Viruses the New Condiment

Lip writes to tell us that a new bacteria killing virus has been deemed safe by the FDA as a food additive for ready-to-eat meats. These bacteriophages are designed to kill a common microbe (Listeria monocytogenes bacteria) to which hundreds of deaths every year have been attributed. From the article: "The viruses are grown in a preparation of the very bacteria they kill, and then purified. The FDA had concerns that the virus preparation potentially could contain toxic residues associated with the bacteria. However, testing did not reveal the presence of such residues, which in small quantities likely wouldn't cause health problems anyway, the FDA said."

Comments

"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[Nova Express]

"Please keep it down, sir, or everyone will want some."

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[buswolley]

I am not a biologist, so please respond if you are: Could these viruses effect the bacteria that exist in our digestive tracts??

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[RsG]

Ever had strong antibiotics? One of the bits of advice they give you is to eat stuff like yogurt once you're done the treatment.

The reason for this is that antibiotics will kill off your own symbiotic bacteria in addition to the infection they're supposed to cure. However, replacing those same intestianal bacteria is incredibly easy with the right foodstuffs.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[tijnbraun]

probably not... viruses are often host specific. They have to attach to specific receptors to enter the cell. So as long as the bacteria in our digestive tract do not share the surface proteins with Listeria, the bacteriophage will only tarcet Listeria.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[hcob$]

Ever had strong antibiotics? One of the bits of advice they give you is to eat stuff like yogurt once you're done the treatment.

The reason for this is that antibiotics will kill off your own symbiotic bacteria in addition to the infection they're supposed to cure. However, replacing those same intestianal bacteria is incredibly easy with the right foodstuffs.

The difference with bacteriophages is that, in general, they target specific bacteria.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[kurt555gs]

Until they mutate, that is.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[lord sibn]

I am less worried about their mutation as I am about the implications of engineering an enterprise at this level to *potentially* save a couple of hundred lives every year. I think we have bigger problems more deserving of the money that will be used to manufacture the spray in question. From what I read, the greatest danger is presented to the average consumer as cold cuts. However, the article fails to specify whether the "500 deaths per year" is national, continental, or global. My assumption would be that it is global, which raises the other eyebrow for me because of the sheer number of people who already cannot afford to eat, and this process is not going to be deployed on the cheap.

I just don't think (even if the number is 500/yr in the USA) that the expense is justified.

Having said that, I do agree with you wholeheartedly, that they have the capacity to mutate and this could be breeding another "super bug." I just do not think it is as important as the cost/benefit (ack, I just used marketspeak) issue.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[abandonment]

this is the first thing I thought - how can they come up with something this complicated to solve a problem that apparently isn't a problem. the number i read (different article about the same topic) was 2500/year across america.

it also mentioned that consumers wouldn't be informed if their food was sprayed with this virus - so the entire population is going to be subjected to a virus that MIGHT help a few thousand people. The odds of something going wrong is ridiculous. If there are a few thousand people that need special food with this virus, then create special food for them. don't subject the entire population to an experimental genetically engineered virus for something so relatively minor.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[FooAtWFU]

I just don't think (even if the number is 500/yr in the USA) that the expense is justified.

Justified? As compared to what... I mean, do you think there's some underfunded cause somewhere that would do better with that money than this? Why, probably, sure. But that's true of a lot of money. And money is fungible, but it's not that fungible.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[infidel13]

A bacteriophage would be hard-pressed to mutate into something that could cause disease in humans.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[hr raattgift]

Bacteriophage viruses also mutate, and usually at a faster rate than the bacteria they attack (this is mostly because duplication of viral RNA sequences and assembly of virion particles are especially error prone processes, and many many copies are made before the bacteria is lysed). Bacteriophage therapy thus has the handy property that any resistance acquired by the target bacterium is almost certain to be met by an equivalent viral adaptation, all occuring within the bacterial growth medium, whether that's a slab of beef or a human patient.

Any mutation in the host bacterium, moreover, is likely to have been seen in its natural environmental reservoirs and thus there is likely already an equivalent reservoir of already-adapted phage.

Procedure: extract phage particles from pond scum (literally, in many cases). Add to culture of resistant bacterium. When the culture is clearly succumbing to a viral infection, extract and purify the phage particles. Inject into patient with resistant bacterium. Repeat as necessary.

The main downside to this approach to acquired resistance to phage therapy is that culturing the resistant strain takes time. Meanwhile, the resistant strain is infecting the patient. If the infection is especially aggressive, or the patient is especially weakened by it, the infection will outrun the preparation of the new viruses. (In that case, use wider-spectrum agents like western antibiotics, hyperbaric oxygenation, debridement, amputation, etc. as necessary).

Using phage therapy in cattle (or on dead beef as a surface treatment) against known strains of known pathogenic (to humans) bacteria is sensible: firstly, you reduce the incidence of sick humans who handle uncooked meat, who eat improperly cooked meat, or who eat cooked meat in which bacteriotoxins have survived; and secondly, you do not breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the surface of the cuts of beef.

Treating the surface and near subsufrace of dead meat also has the positive advantage that the dead animal no longer has an immune system to interfere with the phage's attack on its target bacteria (this is also unfortunately why bacterial contamination of untreated dead meat is so common).

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[hr raattgift]

It's not exceptionally difficult to implement.

The phage culture would be added to whatever washing fluid is used to remove fecal matter and other contaminants during the butchering process(es).

The bacteriophage viruses are easy to grow at any lab which can culture the relevant bacteria. The bacteria is the phage "food".

So all that's necessary is shipping out some purified phage solution (or even as a powder) to meat packing plants every so often.

This is an inexpensive way of preventing a number of diseases associated with handling or eating uncooked or improperly cooked meat. Some of these diseases are extremely unpleasant for the victim, even if the number of fatalities a year is low.

(It can also be applied to other foodstuffs which are subject to common infections by microorganisms for whom there is a natural "predator" phage virus).

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[Lurker2288]

It's not an issue of "a few thousand people who need special food." Rather, given things as they are, Listeria infection will kill a few thousand people per year, which may be a certain subclass of people (like those who are already sick and weak), or which may not. The point is, producing the phage for this use will not be terribly daunting, and there is basically no way for the virus to cause harm in humans. Keep in mind that any virus that infects humans has evolved to somehow circumvent the immune system--no easy feat. These phages are involved to infect bacteria, which have only the simplest of defenses against an invading pathogen. In short, it would be like expecting a medieval knight to overrun a modern army base. As to cost, you need to consider the cost/effectiveness ratio is this sort of decision. Kidney dialysis costs upwards of $50K per life year saved, and most people agree this is an acceptable level of spending. If this treatment saves lives at a decent cost, then it's worth investing in.

Re:"Waiter! There's a virus on my steak!"

[alienw]

Viruses mutate very easily. Where do you think the human viruses came from? Bacteria viruses. This may present a danger to people with weak immune systems (such as those with AIDS) and possibly even healthy people (large concentrations of viruses could cause allergic reactions or something). In short, I think it's rather irresponsible for the FDA to approve this kind of thing with so few studies being done.

Mmmm.....

[antifoidulus]

lysing

Re:Mmmm.....

[pilgrim23]

Relax, don't worry about it. If it makes you too nervous, take som thalidamide and go fishin on Love canal..

Re:Mmmm.....

[Kitten Killer]

Let's stop giving that drug a bad name. It has its uses, even though it had a terrible past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
"The FDA approved thalidomide in 1998, under a restricted access system, for the treatment of erythema nodosum leprosum associated with leprosy (Hansen's disease). It also was found to be effective for multiple myeloma, and is now standard first line therapy for this disease..."

Re:Mmmm.....

[AJWM]

Nothing wrong with fishing on Love Canal. The canal was fine, the problem was the (1940s era?) Hooker Chemical dump near Love Canal. That wouldn't have been much of a problem either, if the town hadn't expropriated the old dump site. Hooker Chemical didn't want to sell, but the town forced the issue -- HC put in a proviso that the land never be used for anything. Few years later the town builds a school on it...

Nothing wrong with thalidomide either, so long as you're not female and pregnant. (If you're male and pregnant you have bigger problems ;-)

Re:Mmmm.....

[pilgrim23]

The point of my post, which both you and the previous reply aptly show actually far better then my poor humor was: "Never trust authority". Oh, and indeed yes; morning sickness is just not a guy thing unless it is preceeded by a better forgotten night ;)

Re:Mmmm.....

[Lunar_Lamp]

What you say about thalidomide is very true - it's currently being used to treat leprosy, and some cancers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide

Viruses NOT the New Condiment

[Anonymous Coward]

The federal government classified them as vegetables along with ketchup.

Re:Viruses NOT the New Condiment

[kfg]

The federal government classified them as vegetables along with ketchup.

Which is totally ridiculous. Everyone knows that ketchup is a fruit.

KFG

Re:Viruses NOT the New Condiment

[waveclaw]

The federal government classified them as vegetables along with ketchup.

Pffft. A tomato is a fruit, so is ketchup technically a watery, thin jam or jelly?

Either way, You won't catch me making ketchup and peanut-butter sandwitches anytime soon.

From the article:
Luncheon meats are particularly vulnerable to Listeria since once purchased they typically aren't cooked or reheated, which can kill harmful bacteria like Listeria, Zajac said.

The FDA is approving this baterial treatment for Poultry, ham, et cetera and note that it targets Listera pretty specifically. This means that every other thing growing on that food now has less competition. During high school biology lab we used to get a good culture of strep from old chinese takeout chicken. However, outside of botullism, I don't recall anything really nasty comming off of those old meat experiments.

Too bad we don't nuke food, it'd solve all these 'growing things on food' problems really quick. But, that involves them thar evil nuclear raditions that mutates ya' in stuff. But that is a rant for another day.

Mutation?

[MidoriKid]

Is it possible for a bacteriophage to mutate and infect human cells?

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK there aren't any phage-type viruses that can infect humans with intact immune systems. They're too big and obvious for our white cells not to notice.

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I'm worried about. How can they control the eventual mutation of something like this?

Re:Mutation?

[Enzo the Baker]

Is it possible for a bacteriophage to mutate and infect human cells?

If it does, we'll just come out with some virus-eating bacteria. It's the ciiiiiiircle of liiiife!

Re:Mutation?

[kripkenstein]

Is it possible for a bacteriophage to mutate and infect human cells?

Anything is 'possible'. However, the odds of this are quite small. Bacteriophages are highly adapted to their hosts - bacteria. This would make it far less likely to occur than for a virus adapted to, say, a mammal to cross over to humans (which happens, but rarely). Furthermore, as TFA states, humans already come into contact with these particular bacteriophages all the time.

However, there is a risk factor, obviously. We would be creating much more interaction between human beings and these bacteriophages (if these sprays become commonplace), which would give them more time to adapt to us.

Re:Mutation?

[buswolley]

I thought that their host were going to be salami.

Re:Mutation?

[RsG]

What's more, a virus whose survival strategy is to infect bacteria doesn't really gain anything from trying to infect animal cells. When was the last time we had any infection, with or without human intervention, that made such an enourmous leap? Hell, it's hard enough for disease organisms to jump from one similar species of animal to another, let alone from bacteria to animals. Even examples like bird flu are going from one large, warm blooded animal to another.

I'd actually think it more likely that the bacteriophages would go after the bacteria living in our digestive system, which would likely cause many of the same problems that a round of antibiotics does - ie, diarhea - but which is also simple to cure by recolonizing your intestines with those same bacteria (no colonizing your colon jokes please). So the cure for the bacteriophage run amok B-movie style would be... yogurt actually.

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then the gorillas freeze to death, right?

Re:Mutation?

[enharmonix]

Anything is 'possible'. However, the odds of this are quite small.

The odds of replicating proteins strands spontaneously self-assembling are quite small. The odds of these proteins developing protective coatings are quite small. The odds of these things grouping together to form complex structures are quite small. The odds of those structures developing an electrical computational center, or walking on land, or using tools, or adding viruses to food are also, each, quite, quite small. And yet, here we are. It just takes time....

Re:Mutation?

[ultranova]

What's more, a virus whose survival strategy is to infect bacteria doesn't really gain anything from trying to infect animal cells. When was the last time we had any infection, with or without human intervention, that made such an enourmous leap?

Presumably sometimes after the first multi-cellular organisms developed.

But you are going about this backwards. A virus doesn't think, it doesn't ask itself: "Can I gain anything by infecting these human cells instead of bacterial cells?" The virus infects the first cell it comes accross it can infect, human or bacterial; the question is if it's possible for the virus to mutate in such a way that it can infect the human cell, not if it's a wise thing for it to do so.

Or, more to the point: how likely is such a mutation to occur ? It is certainly possible, since otherwise we wouldn't have any viruses, they'd all be limited to infecting bacteria.

Re:Mutation?

[pilkul]

Indeed. Let's have the FDA schedule a review of this additive every 200 million years and we should be in the clear.

Re:Mutation?

[Kitten Killer]

Nit-picking a detail here but:

DNA isn't protein. Proteins are made of amino acids and do not self-assemble from amino acids. DNA are made of nucleotides.

Re:Mutation?

[PizzaFace]

I'm worried that recolonizing the intestinal tract would just feed the viruses. Antibiotics get cleared from your system, but viruses keep multiplying until the hosts are destroyed.

Re:Mutation?

[SoumyaRay]

from the article: "People normally come into contact with phages through food, water and the environment, and they are found in our digestive tracts, the FDA said."

soooo... these are the same phages found in our stomachs? then its not so much a bad thing at all. is it? besides, the article also seems to indicate that only limited meats such as luncheon meats will be treated this way, as they typically are not cooked or reheated by the consumer.

Re:Mutation?

[RsG]

Point taken. However, "survival strategy" generally doesn't imply conscious decision, rather it implies what the virus has specifically developed for. In this context, the virus has evolved to infect bacteria, which are quite different from human or animal cells. It's not a question of whether it is "wise" for it to infect those cells, but whether it even could in the first place.

As to ancient viruses jumping species from bacteria to animal cells, what makes you think that humans and modern animals are anything like the first multi-cellural organisms, aside from the obvious point of having more than one cell? So far as I know, immune systems didn't develop until well after organisms became multi-cellular, due to the fact that such systems require specialized dedicated cells evolved to fight infection.

It's much easier to see a disease organism jumping from a single celled organism to a cluster of cells that have only just begun to act as a group, than it is to see a virus that had no prior evolutionary adaptation to immune responses infect a complex organism with an immune system. The "arms race" between animal cells and viruses to develop/survive immune responses accounts for why modern viral infections are capable of surviving an assault by the human immune system, whereas bacteriophages lack those millions of years of adaptation.

I am aware of no examples of bacteriophages jumping species to animals. Presumably they do share a common ancestor with the common cold, but that's likely so far back that using that common ancestor as proof that they could jump to humans is illogical.

Re:Mutation?

[Kitten Killer]

It is certainly possible, since otherwise we wouldn't have any viruses, they'd all be limited to infecting bacteria.

Not necessarily. The gap may simply be too wide now between bacteria and animals. You have to keep in mind when animals were evolving into animals, there was likely a set of viruses that were co-evolving with those early animal-like beings, adapting with the changes as they were made. It was a continuous process as the gap formed, unlike the gap that now exists between the groups.

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the ciiiiiiircle of liiiife!

Be careful with those 'i', or Apple might sue you !

Re:Mutation?

[American Patent Guy]

The slashdot headline is misleading. It is not the viruses that are new, but rather that they would be added to foods. It's likely that you have been exposed to these viruses thousands of times already. Your concern for this should be much less than, say, the addition of MSG to your baloney.

Re:Mutation?

[Cyberax]

Bacteriophages are VERY specialized. They can't penetrate into animal (or plant) cells because they are too large for it, and they can't use their injection system because animal cell walls are dense as bacterial cell walls.

Actually, bacteriophages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage) are the smallest syringes in nature, and they actually have proteins that store the energy needed for injection of genetic material through the cellular wall!

Phage therapy is a very real alternative to antibiotics. In fact it is already used with much success: my cousin was treated with phage therapy after a chemical burn complicated by kidney infection (strong antibiotics would have destroyed his kidneys).

Re:Mutation?

[RsG]

Given how easy it is to recolonize your intestinal bacteria, how do you know they don't periodically get plagued by naturally occuring phages? At most, you'd get digestive problems for a litte while, then the problem would go away the next time you ate a meal with the right strain of bacteria in it...

Re:Mutation?

[johnkzin]

That's my concern as well.

The best case is: the virus doesn't mutate to attack the bacteria in our intestines

The middle case is: the virus ends up in our intestines, gets hungry when it runs out of listeria, mutates to live on the bacteria in our intestines, and after 3 or 4 days of us having diarrhea, the virus dies and passes out of our system. In the worst of that case: you end up on an IV for a few days.

The worst case: the virus keeps mutating as it runs out of bacteria to eat, and keeps attacking another type of bacteria in our bodies, and then it might take more then 3 or 4 days ... a LOT more than 3 or 4 days ... for the virus to run out of things to attack. Especially since your body eventually does repopulate its own intestinal flora (you don't _have_ to eat yogurt to recover from a bad case of diarrhea, for example). Now we've got a virus in our intestines that lives longer than we can go without digesting food, and we can't digest any food until it dies. The way they'd probably have to fight this is: a) the IV, b) antibiotics (to keep your body from hosting any bacteria long enough for the virus to starve) ... which then goes back to the "over-use of antibiotics" debate. How long before our bodies, needing to repopulate our intestines, start to develop intestinal flora that are immune to our antibiotics, and thus our bodies produce a steady stream of food for the virus, so the virus keeps on going. Now you've got someone stuck on an IV for a really long time.

Note: that probably sounds like FUD and "doom and gloom" type hysteria ... I'm really just trying to think through the situation so that others, who understand it better, can shoot it down completely. Produce the worst case so that it can be refuted, and then no one has to worry about that worst case.

I'm also curious about how contagious the virus is. If I end up with some of it in my system, how likely is it to jump from me to someone else I know? For the best case scenario, this is trivia ... but for the other two cases, it's a good question.

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many diseases are caused by toxins released when phage attack bacteria -- salmonellosis and cholera are two examples. The phage don't have to attack you.

Re:Mutation?

[edxwelch]

Yes, but why do we need this in the first place? If meat is fresh and cleanly prepared it doesn't have any risks of bacteria. So, basically this is a measure to conteract the bacteria that you would find on meat that has being lying around for a while. While that might make the food cheaper to produce, I would prefer the fresh product, rather than gambling with the unknown effects of having a virus in my food.

Re:Mutation?

[JourneyExpertApe]

"I'd actually think it more likely that the bacteriophages would go after the bacteria living in our digestive system, which would likely cause many of the same problems that a round of antibiotics does - ie, diarhea - but which is also simple to cure by recolonizing your intestines with those same bacteria (no colonizing your colon jokes please). So the cure for the bacteriophage run amok B-movie style would be... yogurt actually."

Antibiotics pass through your system, after which the bacteria can recolonize. But If you became infected with a virus that used your bacteria as hosts, it might not be so easy to get rid of. Eating yogurt wouldn't put down the virus population; it would "feed" it.

Re:Mutation?

[RsG]

Well, from TFA they seem to be approving this for cuts of meat that you don't cook (like the kind that go on a cold sandwitch).

With that in mind, "fresh" isn't guaranteed, and cleanly prepared isn't the consumer's job, its the meat-packing companiy's. It's not like with raw hamburger or chicken where the buyer is going to cook the stuff themselves before eating it.

Given the choice between either irradiating or phage-treating the stuff, or else risk giving their customers food poisoning, which should the packing companies choose?

Re:Mutation?

[enharmonix]

Let's have the FDA schedule a review of this additive every 200 million years and we should be in the clear.

/takes tin foil hat off.
Heh. Good idea, but I'm not convinced the federal govt could actually meet that deadline...

Re:Mutation?

[enharmonix]

Nit-picking a detail here

By all means, pick away. I thought I would like biology, but I didn't -- more accurately, I didn't like organic chemistry. I guess because it's one of those sciences you can study and study and study and pass all your exams and still be completely in the dark as to what's going on. In math, music, history, literature, and just about any other subject you can name, the more you learn, the more sense it makes, but biology just gets weirder and weirder the more you learn. Once I finished my credits, I promptly forgot pretty much anything at all related to organic chemistry other than the fact that we're carbon based (we are carbon based, right? ;^).

Re:Mutation?

[BTG9999]

It is almost impossible since the class of bacteriophages only attack prokaryotic cells and all multicelled organisms(aka everything that is not a bactieria) have eukaryotic cells. This is not going to happen anytime soon since the makeup of prokaryotic cell walls are very different then eukaryotic cells walls. So the chance of enough random mutations happening in the next 1000 years is not likely. As previous posters have said the point that is the most worrisome is the virii attacking your intestinal bactieria.

Re:Mutation?

[Kitten Killer]

Oh god the horrors of orgo-chem. I nearly failed that. In fact, I still know next to nothing about it, but look at me! I'm doing my Masters in Microbiology. And no, I've never, ever had to synthesize my own organic molecules, and I don't deal with the metabolism of microbes. I do mainly molecular microbiology and pathogenesis, so lucky for me I guess. Is it too late to change your mind and talk you back into doing biology?

Re:Mutation?

[tzanger]

Given the choice between either irradiating or phage-treating the stuff, or else risk giving their customers food poisoning, which should the packing companies choose?

Irradiating, clearly. Once the meat passes through the irradiating device, it is 'dead' -- there is nothing living in it, and it's not radioactive. We do this already with apples and potatoes, IIRC. Why not meat?

Re:Mutation?

[bky1701]

They would be closer then Microsoft...

Re:Mutation?

[alshithead]

I thought humans were mammals. Maybe you meant from one species to another?

Re:Mutation?

[zippthorne]

Do biologists have some kind of different definition of organic chemistry from engineers and physicists? IIRC, organic chemistry was fun one, with ethyl alcohol, benzene, nitroglycerin, picric acid, trinitrotoluene, and all the other nifty-sounding high calorie things you really shouldn't be eating.

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as you are surrounded by trillions of bacteria (all over your skin, in your gut etc.), you are likewise surrounded by trillions of bacteriophages of all different types.

Don't worry so much :)

Re:Mutation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reminded of an old nursery rhyme

The old lady that swallowed a fly
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/oldlady.htm

Re:Mutation?

[Xeth]

Sure. Just like all those elephants that are mutating and eating monkeys.

Re:Mutation?

[ScrappyLaptop]

MSG is now everywhere. Try to find a good old fashioned Cambell's soup without it. Heck, most any food that is flavored nowadays has MSG somewhere in the ingredients list. Crackers, chips, soup, cheese-food, most processed meat foods; just about anything processed with flavor added. Bummer for those of us sensitive to the stuff. The silver lining? I'm already not eating the stuff that would have the viruses sprayed on it...

Re:Mutation?

[lmpeters]

They can't penetrate into animal (or plant) cells because they are too large for it, and they can't use their injection system because animal cell walls are dense as bacterial cell walls.

Animal cells don't have cell walls. Or were you thinking of cell membranes?

Re:Mutation?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

We do this already with apples and potatoes, IIRC. Why not meat?

Well, the theory is that meats contain chemicals (triglycerides, I think) that, when irradiated, sometimes become allegedly-toxic chemicals known as cyclobutanones. See Wikipedia. I don't know if that theory is scientific, or if it's just rubbish put forward retroactively by misguided activists.

Ultimately, it's a matter of risk management. I am in favour of the option that carries the lowest risk of killing me.

Re:Mutation?

[enharmonix]

Do biologists have some kind of different definition of organic chemistry from engineers and physicists?

Well, it might not be fair for me to answer on behalf of biologists, but what the heck. IIRC, you can define organic chemistry as the chemistry of pretty much anything with hydrocarbons, so, technically, no, there's only one organic chemistry. However, for me at least, they taught organic chemistry in both chem and biology. The one in chem was actually pretty cool, but not very practical (for me), so I gradually forgot everything because I never used any of it. As for the one in bio, well, I'd venture to guess that's probably what pre-med feels like, so it might be more accurate to say I repressed those memories.

Re:Mutation?

[enharmonix]

I nearly failed that.

You and me both. Before: 4th in class. After: 37th in class. I passed, but it singlehandedly knocked my GPA down by 0.35 and out of summa cum laude.

Re:Mutation?

[someguyfromdenmark]

Is it possible for a bacteriophage to mutate and infect human cells?

Well, if it does, we'll just send wave after wave of our own men against it.

-- or --

Don't worry, Lisa. We'll just send waves after waves of virus-eating snakes after it.
-But what about the snakes?
Don't worry about them. We have an army of snake-eating gorillas to send in when the snakes are done doing their business.

Re:Mutation?

[smchris]

Fresh is relative. I suspect this will be sprayed on the boxes of Brazilian burger patties going to our burger chains soon. Wasn't one of the big listeria outbreaks a west coast burger chain?

Re:Mutation?

[Snwbeast]

Are you thinking of Jack in the Box with e.coli? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_in_the_Box#Food_ safety

Cue John Q Public

[dsanfte]

"They're putting bird flu in our food!"

The press coverage has been woefully bad with respect to explaining that these are not your average run-of-the-mill viruses, but rather are bacteriophages that can only infect bacteria. Expect some mild hysteria over this and some nuts demanding labelling.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[uarch]

Its already happened... Look at the top-level post directly below yours

Re:Cue John Q Public

[l2718]

Note that there are implications to this "bacteriological pesticide": while the phages are naturally occuring viruses, they are not normally ingested in large amounts. It is not inconcievable that they could have effects, for example, on the bacterial culture in our intestines. I hope someone here is knowledgeable enough to comment on this.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Lord Kano]

Expect some mild hysteria over this and some nuts demanding labelling.

You have to be a nut to want to know what additives are in your food?

Are vegans nuts if they want to know if enzymes from animal sources are added to their food? Are Jews or Muslims nuts because they want to know if pork products are added to their food? What about people who are allergic to peanuts, are they nuts to want to know when their foods are prepared with peanuts? How about people who are allergic to eggs? What about people who are lactose intolerant?

It's only reasonable for manufacturers to list the contents of the food products that they place on the market.

LK

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Kitten Killer]

Why did the parent get modded troll?

Irradiating foods (not making them radioactive, but exposing them to radiation) used to be an accepted practice of reducing the microbial load on fruits and vegatables, making them less likely to give you food poisoning. But then people, like the moderator, thought "Irradiation = Nuk-u-lar = glow-in-the-dark = CANCER!" and the practice stopped.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[owlnation]

Expect some mild hysteria over this and some nuts demanding labelling.

Yes, ok, these are to some degree different from virusy viruses. However, hysteria aside, this is extremely unpalatable. That's one very damn good reason to expect, or indeed demand, a label for this process.

Seriously, good food does actually grow on trees - there's no legitimate reason (other than squeezing the last cent out of production) for screwing around with it. Me, I'll pay you extra to leave it alone, and I'll probably live healthier and longer too.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Anonymous Coward]

Are vegans nuts if they want to know if enzymes from animal sources are added to their food?

No, vegans are just nuts. Period.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Anonymous Coward]

This certainly should be labeled. While it's highly unlikely that thay will do anything to body cells, they may well attack (good) bacteria in your gut. You carry several pounds of those around and they are essential for your health (symbionts). BTW, one thing those 'good' bacteria do is holding the 'bad' ones in check.

I can assure you that the FDA hasn't checked for that.

If this stuff is net positive or negative remains to be seen. There certainly is a strong case for having it labeled.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Mr. Slippery]

No, vegans are just nuts. Period.

No, we eat nuts. Ethical anthrocentrism that says it's ok to kill sentient non-human animals for our pleasure, now that's nuts.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[MyLongNickName]

He didn't. His karma sucks so bad he starts at negative one.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Mr. Slippery]

But then people, like the moderator, thought "Irradiation = Nuk-u-lar = glow-in-the-dark = CANCER!" and the practice stopped.

Perhaps a few people thought that. Others considered that exposing food to ionizing radiation destroys part of its nutritional value, produces chemical by-products of questionable safety, and is a strategy used to promote the long-distance transport of food over locally-grown produce, and came to the conclusion that it's a stupid idea.

I suggest this Consumer's Union article.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[RexRhino]

There is a simple solution to this:

Meats that aren't treated with this product will advertise that fact. In the same way you assume that meat is not Kosher or not Hallal if it is not specificly sold as such, you assume that your meat has been treated with this product if you are not told such. There is no warning nessicary on meat "WARNING: THIS MEAT IS NOT KOSHER! WARMING: THIS MEAT IS NOT HALLAL!!!"... you simply assume it is not Kosher or Hallal by default.

Also, there is no warning that vegetables have been treated with pesticides. You naturally assume it is the case. If you want food that isn't treated with pesticides, you go to the organic section of the supermarket and buy there. There is no pesticide label on all vegetables.

If you are putting a warning about something like this, which does not effect the nutritional value of the food, there is a agenda to it. People with a religious or social agenda want to ban all biotechnology, and so they figure a big warning will scare you away from it (after all, a warning implies danger). Without a warning, people would simply go to the organic section of the supermarket and buy the meat without this additive... but with a big orange warning sticker, that is clearly intented to cause fear and alarm.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[alshithead]

I think killing non-sentient human animals for food would do the world a lot of good.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[NMerriam]

you simply assume it is not Kosher or Hallal by default.

That's because meat IS not Kosher or Hallal by default. Making it kosher or hallal is a special thing. This is not rocket science.

Adding specially designed artificial bacteriophages is not a "default" food condition. That is a special, artificial process that has to be ADDED.

Also, there is no warning that vegetables have been treated with pesticides. You naturally assume it is the case.

And indeed, that is backwards and wrong. We started using pesticides on food back in the era where we were a stupid species who had no idea that toying with food could have anything but beneficial effects.

If you are putting a warning about something like this, which does not effect the nutritional value of the food, there is a agenda to it.

WTF? If I add water to chicken it doesn't affect the nutritional value, but that is required to be on the packaging because it is a common way to increase the "weight" of the chicken and thus sell less food for more money. If I added a teaspoon of HIV positive blood to your breakfast cereal, that wouldn't affect the nutritional value, and shouldn't (by all current scientific knowledge) affect your health, but I'm pretty sure you'd like to know about it. If I masturbated onto your steak before cooking it in a restaurant, I think you'd like to know, though it shouldn't affect the nutritional value.

Suggesting that someone has to have a sinister "agenda" because they'd like to know what they're buying is an absolutely idiotic straw man argument.

I don't know how such a simple concept as "people would like to know what has been artificially added to their food" can be anything less than basic common sense.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[NMerriam]

Irradiating foods (not making them radioactive, but exposing them to radiation) used to be an accepted practice of reducing the microbial load on fruits and vegatables, making them less likely to give you food poisoning. But then people, like the moderator, thought "Irradiation = Nuk-u-lar = glow-in-the-dark = CANCER!" and the practice stopped.

So? People are allowed to make stupid buying decisions. The answer is not to lie to them about what they're buying in the hopes you can trick them into buying something they don't want just because YOU think it's a good product.

While I personally think irradiating food is great for safety, I can hardly blame someone for not wanting to eat a food processed in an entirely new way that has no history to prove it is safe. There's nothing irrational about choosing the devil you know over the devil you don't know. It's also fairly well-established that even low levels of artificial radiation lower the nutritional value of foods quickly (even normal heat radiation used in cooking). Who are you (or the food industray) to unilaterally say that the lower nutritional value of irradiated foods didn't offset the benefit of irradiation over a person's lifetime, particularly in fruits and vegetables where Americans eat notoriously low amounts and every bit of nutrition is critical?

Re:Cue John Q Public

[ScrappyLaptop]

Now that's a totally animal-centric point of view. What are you, some sort of plant-hater? Did you fall on a cactus at a young age? Life is life, whether it be plant, animal, fungi, protist or moneran. Our particular place in life is such that we must kill life to sustain our own, so we (hopefully) try to kill only what we need and no more. What I don't understant is what in your ethical framework makes it less wrong to kill plants? I can understand the argument of killing being more wrong the higher up the evolutionary scale you go, but what is more evolved than something that creates it's own food from the raw elements and energy surrounding it? Ah, perhaps your argument is that you don't kill the plants, you merely maim them over and over again, taking from them that which they have worked so hard to create in order to ensure not only their own survival but that also of their offspring. Take peanuts, for example. Sure, the plant makes them in abundance. For the future generations of it's own genetic code, not yours. So, let's say you grow a peanut plant; when it is time to harvest you pluck it out of the ground (killing the plant) and remove the peanuts. There is no genetic future for that plant, you've killed the parent and removed that which it was going to leave in the soil for the next generation. Same argument goes for any fruit or vegetable. That pretty much puts eating meat and plants on even standing in my ethical book. Perhaps your argument is that being a vegan avoids mistreatment of animals since they can feel pleasure and pain and eating them causes pain and deprives them of pleasure. Now that is anthrocentrism; it's just extended to anything that reminds us of ourselves. To only save the animals because they too have nervous systems, like we do. Plants too, can be mistreated. They show signs of stress when injured, often in quite sophisticated ways, but not being mobile they don't need to waste resources on a nervous system. They also show signs of well-being when conditions are favorable. Nah, I say be honest, be realistic and realize that survival requires taking the life of another, whether it be plant or animal. Just try to do as little harm to the ecosystem and the individual life as you can.

Re:Cue John Q Public

[Mr. Slippery]

Life is life, whether it be plant, animal, fungi, protist or moneran.

Life is an interesting set of chemical reactions, and we all have a sentimental attachment about it, but it is not the ethically relevant criteron. The ethically relevant thing is consciousess, the ability to have experiences, to be the "subject of a life". In biological organisms that corresponds to the presence of a functioning highly-structured nervous system. It is the end of this experience, this subjectivity, that concerns us, not the cesation of chemical reactions. That is why we define the legally and ethically relevent death as "brain death" for humans. (This also gives us the guide for hypotheticals such as intelligent computers, or extraterrestrial organisms based on radically different physiochemical processes.)

And, while I'm 99% sure your "plants rights" blather is the usual troll, since animals slaughtered for food are fed plants, choosing a vegetarian diet ends up in fewer plant being killed.

I can understand the argument of killing being more wrong the higher up the evolutionary scale you go

I'm not sure I do; what does "higher up the evolutionary scale" mean? Are you suggesting that members of a species that emerged more recently is automatically entitled to greater ethical consideration? Or one with more complex genetic information?

Same argument goes for any fruit or vegetable. That pretty much puts eating meat and plants on even standing in my ethical book...Just try to do as little harm to the ecosystem and the individual life as you can.

If you saw eating meat and plants as ethically equivalent, and your goal was strictly to do as little harm to the ecosystem as possible, you'd hunt, kill, and eat the naked ape. They're overpopulated and a tremendous stress on the environment. So, I suppose you're a cannibal?

Re:Cue John Q Public

[RobertLTux]

Me im a meat eater in fact if i don't get a base level of meat i get very sick (not to mention most veggies tend to ferment in me and that cuases its own problems)

so any big party should have a salad bar (with carno sidebar) a NonKosher meat table a Kosher meat table drinks table (soft and hard) and a dessert/fruit table.

Bonus tip if you have grills try to have the meat grills DOWNWIND of the party (some vegans can start puking at the smell of meat cooking)

btw my take is any virus on MY FOOD should be deader than the Pharos

Re:Cue John Q Public

[tehcyder]

reducing the microbial load on fruits and vegatables, making them less likely to give you food poisoning

You must have really crappy produce in your country if it's likely you'll get food poisoning off fruit and veg. Don't you know how to turn on a tap and wash the stuff?

Opening doors.

[zyl0x]

Once this kind of technique prooves successful in real-world applications, maybe cancer-killing virus research will obtain more funding! As someone knowing people with so-far uncurable cancers, this makes me excited for the future of medicine.

Re:Opening doors.

[Tatarize]

We're geeks. Screw cancer. Acne is caused, in part by, P. acnes. While we are at it, tooth decay is cause primarily by Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus acidophilus. Lack of sex is called by Geekoccus maximus. Lets get some phages to eat this suckers.

Re:Opening doors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of sex is called by Geekoccus maximus.

We geeks don't need no sex. We have virtual reality sex

Re:Opening doors.

[ebuck]

Well, back in 1990's I was working on a "plan" to take a newly discovered cell cycle regulatory protein and pack it into a phage (virus) for targeted delivery to cancerous tissues. Let's just say that it was a lot harder than it sounds. I've heard that there were some mild successes, but I haven't heard of a complete viral cancer strategy. In a twist of fate, a few cancers are know well known to be caused by viruses.

As for the meat industry, I think this is a horrible idea. First, the United States doesn't do enough research to really know what's going on here. Back in the 90's there were fewer research scientits per capita in the U.S. than in most countries, and I doubt it's improved much. I would be shocked to know if there are any meat surface ecologists who have done research which might indicate that the absence of this bacteria allows slower growing, more deadly bacteria (which are unaffected by this virus, as viruses are typically very specific) to take foothold.

And yes, it (according to meat industry "scientists") is going to save the lives of 7.4 people per million. Honestly, I don't think that the 7.4 number should be taken too seriously. Such a small number is equal to 0.000000074% of the people who eat meat, yet we're going to apply the virus salve to 100% of the meat? Applying it to 50% of the meat will only change the ration by 50% leaving 0.0000000037% of the population affected.

In addition, it's not clear to me that the 7.4 per million died from eating bacteria infected meat. Such small numbers are very difficult to measure accurately, and there's no indication of the standard deviation or standard error. There's not even an indication of the sample size. If the sample size was in the 100's of thousands, a single mis-diagnosed person could provide nearly all of the "evidence".

This seems like a quick way to lengthen the shelf life of meat, not a life saving measure. Industry backed research always targets the bottom line, because that's where they justify their paychecks. How else do you think they had research findings that proved cigarette smoking wasn't the main cause of lung cancer all of these years?

I've heard about this before...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I dunno why she swallowed that fly, Perhaps she'll die. There was an old lady who swallowed a spider, That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly - Perhaps she'll die. There was an old lady who swallowed a bird; How absurd, to swallow a bird! She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly - Perhaps she'll die There was an old lady who swallowed a cat. Imagine that, she swallowed a cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ... She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly Perhaps she'll die There was an old lady who swallowed a dog. What a hog! To swallow a dog! She swallowed the dog to catch the cat... She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ... She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly Perhaps she'll die. There was an old lady who swallowed a goat. Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat! She swallowed the goat to catch the dog ... She swallowed the dog to catch the cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ... She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly Perhaps she'll die. There was an old lady who swallowed a cow. I don't know how she swallowed a cow! She swallowed the cow to catch the goat... She swallowed the goat to catch the dog... She swallowed the dog to catch the cat... She swallowed the cat to catch the bird ... She swallowed the bird to catch the spider That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. But I dunno why she swallowed that fly Perhaps she'll die. There was an old lady who swallowed a horse - She's dead, of course.

Re:I've heard about this before...

[Anonymous Coward]

If she'd have had a wafer thin mint she'd be fine.

Known versus unknown

[noidentity]

Yay, let's trade off a few hundred known deaths with the unknown health effects of this new virus. I suppose food labeling won't be required to show that this is added, because "we're sure there are no negative health effects and wouldn't want you, the idiot consumer (literally) deciding for yourself".

Re:Known versus unknown

[Kitten Killer]

unknown health effects of this new virus

Right, because the FDA doesn't do any type of testing at all before approving such things.
(I know, I'm probably feeding a troll, but how does a troll get modded insightful?)

Re:Known versus unknown

[MyNameIsFred]

... I suppose food labeling won't be required to show that this is added...

I have an issue with a kneejerk reaction to add labeling. Mainly, the vast majority of people don't read the labels. So adding a warning does little. Furthermore, its getting to the point that so many warnings are being put on consumer goodss, that the warnings get lost in a sea of noise. Take a simple electronic device such as a radio, it typically comes with a small booklet full of warnings. Honestly, when was the last time anyone on Slashdot read those warnings. To me, it is far more effective to insist that adequate testing is conducted to ensure that something is safe. Beyond that, adding another warning, to the long lists of warnings I see everyday, will accomplish nothing.

Re:Known versus unknown

[bjason82]

Yeah, I love how they're now modifying our food sources. I mean, its no secret they've been pumping beef with hormones and anti-biotics for some time now, but I have a real problem with them genetically modifying agricultural products that the public has no control over. It would be possible for some organization bent on reducing the world population to genetically modify our food sources so the population gradually dies off.

Now take a look at viruses...anyone who reads about the latest ideas in science will know that gene therapy researchers are looking at ways of using viruses to deliver genetic information. Therefore, dousing our food with viral agents can potentially allow for some very bad things to happen. I think most will agree, its better to remove the temptation or the ability to cause great harm to those who might do so by preventing the enabling condition in the first place.

It is important for the people of a free democratic society to keep those in-check who feel entitled to the power they have been granted. Unfortuantely, this day in age we have been so brainwashed and propagandized by the government-media complex (aka government & corporations) that we allow them do to whatever they want at our expense.

Distrust is your greatest ally.

Re:Known versus unknown

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because the FDA doesn't do any type of testing at all before approving such things.
(I know, I'm probably feeding a troll, but how does a troll get modded insightful?)

Because a moderator agreed with the OP's politics?

Re:Known versus unknown

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Right. Because we all know that the FDA has *never* approved anything that turned out to be harmful after all.

Just quit fucking with my food, because nature is "inconvenient" to deal with in maximising profits.

Re:Known versus unknown

[Punchcardz]

Anyone who reads about the latest ideas in science might also know that not all viruses are created equal when it comes to using them as a transfection vector.

Re:Known versus unknown

[ncc74656]

I know, I'm probably feeding a troll, but how does a troll get modded insightful?

You must be new here. :-| It happens all too often.

Re:Known versus unknown

[Kitten Killer]

Right, because the FDA is a giant industry+military+government complex out to drug all of you and turn you into mindless sheep so you can be controlled... Grass for dinner then?

Do you seriously think anything you eat is "natural"?

Selective breeding in crops and animals have been done for centries to maximise profits. That's not natural

Irrigating land that is normally not suitable for farming. That's not natural.

People just accept what they can understand, and reject anything that they don't comprehend.

Re:Known versus unknown

[noidentity]

Who cares if most people don't read the labels? The point of listing the contents is to allow those people that do read the labels to be informed, not to protect those who don't care. I read the labels of all foods I buy, and regularly pass over items that contain ingredients I don't want.

I don't carefully read the warnings on simple electronic devices because I know that there can't be any that I don't already know. There's nothing new under the sun when it comes to simple electronic devices (beyond cellphones perhaps). Food is a different matter.

To me, it is far more effective to insist that adequate testing is conducted to ensure that something is safe. Beyond that, adding another warning, to the long lists of warnings I see everyday, will accomplish nothing.

Labeling and warning always allows a careful person to make more informed decisions. Who determines what is adequate testing? What about bypassing of said testing by paying people off?

Re:Known versus unknown

[noidentity]

You know, people will read your post and write you off as paranoid and misinformed. My reply, so what? The point of labeling is to allow people like you to make a personal decision about what you consume, even if it's misinformed (but who is to determine what is "properly" informed?). The only reason for not labeling seems to be to have control, to take this choice away from someone (or at least make it harder to make an informed decision). So what if someone doesn't trust FDA testing? Why not give them the option of "needlessly" restricting what foods they eat?

Re:Known versus unknown

[RKBA]

"Selective breeding in crops and animals have been done for centries to maximise profits."

True, however it's rather difficult to selectively cross breed cows with spiders (ie; spider genes - as the Army is doing to produce silk cheaply for body armor), or to selectively cross breed Vegetables with scorpions (or scorpion genes); tomatoes with flounder genes; potatoes with jellyfish genes; etc, but it can be done relatively easily and quickly with genetic engineering techniques. Personally I want the freedom to choose what I swallow, sniff, and smoke without the governments "help."

''...this government, swollen and arrogant with pelf, goes butting into our business...It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars and how fast we can drive them, bosses us around about retirement, education, and what's on TV; counts our noses and asks fresh questions about who's still living at home and how many bathrooms we have; decides whether the door to our office or shop should have steps or a wheelchair ramp; decrees the sex and complexion of the people we hire there; lectures us on safe sex; dictates what we can sniff, smoke, and swallow; and waylays young men, ships them to distant places, and tells them to shoot people they don't even know.''
-- P.J.O'Rourke

Re:Known versus unknown

[k12linux]

Besides there doesn't have to be a paragraph or even a sentance like most warnings seem to be. Just some symbol that those who care would recognize and those who don't would ignore.

Re:Known versus unknown

[bjason82]

you guys are missing my point... I was merely trying to point out that there is a lot of potential to create great harm. If someone or some group, who is in the position to do so, decided they wanted to cause great harm to many people then they could. The possibilities are there, I'm just concerned who would sound the alarm if, say, the government decided to carry out a program of genocide? Its not like the US govt hasn't supported genocidal governments elsewhere in the world, so what would stop it from happening here? I dont think its possible to have a kind of moral separation on an issue like genocide. Meaning, you can't say that it would be okay to commit mass murder on the people of east timor, but not on americans...that logic doesn't follow.

Re:Known versus unknown

[Punchcardz]

So, I have to ask, what is your opinion on fluoride in the water, and how are your precious bodily fluids doing there?

Re:Known versus unknown

[bjason82]

My opinion on fluoride is that it's a poison.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

phages

[Luxifer]

This is very cool. I remember the Russians were working on killing bacterial infections in people (Tuberculosis, Leprosy, even Flesh eating disease) with Phages. That was in the 70s. It's about time someone came up with something successful.
    By the way these are completely harmless to humans, in fact to all plants and animals. The phage is a very simple virus with a small genome that gets injected into the bacterium and does the standard virus things (hijacks the host's systems to replicate itself a billion times). The cell explodes, releasing billions more phages. These phages have been our tools for a long time in biology, we use them to move genes around, for making libraries of genes, all sorts of neato stuff. There's little we don't know about them, so they're a good candidate for this task. There is no way these can make the leap from infecting bacteria to infecting higher organisms, any more than a plant could suddenly start walking around.
    I could think of a few things that are possible, for example if it mutated enough to find our host bacteria a good target then that might cause problems, but again, very doubtful.

Re:phages

[retro128]

It doesn't have to mutate to infect animal/plant cells to cause damage. There are many beneficial bacteria that lives in our bodies. What happens if the bacteriophages mutated to start killing off those? All sorts of intestinal problems can be caused by the destruction of the beneficial bacteria that live there. If that happened, how would you then kill the bacteriophage? Your immune system wouldn't respond to it because it's not attacking any of your cells. I'd sure like to hear what a microbiologist has to say about this scenario.

Don't get me wrong - in the age of antibiotic resistant bacteria, I think that bacteriophages are the next step to combat them. But putting them in the general food supply? For me, the jury's out on that one.

Re:phages

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you've never seen DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS...

Re:phages

[Anonymous Coward]

"any more than a plant could suddenly start walking around."

Remember the Triffids!

Re:phages

[Scarblac]

Uhm, bacteriophages are in the food supply. They're everywhere that bacteria are - that includes a lot of them living inside you.

I don't see a reason why this specific bacteriophage would be more likely to turn harmful than the ones already preying on the bacteria you need.

Re:phages

[HalAtWork]

First, thanks for trying to provide some information and reasoning. But I still have a few questions...

There is no way these can make the leap from infecting bacteria to infecting higher organisms, any more than a plant could suddenly start walking around.

Aren't there useful bacteria that we need? Also, will it be detrimental to any sort of "bacteria ecosystem" that we may need?

I could think of a few things that are possible, for example if it mutated enough to find our host bacteria a good target then that might cause problems, but again, very doubtful.

In the short term, in the long term, or at all?

Re:phages

[mapkinase]

Hello, friend. I, like yourself, do not believe in macroevolution, too. Wait a sec, you are talking about microevolution now.

Viruses have been used for medical purposes already. I do not know if TA mentiones it, but google up "gene therapy".

Re:phages

[retro128]

I mention it because these are engineered microoganisms. It's true that I'm a layman, and I know pretty much nothing about biology. I was just asking questions of people better equipped to understand the issues than myself. I was just wondering out loud if there could possibly be some unintended consequences though the widespread deployment of breeded viruses.

Re:phages

[Luxifer]

Yes, there are usefull bacteria we need but they are totally different species. The equivalent of the phage attacking them would be to have a lynx that lives off rabbits deciding to eat deer. Even if it made the switch, it wouldn't be very god at it and wouldn't make much of an effect on the ecosystem. In the end, that strain would die out because it would be less competative than the one that was eating the rabbits.
    Phages are _very_ specific and it's a huge thermodynamic deficit for them to switch species.

Short term, or long term. Certainly in the long term our gut bacteria have been in their ecosystem longer and would adapt far better than the phage. Predator-prey relationships always favour the prey. They have to, or the predator would starve to death after over-grazing.

Good questions, tho.

Re:phages

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for taking the time to reply :) I appreciate it since I was having trouble finding the info since I'm not technically inclined in that direction (biology)

truth in labelling

[aepervius]

Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling. It does not matter whether biotest found out that it is innocuous. It does not matter that FDA thinks genetically modified soja is ok for consumption, or hormone in beef, what matters is that *I* "the consumer" need to know to make a choice. Whether I inform myself to make a correct decision is my choice. But if you take out stuff from the label beause no consummer would buy it out of fear, then you REMOVE the choice, even if it is a dumb choice. And I as a consumer find it a really bad idea. Next you will claim putting a label with a list of ingredient with % is a dumb idea too.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. labelling is NEVER a bad idea. This is called being transparent...

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had to document every type of microbe that could potentially be in the stuff you are consuming then you would need a book with every bottle of water to list it all....

Re:truth in labelling

[FleaPlus]

Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling.

Should all products which use yeast include the label "Contains fungus"?

Re:truth in labelling

[Lord Kano]

If they had to document every type of microbe that could potentially be in the stuff you are consuming then you would need a book with every bottle of water to list it all....

How about just listing the ones that are intentionally added?

LK

Re:truth in labelling

[Luxifer]

Ok, lets give you truth in labelling: your tap water contains a hundred trillion of these phages in every glass, but most are specific for other species. While we're at it, about 4 pounds of your body weight is bacteria. That's about the mass of your brain.
    Do you think if we told the public that any given piece of meat has x billion bacteria on it that it would be useful information to them? Plants too, so none of that herbivore crap.
    How about this, your food is inspected and is maintained within the strict standards set by those in charge of your health. That is a good label that can go on all your food.
    Sodium and fat content are useful so you can set your diet. The food's safety shouldn't even be a question, so putting it on the package is pointless.
    Genetic modification has been going on for 10 thousand years by us and a few billion by nature. Unless you're one of those Intelligent Design whacks. If you are, I have one word for you:

Evolve.

Re:truth in labelling

[ctr2sprt]

Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling.

So am I, but truth doesn't imply completeness. The line needs to be drawn somewhere. That cow you want to eat may have ingested some kind of poison which suffused every cell of its body, and by eating it you could die. So it seems relevant, except that every slice of roast beef would have to include a 5000-page manual. At a certain point, we have to trust that the experts (that would be the FDA and other organizations) are, in fact, experts.

So considering that the overwhelming preponderance of scientific opinion on the matter is that these things are, in fact, perfectly safe (and safer than eating bacteria), it's perfectly rational and correct for the "default" case to be "virus included."

But not to worry. I'm sure someone is already out there forming a company to sell "Organic Lunchmeats" with all the original bacteria intact. With truth in labeling the virus-adding players won't be able to make the same claim, so you'll be able to tell the sides apart that way. Just like when you're buying pesticide-free food, non-GM food (in the US), rBGH-free dairy products, etc. Since you're probably the sort of person who buys all those things anyway, it will probably be more convenient for you too: just buy everything that says "Organic" or "All-Natural" on the label!

Re:truth in labelling

[LordSnooty]

No, because the very definition of yeast is that it's a fungus. Food, however, is not defined to be a virus.

Re:truth in labelling

[bcattwoo]

Should all products which use yeast include the label "Contains fungus"?

No, just "yeast" would suffice (and be more precise).

Re:truth in labelling

[Mozk]

Too bad I don't have any mod points or I would have modded that up.

Re:truth in labelling

[ultranova]

So am I, but truth doesn't imply completeness. The line needs to be drawn somewhere. That cow you want to eat may have ingested some kind of poison which suffused every cell of its body, and by eating it you could die. So it seems relevant, except that every slice of roast beef would have to include a 5000-page manual. At a certain point, we have to trust that the experts (that would be the FDA and other organizations) are, in fact, experts.

Do you truly have trouble understanding the difference between a substance that was deliberate inserted into the foodstuff and substance that got there by a freak accident and couldn't possibly be included in the list of ingredients since, after all, it's presence was an unforseen accident, or are you simply making a rather pathetic attempt at astroturfing for the meat industry that doesn't want people to be able to discriminate against whatever makes the industry more profits ?

And in the latter case, do you truly want to make your money this way, even when it leads to you, too, being unable to tell what you're actually eating ?

So considering that the overwhelming preponderance of scientific opinion on the matter is that these things are, in fact, perfectly safe (and safer than eating bacteria), it's perfectly rational and correct for the "default" case to be "virus included."

No, it is not. The natural and correct default is that the label includes any and all substances that went into the package. Leaving them out serves no purpose beyond making the people unable to make informed decisions. Which, of course, is exactly what the industry wants: anything that slows the bacterial growth in the meat allows them to be kept on the display longer and handled with lesser care, leading to greater profits. Your proposition is nothing more than an attempt to get around the "truth in advertising" by changing the meaning of "truth".

A lie of omission is still a lie. Selling someone a food that has been purposefully injected with bacteria-killing viruses and neglecting to mention this, when such injections aren't common knowledge, makes you a fraudster and deserves you a long visit in the local jail. Whether or not these viruses are actually good for the customer is completely irrelevant to the matter; that you took the choice out of his hands, and in fact made it so that he never even knew that there was any choice involved, is in itself wrong.

It is very tempting to take the choice out of people's hands "for their own good", but that's the exact same attitude that led to the Prohibition, Comics Code, content filtering in public libraries, dress codes in public schools, and Jack Thompson's crusade against games. It is wrong, it has always been wrong, and it will never stop being wrong, no matter how stupid you think the masses are being.

Re:truth in labelling

[hackwrench]

Great job of pulling numbers out of nowhere. Last I heard that bacteria weight thing it was 2 pounds, I believe, and I think it was on USA network or some such.

Re:truth in labelling

[Jugalator]

I got the impression he was talking about some demanding *warning* labels on it from mass hysteria.
But sure, putting a label with <insert virus name here> as part of the ingredient listing would only sound fair.

Re:truth in labelling

[noidentity]

Should all products which use yeast include the label "Contains fungus"?

Only if that can't be determined by reading the ingredients list. I'm assuming that the mention of "yeast" would allow an informed person to determine that it contains an organism classified as fungus.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because it already mentions "yeast" in the ingredients list. If, on the other hand, it said "Contains fungus" I would like to see a list of which fungi.

Re:truth in labelling

[Socks of Doom]

Why not? I for one know a person who is allergic to common yeast (Yes, she can't eat just about any sort of bread.) If it's a substance which someone can't obviously see that it has yeast in it, they should label it, if they don't already. Saves the consumer the side potential effects.

Though I think "contains fungus" is a bit too broad of a term to use in labelling. Athlete's foot and dandruff are fungi, too.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this:

Maybe this food should be labeled as having the innocuous virus, and the other food should be labeled as having the dangerous bacteria the virus kills.

Re:truth in labelling

[ctr2sprt]

or are you simply making a rather pathetic attempt at astroturfing for the meat industry that doesn't want people to be able to discriminate against whatever makes the industry more profits ?

Wow. I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee of the meat industry, or any other food-related industry. My sole association with them is eating some of their products. Seriously, tinfoil hat much? The mere fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't mean your opponent's taking bribes.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

I am for TRUTH in labelling.

Cool. Let us know when you and your fellow OCD hippie food cultists start walking around wearing "I am a jabbering, ranting Luddite ignoramus" tee shirts, so the rest of us can avoid sitting next to you on public transportation.

Re:truth in labelling

[ozbird]

Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling.

"Warning: Lark's Vomit!"

Personally, I think this is a dangerous precedent. Adding a 'phage is not a substitute for having proper food handling standards (and testing) to prevent Listeria contamination in the first place. Listeriosis may be unpleasant for those unfortunate enough to get it (a mere 7.4 people per million), but it acts as a red flag indicating there's a problem that needs to be fixed. Giving people a "magic spray" just encourages them to take shortcuts, leading to more outbreaks of other food contamination. (No doubt the FDA's "solution" is to add more 'phages - didn't they learn anything from the misuse of antibiotics?)

"Ulch - that meat was tainted! You feel deathly sick." - Nethack.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

are you simply making a rather pathetic attempt at astroturfing for the meat industry that doesn't want people to be able to discriminate against whatever makes the industry more profits ?

Tell me, does the "meat industry" hide under your bed? Are they beaming mind control rays into your brain that tell you to eat veal?

You're clinically insane, aren't you, son? Sorry, your psychosis doesn't get to make the rules for the rest of us.

Re:truth in labelling

[RexRhino]

Virtually all food has virus in it... so should all food carry a virus warning?

Re:truth in labelling

[Eli Gottlieb]

A side note: Has your friend tried eating matzah? It can replace actual bread for just about everything except toast.

Re:truth in labelling

[alienmole]

        How about this, your food is inspected and is maintained within the strict standards set by those in charge of your health. That is a good label that can go on all your food.

Faith in government - are you sure you're on the right web site?

The point is that governments screw up, and the other point is that spraying food with viruses is something new which hasn't previously been tested on food consumed by millions of people. The meat industry is also not the first industry I'd trust to be introducing such technology. You might be willing to be a gamma tester for the latest mass-scale experiment in biotechnology, but not everyone is quite as blindly trusting as you. Federal agencies, viruses, the meat industry, and a can't-pass-up opportunity to deploy shiny new biotechnology sound like a recipe for a few good movie plots, and if you think none of those plots could possibly come true, you don't pay attention to the news (FEMA? Iraq? Vioxx?)

Further, you talk about evolving, well guess what: our cautious nature is a big part of what has kept us as a species alive. You can maintain your faith in "those in charge of your health", but I'm in charge of my own health, thank you very much.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

The natural and correct default is that the label includes any and all substances that went into the package.

Does a potatoe have a label? Does an antelope have Nutrician Facts on it's side? Wild plants and animals were humans ORIGINAL food. THAT is the 'default'.

Re:truth in labelling

[alienmole]

At a certain point, we have to trust that the experts (that would be the FDA and other organizations) are, in fact, experts.

We trust that they're experts dealing with stuff that they've seen every day, and having learned from their mistakes. But when they do something new on a large scale, their expertise could very well count for little as factors outside their control affect things in unanticipated ways. Of course, any illness or death that results will help them to be better experts in future. But for those of us out in guinea-pig land, exercising some caution is not irrational. The interests and risk tradeoffs of the experts are not exactly the same as those for any individual consumer of virus-sprayed meat.

Re:truth in labelling

[ScrappyLaptop]

Next, you are going to say that using Carbon Monoxide to keep meat nice and bright red even if it stinks like road kill is a bad idea too. The FDA really is just looking out for YOUR best interests.

Re:truth in labelling

[Socks of Doom]

Yep - In fact that's what she replaces a 'normal' bread intake with. That, or tortillas.

Re:truth in labelling

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very tempting to take the choice out of people's hands "for their own good", but that's the exact same attitude that led to the Prohibition, Comics Code, content filtering in public libraries, dress codes in public schools, and Jack Thompson's crusade against games.

And Social Security.

Re:truth in labelling

[The Man]

Do you think if we told the public that any given piece of meat has x billion bacteria on it that it would be useful information to them? Plants too, so none of that herbivore crap.

It depends. If those bacteria, like most of those in the human body, are normal and naturally occurring, it's not useful information. They are, for all practical purposes, part of the meat (or plant product). You'd eat them if you went out into untouched forest, killed a healthy animal, and butchered it correctly and safely on the spot or in a cleanroom. However, if they've been intentionally added for some reason or other - to enhance flavour, to extend shelf life, to compensate for unsafe food handling practices, then yes, it is useful information. That's really what I'm looking for from the government - not regulation as to what can or cannot be done but truth in labeling, telling me in clear, simple, and precise terms what has been done to my food beyond the barest minimum necessary to prepare it for consumption (picking it out of the ground/off a tree, or basic butchering). It's then up to me to make informed choices about which practices and additives are acceptable to me, and buy accordingly.

For those who are trotting out the hybridisation/GM argument, this applies to your case, too: hybridisation can and does occur without human intervention. Direct manipulation of genes in a machine does not. Therefore the former is merely a case of human-directed food production (much like agriculture itself), while the latter is a clearly artificial practice. Does that mean it's unhealthy? It's certainly unhealthy for the market, but that says nothing about safety for human consumption. On the latter grounds, I'm not claiming that GM foods - or bacteriophages, either, for that matter - should be banned. But I do insist that I be allowed to make informed choices, and that means labeling. That the FDA has refused to require labeling for these practices is just another case of paternalism from this government; they either believe they are responsible for our safety or they simply don't care about it. In fact, I am solely responsible for my own safety, and my first step to protect it is to explicitly refuse to trust anything this government says or does.

Instead of trusting a government obviously in the back pocket of Big Agriculture, consider forming relationships with local farmers and butchers. They'll know, and probably tell you, where your food is coming from, how it was grown, and what's been done to it since then. It would be nice if the government would serve its sole regulatory purpose by improving the quality and availability of information in the marketplace, but since it doesn't, you'll have to fall back on simple old-fashioned trust formed in face to face interactions with the people you buy things from.

Re:truth in labelling

[canadian_right]

Consumers do not need to know.

Citizens need to know.

Re:truth in labelling

[modeless]

Labelling was a huge setback for food irradiation, though it can help prevent food poisoning. Maybe labelling is not a bad idea, but it puts the food industry at the whim of those knee-jerk fearmongering articles the media loves to spew on the most specious evidence. And as others have pointed out, labelling every single thing done to a product would require a book, which, aside from being impractical, would *discourage* reading of labels.

We must pick and choose which things are important enough to require labelling, and which are simply not relevant. And we should choose based on scientific evidence, not by the latest media fad scare.

Re:truth in labelling

[ultranova]

Does a potatoe have a label? Does an antelope have Nutrician Facts on it's side?

No, but a package containing them does.

Wild plants and animals were humans ORIGINAL food. THAT is the 'default'.

The default is that you kill or gather whatever it is you're eating with your very own hands, so you know exatly what it is. Since that is impractical in our society, we have invented labels to achieve the same end.

Re:truth in labelling

[ultranova]

It is very tempting to take the choice out of people's hands "for their own good", but that's the exact same attitude that led to the Prohibition, Comics Code, content filtering in public libraries, dress codes in public schools, and Jack Thompson's crusade against games.

And Social Security.

Hardly. The idea of social security is to give enough resources to survive to those unable to get them themselves. This does not take any choices out of their hands, even if there is conditions for getting the ss, since they can always choose to not take it.

Or were you referring to the fact that social security is funded through taxes, and taxation is not voluntary ? Well, guess what: there's a price for everything, including living in a society.

Re:truth in labelling

[ultranova]

Maybe this food should be labeled as having the innocuous virus, and the other food should be labeled as having the dangerous bacteria the virus kills.

"Warning: this food contains preservatives derived from genetically engineered bacteriophagic viruses".

"Warning: due to the lack of bacteriophagic preservatives in this food, it may contain potentially dangerous bacteria not found in food so preserved."

Warning labels for food with and without the virus preservatives.

Re:truth in labelling

[tehcyder]

about 4 pounds of your body weight is bacteria.

I don't even care if it is true, this is a brilliant fact to let drop into conversation.

How many bacteria make up the 4 pounds?

Re:truth in labelling

[LunaticTippy]

Here's an interesting page with links.

They give a range of 2-9 pounds, depending on which references are used.

you mean lysteria hysteria?

[Luxifer]

see subject.

haha... I kill me.

as if it were not enough to eat the innocently

[porky_pig_jr]

slauthtered cow, now we're adding innocently slaughtered bacteria to the whole meal.

Re:as if it were not enough to eat the innocently

[Anonymous Coward]

"innocently slaughtered" ?
i really picture it :

"Oops, killed another one ... NEXT !"

What happens..

[pickyouupatnine]

.. after you've eaten it? Does the virus then die off in your digestive track? How does it die - when it has run out of bacteria to consume??

Re:What happens..

[Kitten Killer]

It's likely only capable of infecting Listeria. Once inside your digestive tract, it'll get killed by stomach acids, digestive enzymes, etc. etc. Anything that gets into your system (i.e. outside the digestive tract) will be taken care of by your immune system and the rest goes into the toilet.

Re:What happens..

[kevstar31]

"Another problem with bacteriophages is that they are attacked by the body's immune system" From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

Re:Small quantities

[violent.ed]

I for one welcome our new bacteria killing, avalanche causing, virus overlords.

Secret Sauce

[Anonymous Coward]

A burger joint's "secret sauce" used to be (loosely) protected by trade secrets. In the future it'll be protected because a stretch of some virus' DNA is patented.

AKbar and Jeff's Weenie Barn's secret sauce feeds you twice! You get to eat the weenie, and then also reap the benefits of photosynthesis as the sauce's green viruses set up shop inside your skin!

To be overheard:

[cli_rules!]

Excuse me waiter, but - there's a virus in my spam.

The secret ingredient is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Viruses in our food? I think I can see the into the not-so-distant future...

FDA approves the sale of new Hormel vegetarian alternative food
Hormel will begin marketing it's unique new meat alternative this month under the name Soylent Green. "We've been pushing for FDA approval for some time, and we're happy we'll finally be able to offer such a wonderful product to our customers," said PR spokesperson Adele Wright.

When asked about the unusual color, Wright responded, "We were very inspired by Dr. Seuss, and saw the success that Heinz had with their green ketchup. Such a fun looking food will appeal to children, who are notoriously finicky eaters. Soylent Green offers all the benefits of a vegetarian diet, but without missing any of the flavor. Soylent Green has a distinct flavor that we think will be quite popular."

Imitators, however, do not have Hormel concerned. "We keep our secret recipe closely guarded," says Hormel CEO Dr. Hannibal Lector. "We don't anticipate anybody coming up with a knock-off product any time soon."

Most people, though, are probably only interested in the taste. The Star's very own food critic Ken Prescott offers his opinion: "Soylent Green is really just vegetarian spam: it has a funny color, and a taste like nothing else. A lot of people like Spam, and a lot of people hate it. Soylent Green is the same - how it tastes will vary from person to person."

Re:The secret ingredient is...

[Kitten Killer]

We already eat fungus. I am mean man made fungus, not just mushrooms. Quorn --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn

Re:The secret ingredient is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen any Quorn in the states

Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[SuperBanana]

The press coverage has been woefully bad with respect to explaining that these are not your average run-of-the-mill viruses, but rather are bacteriophages that can only infect bacteria. Expect some mild hysteria over this and some nuts demanding labelling.

I was expecting more of a "We can't label this, consumers would freak out if they knew!" reaction from businesses.

Exactly that argument was used to strike down requirements that "GM" (genetically modified) food be labelled. Businesses, with a straight face, told the government regulators that if they required labelling, consumers wouldn't buy their products. God forbid consumers be allowed to make a choice as to whether they want genetically modified foods or not...and if you're afraid they won't choose genetically modified foods- maybe you shouldn't make them.

Most people's fears come from the business world constantly (and consistently) putting profits ahead of public health. Industries whine about reglation, but they brought it upon themselves, as almost every piece of regulation on the books were brought about by someone doing something they shouldn't have- all because it made more profit.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Trepalium]

Most people's fears come from the business world constantly (and consistently) putting profits ahead of public health.

Except no one has provided any evidence whatsoever that genetically modified foods are less healthy. All you have is Greenpeace's paranoid ravings about frankenfood, and how it's "not natural". We do not require labels for hybridized foods, or any other type of food we might breed inside or outside of a laboratory, so why single out GM? Is it simply because people have watched far too many monster movies where an unwitting scientist unleashes a monster on the world?

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem, of course, is that the old food isn't labeled as to how it was modified. Essentially all grain products consumed in the industrialized world -- whether "genetically modified" or "organic" -- are made from hybrid grains that have ancestors that were deliberately exposed to artificial ionizing radiation in order to induce mutation.

So, if we really want to give consumers full information about how the genes got into their food, shouldn't we have equal-time labelling? We can have the "Uncontrollably Mutated with Artificial Radiation" and "Genetically Modified by a Controlled Process" sitting side-by-side, and then let the consumers make the choice.

The most effective way to tell a lie is to tell a selected half-truth. And that's what "Genetically Modified" labeling is.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[radtea]

Except no one has provided any evidence whatsoever that genetically modified foods are less healthy

This is not the issue.

The issue is: KNOWING WHAT WE ARE BUYING SO WE CAN MAKE INFORMED CHOICES.

That is all. That is the only issue. It is an issue of the freedom to choose, and the knowledge required to make that choice.

I want to know what agricultural practices I am supporting when I buy food. I have my reasons, and in a free country I should be allowed to act on those reasons. I neither know nor care what you, the FDA or Monsanto think of the issue.

Freedom means the freedom to do things that other people think are irrational and ill-advised, so long as doing so does not take away other's freedom.

If you can come up with a single argument as to why I should not be free to know what I am eating I'd like to see it.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Oligonicella]

So then, you are for labeling every hybrid? That's genetic modification. And, yes, it is a portion of the issue. Why the hell should I pay more for something because of your unfounded paranoia?

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[pipingguy]

Most people's fears come from the business world constantly (and consistently) putting profits ahead of public health

Just a question: do you have any examples of "the business world" not doing evil (besides Google, that is)? I'm pretty sure that there are more "good" business people than there are bad ones, we just hear about the bad ones much more often. On the other hand, exposure to spam does tend to jade the average person.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

To paraphrase Pratchett, you think that there are good and bad people in business. This is not the case. There are bad people, and there are worse people.

Good is a sort of idealism, and in general, it's very difficult to live up to a set of ideals. (Don't lie, don't cheat your customers, don't overwork your employees, etc., etc..) Most people are probably doing the best they can, given their situation. Only problem is, the worst tend to drag everyone else down; so to compete with the worst, a lot of people who would otherwise be quite benign turn quite 'bad'.

If I were feeling particularly cynical today, I would say that the people who generally make their way to the top are often the least qualified to be used as examples of moral or even effective leadership. And yet, they're often used as such. What kind of examples are they setting?

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Trillian_1138]

"Why the hell should I pay more for something because of your unfounded paranoia?"

Well, um, why would it cost more to label the food with what's in it? Or, in this case, say "Hybrid Animal" or whatnot? If that does, in fact, drive down sales and in turn drive up costs, tough shit. That's how the free market works - people do or do not buy a product and the product, in turn, is or is not successfull. The GP didn't even say it was a fear of eating hybridized or genetically modified food. It may be a moral or religious issue or it may be that the GP doesn't like the idea of tinkering with genetics because of issues with crossbreeding and because we've eaten unmodified food for thousands of years (if not more) and we're not quite sure what, if anything, GM-ed food does to us.

So I have to ask you - why the hell shouldn't I be told what I'm eating?
-Trillian

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Burz]

Few Studies On GM Food

GM crops created superweed, say scientists

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[driddle]

The issue is: KNOWING WHAT WE ARE BUYING SO WE CAN MAKE INFORMED CHOICES.

That is all. That is the only issue. It is an issue of the freedom to choose, and the knowledge required to make that choice.

How can someone that does not have a PhD in genetics possibly make a rational informed decision about this issue? Any education short of that will just lead to an emotional decision.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[radtea]

So then, you are for labeling every hybrid? That's genetic modification.

If you're going to pretend not to know what "GM" means, why stop at hybridization? Unless an animal or plant has been produced by cloning, all offspring are genetically modified relative to their progenitors. So why are you asking specifically about hybridization rather than simply about reproduction?

In any case, your question illustrates the force of my argument nicely, although it's disappointing you weren't able to apply it.

THE ONLY ISSUE IS THE CONSUMER'S FREEDOM TO MAKE AN INFORMED CHOICE AS TO WHAT THEY ARE EATING.

So, would labelling hybrids enhance that freedom? By your own admission, virtually everything we eat is a hybrid. Ergo, the additional information provided by labelling everything we eat as a hybrid is nil. You, I, and everyone else who cares about the issue already knows everything there is to know.

So labelling everything as a hybrid would not address the only issue.

I hope that clears this up for you.

I am still waiting for someone to produce an argument as to why I should not have the freedom to know what I am eating.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[dsanfte]

Forcing the labelling of things that have no bearing on the actual makeup of the food is asinine at best and punishes businesses for their particular means when the end is the same in all cases. None of these altered genes change the makeup of the food. Were you to do a spectrograph analysis of the food it would be identical to non-GM food of the same species.

We might as well force labelling of the ethnicity of the company owner on every product because it has just as much bearing on the food itself as these genes do, present or not. IE, none, zero.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[smoker2]

Except no one has provided any evidence whatsoever that genetically modified foods are less healthy. All you have is Greenpeace's paranoid ravings about frankenfood, and how it's "not natural".

My issue with GM is not that it is GM per se. Rather that Monsanto seeks to sell seed that will not produce any seed of its own.

That is evil.

Quite apart from them getting the farmers by the balls, they also get us by the balls. If due to some unforseen catastrophe we have to go back to survival basics, then sterile seeds will most likely finish off the human race.

Yes I know it's unlikely, but I don't like putting my head in a noose, especially for their profit.

Ever heard of the Titanic ?
"We don't need a full compliment of lifeboats, this ship is unsinkable !"

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[RobertLTux]

and ive heard that if the captain had either done nothing or gone backwards the titanic would have survived (would have sucked for some of the passengers but the ship would have made port) as it is he sideswipped the berg and ripped a gash in the boat (basically it was designed so that N compartments could be breached and Captian Moron caused N+O compartments to get breached)

personally i like my food to be as close to made meal sized (and cooked) as possible.

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[eloki]

So, would labelling hybrids enhance that freedom? By your own admission, virtually everything we eat is a hybrid. Ergo, the additional information provided by labelling everything we eat as a hybrid is nil. You, I, and everyone else who cares about the issue already knows everything there is to know.

I think this is where your argument falls flat. What if I want to know what breed specifically I'm eating; is this cut of meat from an Angus, Hereford, Charolais or Brahman? Isn't this information necessary for me to make an informed choice? Hybrid information isn't nil, because choice is more than just choice between GM beef and non-GM beef. Say for argument's sake that all beef had asbestos added, and was so labelled. Wouldn't that cause you to make the informed choice not to eat beef at all? You can't dismiss labelling of hybrids because not everyone knows that all beef is hybrids, just as not everyone knows that some food is GM.

Now, I'm not saying I think GM labelling is necessarily unreasonable. The point is that you are differentiating GM material from breed and many other factors - like feed, origin, housing practices etc. - which could conceivably be labelled but aren't required to be. Fair enough if you wish to draw the distinction, but I think you should explain why GM is genuinely required by consumers for an informed choice, but the others aren't.

PS. Hopefully you can reply without shouting. If you need emphasis then just use italics as is normal in English...

Re:Cue Bill Z. Businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

The producers of non-GE food have every right to voluntarily label their products as non-GE if they think it will attract consumers. Evidently they don't think it worth the cost of making the labels. (In anticipation of one particularly idiotic objection, labeling a product with lies is common fraud whether or not there's a law against leaving it unlabeled.)

Disclosure

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have an opinion on this one way or the other, but why do they need to leave consumers unaware of whether this is being used? Anything that goes into our food should be clearly labeled as being used in the process. I find it especially hypocritical since FDA claims there is no harm in this. If there is no harm, I see no reason not to specifically state what it is we are buying.

As it stands all this will do is drive more people with means to Whole Foods and the like, (and increase their share price in the process).

Incidentally, once FDA made it mandatory to label products with an amount of "transfat" contained in them, many common foods that used transfats have been reformulated not to do that. Trans-fats are brought into food from margarine/hydrogenated oil, and these are a known health hazard, of course. Interestingly, FDA guidelines leave a lot of wiggle room to manufacturers, allowing products with less then 0.5 gram of trans-far per serving to be labeled as trans-fat free. 0.5 gram of fat is quite a significant amount, especially since it is easy to go just under that by simply stating smaller "serving size". However, even under these half-honest guidelines of disclosure consumers have benefitted from better products. Disclosure is always good.

Re:Small quantities

[Captain Jack Taylor]

Thankfully I don't eat luncheon meats very often, maybe once or twice every five yeras. I for one will be fine. I'll also keep an eye out for what else this crap ends up in. :)

Re:Small quantities

[twitter]

But small quantities build up over time!

Yes, irritants cause cancer.

Don't worry. We can trust the people who brought us BSE, growth hormones, high fructose corn syrup and the current obesity epidemic can't we? Ronald loves you.

Actually it's more than just a virus...

[Assassin bug]

It's a bacteriophage. These things target specific bacteria and it is thought that it is very difficult for bacteria to develope resistance against them. So, they are a much better option and probably less environmentally sensitive that most general antibiotics (to which many bacteria have developed resistance). If you don't know what these phages are you should really visit the Wiki link above (they are really wicked looking and interesting).

Re:Small quantities

[Lord Kano]

You can't really blame big business for BSE.

LK

Sounds sane, but people will freak over it.

[TechGranny]

This sounds very sane and quite promising, but people will freak out over it because it sounds wierd. Maybe they could give the strains cartoon names and splashy little cartoon characters. They need a little ad campaign to educate folks. Seriously. People are programmed to think that all virii are bad.

I am all for more safety and better assurances on quality, but I wonder if the public will be able to understand it. From some of the comments here, I think a lot of folks will look at the phages in a strange way.

The thing is.. almost everything we touch is already freaking nasty, so we need some little guys on our side. I would eat a something treated with this without a doubt. Well without a second doubt. Its hard to overcome all the social programming about viruses, etc.. Truth is though a lot of them are beneficial. We just hardly ever hear about them.

Aren't preconceptions fun? :)

Re:Sounds sane, but people will freak over it.

[Quiet_Desperation]

so we need some little guys on our side

You know, I think you hit on the slogan they need to sell this to John Q. Stupid.

"These little guys are on *our* side!"

other effects

[Anonymous Coward]

While bacteriophages may not infect human cells, their presence might conceivably have other effects on humans. It might wind up being as dangerous as peanuts, for instance; most people can eat them with no problem, but one person in umpteen-thousand could experience anaphylaxis. I have no problem w/ requiring food with viral preservatives added be labeled as such.

Good joke but you give a better idea

[Khyber]

Do we have viruses that infect other viruses? I can see the potential to adding that to many foods to rid entire populations of HIV/AIDS.

Re:Good joke but you give a better idea

[Kitten Killer]

Viruses don't have cells. They're basically just genetic material in a protein shell that go off to reprogram other cells. It would be impossible to "infect" another virus.

There are ways other viruses can co-infect a cell and piggy-back onto another virus's replication cycle for it's own use, or even disrupt the other virus's replication because of it. Problem is HIV is a retrovirus, which also means it doesn't actively replicate all the time and can integrate into your own genes. That's why an infected person can survive for years with a very low HIV count and relatively symptom free until the viruses essential reactivates.

minor typo...

[Bazman]

It should be 'bacteria-killing virus'. A virus that kills bacteria. The hyphen is important, it differentiates between 'man-eating shark' and 'man eating shark'.

Probably the tenth time I've complained about grammar on slashdot :)

B

Re:minor typo...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Probably the tenth time I've complained about grammar on slashdot :)"

Poor in grammer, this sentence is.

+1 if you can tell us all why. ;p

Re:minor typo...

[roastedMnM]

If you note the ID number of gp, you will realize that if he/she has only had 10 grammar complaints then he/she has an incredibly high tolerance for loose grammar.

Might we say that the sentence is lacking a verb but communicates the meaning without confusion?

-roasted

Re:minor typo...

[Bazman]

I reckons a comment wot maybe a dozen people's gonna read dont need the grammar of a paid slashdot righter pennin edlines that miillions of geezers are gonna read.

If I were being really pedantic I'd have said the title would have benefited from a colon, to be "Viruses: the new condiment"...

Slashdot needs proper sub-editors. As does life in general.

like fluoridation in my water

[ssrs396]

I think consumers are less likely to understand bacteria-killing viruses than fluoridated water. Consumer rights groups will raise a stink, there will be an ineffective health benefits advertising campaign, and the concept will die for a while. It might work very well for protecting food supplies in 3rd world countries or in places where the disclosure laws are different.

Re:like fluoridation in my water

[b0s0z0ku]

I think consumers are less likely to understand bacteria-killing viruses than fluoridated water.

The viruses are probably safe. Agreed.

Fluoridated water isn't, because in higher dosages, fluorides actually have a weakening effect on bone/tooth strength. And dosage of water taken in isn't very well-controlled - some people might drink half a glass, others may drink eight or ten. Far better to supplement with fluoride supplements of some type or use topical dental fluoride if your MD or dentists seems it necessary.

-b.

Re:like fluoridation in my water

[1u3hr]

Fluoridated water isn't, because in higher dosages, fluorides actually have a weakening effect on bone/tooth strength.

In absurdly high doses. In high, but safe, doses, you get teeth mottling first.

Far better to supplement with fluoride supplements of some type or use topical dental fluoride if your MD or dentists seems it necessary.

Leave it up to supplements and dentists and those who need it most don't get it.

Re:like fluoridation in my water

[b0s0z0ku]

Leave it up to supplements and dentists and those who need it most don't get it.

Right. So you harm (and fluoridation is not as benign as you state) the many to save the ignorant few? Great.

BTW, this wouldn't be a problem if we had a nationalized health care system like most other developed countries - those who want to see a doctor or dentist would be able to for a nominal (or no) fee. Finance it with a graduated income tax and let the wealthy finance the poor.

-b.

Re:like fluoridation in my water

[1u3hr]

Right. So you harm...

Harm? I read a bunch of reports on this when it was proposed where I live. Basically, it's the "precious bodily fluids" people who oppose it. They talk about how corrosive fluorine is, and extreme megadoses. Most also seem to be Creationists.

to save the ignorant few?

Children can't self-medicate fluoride.

Re:like fluoridation in my water

[b0s0z0ku]

Children can't self-medicate fluoride.

If their dentist prescribes a rinse - sure they can. And with a decent nationalized healthcare system, any child should be able to see a doctor or dentist for a nominal or no fee. Besides, the advantages of fluoride have been proven to be mostly topical, so fluoridated toothpaste should work just as well as adulterated water. I wonder why no other industrialized country fluoridates as extensively as the US.

-b.

Re:like fluoridation in my water

[1u3hr]

If their dentist prescribes a rinse

Mine didn't, and I have a mouth full of fillings (partly) as a result. Lots of people never see a dentist unless they have a toothache; especially the poor.

Labelling? - Apparently not

[CCW]

I'm rather ticked off that once again (like with irradiated meat) the food industry thinks that consumers have no right to know what is in what they are eating. (and I think treating meat with radiation and bacteriophages is a good thing. I just think people have a right to know.)

The problem is the food industry and USDA wants the benefits of science without taking any responsibility for educating a population woefully ignorant about science.

The other side of it of course is that treating meat so it can sit on a shelf longer has no real benefit for the consumer (other than not getting sick from spoiled meat) - the meat packers benefit greatly with lower costs, but why shouldn't consumers get some of the benefit in the form of lower prices? Hiding whether it is treated is a way to capture all the benefit for the producers.

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[Kitten Killer]

I would argue that treating the meat so it can sit on the shelf longer also implies it can sit inside a consumer's fridge longer too. It also reduces waste in resources, so a good thing all around?

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[Kaenneth]

I'd say not getting sick from spoiled meat is a pretty good benifit...

Fewer sick days, more productive workers...

I'm sure the military will feed this to soldiers, so we'll see if it's the next agent orange/desert storm syndrome.

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[statusbar]

Yes, treating the meat may be beneficial. But it should not be illegal to state that the food is or is not processed in a specific way in order to allow the customer to make an informed decision.

The problem is that I believe that some food producers had put a label on their products stating that the food was not irradiated, and the FDA took them to court and told them that they were not allowed to say that - And the FDA won.

--jeffk++

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[Oligonicella]

I'm sorry, but please tell me the reason to have to print on a label that meat has gone through a microwave, passed under a IR lamp or been UV dosed? Got a good reason, or is it just simple paranoia?

"The other side of it of course is that treating meat so it can sit on a shelf longer has no real benefit for the consumer (other than not getting sick from spoiled meat)"

Well, yeah, other than that...

Actually, I jest. Another benefit is lower prices due to less spoilage. But your point was better.

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The problem is that I believe that some food producers had put a label on their products stating that the food was not irradiated, and the FDA took them to court and told them that they were not allowed to say that - And the FDA won.

I'd never heard of that, if that's true, that's pretty sad. I'm surprised that the FDA could legally deny that though, they seem to have an odd system of regulations that Congress has established. Products that are considered drugs must go through a rigorous system that proves it does work and establishes that it's reasonably safe to use. Products that are considered supplements (vitamins) don't have to be tested and the FDA can't touch them until there is proof that it hurts people.

Even stuff like that Vioxx case is absurd. If the NPR Science Friday program was right, the company promoted off-label prescriptions. Off-label prescriptions means that the drug was prescribed for situations for which the drug wasn't proven safe or effective. There were people that greatly benefited from using the drug and now they can't use it. My impression was that they would have taken the risks because the risks from NOT using it were actually greater. Now, because the company and physicians got out of hand, those people are now hurting.

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[CCW]

That's a reasonable argument. So there should be a big label on it right, "Now fresher longer, thanks to biotechnology!"

My point is that if the consumer isn't told WHICH meat is fresher in their fridge longer, then it isn't a benefit to them. The fact that the industry refuses to label means they don't believe it is a consumer benefit - ie. the extended shelf life will be used by them to ship meat farther, and not available to the end user.

Re:Labelling? - Apparently not

[JeremyALogan]

I wish they'd just start irradiating MORE stuff. I use to buy irradiated milk and it was great. It had a several month shelf life (before it was opened) and it lasted 2-3 times as long once it was opened. For someone who likes to have certain things around that they don't use muchof (like milk) it's a god-send. I wish I could still find that milk.

Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

remember the Russians were working on killing bacterial infections in people (Tuberculosis, Leprosy, even Flesh eating disease) with Phages. That was in the 70s.

In Soviet Russia, viruses kill bacteria!

Ok, ok, it needs some work.

Re:Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, doctor infects you!

viruses are not alive

[Luxifer]

Viruses don't carry out metabolism, they can't reproduce themselves (they rely on the host for that), they don't do any of the stuff that we use to define life. There is nothing to die off.

Why Now?

[fm6]

Bacteriophage has been known about for a long time — long before it was identified as viruses. There's a novel written in 1925 that has a doctor using bacteriophage to fight bubonic plague. So I have to wonder why it's taken this long to develop such an obvious application.

affect vs effect

[bar-agent]

Could these viruses effect the bacteria that exist in our digestive tracts?

You mean affect. The verb effect means "to bring about," which is opposite of what you want it to mean here.

Re:affect vs effect

[buswolley]

Thanks. I admit I get them confused.

Re:affect vs effect

[StikyPad]

Maybe he's missing his natural intestinal flora.

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

...concentrate on creating food products that aren't as succeptable to deadly bacteria, so you won't have to engineer viruses to combat them? A bunch of cold cuts laying in the Wal Mart deli don't seem very hygenic to begin with.

Re:Small quantities

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Yeah, other than that whole "feeding dead diseased animals to the livestock because it's cheaper" thing.

Re:Small quantities

[Kitten Killer]

Yes you can. BSE was transmitted in cattle by feeding cattle with dead cattle bits to save money and improve the cattle's nutrition.

The cattle were being fed bones and brains from other cattle, one or more of which was infected with BSE. The cattle who ate this got BSE. Some of these cows were infected and killed when they showed symptoms of BSE. The corpses were not suitable for human consumption, but got fed back to the cattle. (Think Soylant Green for Cows!)

They did it when they didn't know BSE was transmitted this way, but you can blame big business for BSE.

Re:Small quantities

[FooBarWidget]

Why can't the body remove those small quantities?

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you fire bomb the consumer rights group's offices. It's time to start fighting back against willful and extreme ignorance. We're sitting here dependent on foriegn oil because the IGNORANT FUCKHEADS won the nuclear power battle. Enough alreay. KILL STUPID PEOPLE!

Re:So what?

[soft_guy]

So every time I buy food I should have to test it to make sure someone didn't poison it with some new food "additive"?

condiments, hah

[SgtXaos]

I guess Heinz is gonna have to print new labels:

  "58" varieties

If the market is competitive

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Then one meat packer will think "Hey, my costs are lower now, I can offer the supermarket chains a discount and take business away from all the other meat packers".

The only objection to labeling that makes sense is that it's hard to know where to stop. Hormone treatments? Antibiotic treatments? Preservatives in the feed? Insects in the packing plant? Trace chemicals in the soil that grew the grass? We all like information, but if there's a health issue the answer isn't to label it but to ban it.

Re:If the market is competitive

[Anonymous Coward]

Every foreign protein, coming from a plant, animal, bacteria or virus, can trigger an immune response. If you happen to become allergic to some enzyme or structural protein of those virii, then you most certainly need to know which foods do or do not contain them.

You are all missing the point

[aepervius]

I am not speaking of giving a composition in the meaning of all fungus and bacteria which CONTAMINATED the product, but i am for labelling everything which was intentionally put in it. Hormon treatment for beef (yes in some country those are forbidden), genetically modified soja, phage on the meat. You are missing the point also about the phage being innocuous. Beef hormone and modified soja is also innocuous. Aspartame too. But this is about CHOICE and being able to make one or inform oneselves. If you do not know something was ADDED or MODIFIED in the prodct you buy... Well you have taken the choice from the people. You might as well give us feed bag with "trust us" written in big bold red lettering. PS: I understand very well those phage are innocuous. What i am reacting allergically is all mention of "won't be needed to be on the labbeling". Just like genetically modified food.

Re:You are all missing the point

[TIMxPx]

Aspartame is innocuous? There is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Plus it tastes like poo. Even if it didn't, though, some of us don't want to mess around with foodstuffs because we believe that the stuff God created for us to eat is better than the ideas we might have, and our ability to see consequences is limited. So yes, please label all foods according to what they are. That includes GMOs, which often are not labelled in the US. It's funny that the manufacturers go out of their way to tell us how they've added acidophilus to yogurt, because it's mostly viewed as a positive addition, but when they use less popular or disputed additives, they hide it in the list of ingredients. Why do I have to search through the ingredients in a bottle of orange pop to find out whether it contains caffeine? Because I and many other people would never buy it if were made known up front that it does.

Re:You are all missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't any real serious evidence about aspartame being bad for you. I love it when people spout off about how aspartame breaks down into formaldehyde and formic acid in the liver, and thus claim to be righteous and all knowing. What they seem to be forgetting is that many, many natural foods contain trace levels of methanol that breaks down into said products, as well as almost all alcohol beverages, which contain more than trace levels of methanol. The amounts of formaldehyde and formic acid formed from drinking a 2-liter of soda are much less than from a pint of beer.

Interestingly, many studies have shown the beneficial effects of alcoholic beverages (in moderation).

Re:You are all missing the point

[leenks]

I'm not aware of any foodstuff that "God" created for us.

Re:You are all missing the point

[ScrappyLaptop]

Aspartame gives me a can't-think-clearly, turn-out-all-the-lights, out-off-commission-for-12-hours, just-shoot-me migraine within 45 minutes of ingesting it. Within three minutes, my nose starts to tingle. There are a fairly good number of people that report the same thing, so perhaps Aspartame was not the greatest example. Or, perhaps it was...

Re:Small quantities

[Wilson_6500]

Small quantities _don't_ build up over time if the body can metabolize or excrete them. Metabolizing and excreting are two tasks that your body is remarkably good at performing. Then again, we don't really have a basis for judgment on that because we're not told what those residues might be.

Un-natural selection question

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't this just ultimately produce a virus-resistant listeria strain?

If the phages themselves are harmless

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

which there's every reason to believe, there could still be problems with a couple of systems-level effects.

They only kill one strain of bacteria. Will consumers (and meat packers!) get a false sense of security, get sloppy, and wind up with some different strain of bacteria poisoning the meat?

Treating huge amounts of meat with industrial quantities of phages will change the environment for the bacteria. The bacteria have a chance to change their genome every half hour. If they can evolve to be less vulnerable to phage infection then we'll be forcing them to do so. Then we wind up with spoiled meat again.

Irradiation seems better. It will rearrange some molecules, but less than cooking the meat in an oxygen atmosphere. Radiation will kill everything except that weird bacterium that lives in nuclear reactor cooling water.

Re:If the phages themselves are harmless

[hr raattgift]

They only kill one strain of bacteria. Will consumers (and meat packers!) get a false sense of security, get sloppy, and wind up with some different strain of bacteria poisoning the meat?

There are lots of bacteria happy to colonize meat. Most of the ones that cause human (or pet) diseases are readily controlled by careful packaging, storage, preparation/handling and cooking. Cook your food thoroughly and wash your hands carefully before eating, and you likely will never run into food poisoning by any of them.

Listeria monocytogenes is an exceptionally hardy bacterium for one that does not form spores. It will grow in packed refrigerated meats, for example. It will survive freezing, and can survive cooking. (It's also very tolerant of dessication.) It readily causes gastrointestinal troubles for healthy people, and can cause serious symptoms. Rarely, it will prove fatal.

You are right that L. mono. has plenty of opportunities to adapt to environmental pressures. Viral infection is one of these -- "that which L. mono. survives, makes it stronger". However, bacteriophages co-evolve with their target bacteria. Their replication and assembly mechanisms are error-prone, and typically billions of copies are made before the infected cell lyses. This leads to even greater opportunties for genetic changes than the bacteria have.

Most evolved mechanisms of resistance are energy intensive, so resistant organisms typically don't overwhelm unresistant organisms in the wild.

There is, however, a possibility of a locally resistant strain arising in e.g. a meat-packing plant making routine use of the bacteriophage spray.

This will typically be noticed through inspection. The approach to this situation is straightforward: find a virus that infects the new strain, and breed it (by letting the infection run its course through a culture of the new strain). "Finding" may involve simply looking around the meat packing plant, or more simply (and perhaps just as effectively), turning to ponds and soils wherein L. mono. is naturally found. Scooping up a bunch of the surrounding scum is liable to net some viruses which can infect the new strain.

Irradiation seems better. It will rearrange some molecules...

Phage treatments remain active for a longer duration than a flash irradiation, and do not change the nature of the food medium they are applied to. Gamma irradiation denatures food material as well as bacterial material.

Gamma irradiation does not worry me, but some people appreciate more conservative approaches to pathogen control.

Finally, given the differences in difficulty of preparation and delivery of the anti-listeria agents, phage treatments are almost certainly much less expensive than using ionizing radiation, especially factoring in the various regulatory realms involved.

But will it kill prions?

[Slur]

[ vegan police bulletin ]

Just to remind everyone, our ever-increasing orgy of animal slaughter wastes land through feed production, pollutes air and water, and brings much untold suffering to our fellow beings, who themselves are given no political voice. Only when the barbaric practice of factory farming is finally eradicated may we ever call ourselves compassionate as a society.

If you as an individual can reduce your dependency even a little on the products of animal exploitation and slavery, please do. Your every meal will become a testament to life and love, and you will be helping your health, your environment, your animal friends, and your sense of humor.

Meanwhile, be aware of the many threats to health directly caused by the breeding and use of animals.

Oprah: Now see, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me just ask you this right now Howard. How do you know the cows are ground up and fed back to the other cows?
Howard Lyman: Oh, I've seen it. These are U.S.D.A. statistics, they're not something we're making up.
Oprah: Now doesn't that concern you all a little bit, right here, hearing that?
Audience: Yeah!
Oprah: It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!
Audience: (Claps loudly and shouts) yeah! ...

Howard: Ask yourself the question. Today we could do exactly what the English did and cease feeding cows to cows. Why in the world are we not doing that? Why are we skating around this and continuing to do it when everybody sitting here knows that, that would be the safest thing to do, why is it, why is it? Because we have the greedy that are getting the ear of government instead of the needy and that's exactly why we're doing it.
Audience: (applause)
Oprah: We have a lot of questions about this Mad Cow Disease that we'd like to try to get resolved, because we don't want to just alarm you all, but I have to tell you, I'm thinking about the cattle being fed to the cattle and that's pretty upsetting to me...

[ kill no more ]

Re:But will it kill prions?

[Wilson_6500]

Explain, please, how you're going to "kill" a prion--which is just a protein--and, more importantly, what that has to do with our current discussion. We're discussing bacteriophages and the organisms they prey upon.

Also, on a related note, please stop trying to put your choices in my mouth, thank you.

Re:But will it kill prions?

[someone1234]

Umm yeah. Eating beans, corn and peas would cause increased flatulence (methane gases), which increases the greenhouse effect. STOP EATING PLANTS or the Earth will die.

Re:But will it kill prions?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no nutritional requirement for humans to eat anything more than [b]the diet their body was intended for[/b] - fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes and nuts. A healthy diet results in a healthier body and a healthier planet."

Then why do we have incisors & canines? To chew through jungle woman's forest? There is nothing more sickening than vegan propaganda. Makes me want to go eat a nice steak.

More Shit In The Meat

[frogstar_robot]

Meat packers are already sloppy with intestinal contents on the slaughtering and packing lines. I don't object to technology like this per se but the packers will use it as a way to be even looser and more disgusting with their production hygiene. We eat what they produce. The acceptable amount of shit on the meat whether treated or not should be ZERO.

But will it kill prions? (video)

[Slur]

Are Humans Natural Carnivores? by Dan Piraro.

Re:But will it kill prions? (video)

[Kitten Killer]

Yes, we are. We're omnivores. http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp -anat-1a.shtml

Re:But will it kill prions? (video)

[Oligonicella]

If by that question you mean "do humans naturally consume meat?" the answer is yes, just like every other ape on the planet.

Bacteriaphages are everywhere

[JumpSuit Boy]

I work at a school that has some people that have been doing phage research for a long time, not a long as the people in Georgia (as in Republic of) but a long time. One comment she made is that the quantity of different phages in a bucket of seawater would keep her busy counting them for the rest of her life. So do not worry, Unless you are boiling all your food and drink for 10 minutes and breathing though an deionizing airfilter you are sucking these thinks down left and right. The only issue and this is what the FDA was worried about is that when the phages rip the bacterial apart is there anything nasty in the waste product. There is not in this case.

It should be noted also that there is growning use of phages to treat antibiotic resistant staph infections that are otherwise incurable deadly. I get to see all sorts of nasty wounds on the posters I print for conferences. In the case case of the staph effecting phages there is some nastier waste products so it is generally just used externally.

A mixed blessing

[golodh]

From the article the idea is to cut down on illnes and deaths Listeriosis, particulerly in "primarily in pregnant women, newborns and adults with weakened immune systems" caused by a bacterium called "Listeria". These bacteria grows in e.g. meat and are readily killed by cooking, so Listeria only has a chance when meat is kept uncooked.

I consider this a very mixed blessing for the following reasons:

- it substitutes "spray and forget" for good hygiene and quality control for food. Bluntly speaking it provides meat vendors with more leeway to get away with poor quality control, poor hygiene and meat that's too old because it takes away some of the bacteria. Economic pressure being what it is, there will be vendors who will take advantage of this and who will then have a competitive advantage over vendors that *do* pay attention to proper hygiene and quality control

- it proposes to launch an enormously broad application of this bacterium-killing virus when only a select target group (mentioned in the article) needs it. When meat leftovers containing this virus are disposed of, they will spread this virus throughout compost heaps and perhaps even into sewage sludge, providing a great opportunity for billions of bacteria to encounter this virus in great dilution under a variety of conditions. Who is willing to bet that no bacteria will develop immunity? In this closely resembles the same irresponsible attitude that was a the bottom of the American habit to prescribe Penicillin indiscriminately for everything from coughs, colds, to sprained ankles. A habit that led directly to the emergence of the current nasty strains antibiotic-resistant bacteria (MRSA comes to mind).

- there are no safeguards against the emergence of a new strain of Listeria that might develop and that is resistant to this particular virus.

- bacteria live in an ecosystem with competitive pressures. If you remove one bacterium (Listeria) you create an open invitation for any bacterium that isn't targeted by this specific virus. What are the chances that we will be surprised by a newspaper article decrying the death of 100 elderly because they had (sprayed) luncheon meat in which very rare but virus-immune bacteria had developed (and had chance to develop because standards of hygiene went down and the meat was kept out of the fridge for say 24 hours)

In summary I am pessimistic about applying this virus on a grand scale:

- it's a sizeable intervention that isn't really needed, because with proper hygiene and fresh produce you will not have difficulties for ordinary healthy people, and those with a weakened immune system or special vulnerabilities can simply take special care.

- due to its intended broad and indiscriminate application, there are no safeguards whatsoever against this novel anti-bacterial weapon not being blunted by allowing billions of bacteria to encounter in in great dilution, develop immunity, and pass that immunity on to their colleagues (which is a known mechanism in bacteria).

- it only seems to benefit the producers of this virus by creating competitive pressures to use it if your competitor does so too (which is of course their good right, but not necessarily beneficial for society as a whole)

Re:A mixed blessing

[Wilson_6500]

Can a bacteria develop "immunity" to a bacteriophage on any reasonable timescale? One would think that the virus itself would continue to adapt to "try and keep up with" the changes in its host. Remember that we're not talking about a static drug molecule, here--these things can change.

Re:A mixed blessing

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. All potential problems with using a virus, whether real or imagined, possible or impossible aside, for customers all this means is that the meat you buy will be older and/or less hygenically handled.

Re:A mixed blessing

[hr raattgift]

Phages aren't genetically engineered (now). They are obtained from the same environment that the target bacterium inhabits. Viral infections are natural for bacteria like listeria. The method of preparing phage treatments is simple: find and take an infected population (from the wild, or from the meat packing plant) and mix it with an ordinary bacterial culture, let the viral infection run its course, then extract the viral particles. Breeding techniques and test automation can make the "find and take" process more efficient.

As other people have noted, viruses also adapt to selection pressures (and quickly, since the failure rate and scale of virion manufacture is large), so viruses are likely to catch up with any but the most dramatically runaway acquired immunity in its target population.

Introducing lots of listeriophages into the environment might make Listeria monocytogenes less common, or press it into virtual extinction? Oh noes! What a horror. We shouldn't make listeriosis (at least locally) extinct, because the mostly domesticated 37ish mammalian species (and 15ish birds) it infects, including humans, might undergo a population explosion?

I don't really see the downside other than fewer sick animals.

Unfortunately, the propagation mechanism is very local -- sprayed phages will get carried around by droplets and as dust. There are listeria reservoirs
in places far away and well isolated from western meat packing plants. Unlike the bacteria, the phages cannot replicate themselves -- they can only replicate in the presence of susceptible bacteria. If they're ingested by grazing animals or flying birds or the like, they probably will not survive passage through the digestive system, or attack by the animal's own immune system. Thus transportation to an area with as-yet-uninfected bacteria is unlikely. L. mono. is very hardy for a nonsporulating bacterium (that's why it's dangerous) is much more hardy than the several viruses that prey upon it.

What are the chances that we will be surprised by a newspaper article decrying the death of 100 elderly because they had (sprayed) luncheon meat in which very rare but virus-immune bacteria had developed (and had chance to develop because standards of hygiene went down and the meat was kept out of the fridge for say 24 hours)

Much less than the chance today of listeriosis acquired by refrigerated (or even frozen) and sealed packed meats that are well protected against e.g. E. coli and a range of other non-sporulating food-colonizing bacteria.

Leaving meat exposed outside of a fridge for 24h will also breed a range of moulds and bacteria, notably salmonella.

Bacteriophages aren't instant, so it's more useful to spray a solution on the meat at a packing plant, than on unwrapped meats.

(So it's still not a good idea to spray on an anti-listeria preparation and re-freeze or refrigerate unwrapped and left-out meats and the like.)

These bacteria grows in e.g. meat and are readily killed by cooking, so Listeria only has a chance when meat is kept uncooked.

those with a weakened immune system or special vulnerabilities can simply take special care

With listeria, it's not so simple: the bacterium also survives considerable heating (sometimes even cooking) and dessication, as well as being able to reproduce in fridge temperature ranges, and survive deep freezing.

Careful storage, cooking and preserving, in other words, can fail to eliminate listeria. Listeriosis produces a range of symptoms, some serious, and while fatalities are rare, you really wouldn't enjoy the gastrointestinal upset it produces in mild cases in an otherwise-healthy individual.

Other people and comments have addressed the co-evolution of phage and bacterium, compared with antibiotic resistance. However, bear in mind that methicillin (the M in MRSA) is

Hold on! Why should you need this?

[TheLink]

If you don't regularly get contaminated food you shouldn't have to use stuff like this at all.

If it is pretty rare that dangerous bacteria get into your food, why should it be good practice to have viruses added to certain "foods" 100% of the time? Think about it.

This is just like the other stupid idiocy (salmonella etc) which the food industry seems to get away with. Go read this: http://www.cspinet.org/reports/polt.html

Excerpt: "Despite increasing rates of food poisoning from Salmonella and Campylobacter during the 1980s, and continuing high levels today, the poultry industry has maintained processing practices that actually increase the percent of contaminated products. Instead of minimizing the contamination in processing plants, the poultry industry relies on consumers to cook the problem away."

The real problem is not bacteria in food. The real problem is the food industry treating food just like any other "fuel" - if it meets regulations XYZ then it's fit to be consumed. AND the FDA etc allowing them to do so.

With attitudes like that you get practices like feeding feathers to cows - which was stopped because, brilliantly, they feed leftover cows to chickens too, so with the BSE scare, the risk of leftover cows ending up being swept off the floor with the feathers and re-fed to cows was a bit too high to be politically/economically viable.

And then the USA complains when the Japanese refuse their beef or their rice or whatever.

This is just like going to a restaurant and getting crap served to you, but FDA approved crap, with FDA approved viruses squirted on it so that all the dangerous bacteria has been killed, following industry "best practices".

Even if it is legally edible and meets all the regulations, it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth one way or another.

Instead of debating whether the viruses are potentially harmful or not, we should consider whether what's happening in the food industry is harmful or not.

What next? You guys are going to continue eating such industrial output, like it and think it's "wonderful new technology", "Approved by the glorious FDA"? Now that's what I call disgusting. Believe me, what is disgusting is not the viruses or the bacteria, and I'm the sort who eats and likes all sorts of stuff (some of it apparently has appeared on Fear Factor).

Re:Hold on! Why should you need this?

[RexRhino]

You could increase "safety" of food in other ways (I put safety in quotes because contamination from food isn't a statisticly significant source of death in the industrialized world)... The trouble is that it costs a lot of money.

I mean there is all kinds of stuff that you could do to make food safer, if you want to make food 5 or 10 times more expensive. All the issues you are talking about would significantly increase the cost of food to address (if it was cheap to fix the problem, the companies would have fixed the problem). When danger from food is essentially nill, most people aren't going to be willing to pay astronomical prices for extra food "safety".

However, a product that costs virtually nothing that could make food safer is welcome.

Instead of debating whether the viruses are potentially harmful or not, we should consider whether what's happening in the food industry is harmful or not.

Why debate what is happening in the food industry? What concern is it to you? Healthy food has never been cheaper or easier to get. Unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables are universally available, and most supermarkets have an organic produce as well as organic packaged food. Specialty stores are opening up all over the place offering healthy foods (I have 5 "health food" stores in a 10 minute walk from my home... as well as a store that sells "humanely" raised and butchered meat fed organic feed). Food isn't some dismal one-sized-fits-all take-it-or-leave-it government run industry like education or health care (although I am sure Food Nazis like you would prefer it that way)... and the government isn't requiring that this product be used. So why would you be worried about it? Why do we need any debate whatsoever about this product? I am a vegetarian, and I never have any problem cooking meals without meat, so you shouldn't have any trouble whatsoever cooking meals without this additive.

It is authoritarian busy bodies like you who are the reason you can't get unpasturized cheese in the U.S. ... and Amish people go to prison when they sell whole unpasterized milk for $2 to undercover agents (Yes, thanks to people like you there is absurd things like Miami Vice style undercover agents going after unpasterized milk!!!). Can't you start some voluntary food dictatorship organization... where the organization can tell you what to eat and if you disobey you can self-flagellate or something? The only debate you should be worried about is debating how you are going to mind your own buisness and stay the hell out of other people's eating habits!

Re:Hold on! Why should you need this?

[TheLink]

quote: "The only debate you should be worried about is debating how you are going to mind your own buisness and stay the hell out of other people's eating habits"

And you call me a Food Nazi and authoritarian busy body from what I posted?

From what you and I say, you're probably far more a "Debate Nazi" than I'm a "Food Nazi".

Show me where I'm forcing people to not eat stuff or to eat stuff.

Hey I'm fine with the US people consuming crap. They are free to do that- it's a free country there I hear ;). If they all decide to eat rat poison, starting from the top, I'd recommend against it, but if they insist that's fine with me.

Keep in mind, it's the US that tends to force OTHER COUNTRIES to follow US regulations etc, whether we like it or not. So the laws and policies the US citizens condone, often end up affecting us. Some of it good, some of it bad. So it's often a good idea to try to influence things at the start given the US citizens are the sort of people who'd end up getting G W Bush _twice_ and Diebold election systems, believe that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and so many other US-isms.

Maybe it's not the food, it's the kool-aid in their drinking water...

Wait, let's look at this more carefully

[peterfa]

This is the FDA we're talking about here. The FDA approves a lot of foods and chemicals that are questionable. I may be reactionary in this, but I've got good reason.

First of all, there is hydrogenized oil. In our country we have such a high incindence of heart disease. Hydrogenized oil is a vegatable oil that has been put in a tank, and under high temperatures, had hydrogen bubbled through it. This changes the texture to mimic butter. Think Crisco shortening. This sounds great since it's cheaper and it's vegatable oil, but on the molecular scale, things are different. Vegatable oil is composed of unsaturated fatty acids. These acids are made up of stings of carbons and hydrogens, there is a peice added to the molecule that changes it from a string of carbons and hydrogens, but I forget what it's called (carboxal group?). Unsaturated means that there is a double bond between at least one pair of carbon atoms, and no hydrogen to go with that. Hydrogenizing adds the missing hydrogen, but this causes so much damage to the molecule. The importance of the unsaturated fatty acid is in it's electrical properties. The body can use it like an electromagnet. The force of electricity is quite strong. Hydrogenization damages the molecule and it can no longer be used. The danger lies in the fact that the body is unable to determain a good molecule from a bad one, since hydrogenization doesn't occure in nature. The body just goes along and tries to use it. The name of this molecular change is call transmrogification (sp?), hence "trans fats". Trans fats are known as a metabolic poison... it slows all the processes of the body. The FDA approves of this.

The FDA also approves of food coloring. Food coloring comes from petroleum. It also causes lots of problems for a lot of people. Try removing it from your diet, and and your children's, and see how that goes. The FDA approves of use of petroleum by-products in foods.

Now, this is going to gaurentee my troll -1 modding. There's always the wonder if I'm trolling, or I have a different opinion. As if the above didn't make people wonder in the first place if I'm just trolling. Dairy is not the super food they'd like you to believe. The FDA approved of dairy a long time ago because they found that if you feed rats dairy, they didn't die. In fact, this is how the approve most of their foods. The study they used to approve was performed by these dudes from the dairy industry, which makes it just absolutely doubtful that the study is legitimate. Dairy is said to have lots of calcium and vitamins. However, milk is a poor delivery of calcium. Despite the richness, the body cannot absorb calcium from milk. What's worse is that milk also stops the body from absorbing calcium from other sources. Milk is harsh on the digestive system. It strips the lining of the intesting, causing "leaky-gut syndrom," it causes heart-burn (don't drink any dairy, or consume products with whey, or caisin if you don't believe me, and see how you feel a week later), and a myriad of other problems. If you have health problems, you might be alergic to dairy.. try removing it from your diet, it might be the cause of it. After all these problems, the FDA still manages to advocate dairy consumption...

The point is that the FDA approves of things they really should not approve. When they say to me that this is good, I am not quick to believe them. Things looks really good when they give you the papers, but you wonder what they left out.

Re:Wait, let's look at this more carefully

[fracskul]

True about milk and milk products. I stopped drinking milk entirely and my digestion has been great in comparison to before. But our culture pushes milk on us every day.

On the subject: I disapprove of the lack of labeling requirements. As a health care professional, I view that as unethical.

I also agree with an earlier post, that this will make food and meat processing businesses sloppier and lax about safety, probably more than they already are.

Re:Wait, let's look at this more carefully

[Dahan]

lol whut

Someone needs to go back to Chem 201 (Organic Chem). Some biology wouldn't hurt either.

Stop regurgitating stuff you've heard about from crackpots and learn about it for yourself.

False sense of security

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this will give people a false sense of security about meat preparation. The fact that you've eliminated the threat posed by one type of dangerous bacteria doesn't mean raw ground beef is now as safe to eat as popcorn. There are hundreds of different bacteria, protists, and parasites which we still need to worry about. Proper refrigeration and adequate cooking are still a necessity.

This is the same FDA

[rsilvergun]

that cherry picked US canned tuna for it's studies to show low mercury levels, so I'm a little worried about this. The sheer number of known carcinogens in the American diet worries me. Aspertame, Sodium Nitrate, Potasium Bromate; the list goes on and on. The argument is always either a) you're not getting enough to harm you or b) it's all naturally occuring anyway. Neither idea takes into account that a) if you eat a lot of prepared foods (like most poor Americans) you get way more than most studies allow and b) is it really a good idea to add more of a naturally occuring carcinogen to a diet? Wouldn't that raise your intake above natural limits? I've been gradually trying to clean up my diet, but it's hard. Real hard. Try to buy bread without High Fructose Corn Syrup or Hydrongenated Vegetable oil for less than $4 dollars/loaf, for example. Cheap lunch meats all have Sodium Nitrate, cheap flavoring agents Potasium Bromate, cheap fish is high in Mercury. Fresh vegetables, chicken and ocean fish are _not_ cheap when eaten as much as the fda recommends. At .50 cents a serving, 6 searvings a day 30 days a month that's $180 dollars a month just on vegetables. The average American only gets $100 /month for his food budget in most families (average grocery bill for a family of 4 if $400/month). You can't really live off bread anymore either, over farming has taken a lot of the necessary nutrients out of the soil and then the wheat that made that possible. All and all, I'm appalled and frightened by my food supply, and things like this aren't encouraging.

Re:This is the same FDA

[Anonymous Coward]

I cut high fructose corn syrup out of my diet several months ago and immediately started losing weight. A pleasant side effect of removing HFCS from my diet is that HFCS is so common in American food that avoiding it also avoids many other chemicals that I prefer not to consume. My monthly food cost rose only slightly, because I do virtually all of my food shopping at Trader Joe's (http://traderjoes.com/). My reaction to natural food stores has always been that they are intriguing, but too expensive. Trader Joe's is a national chain, so their prices are rarely more than 10-20% more than supermarket prices, and in most cases, are within a few cents of the supermarket prices.

Re:This is the same FDA

[k98sven]

..that cherry picked US canned tuna for it's studies to show low mercury levels, so I'm a little worried about this.

Uh, right. So since there's been more than one case of Police corruption, I better be worried whenever they arrest someone.

The sheer number of known carcinogens in the American diet worries me. Aspertame, Sodium Nitrate, Potasium Bromate; the list goes on and on.

Aspartame and Potassium bromate haven't been conclusively shown to be carcinogens. In particular the evidence for aspartame is quite dubious. Meaning that even if these substances are carcinogens, the risk is very, very, low. The laws of statistics dictate that: The lower the risk the harder it is to detect.

Sodium nitrate (and nitrite) are out of the FDA's juristdiction since they were grandfathered in in 1958 when the FDA took over the food-additive approval business from the Dept of Agriculture. The EU has stricter regulations on it, but nevertheless permits it because the cancer risks of it widely outweigh the food poisoning risks it prevents.

The argument is always either a) you're not getting enough to harm you

That's because that happens to be the case. (More on that later)

or b) it's all naturally occuring anyway.

That's ridiculous. Nobody makes that argument. Most of the most carcinogenic substances around are naturally occuring in one way or another.

Neither idea takes into account that a) if you eat a lot of prepared foods (like most poor Americans) you get way more than most studies allow

Blatantly false. Most (all, in the FDA context) carcinogenity studies involve amounts of the substance which are far beyond what any human would normally recieve. To take an example, The Economist did the math over Sudan-1 recall of Worcestershire sauce last year, arriving at the tidy figure of a human having to consume 800 liters of the stuff per day for 2 years to reproduce the effects on the mice in the study (in which none of the mice didn't actually develop cancer). Nevertheless the recall happened, and Sudan I is indeed banned.

b) is it really a good idea to add more of a naturally occuring carcinogen to a diet?

Of course not. Which is why carcinogens are not permitted in food except for in very few cases. The substances you describe are simply not known for certain if they cause cancer. And if they do, yes, then the risk is truely negligable. Except sodium/potassium nitrate/nitrite, which is known to cause cancer for sure. However, the risk of cancer there far outweighs the health risks of food poisoning. Botulism kills quite a lot of people, and would certainly kill a lot more if nitrites weren't used.

Wouldn't that raise your intake above natural limits?

There's no such thing as "natural limits". You don't reach some point where your body says "that's it!" and goes off and develops cancer. Cancer is natural. It occurs in your body many times each day. Most of the time it gets taken care of by your immune system. You get cancer from the air. From sunlight. From the food you eat. From the natural background radiation. From cosmic radiation. From the natural biological processes in your body. Yes, your body produces huge amounts of carcinogens.

All that exists is a risk you'll develop a cancer your body can't take care of. You can try to lower that risk, but if you're going to do so, you better have a sense of proportion with you. There are a large number of environmental factors which are hugely more important that any food additives. Americans first and foremost need to smoke less. They need to exersize more. (This is good for a lot of other things than just cancer prevention). They need to eat less food in general. They need to avoid polluted air. They need to wear proper sun protection. They need to stop eating fried foods. They need to stop drinking coffee.

Try to buy

Re:This is the same FDA

[zenhkim]

> All and all, I'm appalled and frightened by my food supply, and things like this aren't encouraging.

I hear you, buddy, and you aren't the only one. Years ago I discovered to my surprise that several of my fellow college students were vegetarians when they invited me to "do lunch" with them one day at their favorite restaurant -- a Vietnamese vegan establishment that specialized in imitation meat dishes that looked, smelled, and tasted incredibly like the real thing. The experience got me interested in adopting a vegetarian diet as well, so I decided to research the whole vegetarian thing.

Several books and a shitload of websites later I was in shock. They put WHAT in our meats? There's WHAT in our fish and seafood?? There's HOW MANY deaths attributed to bad meat every year??? WTF?!?!? The question in my mind was no longer whether I should go vegetarian, it was why the fuck isn't *everyone* going vegetarian?

Two books in particular had an enormous effect on me -- "The Vegetarian Handbook" by Gary Null, and "Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat!" by Howard Lyman:

http://www.powerbooksearch.com/booksearch031214441 5.html
http://www.madcowboy.com/01_BookOV.000.html

Re:This is the same FDA

[rsilvergun]

Wow, nice post. I'm far too lazy to refute everything, and there's a few things I probably can't refute. But a few stike me as worthwhile. One is why ocean fish has less mercury than farm fish. Mercury in our fish comes from industrial run off, mostly mining (there's a really cheap way to mine gold that uses mercury, for instance). It gets in the air, and settles in the water, where it winds up in fish. Fish farms' lakes are open to the air (at least, all the fish farms I've seen are). Ocean fish are far enough out and away from mining opperations they get less mercury.

Sodium Nitrate isn't in your food to prevent Botulism, it's there to keep the meat nice and pink. The botulism is a nice side effect, but there are other ways to achieve that. They just don't keep the meat the right color for it's 3 months shelf life.

Moreover, if these food additives and what not are causing cancer to some degree, how do you explain the low cancer rates in Asian countries where they smoke like chimneys? And yeah, you'd never drink that much Worcestershire sauce, but what happens if you're getting the stuff from seven or 8 other things you eat?

Expensive doesn't mean better. I'm poor, and with the economy tanking I don't see that changing much. I need cheap. And yes, I did run off on a tangent about HFCS and Hydronenated Oils. :). 4

Oh, here's an article on the study showing higher mercury levels in imported tuna. If you search a little more you'll find the full studio, which points out that when the fda did it's testing it used tuna canned in the US. Naturally, the US, with it's more stringent industrial regulations, has less mercury in it's fish.

Mutation?

[pallmall1]

viruses are often host specific. They have to attach to specific receptors to enter the cell.

What about mutations in the virus?

Does this mean....?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is the start of a general trend, will it mean that food companies need to put less salt in their products in future? If so, presumably it will have further positive health benefits.

Oops

[pallmall1]

Sorry for the redundant post above. The question's already been adressed further down.

You assume small quantities get ingested

[rsilvergun]

so you start your day, and you're poor. You eat 4 sasuage links with your eggs. You snack on a burrito before lunch and have cold cuts for lunch. For dinner you hit Micky D's. You've had 4 heapin' helpings of bacteria. Now lather, rinse and repeat. The FDA assumes you're not eating this stuff _every_single_day_. But for a lot of poor people, they are. They don't have time, or money, for the fresh fruit and vegetables studies assume they'll eat. So they're getting way more of this crap than they should.

I dont like this

[future assassin]

and will not eat any food that is spreayed with this. I guess no one cares that our bodies or our kids bodies will be way more suseptible to bacterial attacks since they wont be in contact with these microbes anymore and build up our imune system.

Re:I dont like this

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you missed the part in the article where they said: "Consumers won't be aware that meat and poultry products have been treated with the spray, Zajac added. The Department of Agriculture will regulate the actual use of the product."

Rightfully so, Europe could deny these things...

[thrill12]

Moderators, before reading this post or even comprehensing its contents, mark me FLAMEBAIT please and get off with it.

For the interested parties, read on...

What is it nowadays (..) in the US that makes food-safety a non-issue with regards to new technologies ? Often Europe is being seen as "the old world", where we boycot a lot of products from countries 'without reason'. Europe is 'old-fashioned', 'isolates' itself, is perhaps even 'afraid to try new things'. I wonder if this is true and whether we didn't learn anything from our mistakes.

There was a time when heroin was made into a medicine by a medical company in Europe. And there was a time when asbestos was used as a flame retardant, only to be discovered by the US none the less that it was in fact sickening.

It seems that we live in a brave new world now, in which these things are no longer deemed as important. We are back 100 years again, and this new technology (bio-engineering) has taken hold of us. When we finally get bitten by it, and I feel that on the current way there is no escaping this - independent of the above article which could indeed prove to be quite harmless as said..- will we open our eyes again ?

Maybe Europe is old-fashioned, and we should experiment with ourselves more often. Who knows what good it will bring.

Europe is probably too narrow-minded, and boycotting products will only delay the inevitable.
But still, I wonder what will happen if any of these brave new products does turn out to be "faulty". Will it backlash and totally invert current stance towards bio-engineering, negating all the hard and good work that HAS been done in this field - for which there is no denying ?

Perhaps, for the sake of the field of bio-engineering, we should guide the technology along better - give it time to grow up like any living thing in its earliest stage of life. And when we have guided it along, we - Europe - will come to find that it is indeed a brave new world, a world which we should embrace.

Can bacteria develop immunity to a virus

[golodh]

Yes, I'm afraid that bacteria can develop resistance to bacteriphages. See e.g. http://www.phages.org/PhageInfo.html

The authors of that webpage note that development of resistance can be countered by changing the phages. This means that whoever produces that Listeria killer would have to keep changing it.

It also states that bacteriophages are extremely bacterium-specific. Therefore I conjecture that we may see a mutant strain, or possibly another bacteria altogether, profit from the ecological niche created by the absence of Listeria and the (I feel) to-be-expected drop in hygienic standards and quaity control.

For a description of how bacteria swap genetic material, see: http://www.slic2.wsu.edu:82/hurlbert/micro101/page s/Chap9.html

Re:Small quantities

[Anonymous Coward]

/me whacks captain jack upside the head with a salami. shut the hell up.

Obligatory Homer Simpson quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mmmmmm, viruses..."

Toxic residues?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is wether or not the process of CREATING the virus is safe. Do the inventors of this techinque eat ready made meats?

Re:Small quantities

[Anonymous Coward]

... in bed!

It's not nice to fool mother nature

[ColdWetDog]

The middle case is: the virus ends up in our intestines, gets hungry when it runs out of listeria

And nature just hates it when you anthropomorphize.

And bacteriophages don't go "hungry". They are very simple little critters. If they find the correct host, they attach to it, inject thier DNA and go promptly about making more of themselves. The host bacterium then ruptures, spilling out the viral particles and so it goes.

If there are no more of the specific host (Listeria monocytogenes, which is NOT found in healthy humans), they remain inactive viral particles and just hang around until they are destroyed or manage to find another host.

If you swallowed a bunch of these things, your stomach would likely digest them into component pieces parts (I suppose I could look up the acid sensitivity to these phages, but I'm not going to do so). So by the time they get to your colon where large numbers of bacteria wander about (but remember, NOT Listeria) they would be few and far between.

As for a bacteriophage infecting a eukaryotic cell (even then meanest and newest of slashdotters has made it beyond the single cell limit), there are quite a lot of other things that you should be worrying about first: Near Earth Asteriods, Elvis returning, George Bush staying on. Those sorts of things.

Re:It's not nice to fool mother nature

[johnkzin]

Yeah, I wasn't thinking that it would find listeria in my intestines, I was thinking that it might find the various bacteria that ARE in our intestines and attack those. But, if you're saying it would get digested long before it got that far into my intestines, then that's good news.

(and, I definitely wasn't suggesting it would attack our actual cells)

Thanks for the information. (see, like I said: put out worst case thoughts, let someone who knows more about it refute them)

In other news...

[ChePibe]

Deaths resulting from the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria shot up dramatically among Mac users, as they are immune to viruses.

Microsoft Chairman, Steve Ballmer, was quoted as saying: "these deaths were inevitable. It was only a matter of time until a GOOD virus came around to help everyone. By keeping ourselves open to the possibilities the world and the market, all of our users will now be immune to this terrible bacteria. This has been a part of our business plan all along. Oh, and iPod users are vulnerable, too! THIS is the iPod killer!"

Following this remark, Ballmer screamed something intelligable (believed to be the word "developers") and threw a piece of furniture at the journalist filing this report. No source exists to confirm Mr. Ballmer's claims regarding Apple's iPod.

Steve Jobs, presently in iCare - Cupertino's intensive care ward - was unavailable for comment.

(and yes, I'm a Mac user...)

Re:Small quantities

[RexRhino]

No, small quantities don't build up over time... this isn't a heavy metal like arsenic!

Bacteriophage, it's what's for dinner!

[Ranger]

As we age our brains may ossify and turn us all into natural luddites. But, it seems that a "hi-tech" solution to another "hi-tech" solution is a problem. We need to step back and look at how this bacterial problem occurred in the first place. Say hello to the high density feedlot where cows live in great metal buildings standing around in their own filth being fed unnatural foods and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. Antibiotics? The overuse of antibiotics has created superstrains of bacteria. And it is those stronger strains that are showing up in our meat supply.

The practical solution is simple. Grass finished beef. Corn fed isn't natural or healthy. Let the steers eat grass for their last two weeks before slaughter. They can still do the dense feedlots, CAFO's but most of the problems caused by CAFO's are mitigated by grass finishing diet. But they determined it wouldn't be cost effective so they pass the real cost onto the consumer to make sure their meat is properly handled and cooked and the medical costs associated with tainted meat. Oh well.

The real solution is free range grass fed beef. Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and check out Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms. After reading about CAFO's, I can see why some people become vegans and vegetarians, but I won't stop eating meat. I'll just eat meat that is safer and healthier for me.

Re:Rightfully so, Europe could deny these things..

[Toreo asesino]

Are we so Backwards in Europe? Now there's a thought

Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the best way is to eat some yogurt an hour after each dose. Keeps your intestinal normal flaura levels up the whole treatment.

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I call bullshit. First, who's done the study, and second, justify why it's an hour and not 61 minutes or 59 minutes. I think it's arbitrary crap someone made up to sell some yogurt or dietary suppliment. Just eat yogurt and don't worry about timing it. I doubt your rectum even notices.

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Anonymous Coward]

Rectum is a funny way of refferring to your poophole

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Arivia]

I don't know what YOU'RE taking, but MY antibiotics have a giant warning label saying "DO NOT DRINK/EAT DAIRY PRODUCTS FOR TWO HOURS BEFORE/AFTER DOSE". That might be why it's an hour --- because the pharmacists and doctors that actually know something say that's right to avoid problems with the antibiotics, as opposed to random Slashbot.

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That's something completely different, and if you could read you would know it. I'm talking about replentishing normal intestinal fauna, and you're talking about digesting dairy products.

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Sj0]

...Because Yogurt is a vegitable!

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Yogurt is millions and millions of tiny little animals, and it give me great pleasure to crush them and feast on their bowels and blood which spill out of their tiny ruptured bodies. Delicious.

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[hr raattgift]

Yoghurt isn't animals (the active ingredients are bacteria in the Lactobacillus genus, mainly L. acidophilus and L. bifidus.

These bacteria, like all others, are unicellular organisms, and so lack bowels (teeming with lots of cells of all sorts within and surrounded by lots of other cells belonging to the animal itself) and blood (teeming with lots of cells belonging to the animal).

On the other hand, there are cognates... in Lactobacilli there are a number of vesicles and nutrient storage structures that might do as a sort of bowel kinda, and there is of course a cytosol, which is sorta like the non-cellular part of animal blood.

Sadly, it is not the crushing (with your teeth, presumably) which will let you spill out their bowels (chewing hard on yoghurt likely won't harm a single bacterium out of the billions in each spoonful), but rather acids and enzymes found much further down your digestive system. Most of them, in fact, will be found in your bowels (and descending colon), and won't really be produced by you per se, but rather by the other microorganisms dwelling there.

L. acidophilus actually mostly helps you spill open much less friendly bacteria so that you can feast upon their "bowels" and "blood".

Eat more yoghurt! They are your proxy teeth!

Re:Yogurt one hour after every antibiotic dose

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I think you must be mistaken. Yogurt is tiny animals, and I can hear them screaming as I crush their delicious bodies in my teeth. I think your theories about yogurts lacking bowels and blood are amusing, but I refuse to let you spoil my enjoyment of killing my breakfast with such fictions.

in other news...

[someone1234]

Plants in the laboratory developed legs and arms and broke the phage vats. There is no immediate danger, but the nearby cities were evacuated. The army is prepared to spread the area with napalm.

Grammar Nazi

[dulridge]

Not correct.

Read your usage guides.

Effect and affect are interchangeable in mosdt circumstances when used as a varb. As a noun it is different however...

Personally, I'd use effect too - "affect" to me implies mood.

So there ;-)

Re:Grammar Nazi

[Ruff_ilb]

First of all, I hope to GOD you're being sarcastic.

If you're not, however, I'd like to point out that the GPP is, indeed, correct.

From Dictionary.com

Effect
tr.v. effected, effecting, effects

      1. To bring into existence.
      2. To produce as a result.
      3. To bring about. See Usage Note at affect1.

(e.g. "The Senator was afraid that the new policy would effect higher oil prices.")

Also, effect is often seen as a noun, meaning (among other things) a result. For example: "The Senator was afraid that the new policy would have detrimental effects on the oil industry."

On the other hand:

Affect
tr.v. affected, affecting, affects

      1. To have an influence on or effect a change in: Inflation affects the buying power of the dollar.
      2. To act on the emotions of; touch or move.
      3. To attack or infect, as a disease: Rheumatic fever can affect the heart.

(e.g. "The Senator was afraid that the new policy would adversely affect the oil prices, dragging them higher.")

Affect is rarely used as a noun, although it is much more commonly seen as a verb. Affect as a verb: "The man had a strange brand of body language that lent him an odd affect."

If you don't believe me:

Usage note from dictionary.com:

"Usage Note: Affect and effect have no senses in common. As a verb affect is most commonly used in the sense of "to influence" (how smoking affects health). Effect means "to bring about or execute": layoffs designed to effect savings. Thus the sentence These measures may affect savings could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas These measures may effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about."

Usage note from wikipedia.com:

"Do not confuse affect with effect. The former is used to convey the influence over existing ideas, emotions and entities; the latter indicates the manifestation of new or original ideas or entities. For example, "...new governing coalitions during these realigning periods have EFFECTED major changes in governmental institutions" indicates that major changes were made as a result of new governing coalitions, while "...new governing coalitions during these realigning periods have AFFECTED major changes in governmental institutions" indicates that before new governing coalitions, major changes were in place, and that the new governing coalitions had some influence over these existing changes."

Usage note from Write101.com:

"The easiest way to distinguish the two is to remember that affect is a verb (well, nearly always a verb) and effect is a noun ... well, nearly always! [...]
When affect is pronounced [uh FEKT] and accented on the final syllable, it's a verb meaning "to have an influence on."
eg Nothing they did, could affect my decision to go to the beach.
Occasionally, very occasionally, the word is used as a noun (it means a feeling or emotion, as distinguished from thought or action, or a strong feeling having active consequences) and the accent is on the first syllable [AFF ekt]. This is a term that is reserved for psychiatry and psychology:
eg In hysteria, the affect is sometimes entirely dissociated, sometimes transferred to another than the original idea.
Effect is most usually a noun and it means the result of some action or the power to produce a result. The noun is pronounced [uh FEKT] :
eg The effect of the bushfire was clearly visible.
eg The soothing music had an immediate effect on the wild beast.
This can also be a verb and it means to bring into existence, to produce a result (pronounced [ee FEKT]}"

Hopefully, that should convince you.

Re:Grammar Nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooo, in otherwords, both affect and effect are causal, but if I use them as a noun, spell it with an e, if I use it as a verb, spell it with an a.

Rheumatic fever can affect the heart.

or

The effect that rheumatic fever can have on the heart can be quite severe.

Thanks!

Re:Grammar Nazi

[adavies42]

Simple mnemonic: to affect is to effect an effect.

Re:Grammar Nazi

[tehcyder]

Simple mnemonic: to affect is to effect an effect.

No, a mnemonic is something that actually helps you to remember something else (like Richard Of York Gained Battles In Vain).

As most people pronunce the two words more or less the same, you phrase is more like the world's easiest tongue-twister.

Re:Grammar Nazi

[adavies42]

Fine: simple, but completely unhelpful mnemonic. Happy?

Re:Small quantities

[Oligonicella]

Only certain things. Biota are digested.

Food security is a local issue.

[elucido]

Food and water security are perhaps the only two issues that every human on the global universally agrees on. Let's face it, government is too big. Food and water regulation should be handled on the local level. The FDA is just one of those massive government programs from the old era.

Focus on food security.

Re:Food security is a local issue.

[Cadallin]

So you want every state (or do you want it at a municiple level?) to do their own evaluations of clinical trial data to determine if drugs are safe? How do companies know what the standards that they have to meet are? Who decides? Or should we have no regulation at all? Just trust the companies, "Oh yeah, this stuff is safe, won't kill you at all!" The reasons why food and water are covered under the FDA as well are also sound, remember how Congress is supposed to have sole power to regulate interstate commerce? If there's no FDA, how do you do inspections of food production facilities on opposite sides of the country? Who decides what the safe level of Lead in potable water should be, etc?

I'm not arguing that the FDA is perfect, but it sure as hell has useful functions that provide a measurable benefit to society. And no, people don't "universally agree" on safe food and water. Communities may very well think it is fine to use human feces to fertilize crops. How do you know if there's no FDA? With the FDA in place, I know there are certain standards I can reasonably expect to be met (because there are people checking, which while certainly not absolute, at least gives you some reassurance).

Re:Food security is a local issue.

[The Spie]

As someone who spent seven and a half years as a meat and poultry inspector at both the state and federal levels, I have two words for you: Fuck. You.

Re:Food security is a local issue.

[bodan]

Food and water security are perhaps the only two issues that every human on the global universally agrees on. Let's face it, government is too big. Food and water regulation should be handled on the local level. The FDA is just one of those massive government programs from the old era.

This is stupid. You found the only two issues on that every human will agree on, which is the only kind of issue that can be easily regulated at the global level, and you propose regulating it separately in each and every jurisdiction. I guess this means that governments should only regulate things no-one agrees on. Like what to read, what music to listen to, what religion (if any) to follow, and ultimately what to think, right?

Food security.

[elucido]

The only thing I can say is, this is an issue of food security. What food security do we have? Little to none. The reason? Because food and water security should be a local issue.

It is horribly inefficient to ship food when you can buy it locally. It is also inefficient to have a national FDA when you can have each individual state handle it's own food and water security. So I don't know what the purpose of the FDA is at this point other than being another big government program. Why must we nationalize everything? Big federal government isnt always better.

Re:Food security.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

It is horribly inefficient to ship food when you can buy it locally.

Not necessarily, but for the purposes of this discussion, sure.

It is also inefficient to have a national FDA when you can have each individual state handle it's own food and water security.

What does that have to do with the previous sentence? Care to back that up with any facts? Or reasoning based on facts?

So far, the only argument in your favour seems to be, "it's truthy!"

Who is they?

[elucido]

Look, it's the publics fault for not electing state and local governments to handle their own food security. The public may not be able to stop Walmart or another company from coming into their backyard and selling them food, but food and water security are the only issues we universally care about.

Gay marriage? Thats a special interest group. Affirmative action? That's an issue from the 60s-70s-80s. Womens rights/abortion? That's an issue for women to deal with since it's their body.

The one issue we all agree on is security, and we have NO food and water security. What idiots we are for having security in the form of military, and having guns all over, but none of us have state or local representitives willing to set up a state level food and water regulation program?

I don't think you can federalize food and water because it's good and water. I don't think it's the federal governments job to control the food we put into our stomaches, and I think the majority of people on Slashdot, if not the majority on planet earth, will agree that government is far too big. Go for food security first. You don't want viruses and bird flu in your food? Call your state senator, call the Republican congressman or the Governor, and tell them you demand localized food and water security. Ask for a local FDA like program, and if they won't start one, then start a non profit to secure the food.

It's simple, Big government is bad.

[elucido]

This is why big government is bad. Soon you won't even be able to choose your food. Look, you need to have food secrity, and we all look like freakin idiots when we discuss national security for big corporations, all the while we don't have any clean food and water. The main thing we need to focus on are

1. Food security

2. Water security

3. Environmental security

You need clean food. You need clean water. You need clean air. You need to get your food locally, it supports your local economy, and you know who grew it. You need to have the state, and private corporations testing the food and water, and you should not rely on the federal government. Start a business if you are a business man, and test all the food and water for a price, and let people pay to buy clean food through your corporation. Start a non profit, and let people donate time and money to setting up labors. Start a state wide FDA like government program, and let the state level FDA handle the food security and water security of the state. You can call it the (state) environmental protection agency. You can have food and water security as top issues for congressmen who are trying to get elected.

You know, we should be talking about this, we all agree, Democrat or Republcian that we need clean food and clean water. This is not a political issue or a partisan issue. This issue is the type of issue that can only be solved on the local level, as it is not a national issue. So what do you want to do? Discuss solutions but stop complaining.

Well, this move is odd from the FDA.

[elucido]

This is the type of move, that I suppose, helps libertarians who don't want big government anyway. If you look at the issue from a point of view of "big government = bad". The FDA is flexing it's muscle.

Here is the question, do we want real food security or not? Do you want real water security or not?

If you want food and water security, this is a non-partisan issue. You need to work locally, and statewide to create your own food and water regulation agency. Different people from different states eat different foods. You cannot nationally food security, it's impossible, and it's always a local issue, all the way down to consumers reading labels, and then to local networks providing the safety information.

To all of you so called scientists who want to claim this food and genetically modified foods are safe. Prove it is safe, lets test it publically, through the state agencies, and post the test results all over the internet. Let's lab test everything randomly by going to a supermarket and testing stuff in a lab to see exactly how safe it is. We already know Coke is deadly, people in India proved that, and through tests like putting coins and watching it, we can see how deadly it is. So ok Slashdotters, if you care about your health, start a private yet open source style food testing lab. Let us subscribe to it, and then send us the results of your tests in a magazine. You can profit, and we will get the knowledge we need as consumers. This will work until the state governments or the voters decide to tell their congress people to actually create a localized version of the same thing.

What do you all think? Anyone going to do it or are you all just the type of people to talk and complain? It's your food and water, you can clean it yourself or you can continue eating dirty.

Re:Well, this move is odd from the FDA.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want food and water security, this is a non-partisan issue. You need to work locally, and statewide to create your own food and water regulation agency. Different people from different states eat different foods. You cannot nationally food security, it's impossible, and it's always a local issue, all the way down to consumers reading labels, and then to local networks providing the safety information.

Huh? No, the foods we eat across states are not fundamentally different. There are only a few different meats, and the health-significant aspects of preparation (cooking at a certain minimum temperature for a certain minimum time, refrigerating for a maximum time, keeping in the "danger zone" for a (short) maximum time), cleanliness, etc. don't vary with cuisine as much as you seem to think. Creating 50 different agencies to do the job of one would simply result in a totally unnecessary, massive increase in the size of government. Not to mention the inter-state aspects - how much of the food that you eat do you really think was grown, packaged, and processed in your state?

To all of you so called scientists who want to claim this food and genetically modified foods are safe. Prove it is safe

Already done. The research is all in public journals, if you care to look.

We already know Coke is deadly, people in India proved that, and through tests like putting coins and watching it, we can see how deadly it is.

By that logic, stomach acid is deadly. You clearly are jumping to unreasonable conclusions with inadequate evidence, which perhaps is why the food makers would prefer you trust the experts. It takes time to develop a real understanding of science, and you're obviously starting from zero.

More BS, stop blaming the food industry.

[elucido]

The food industry is not responsible for testing your food, or for your food security. It's your responsibility to test your food and handle your food security, LOCALLY. If you want to secure your food, YOU start the food security corporation. You get the venture capital, and YOU start the busienss that tests food. YOU elect senators and congressmen who will give you a statewide food/water/environmental security agency. You start the food and water security industry.

Stop blaming other corporations, and do it yourself. It's your food, it's your security, and the state government exists to protect stuff like food and water, so if it isn't, it's your fault for not establishing the organization to do it.

Organize and secure your food and water, or continue to eat dirty food. Labels aren't good enough, this is a security issue.

Re:More BS, stop blaming the food industry.

[justins]

The food industry is not responsible for testing your food, or for your food security.

In the US they are, under federal law. You might have a point in some hand-wavey, disconnected from objective reality idealistic way.

Re:More BS, stop blaming the food industry.

[zenhkim]

> You [elucido] might have a point in some hand-wavey, disconnected from objective reality idealistic way.

Hey there, justins, I think you're more right than you realize. Have you checked out elucido's posting history on Slashdot (click on his user nick and take a quick look at his article titles)? The dude is either a massively pro-corporate libertarian of the worst sort ("Eliminate regulation! Privatize everything!") or he's Yet Another Astroturfer for Big Business -- maybe he's getting money from Monsanto....

Re:More BS, stop blaming the food industry.

[elucido]

I'm a pro business libertarian. I never said I was for big business. Anyone here who is not pro-business, how exactly do you expect to keep your job or have any job security being anti business?

I'm libertarian because look, Democrats and Republicans are the same except on social issues. Government is increased under the Democrats and under the Republicans. Why is big government good? How exactly is it helping you? You don't want more of your own money back? You don't want your freedom back? You don't want to secure your food?

The more you blame big business and whine like a cry baby, the less you accomplish. Coming on slashdot to complain about the big government and big business that YOU put in power, makes no sense. You are the consumer who put big business in place and you are the voter who voted big government in place. How the hell can you support big government as good yet view big business as bad? Big government IS big business. Big business IS big government. Do you get it now?

I'm being tough, but only because I'm trying to help you. If you look at hurricane Katrina, thats big government. Why would you expect the FDA to be run any better than FEMA? The big government, is only good at a few things, and thats protecting itself through military power, and giving more money to itself through either raising taxes, or cutting taxes for big businesses.

Like I said, you can label me whatever you want, but your food security is not going to magically increase. The big federal government will not save you. You will either save yourself, or you won't be saved. You cannot go back in time to the FDR days, we don't have the same people that we had back then, we don't have the same world, the same economy, the same population size, the same corporate entities, nothing is anything like it was back then so it's useless to keep trying to apply big government solutions. Big government simply means more government control over your food and drugs.

Labeling is silly

[elucido]

Let me explain, every word on the labels could be faked, because you have no way to know or trust the labeling unless you know who tested the food. You need to let the private sector handle it, set up a corporation that goes into super markets and tests food. Start the food testing corporation, and run lab tests on food for a profit. Sell the results through a magazine format.

The point is, there are many many business oppurtunities in the food security industry. You can make more money securing the food than you can selling it.

Wake up consumer.

[elucido]

Stop consuming long enough to test before you eat. If you are a consumer with a big brain, then figure out ways to organize and test what you consume. Why should you rely on the FDA? Why should you rely on big government?

If you want to protect your food and water, protect your food and water. Nothing short of actually doing it will make it so. Asking for protection means you don't really want it. Demand protection from your congressmen or and senators in your state. This is a local issue, a state issue, and your state senate, and city mayor, along with those CEO friends of yours and church leaders, all can join in and decide to protect the food and water. You do not have to buy your food from Walmart and McDonalds. You do not have to let these corporations get away with selling bad food if you test the food and water yourself. If you suspect it has bird flu, test it and find out, take it to the lab and see. Go to the resturant or the super market, buy the food and test it under the microscope. If you want to get paid to do it, ask your mayor or governor for a grant, and if they say no then ask your church or CEO friend to invest. The money is there for this, as this is the one issue everyone agrees on.

Mad Cow, Avian Flu, what next? The pork pox? Then you have the pesticides. Look, do something or keep eating your burgers. If you want to know about pesticides, here is a site

http://www.panna.org/

Pesticide Network of North America

You really have no excuse here.

No, it's simple.

[elucido]

Instead of expecting the food industry to do it. Simply create the food security industry and do it yourself. Sell the magazine, I'll buy it, and I think most people here would buy it. Slashdot could test the food privately and release the results to the subscribers of this site. People want to know, and there is plenty of money in that. Let's thank the FDA, the Avian Flu, and MadCow disease for creating the new food security industry.

Re:No, it's simple.

[Red Flayer]

Slashdot could test the food privately and release the results to the subscribers of this site. People want to know, and there is plenty of money in that.

There's also plenty of money in publishing falsehoods, and plenty of charlatans willing to take that easy money. What do you think all the industry-funded "independent organizations" are? And what's to keep the food inustry from changing its formulations slightly very often, and showing third-party test results to always be inaccurate?

It's not about 'expecting' the food industry to do it. It's about demanding the food industry do it, and making sure they do it right.

So what?

[elucido]

If you want to protect your food, protect it.

Power has nothing to do with this. All humans must eat food.

First, no one forces you to buy food from unknown places. Second, nothing stops you from testing your food. Third, if you want to test your food and buy locally, you can. Businessmen and people who profit don't care about you, it's not a surprise is it? You care about yourself right? Protect your food security and don't expect people in the food industry or federal government to do it.

So, secure your food.

[elucido]

How many people here actually work in the science or math industry? You are programmers and scientists and you are telling me you cannot set up a private sector consumer lab?

Grow your own food and sell it to each other, buy local food, and set up a consumer testing lab. Sell the results.

http://www.panna.org/

Global food security

[elucido]

Global food security has been degrading for decades now. It's too late to save the globe. Save yourself. Save your community, and work locally. Other communities that want to live will do the same.

What good is that?

[elucido]

Getting married right before you starve to death?

Wrong

[elucido]

You don't eat what they produce. You eat what you want to eat. Start eating food from other people or start testing it yourself.

Re:Wrong

[frogstar_robot]

That overly-libertarian viewpoint isn't terribly realistic. First off, most of us don't have access to the facilities required to "test it yourself". Secondly, the supply of food from "other people" is catch as catch can. Thirdly, food producers and supermarkets are allowed to flat-out lie about terms like "organic" and "natural". Fourthly, a pantry stocked with verifiably clean food is more expensive than what most people can afford. Remember folks that free-market invisible hand stuff only works when all sides of a transaction have access to complete and accurate information.

Regulated capitalism may indeed suck but it is superior to the alternatives. It simply is NOT acceptable to sell shit-contaminated foodstuffs for human consumption. I'm not going to seriously entertain any political or social viewpoint that says it is.

Our bodies need certain bacteria

[AriaStar]

Supposedly this virus won't attack human cells, but what about the bacteria our bodies need? This was not addressed in the article aside from a mention that this virus is only supposed to attack the Listeria virus. Our bodies naturally have deadly bacteria, but it's kept in check by other bacteria. Trying to kill off one may not seem like such a big deal, but it does have an effect. Then, when another is the target, and another, our bodies get screwed up pretty badly.

You men may not be aware of something. Now be adult and accept what I am about to write as how things are. While not pleasant to think about, we are all adults, and you should be mature enough to not squirm at words like "penis" and "vagina." This can affect you men too.

Women need certain bacteria in our bodies. Men need the same bacteria. When we are on antibiotics, doctors recomment we eat yogurt with active yeast cultures to help restore this specific bacteria. When the bacteria gets too low, we get something known as a yeast infection. Men can get it too, though it's far less common. This causes itching from hell. If a woman gets a yeast infection, you can bet her man isn't going to get any sex for a few days. At the minimum. And she won't be happy. Just imagine itching in a very delicate spot, and you can't scratch it while in public. But yet to scratch in private, you're still going to be unhappy because you can tear tender tissue and risk other infections. So you're fucked and miserable. Yup. This is what happens to us.

It's a delicate balance, and my concern is that this virus may end up attacking what we do need. The Listeria can become resistent or mutate, or the virus can mutate, or both, while our bodies struggle to attack the virus and keep the rest of our system and bacteria in check and balanced. I'm not exactly thrilled at the idea of ontroducing something else to my body for my T-cells to have to identify and attack, adding more of a burden to my already-poor immune system. To risk the bacteria is my own choice. I'll take the bacteria over the virus, something that can be killed with antibiotics should the need arise over something that can't.

Happy, happy...joy...joy....

People who are pregnant or have a weakened immune system just shouldn't eat certain things. The rest of society should be introduced to viruses. If you're pregnant or have a weakened immuse systen, just accept that to eat certain things is at your own risk. And now everyone will be eating this at their own risk instead of just a few. Yeah, let's make the problems of a few the problems of us all.

Really, I wish the FDA would just stop screwing with our food. In trying to control every single thing, they're only creating strands of bacteria more resistent to what's available, creating the need for stronger and stronger antiobiotics and whatnot. This is not good for us, and, if I had the yard space, or even a yard at all, I'd become a vegetarian and grow my own food. Wait. The water's probably treated with what only the gods and the FDA know.

Re:Our bodies need certain bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right on the money. Though not eating meat all together poses its own problems but they can mainly be overcome by getting a blood test and eating organicly grown food.

What I specificly have a problem with is that this new procedure is not addressing the main reason behind why the meat is bad in the first place. I bet if you look at all the people that got sick, look at the meat they bought, where they bought it and if that store passed the health checks in the deli department you will find that it is poor upkeep on the shops part for why the meat was bad. Addressing the bacteria will not solve the main problem with poor health standards. Better quality food, more health checks, less people will get sick.

Re:Our bodies need certain bacteria

[AriaStar]

Add to this their own handlings of food. Was it left out on the counter?

Marketing, marketing, marketing

[Carpe PM]

With a name like 'Artificially-introduced Viral Bacteriophages' it's gotta be good!!

Governments are funny like that.....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The Autralian government recently classified crodiles as **FISH** so that crodiles would be covered by fish control regulations. It's not a hard stretch to see a virus being classified as a vegetable.

your clueless response

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite wrong. There have been many studies both in humans and with test animals that have shown harmful effects from some GM food products. They frequently result in additional qualities being added to a food that up the allergic reaction in people, or the foods themselves turn out to produce higher levels of naturally occurring toxins, etc.

    This is too broad a subject for generalities, and I am guessing by your reply you just picked your statement from your....food exhaust port and don't have any real knowledge on the subject beyond..I don't know, Rush Limbeaugh pronouncements? For example, you can look back at starlink corn, that is probably the most commonly accessed example you'll find on the net to immediately disprove your statement. If you aren't even aware of that case that proves you have no knowledge of the subject of note, and if you were aware and decided to "forget about it" to make your statement it makes you look like a liar. So which is it, ignornant, or a liar?

    And if you look at places like the the lancet, national academies page, etc, you'll find the jury is still very well out except from the industry related guys. What a coincidence. They admit they don't know how safe they are, and they readily admit there's a severe paucity of true independent long term peer reviewed programs to address this issue.

    The other point that is suspicious is the industry has been caught trashing "negative" research that developed internally. There have been several "whistleblower" cases so far where this has apparently happened. They have also been caught..how to say it delicately..being "overly friendly" with governmental inspectors who miraculously get VERY well paying jobs immediately on government retirement back in the industry they are "regulating and inspecting". One might use occam's beard removal tool there perchance...

You are invited to do your own actual research. And BTW, being skeptical of industry and their claims is ...healthy. It is not "being a luddite" or "hippie" it's just logical. And it's logical because of this, easily observable if you have been alive more than a decade and paying any attention: If there's one thing you should learn about big money and scientific studies is the default from industry "science" is "everything we do is 100% pure as the driven snow". Scientists are humans, and as such, absolutely no different from other humans when it comes to common vices, such as absolute love of money. If there's huge sums involved in ANY endeavor, always look for the lie, because it'll be there if telling the lie results in "more money" for someone. Just human nature. If that is too difficult to parse, I'll make it easier. A scientist reporting his corporations product is unsafe has an employment retainment percentage potential of A)100% or B)less than 1%. Go ahead, give it a guess as to which is more probable. The higher the dollar amount with a subject=the less true ethics involved. Just always been that way, it's not even hidden *at all*.

Re:your clueless response

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: you're a psychotic screechbot.

Hope you find it a rewarding lifestyle.

Uhm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when someone comes to a website ranting about something they believe in. Sure, it's great and all to have an opinion, but that doesn't mean we're necessarily interested in hearing it, especially when it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever upon the issue at hand.

Back to the more pressing matter - I agree with what someone else posted earlier, that creating an anti-Listeria bacteriophage that is both easy and convenient to use could possibly cause major problems. No matter how many times you tell them that this virus is not a replacement for proper food handling, many people will inevitably fall back upon the virus as a primary method for sanitation, rather than a just-to-make-sure-there's-no-Listeria safeguard.

"What's that? Oh? It kills bacteria? Okay!"

And just another few thoughts on other issues in this thread - irradiated food is safe, so are American cows. PETA needs a demon half-brother organization that counterprotests whenever they show up.

Re:Small quantities

[GTMoogle]

Hah. For a moment I read that as "dead deceased animals" and was more worried about them feeding LIVE deceased animals to livestock. Mmm, zombie cow. :)

Cheers!

They are not "virii"

[riker1384]

The plural of "virus" is not "virii." See WIkipedia on "Plural of virus":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus

You're not clever. You think you're being very clever by busting out the double-i that most people don't know of, but it's not right here, as the word isn't "virius."

Big government fool.

[elucido]

You trust big government to protect you from drug companies and bad food? It was NEVER the federal governments responsibility to do these things. The federal government by design cannot do it. Also I never mentioned drugs, but I'm a libertarian, I don't think we need nationalized drug laws, but at least the drug issue makes sense to be nationalized. Nationalized food security makes no sense, because it's impossible to do it that way. It's food and water, it's a community / local issue.

Re:Big government fool.

[donscarletti]

Ok, by being modded up you have proved that slashdot's small government/libertarian slant has just gone nuts. If federal government didn't regulate the safety of food and water, who would do it? Would consumers do it? Consumers don't even read the packaging properly, consumers believe that unless they put borax into their soup or leave it on the kitchen counter for three days it will be safe to eat. Maybe the local governments can turn their minds from accepting bribes for planning permissions for long enough to test every single foodstuff that is imported into their municipality. I can't wait to see the impressive testing facilities built by the town of Bumblefuck Missisippi.

If you like small government, consider moving to Somalia, a paradise on earth where the burdens of government are lifted off the population's shoulders and they are free to do whatever they like. Too bad the Kowloon walled city has been demolished, looks like there are less havens in this world, but maybe north Georgia is more to your tastes.

Re:Big government fool.

[canadian_right]

Small communities often do not have the resources to insure a safe water supply, or the local expertise to even correctly test the water supply.

In Canada guidelines regarding drinking water safety are set at the national level, but the provinces are responsible for making sure the rules are followed and can set whatever rules they want. But each city actually sets up, pays for, and runs their own water system. The federal government is directly responsible for water quality on native reserves, cruise ships, and other common carriers.

There was a famous case recently where an incompetent person handling a small communities water supply actually caused a few deaths. An in depth article about the Walkerton case.

Re:Big government fool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Abolishing the FDA will "weed inefficient consumers out of the marketplace" -- Caspar Weinberger.

Re:Big government fool.

[elucido]

I'm guessing you were the only American who watched hurricane Katrina and thought that FEMA did a great job. If you think that big government can test food through the FDA, you are living on another planet. Imported food? What are you talking about? Buy locally.

Look, it's not my job to save other states. Like I said, save yourself. Should we all starve because a of a few states? Hell no. If consumers arent able to test food and water what exactly do they do? You act like consumers are zombies with no brains and like the federal government is filled with geniuses! It's the same consumers in the federal government, the state government, the city government, they all accept the same types of bribes, so I don't see your point. At least when it's local, you know the name of the guy who accepted the bribe and you knoe where he lives. He might even be a family member. When you have the federal government handle it, it becomes a lot more complicated and the chance of bribery only increases.

Since you are such a fan of closed source centralized government I'm guessing you arent a Linux user.

Re:Big government fool.

[elucido]

Yes thats fine. Federal government can set the minimum requirements or guidelines, but thats not all the FDA does. The FDA has control over drugs, food and water, and they approve stuff which kills MILLIONS of people. One mistake by the FDA can kill tens of millions of people, because it's putting the fate of millions of people into the hands of a room full of guys in a very top down environment. The FDA acts more as food and drug control. Honestly I see no reason why we need a federal food and drug admin, as if the federal government sets drug laws to protect our safety. Are people this naive to think that the federal government cares about our health? It's not the federal governments job to protect your health, and if you want the federal government to protect you it's going to cost you a lot of money.

So lets face it, tax cuts are good. Yes there are good people in the federal government, I'm not debating about the civilians and officers who do good work in the federal government, or who have good intentions. What I'm saying is, the federal government is too big to micro-manage stuff like Food and Water, and handle all these social programs. It's just not designed for that and never really has been good at it. There is flouride in the drinking water and people are arguing about how great the water quality is, when most of us don't even drink tap water because the quality is so low. Look if we have to pay for bottled water, obviously we need to do a MUCH better job testing the water.

I'm thinking the majority of people don't care about their own lives or health and enjoy paying higher and higher taxes for less and less services. Makes no sense to me.

Re:Big government fool.

[Bob Uhl]

If federal government didn't regulate the safety of food and water, who would do it?

The states, perhaps? Where is it written that the federal government is concerned with food safety? I can tell you where it's not written--it's not in the Constitution. The federal Congress does have the power to regulate food which crosses state lines, of course, and so I imagine that even in a more federalist republic the national food standards would tend to hold.

If you were an inspector

[elucido]

If one single American gets mad cow disease, yes I'm going to blame the FDA.

Did I saw state inspectors were bad? No. I never said you should lose your job. I said we should not rely on YOU to inspect our food when we can inspect it ourselves. Redundant security makes sense. Don't you get it Mr. inspector, we ARE you.

Re:If you were an inspector

[donscarletti]

No, you should fire that guy, you don't need him. Just give every person a REALLY powerful magnifying glass and tell consumers to look for prions. You get your steak at a resturant, medium rare with a dianne sauce, pull out the ol' glass and look for badly folded proteins. Man, I found one of those little fuckers once, I knew it wanted to get into my head and give me CJD but that wasn't going to happen on my watch damnit. It didn't really love me, it just loved my PrP protein and it only wanted one thing.

These days though I'm more careful. I go up the supply line inspecting the living conditions of every animal I plan to eat. One time an abatoir didn't let me in for my weekly inspection and I resolved never to eat their meat again, that will show the arseholes.

What the real issue is

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they putting that stuff on the meat in the first place. Adding something else because 2500 people out of 300+ million got sick seems a bit unfair to the rest of the people. The 2500 that got sick were probably subject to bad upkeep on meat stuffs on the stores part. Its the process of meat handling that should be addressed not the meat itself. This just gives the excuse to further lower food standards because they will have a longer shelf life much beyond what should be passable.

Good show amerika, next up manditory ddt injections for everyone.

The federal government is not responsible

[elucido]

It's not the federal governments primary responsibility to protect your food. The federal governments primary responsibility is to protect the federal government and to keep a strong defense budget. Most money is going into defense, not food and water security, and thats why you have no food and water security.

It's people like you who support big government, but then complain about the big government you created in the first place. If you don't like big government, stop creating it. You know how governments are, you saw Katrina. The era of big government died in New Orleans. Bill Clinton himself said the era of big government is over. Accept it.

Learn to govern yourself and stop expecting other people to do it.

Re:Small quantities

[Anonymous Coward]

"However, testing did not reveal the presence of such residues, which in small quantities likely wouldn't cause health problems anyway"

Didn't they say that about Phen Phen and the tons of other drugs they needed to pull after a year or two...

Hire someone

[elucido]

Hire someone to test your food. Start a business, or pay someone to start one, where the person goes into random supermarkets, buys food, and tests it in a lab. Is that too complicated?

But yes, if you don't want additives or poisons in your food, learn to test your food. Thats what the kings and queens had to do. Don't you know history?

Re:Hire someone

[soft_guy]

Yes, I am aware that royalty had food testers. If it was only a matter of having someone take a few bites and then keel over (or not), I would just make sure my wife took the first bite at dinner.

However, that was only feasible because of the type of poisoning that was being attempted. A food tester would not have died quickly enough from slow poisoning or food additives that merely questionable. It is not the case that a person will die immediately from eating this virus. The problem is down the road when the cancer rate goes through the roof, or birth defects emerge, or some other bad consequence that will take a long time to link back to this particular food additive and then it will be a hard political fight to get it back out of the food system.

Also, do you have any idea how much it would cost to test food for unknown substances. I have no clue what I'm testing for, just "bad stuff". You can't test for things economically that way. It is far easier for the food companies simply to disclose what they put in our food.

I realize that you are some kind of insane extreme libertarian, but I don't think it is too much to ask that people operate businesses in a manner that is regulated by law. Otherwise, everything becomes a scam and it is that much harder for honest people to run innovative businesses because everyone thinks everything is a scam and won't try anything new.

you can get decent meat

[r00t]

There are a few places in Texas that can ship you beef from grass-fed longhorn cattle. They pack it in dry ice. You can also get goat meat. Sometimes they also have mostly grass-fed (some flax seed too) chicken, pork, and elk.

Vegetarian

[sugarmotor]

I don't eat meat. Sometimes fish, but drink milk every day.

I don't see why any intelligent person would regularly eat industrially produced meat.

I find it quite simple to avoid. "Too expensive," is what I say jokingly. A friend said, "now I can eat more", after cutting out meat.

There is no way...

[hicksw]

... these can make the leap from infecting bacteria to infecting higher organisms, any more than a plant could suddenly start walking around.

Great. Now we need to be on the lookout for Triffids.

Any predictions of impending blindingly bright meteor showers?

I want to know what agricultural practices I am s

[matt me]

> I want to know what agricultural practices I am supporting when I buy food. Labelling.
Agricultural practice? This is of little importance, you can't say you know any level of detail about the origins of the most the non-edible products you consume. Justify your supposed concern for the environment, without a greater concern for labour practices. Much of the food we consume (see chocolate) is produced by people in conditions similar to the cotton plantations we abolished, with similar wages. Poverty is the world's worst problem, not climate change. The money wasted on the Kyoto protocol (futile, it has been shown it will may make 6 years difference over the next century) could have written off world debt. Rising sea levels are inevitable, but the people of Bangladesh need not be too poor to relocate. As natural disasters show us repeatedly, damage is always disproportionately on the poorest people.

> an issue of the freedom to choose
Mr libertarian, this right will always be abused. Americans have proved that given a choice, they will shun the 'right' choice for what is worst for them (see obesity, alcohol, tobacco, drugs). If the consequences were limited to the individual this would not matter, but these are all serious issues for society: the obesely unhealthy burdening the health system so that those with diseases they did not bring upon themselves cannot receive treatment, alcohol-related crime means we cannot walk the streets alone at night, the majority of theft is perpitrated to fund drug addictions. The purpose of the state is to act in the best interests of its people, not as individuals, but for society. Anarchy is no solution, by choosing to live where we do, our state's laws and customs have improved our quality of life (what most strive for, you may debate why) beyond what we would receive if we were to 'go at it ourselves' in the badlands.

= on organic food
Wealthy people in developed countries have disposable income and can afford to buy what they like for irrational reason. But please don't forget that the green revolution (intensive agriculture, a fantastic success in Asia, if not Africa) is responsible for sustaining the world's population of 6.5 billion. It is sad, but understandable how as most the population has become disconnected from science, now see science as the evil that is destroying our world. Science has put an end to infant mortality, infectious disease, tuberculosis, smallpox and polio (soon). The real evil is corporate business that acts solely for profit, with no regard for society, liberty or the environment. The privitasation of national services in the UK has been a disaster because while the state did try to act in the best interests of people or at least their votes, when businesses were handed monopolies to abuse they were left free to milk people for money, even after the government responsible (Thatcher, Major) was voted out. No-one can vote out Thames Water (the only supplier in my area) , who even when in a year of 'drought' (a consequence of their mismanagement, over half their water is lost to leakage) report record profits.

A brave new world

[matt me]

When did you last hear a authoritative scientist quoted in the press, except to be lauded, misquoted or dumbed-sideways by a clueless journalist?

Viruses don't mutate, do they?

[Anonymous Coward]

And we're all clear on the trillion of mutations that made us humans and chickens, chickens and such. And pretty certain we can predict the trillions of future mutations.

depends on what you mean by "human"

[m874t232]

These phages will not attack human cells.

But your body is full of symbiotic bacteria. Your health depends on those bacteria; without them, you'd be sick. Some phages attack those bacteria, and it appears that that can lead to disease.

However, it's very unlikely that a phage against a bacterium like this will start attacking your symbiotic bacteria; you're far more likely to pick up pathogenic phages from the environment.

Mod up parent!

[Cryogenes]

Hehe, good one. Sadly I don't currently have any mod points.

A further addition ...

[golodh]

I found this link: http://haccp.tamu.edu/alliance/BeefGrindGuide.pdf A guide for beef grinders. Curiously enough it mentions Salmonella and Escherichia Coli in extenso, but makes no mention of Listeria bacteria except in appendix 2, where the resistance of these mircro-organisms to irradiation is tabulated.

From this publication I get the impression that Listeria isn't the focus of hygiene in raw meat products, and that the main problems are Eschirichia Coli (the bacteria we all carry in our intestines) and Salmonella.

So perhaps a Listeria spray will not affect the standards of safety and hygiene as those might be driven by the need to keep the counts for E. Coli and Salmonella down. Therefore it could be that I was too hasty in my earlier criticism.

Re:Rightfully so, Europe could deny these things..

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we so Backwards in Europe? Now there's a thought.

Killing unborn babies is very forward-thinking and progressive.

You arent being rational.

[elucido]

How exactly are you supposed to control who gets fired from the FDA and who doesnt? Do you run the FDA? No you don't. Let's face it, none of us control the FDA, so why do you want to keep paying for it? It's inefficient because you are going to end up having to protect your own food and water locally anyway regardless of what happens with the FDA.

Look, your option is to either stop eating beef, or know the farmer you buy your beef from. Your option is to either search for prions as a consumer, or get diseased. No one is going to protect you, we do not live in the sorta world where big business is going to babysit you. If you are the type of consumer who does not care about your health, they arent going to outlaw junk food, tabacco, and beef, even if there are viruses on them, prions in them, and anything else, because ultimately, the beef makers want to sell their beef and make a profit and if you don't even know which farm you are buying your beef from, you don't even know how it got to your plate.

I suggest you learn where your food comes from, from farm to plate, and then buy your food that way. If you cannot buy locally, buy from the corporation with the best reputation for selling clean food. We are past the time where you can trust big businesses to protect your health. There are businesses who don't give a shit about you, me, or anyone, because they only care about making profits. I'm saying you need to learn to make a profit while protecting yourself and consumers, or just give up and eat the beef.

Costs don't matter.

[elucido]

Why would you care about costs if you are dead or going to die? What exactly is more important than food for your security? NOTHING. Food is the most important thing to spend money on. You should spend ANY amount of money to test your food and water.

You can ask people to do whatever, but did it work for tabacco companies? Name the ingredients in a cigar. Thats right, you can't. Did it help legalize marijuana? No. You cannot solve an issue like this through laws and regulations. Sure that's a part of any solution, thats the green solution, but the libertarian solution works in a way which does not decrease freedom.

I'm saying, you should use any political solution and all political solutions, as well as private sector, non profit, and any other solution, because this is the most basic of basic. This is food and water we are talking about here. If you cannot protect that, you are even more domesticated than a house animal, because even a domestic cat will catch the occassional mouse. Start community farms, start fishing, start hunting/fishing clubs, start farming/growing clubs, and focus on food security.

I'm a libertarian because I know that big government will not solve every problem. I understand the mindset that a lot of people have from previous generations, I understand the federal government pays financial aid, and for schools, and does a lot of important functions, but we have to accept that if the federal government stopped doing these functions that these functions would need to be done regardless, and the libertarian outlook is simply an outlook of do it yourself, do for your community, and this makes a lot of sense because you are less dependent on the federal government.

The federal government, do you want FEMA to handle the disaster relief? Most people now would rather have no relief at all than have FEMA relief, and thats due to a hurricane. Imagine how bad things would be if there were a food shortage, or if there were an energy crisis. Some of these problems are yours to solve, and you'll either solve it or you'll pay later. I say if you want to solve it, pay now so you can save later. You don't want to wait for all the food to completely run out before you decide to do something.

Re:Costs don't matter.

[soft_guy]

Why would you care about costs if you are dead or going to die? You should spend ANY amount of money to test your food and water.

Everyone is going to die. It is not the case that I am willing to spend an infinite amount of money on testing food and water. First, crazy spending priorities are a recipe for being ripped off. Obviously everyone wants clean water to drink and food that is healthy. But most people have other priorities in life as well such as having a place to live and education for our children.

Would you be willing to pay 90% of your income for you entire life in order to live for an extra 2 days? Probably not. Therefore, staying alive for as long as possible isn't infinitely important to you.

Re:Costs don't matter.

[elucido]

No, not 90%, but food is never going to cost that much. I'm saying, I'd be willing to pay 50%. I'd be willing to pay double or triple what we currently pay.

Costs have nothing to do with it. We have money to buy cars, so we have money for food and water. Let's be realistic, when food costs 90% of our incomes then we are more fucked than third world Africa, at that point it's time to move.

Did work in bacteriology

[DrYak]

In short : a lot less than antibiotics.

Most of the antibiotics have a rather broad spectrum of effet. (The bacteria that aren't affected are mostly the resistant one. So you need to use a more recent anti-biotics that'll kill more strains). Antibiotics are roughly specific to bacterial metabolism. (The bacteria that are un affected usual have evolved and mutated the specific target point). Same antibiotic can kill both the pathogen and the harmless flora living in the gut.

On the other hand bacteriophages are highly specific for surface proteins that vary a lot between different bacteria. It is specie-specific, and it can be made sub-specie specific. They are even used in research to do typing - to tell appart the different sub-species. So one can imagine to create a new type of phage that can easily attack some pathogen, but is harmless to the flora living in the gut, because it is only able to bind to surface protein of the first.

That's the theory. In practice, after a while, evolution will have its own word to say, and probably the pathgoens will mutate and change its surface protein so the phage cannot bind and infect. On the other hand, it's more easier for the industry to come up with a new virus that mutated too and circumvented the pathogen's trick (almost the same virus, only binding site changed), than come up with a new anti-biotics (most of the time a brand new different molécule is needed).