[jMyles]

Come on now. Don't make it about that.

If you can't afford real meat, then you can't afford meat.

Nobody says that people who can't afford a catalytic converter deserve an exemption allowing them to spew more carbon from their cars. This is the same dynamic, but far, far worse.

[tptacek]

I see the isomorphism between catalytic converters and animal protein, but there's a pretty big difference between requiring people to pay more for cars and telling them they can't buy chicken at Aldi anymore.

I think shaming people for buying cheap meat is a terrible strategy that will backfire.

What needs to change are the regulations. When antibiotics are banned from the food supply, the market will discover other ways to regain the efficiencies.

[dools]

Actually I think subsidies, rather than regulations, would be a better strategy. The government subsidises lots of industries to ease the cost of transition to more expensive production methods or to wean them off environmentally destructive practices, or even just to promote growth and take advantage of export opportunities. Subsidising meat production would be a fantastic idea. Pity we have governments the world over that believe they need to "earn tax revenue" before they can spend!

[jMyles]

tptacek,

It seems to me that, in every thread, you find a way to dream that more "regulations" will solve all of the social ills of the US and beyond.

The agri-industrial complex is perhaps the clearest example that the powerful among the regulated will find a way to be the regulators. What more needs to happen to clarify this for you?

[TeMPOraL]

Regulations are a right tool for the job here. What would be a non-regulatory approach? Let the market decide? The market decided; it doesn't give a flying damn about things like loss of antibiotics for human healthcare; people want their cheap meat, the market delivers. If it involves overusing antibiotics, so be it.

[Houshalter]

The problem I think he is trying to point out, is that the regulatory agencies are controlled by those businesses in the first place. The FDA tried to regulate antibiotics in farm use decades ago, and the industry threw a fit until it stopped. They tried again awhile ago, and they fought against them until they made compliance voluntary.

If the only regulations you can have are ones which benefit big businesses, then no regulations at all might be better. You can't have a political ideology based around the idea that the government is perfectly competent and incorruptible.

Instead another alternative might be to get rid of the FDA entirely so new antibiotics can be developed faster, and we can genetically modify animals to breed them to grow bigger without antibiotics.

Well that only might work, and only in this one specific case. In general regulations can definitely be necessary. But they've proven they can't solve this problem, or at least not until the last minute when it might be too late. And even if we were successful, you can't stop other countries from doing it.

[jMyles]

Are you saying that the current situation is market-driven? Because that's ludicrous.

Big-ag is the furthest thing from a free market this side of big pharma. Have you heard of ag-gag laws? Corn subsidies? How about events like this:

http://www.wnem.com/story/26116053/farmers-forced-to-dump-pr...

...which happen all the time all over the country?

Our nation's food supply is controlled by a tiny elite for the most part, and it has completely insulated itself from market effects.