Apple and Microsoft aren't enemies; they have patent cross licensing agreements and they are in different markets. All this Apple vs Microsoft bluster is more marketing gimmick than reality. Microsoft likes Apple as the token competitor and Apple like Microsoft because it validates their proprietary approach to software.
GM animals are not to my knowledge on the market anywhere in the US or Europe.
I see, so because you laboriously construct a complicated argument that a particular GM animal may be useful, people should not buy organic?
As to the value of this particular GM. The modification can only be considered beneficial.
Only if you're extremely simple-minded and assume that there is a fixed demand for pigs. But there is not: you make pigs cheaper, farmers will raise more pigs, people will eat more pigs, and the environment and health will be worse off, not better.
Green requires maximal efficiency to minimize waste and environmental impact.
No, "green" requires that we view food production and consumption not just from an efficiency point of view, but also from a behavioral, economic, and social point of view. Deliberately choosing inefficient production methods often is a good thing in itself even if it has no effect on the quality of the product.
Super-bugs are only a problem for someone with a compromised immune system.... Doesn't help if your 90 year old Grandmother gets MRSA, but the majority of the population is healthy enough to clear it without even noticing they were infected.
So according to you, everybody with a "compromised immune system" should just curl up and die?
You're totally wrong anyway; bacterial infections used to be a scourge for the entire population. Everybody is at risk of death from bacterial infections, due to injuries, STDs, food poisoning, surgery, child birth, insect bites, travel, and many other day-to-day things that normal, healthy people do. All of that will come back if antibiotics start failing massively.
Nobody knows for certain, but it does work. (If it didn't work, agribusiness wouldn't be spending so much money on it.)
It's probably that it's normal for animals to get bacterial infections, and while they are fighting them, they aren't eating and growing as much. If you can eliminate most of those infections, they will just grow without interruption, meaning they will grow bigger over the same time period.
It will be a long time before Congress acts, if ever.
But you can protect yourself and make things better by buying meat from "organically" raised animals: animals that were raised without antibiotics and without having been raised in factory farms. Note that the "organic" label itself may be misleading depending on what you are and who uses it, so check more carefully what it means for that particular product (the label usually says it if they did go through the trouble of doing the right thing).
You should also probably avoid genetically modified animals, foods, and feeds, not because the genetic modifications are harmful (usually they are not), but because many genetic modifications are intended just to enable bad and dangerous farming practices.
Both of these are in your own interest (not just socially good things to do) because you yourself may run a higher risk of infection with a resistant strain if you eat animals raised on antibiotics.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple and Microsoft aren't enemies; they have patent cross licensing agreements and they are in different markets. All this Apple vs Microsoft bluster is more marketing gimmick than reality. Microsoft likes Apple as the token competitor and Apple like Microsoft because it validates their proprietary approach to software.
GM animals are not to my knowledge on the market anywhere in the US or Europe.
I see, so because you laboriously construct a complicated argument that a particular GM animal may be useful, people should not buy organic?
As to the value of this particular GM. The modification can only be considered beneficial.
Only if you're extremely simple-minded and assume that there is a fixed demand for pigs. But there is not: you make pigs cheaper, farmers will raise more pigs, people will eat more pigs, and the environment and health will be worse off, not better.
Green requires maximal efficiency to minimize waste and environmental impact.
No, "green" requires that we view food production and consumption not just from an efficiency point of view, but also from a behavioral, economic, and social point of view. Deliberately choosing inefficient production methods often is a good thing in itself even if it has no effect on the quality of the product.
Super-bugs are only a problem for someone with a compromised immune system. ... Doesn't help if your 90 year old Grandmother gets MRSA, but the majority of the population is healthy enough to clear it without even noticing they were infected.
So according to you, everybody with a "compromised immune system" should just curl up and die?
You're totally wrong anyway; bacterial infections used to be a scourge for the entire population. Everybody is at risk of death from bacterial infections, due to injuries, STDs, food poisoning, surgery, child birth, insect bites, travel, and many other day-to-day things that normal, healthy people do. All of that will come back if antibiotics start failing massively.
Nobody knows for certain, but it does work. (If it didn't work, agribusiness wouldn't be spending so much money on it.) It's probably that it's normal for animals to get bacterial infections, and while they are fighting them, they aren't eating and growing as much. If you can eliminate most of those infections, they will just grow without interruption, meaning they will grow bigger over the same time period.
It will be a long time before Congress acts, if ever. But you can protect yourself and make things better by buying meat from "organically" raised animals: animals that were raised without antibiotics and without having been raised in factory farms. Note that the "organic" label itself may be misleading depending on what you are and who uses it, so check more carefully what it means for that particular product (the label usually says it if they did go through the trouble of doing the right thing). You should also probably avoid genetically modified animals, foods, and feeds, not because the genetic modifications are harmful (usually they are not), but because many genetic modifications are intended just to enable bad and dangerous farming practices. Both of these are in your own interest (not just socially good things to do) because you yourself may run a higher risk of infection with a resistant strain if you eat animals raised on antibiotics.