As an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement. As chicken farms become unprofitable due to all the birds dying, prices will go up. This gives people like me an edge to talk about alternatives. We already do this with egg alternatives due to the increases in egg prices. Hopefully companies like JUST Egg can capitalize on this.
>> As an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement.
The article says allowing the virus to rip through flocks could kill "billions of birds" [1]. Is that really OK with the movement?
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[1] Allowing widespread infection of commercial flocks would kill billions of birds, drive poultry and egg prices up, as well as destabilize local economies and global trade through import restrictions imposed on U.S. products, the authors wrote. Simultaneously, it could also foster reservoirs of H5N1, increasing the virus' odds of making the leap to humans — and gaining the ability for human-to-human infection.
The birds are dying anyway. So instead of their bodies being used for profit to continue the industry, they will die with hopefully little to no government bailouts, forcing farmers to change what they do for a living.
I'm guessing the movement figures the birds' 1st choice for their future, a career in the food service industry, isn't going to work out much better for the birds anyway.
Isn't this just switching from, if you detect any infections you're required to kill your flock, to if you have any infections your flock will die of illness? Your flock is still dead either way.
you're wrong here... eggs will become obscenely profitable, because of the sheer demand for the things.
Backyard/black market and over seas eggs will be worth an order of magnitude more than before.
And guess what, America will have next to no say in the animal welfare of the source of the eggs.
JUST Eggs aren’t the only alternative, through: seeds, beans, mushrooms, grains…
I guess you know that the reason of shitty treatment is price, would you rather buy 20x priced eggs ? There’s many family farms that would be happy to deliver them anywhere at that rate.
It's a shame that we've just settled for this as the only answer, "you want better food, you have to pay more".
I think decent treatment of animals and access to decent food is a basic human and animal right. But yeah, it's hard to have this discussion if all it ever comes down too is economics or the decision between communism and capitalism.
It's cheaper, and most shoppers aren't willing to pay enough extra to cover better treatment. (It's not the shoppers' fault that most of the labels aren't very meaningful? Well no, that means it's not cost-effective to ensure people are aware of that.)
I'm still in the "learning Rust and discovering crypto" phase.
As I have a web+mobile background, I'll probably start with some simple mobile or web apps, a wallet, price alerts, seed phrase gen, ens explorer, etc, basically anything that's crypto / defi / blockchain adjacent to understand the field better and ease into it.
Then, I'll also build stuff from the ground up (build your own blockchain, smart contracts, etc) so that I have a deeper understanding of the basics, not just "hand-wavy" ideas like "freedom, sovereignty, decentralized, store of value, trustless, permissionless", etc.
In parallel, I also plan to do non-crypto stuff to practice Rust and to have an escape route to web Rust in case I don't like crypto all that much or can't get a job right away due to lack of Rust + crypto experience..
Then, I hope, as I have a better understanding of the field, I'll have more interesting project ideas, too.
I love the idea of computational experiments that replace testing on animals. Reading about what we do to animals in the name of science is heart breaking, but learning there are computational models and experiments being developed to take place of animal cruelty is exciting. However, such projects feel overwhelming given I know next to nothing about biology, and I'm not sure spending the time learning is worth the payout given my age and other areas of expertise.
The reason we use animal models is that we don’t know enough about animal biology to be confident we can simulate it accurately.
However, computational tools that help biologists “replace, reduce, and refine” animal experiments are helpful. That catchphrase is a good one to Google to look for previous efforts.
Building computational tools to help scientists improve the design of necessary animal experiments is certainly worth working on.
Came here to say this. Money is a tool to make the world a better place. He could be funding schools, scholarships, research projects, new start ups, and so much more. This is what I have been doing, and it has given my life so much more meaning than anything else I have done. I work to donate because that is how I have the biggest impact.
Including those that work directly on cultivated meat? There are literally companies out there selling cultivated meat right now. Regressive countries like Italy and conservative states in the US like Florida and Alabama have banned the sell of cultivated meat. Did they buy into the fantasy? Or are they scared cultivated meat will impact traditional animal farming?
I like thinking about space colonization. Whether it be a the first colony on Mars or a robust space station orbiting Jupiter, what do you think their food is like? Do you think they have farms growing cows and pigs and dogs? Or do they have a bioreactor that uses substantially less water and organic inputs to output whatever meat they want without fear of zoonotic diseases and PETA?
I'm willing to bet Star Trek rings true here in that there are no farms on spaceships growing animals, therefore, this is the future we should be working for. Why waste time tearing down the rain forest to make room for cattle and the soybeans the cows will eat when we could instead use our resources to bring about cultivated meat faster? Few people say cultivated meat is impossible. It is only a matter of research which means time and money. But given the benefits, we should be all in on this research.
I'm doubtful of any future space colonization, but given likely resource constraints, any sort of meat would be a serious luxury. As far as I know, plants are far and away the most efficient way we have of converting energy into a format compatible with human metabolism (though now that I type that out, I wonder how plausible creating synthetic carbohydrates from in-situ resources might be).
I completely agree with you. HN is very anti-vegan, so mentioning not eating meat always comes with a torrent of downvotes. I imagine any self-sustainable colony would not have meat in their diet because there is no need for it.
This is a classic example, frequently paired with a bunch of pseudoscience and smart sounding nonsense. Even if it weren’t personally offensive to me as an MS patient (diagnosed in 2001, when I in my late teens, and not for nothing—a soccer player and vegetarian in otherwise very good physical shape) this kind of speculative alternative health stuff muddies the water so that when looking for legitimate, bonafide information for autoimmune disorders and treatments, one has to sift through vast torrents of frequently difficult to distinguish bullshit. They go out of their way to appear legit, spend tons of money to push dis-/misinformation, and/or poison the well of mainstream science and research.
I’m not suggesting that’s what’s happening in all of these comments, but I’ve seen a lot already that absolutely is. It’s really disappointing to see, but I’ve learned HN comments are great…until the topic of discussion departs from the usual tech-specific ideas, then it’s Dunning, Kruger, et al.
I know they are trying to be practical with "reduce meat intake" and "drink less", but meat and alcohol is on par with smoking and they say "don't smoke". I hope we get to a point where we can say "don't eat meat or drink alcohol" just like we say "don't smoke". If the point is to stop cancer from happening, not doing any of those things is huge.
He says that the reporting of nutritional data about cancer can be very confusing, and references the work of the statistician David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge, who has shown that even if everyone ate an extra 50g of bacon every day, that would only increase the incidence of colon cancer from 6% to 7%. “I think it is about having a healthy, balanced diet,” says Sivakumar, “and occasionally having a sweet treat or a steak.”
Processed red meat is a class one carcinogen and red meat is a class two. Smoking is a class one. What this means is there is a direct, provable correlation to consuming these products to cancer. Sure, a cigarette may not cause the same level of harm as one steak, but they both cause cancer. So, if you goal is to reduce as far and wide as possible your chances of cancer, meat should be off the plate. The "balance" approach is only to be practical, so I find it odd we never say to have a balanced approach with smoking, but we will with red meat.
Fresh unprocessed red meat is not directly known to cause cancer but it's implicated by the association to smoked/processed red meat that is a strong carcinogen. IARC says that maybe it can increase the risk of certain cancers but there is no direct evidence like with processed red meat.
Indeed -- though reducing seems to have other benefits.
Though as far as is practicable [0], one should not drink alcohol. No amount is safe or good enough for you to offset the other risks.
[0] life is short and not all social offers of a drink should necessarily be turned down, unless you're willing to figuratively or literally show the trappings of "one who must not" (pregnant, alcoholic, religion, training for sports, on medication, etc.)
Opposing information from mayoclinic with a link to a webmd post (i refuse to even call it an article), with zero actual scientific information in it, reduces the value of your comment. Which, otherwise, I fully agree with. There is no "although" here. Alcohol is bad for your health. That doesn't mean you should or should not drink X amount, that is anyone's free choice. But we don't live in the Dark Ages where it was suposedly good for you (...only compared to the alternative being bacteria ridden waste water).
Totally agree with you. The reason I included the webmd example and labeled it “counter-programming” was merely to highlight that the average person is faced with conflicting information (I bet even MDs don’t uniformly say any amount of alcohol is bad for you).
The webmd article is especially pernicious because the “positives” probably resonate with many (most?) people and gives people an “out” to optimize for the moment rather than their health. Webmd should do better.
Cancer isn't the only disease you're trying to prevent. Your approach that single-mindedly reduces your risk of cancer may very well increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes - both diseases which are far more prevalent in the general population.
A diet rich in proteins provided by grilled chicken breast and salmon, and low in simple carbs such as sugar, pasta, and rice, will dramatically reduce your risks for the most prevalent diseases and not increase your risk of cancer.
You need to take a moderate and wholistic view of health.
I highly recommend Ultralearning [1]. It does not talk about hours required to learn something, but how to define your goal, plan out the study, and then immerse yourself into the task.
