one of these links which I have an issue with.
As to my point of general population infections being an issue being "false." It would have to depend what you think I meant by being "an issue." I did not say that they didn't exist nor have you shown anything other than that they do exist. Your NYT article uses the same sort of method. That is, I did not find cause to worry one bit, and I understood it very well. The magnitude of claims is important.
Please understand that my point regarding capitalism and a discussion of the system as a whole, as opposed to discussing a particular practice. I obviously am not stating this correctly or I think we'd be in agreement. The system as a whole is certainly not any sort of product of capitalism (and just for clarification I mean proper or laissez faire capitalism). However, some components within the system are not *precluded* by a laissez faire system. For instance today we have businessmen running farms who are looking out for their self interest and choosing practices on that basis and this includes feedlot practices. In addition in making those choices, they will continue to cause other new risks and costs to be incurred regardless of what the choice is, which *could include* continued generation of antibiotic resistance. The system is corrupt. The practice however is an amoral issue as such(so long as you aren't claiming rights violations), and I'll continue to defend any businessman who chooses that practice in an attempt to work in the system while he's attempting to change it. I don't think you have an obligation to defend "the system". At the same time I think it behooves us to understand which parts of the system are as a result of it's corrupt nature, and what parts might just as easily (and morally) exist in a laissez faire system, and not use arguments that accidentally whitewash what can be defended.
On a personal note, I was in no way trying to disparage your personal choices. My only aim in highlighting them is that they *are* value driven, and I can very easily make a case for some people to hold different values and as such for the practices that create antibiotic resistance to still exist because not everyone has the same values. My "hope" for you was based upon an opinion I hold, and it was a sincere hope, meant benevolently. If I miscommunicated that I'm sorry.
Monica, obviously I've said more than you can stand. I've not done what you've said I have. Nor have I insinuated the things that you said I have. We may have a misunderstanding, but I don't appreciate your jumping to conclusions. I read your blog, and at least where you pointed me to this particular argument I dealt with it. I've spent far too much time dealing with the discussion at hand to try to burrow through whatever emotional walls you seem to have raised. I know you want to put me into some sort of classification of a "judgemental Objectivist" but I'm fairly well respected for being open to reason. Let's assume for a second that I am coming to the situation with some ignorance. Your *assertions* here won't convince me, and to state that I simply need to go read all the hard work you've done before I comment, only takes the same sort of condescending tone with anyone who doesn't know as much as you do, smacks of ivory tower intellectualism, especially since you don't really know what I do and don't know, and haven't dealt with anything I've raised if you do. Where you've shown an single error it was on an off-handed comment I made, that doesn't go any part of the argument. I'm not parading anything. I'm working through the problem based upon what I know, and I'm putting that knowledge and thought process out. Please, comment on it, critique it if you like. I've spent almost the whole day writing to you when I could have been doing other things, because it's an interesting issue and I'm interested in a discussion. If you're not that's fine, but please don't disparage me for continuing.
Well, that's enough for today. Obviously I've ruffled feathers, and I've spent too much time on this discussion as it is. I wont' check back for responses after this post. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 15:43:31 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
Sorry for last. Diana, thanks for your last post. If I go back and read I see that you are correct. I think when we got to Objectivist "defending" or "doing research before" they defend I may have been responding to that. Certainly I'm open to understanding if my tone was off-putting. I'm certainly not above fault at times.
As I've said, I don't disparage in any way your personal choices and you certainly are completely at liberty to discuss your reasons for them. So I'll leave it there.
I do plan to as some respectful questions of Monica back channel. Hopefully she'll understand I wasn't trying to be uber-critical. Enough for this thread I think. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 15:45:17 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Kendall -- You're still very much misrepresenting what I've said and what you've said; that's frustrating. But since you aren't checking back for responses, nevermind. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 15:47:20 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Kendall -- We just crossed posts. I'm happy to leave the discussion as is; anyone interested can decide for themselves what arguments were made or not made. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 18:42:58 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: Monica Hughes
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://fa-rm.org
"If you could show that given the "unregulated" regime that grass fed beef could stay within that window on the equivalent $/lb produced in terms of productions cost, then I would agree that the practice would decrease."
Sure -- Here are the links to some of my relevant posts to the feedlot vs. grass-fed issue:
http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/diet-for-unhealthy-planet.html
http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/what-is-nais.html
http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/what-nlis-has-done-to-australian- ...
http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/abolishing-usda-inspection-laws.html
http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/safety.html
These are by no means comprehensive and I intend to expand on this issue in the future. But to make it simpler without reading all that material, here are some historical points. *Before* grain subsidies began in earnest around 40 years ago, almost all meat animals were raised through rotational grazing on some mixture of hay grass, wheat grass, and native grasses with only a limited amount of finishing on the actual *grains* of the grass plants rather than the entire herbaceous material (and that finishing time was weeks, not months at a time for up to a year). It was a much less regulated and subsidized system at that time, although not entirely free market. I would add that such older practices have enormous benefits to soil fertility and erosion as well, something that has declined considerably since WWII. Those benefits simply aren’t something the average consumer or farmer pays attention to right now, partly because the science of these issues is relatively new but partly because farmers are paid to not care and most farmers now don’t own their land as they used to (which is a direct result of government-promoted consolidation). It's yet another case of government regulations leading an abandonment of long-term interest on the part of businesspeople. I don’t have the time to lay out my arguments for this particular aspect right now, but will do so in the future.
Second, there's considerable evidence for the economic sustainability of a grass-fed model from a country with almost *completely* free market farm economics. New Zealand. 100% of their animals are raised on pasture and their grass-fed meats are *extremely* competitive on the world market and have been almost completely without subsidies for 30 years. You might argue that the more temperate climate reduces the cost of the grass-fed system because it reduced feed costs. You might argue that that this was a system already in place before subsidies (however, that was largely the case in the US, too). But one also has to acknowledge that considering the increased transportation costs to bring these products to foreign markets, the cost per pound of grass-fed lamb on the American market is actually incredibly cheap. Roughly $5 per pound for grass fed leg of lamb, approximately the same cost per pound as a grass-fed bison roast produced in the US, which is around $4.80 to $5.50 or so, and the same cost per pound as grass-fed meat produced in bulk direct from producer ($5.50 per pound). (I haven’t compared rack of lamb to a comparable beef product.) Grain-fed meat in the grocery store runs anywhere from $2.50 per pound for hamburger to up to $16 per pound for prime cuts like prime rib. All of those cuts would be present in a bulk order of a side of beef, for an average of $5 to $5.50 per pound, direct from a producer who is paying *greater* production costs per animal than the grain-fed producer (for reasons I explain in one of my posts above). I agree that a more direct comparison should be done with an average weighted cost of the type of cuts in a side of beef " this is something I plan to do in the future.
It IS a complicated issue as Kendall describes, since we really don't know exactly what the cost of commodities would be in an unsubsidized system. Further, most Americans now prefer the taste of grain-fed beef so that's another confounding variable. But it's not simply the subsidies, EQIP, and land prices. It's who should own the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico and how they would respond to the environmental effects of corporate agriculture on their property. And a good deal of it is USDA inspection regulations and the shutdown of approved slaughterhouses due to government-promoted consolidation that has greatly increased per item costs for small producers, almost all of which are grass-fed or at least grass-fed with a much shorter grain-finishing time.
But somehow these products are not just making it to market but are increasing market share to boot, all without government help and most of the time with a great deal of government opposition, actually. That tells us something. Personally, I think it's telling us something about consumer education and an increase of affluence among consumers, which is another wildly unpredictable variable. (Further, the price of grass-fed vs. grain-fed in the grocery store is simply not a good comparison because of these differences in USDA inspection costs and middleman costs. But I will make that comparison on my blog at some point in the future.)
Without grain subsidies, without EQIP, without USDA inspection regulations that have resulted in consolidation (a roughly 30% reduction in American slaughterhouses in just a decade!!), and with any kind of rational tort lawsuits against CAFOs for the property rights violations of local residents, I'm confident that the larger CAFOs would not be in existence (even without the antibiotic resistance issue, if it could be proven in the future). Consumer simply aren't paying for the true cost of these foods, and grass-fed is increasing market share even with all the government regulations that don't favor it. I've followed numerous threads in farm blogs where it's widely acknowledged among many farmers that government interference has gotten us to where we are today, and that the CAFO system is largely economically unsustainable and needs to be propped up by taxpayer support. I haven't done an detailed economic analysis, but I think that's a rational conclusion.
I apologize for my snotty tone in previous posts in this thread. It’s just that I’ve done a huge amount of first-hand research on this issue, hundreds of hours if not more at this point, I belong to several private newsgroups discussing such issues and follow various farm blogs, and I’m very confident that our current system in no way reflects what laissez-faire would produce.
We simply can’t make sweeping analogies to the harassment of big business in other areas of the economy and assume that the same is taking place in agriculture. If anyone has heard of specific instances of government harassment of corporate agriculture, please come forth because I would write about them. I get news alerts on a variety of agricultural topics and have for many months now so this isn't simply a personal bias for the information I try to look for. It is, in fact, almost the complete opposite because only the smaller producers want to and are willing to buck the regulatory schemes.
Kendall, you touch on another important issue, though. While I can't agree that all activism has to be done by referring only to violations of rights, I am going to outline a post soon on initiatory vs. retaliatory force, and why even if government “had the answers” it wouldn’t be moral to institute them. That is perhaps not a case I’ve made as strongly as I could have on my blog.
While that's certainly an important aspect, it’s very important to point out the pragmatic angle of how government regulations have gone terribly awry in so many instances. It’s not enough, in my opinion, to just assert the principle of individual rights. If that were the case, we wouldn’t really need individual activist groups devoted to healthcare, education, etc. or any kind of educational article of the type Paul Hsieh and Lin Zinser produced on healthcare in TOC, or of the type that Stella Daily produced on the FDA. Those articles are incredibly informative and convincing, I think, to people who might not accept any kind of capitalist premise.
I think that if the goal is reaching out toward non-Objectivists, then talking about individual rights in isolation of wider pragmatic issues really isn’t going to work. If we just talk about individual rights and never about the concrete issues and effects of government policies, we’re going to be talking to ourselves in an echo chamber.
Part of that activism is bringing in potential allies to free market economics. In the case of agriculture, those allies are, in my experience, often people who are concerned about the quality of their food but generally believe that more regulation is the answer to such problems. Some of them are Christian conservations, some have environmentalist or leftist leanings. However, it's been my experience that most smaller farmers operating without subsidies, regardless of their wildly different explicit ideologies, are fiercely independent, as are most of their consumer base. I buy from these farmers and have been interacting with them and other consumers of such products so my assessment isn't made in a vacuum.
Contrast that with so many in corporate agriculture -- their attitude is often thuggish, with support and demand for yet more regulations and taxpayer dollars for their economically unsustainable programs, like ethanol. If they oppose the system as it is, I've certainly not seen evidence for it. The same goes for corporate producers of practically any food product, including raisins and milk, if one just digs deep enough. There are a very small minority of individuals working within these systems that are actually willing to buck the price cartels, and have bucked the price cartels in those government-supported systems, and they pay dearly -- often with massive federal fines and harassment from the other 98% of their colleagues (that figure is NOT an exaggeration). The unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of corporate producers in any highly regulated system don't really want to try to do business without the government bailout crack that's been doled out to them since 1929. They could at least verbally support their colleagues that are attempting to escape price cartels (notably in the case of raisins and milk) but that hasn't been the case. Often, they are the ones instigating the lawsuits. This was a case where a corporate producer of milk tried to escape the price cartel and sell $.20 cheaper milk to Costco. He had to pay something like $400k in fines to his fellow "businessmen" who brought a federal suit against him.
This wasn't really what I intended to find. I didn't intend to find an enormous dark side to industrial agriculture when I set out to investigate this stuff nearly a year ago. But that's what I've found. Contrary to what one might expect, I’ve received nothing but positive comments on my writings from smaller (often nominally organic but not certified so by the government) producers, in private emails and on my blog. Most of these people simply want the government to leave them alone. That’s extremely encouraging to the cause of individual rights "- and it should be telling. Conversely, I'm disappointed to say that I've seen *nothing* but hostility on a few larger farm blogs when I've left comments in support of de-regulating farming. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 19:02:20 mst
Comment ID: #22
Name: Kendall Justinano
E-mail: kendalljobj(at)gmail.com
URL: http://crucibleandcolumn.blogspot.com/
Ok Monica, you knocked this one out of the ballpark. Thanks to you for hanging in with me, and I apologize for my tone earlier as well.
Two things stuck out at me in this information.
I think most concretely you've got a great example of a system that actually works and is competitive on costs, in your New Zealand example. You've got some economic examples in hand, and this makes it much less of an abstract problem. And second the interesting point about the reversal of corporate vs. small farm behavior, and their relative dependence on subsidies. This was something I was not aware of.
Nice job! Thanks!
So to Diana's point then, the reversal of antibiotic resistance issues migrating into humans would be an added benefit to the system, regardless of it's actual magnitude. It is a bonus, then. The debate about how big it is becomes moot because it get's thrown in for free.
I can go there. Thanks again, especially for brining in the more detailed analysis. Just what I needed. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 19:19:35 mst
Comment ID: #23
Name: Kevin Clark
"I didn't intend to find an enormous dark side to industrial agriculture when I set out to investigate this stuff nearly a year ago."
Fascinating stuff Monica. Thank you for all the great information.
Your description of the food industry seems to paint a picture which is so close the banking industry or the auto industry. Also, your description of today's big agricultural businesses reminds me of something Dr. Peikoff wrote about in The Ominous Parallels. He said that essentially *all* business men in Germany prior to the rise of the 3rd Reich believed that they owned their businesses by permission of the state. They also all believed that it was the duty of the government to regulate business. They all heavily bought into the controls that existed and lobbied furiously for special favors. In other words, they all accepted what Von Mises called "socialism on the fascist model."
It seems that today in the West in general and America in particular the same thing is occurring. Big business is so used to the system of subsidies and controls that it would never challenge them. Too many people make good or great livings within the system to "rock the boat." And the James Taggarts and Orren Boyles are the top executives of too many businesses. They are in bed with the politicians and regulators. This is not good because it makes me think that only a total collapse can force people to rethink the welfare/regulatory state premise. But I hope that it doesn't have to come to that. |
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| Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 19:30:59 mst
Comment ID: #24
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Kendall -- You said, "So to Diana's point then, the reversal of antibiotic resistance issues migrating into humans would be an added benefit to the system, regardless of it's actual magnitude. It is a bonus, then. The debate about how big it is becomes moot because it get's thrown in for free."
Yes, I think that's right. As you were arguing, Objectivists definitely don't need to be arguing for freedom based on utilitarian cost-benefit analyses: the statists will always gain the upper hand that way. However, freedom brings all kinds of fabulous benefits. Freedom in agriculture would very likely mean a return to pasture-based animal husbandry. And that would reduce worries about drug resistance in bacteria that cause human illnesses -- or worries about ingesting antibiotics on lettuce grown in manure -- because animals would not be treated with routine antibiotics. It's definitely not the most important benefit, but I think it's good to know -- in a concrete way -- that freedom will be good for us. So it's a bonus! Woo hoo!
Thanks for sticking with us. Online arguments can get way too hot way too fast, and we were definitely talking past each other. |
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