Something that really bothers me about any discussion relating to agriculture is how the word farmer is thrown around as if it's clear who they're referring to. Like, the farmers, I believe are actually the owners, right? And the workers are the people who actually do the farming work?
Of course the owners are resisting extra safety measures. It costs money.
Since capitalist modernization of agriculture, the word "farmer" has lost all meaning. Some are genuinely trying to grow the best vegetables ever while others never touched dirt in their life and spend all day doing finance bro stuff
Just based on my own experience the workers are probably refusing it too. My wife works retail and practically begs her coworkers daily to wear something, anything. We give them our own supply and they say no. Americans of all stripes are genuinely unwell.
I can't get my co-worker to use the fucking hand guard when operating a meat slicer. There's also the constant using of milk crates instead of ladders. There is absolutely no reason to neglect safety to get the job done faster. You're hourly
The media will say “farmer” and Americans conjure up an image of the yeoman farmer - the rugged, self-sufficient hard-workin’ (white) man. But this isn’t 1824. At best, the typical farmer (really, “farm owner” is more appropriate) is pretty involved in the business aspect and may even be out there regularly in the crops and checking out things. But still, most of the work is done by poorly paid workers - the overwhelming majority are undocumented. And at worst, the farm owner just lives in a sprawling farmhouse and does nothing other than cut a check to a management company (who still just hires mainly undocumented workers).
I don’t actually want this happen because it hurts workers, but I almost would like to see racist chuds get their wish and have every undocumented worker deported. That would create an economic collapse that would make the 2009 financial crisis look like a balloon party. This country would starve as the ag industry would collapse overnight.
don’t actually want this happen because it hurts workers, but I almost would like to see racist chuds get their wish and have every undocumented worker deported. That would create an economic collapse that would make the 2009 financial crisis look like a balloon party. This country would starve as the ag industry would collapse overnight.
there have been state-level crackdowns that caused problems like this but the hogs can't look at that and stop being racist for ten minutes
american 'farmers' are latifundistas, not cultivators. they're slavedrivers of unfree precarious labor at the most 'personal' level or regular bourgeois rentiers that don't even see the harvest
Something that really bothers me about any discussion relating to agriculture is how the word farmer is thrown around as if it's clear who they're referring to. Like, the farmers, I believe are actually the owners, right? And the workers are the people who actually do the farming work?
Public health is now is the government politely asking businesses to the right thing, the businesses saying no, and then government pretending everything is fine.
That’s intentional. They’re trying to obscure the line between seasonal farmhand slaves and millionaire capitalists who own hundreds of acres of land so that readers have more sympathy for the latter.
The west declines not in a grand epic battle against the rising socialism but because it can no longer get its population to vaccinate and perform basic protective measures against an increasing number of serious diseases. Its population becomes weak, disabled, burdened, and productive output can not be maintained. It simply fizzles out underneath its own inability to exert authority for any purpose other than to put boots on necks.
While SARS-CoV-2 has mutation baked into it's replication cycle, the mechanism of mutation is rudimentary in comparison to influenza. This makes not wearing protection exponentially dumber in this scenario. Virologist estimate it'll only take ~10 direct human infections from chickens or cows until the virus is ready for human to human transmission. We already got one on the books from a dairy farm at the end of March. The infections which occur prior to the virus adapting to humans are brutal too, as it attaches to the α2:3 receptor, which are only found deep in the human lung. Thus the wild mortality rate with these infections until the tropism shifts to α2:6, which are found thorough out our respiratory tract...
At least in Colorado, whenever an infected wild bird landed in a poultry farm they had to cull the entire flock. That must be weeks if not a couple months of lost production, unfulfilled contracts, and wasted inputs. All while their labour force either moves on or gets a disease with a 50% fatality rate. Maybe insurance will cover it the first few times it happens, but with the premiums going up to account for that risk. This is so stupid.
And yet something tells me that if we really wanted to we could find a way. We’ll move heaven and earth to get Israel tens of billions in munitions but don’t ask us how to keep equipment from getting wet
In the specific situation of Dairies, you can't keep things from getting wet. Everything is constantly getting sprayed down will water/cleaning solutions.
While I'm not a very good comrade when it comes to Animal Rights and Veganism, I tend towards agreeing with the idea that large animal operations probably should be scaled way back if not stopped completely.
Yea this right here. Regular masks are completely ineffective when wet, and loads of agricultural work/animal work/food processing work happens in wet environnents.
Could do full-mask respirators? Incorporates the goggles into the mask, and the filters should be okay unless you're like spraying water directly into the intakes.
The Catch-22 might be that this moves the PPE from disposable one use items and things simple enough to easily sanitize into items that need to torn down to sanitize all the nooks and crannies.
"If you knew how to Follow The Science you would see this is actually very smart. As everyone knows, a pandemic's vision is based on movement. So as long as we do absolutely nothing about it, it won't be able to find us to make us sick! I mean, why else would I stop the CDC from wastewater testing?"
Welp, the α2:3 receptors found thorough out the avian respiratory tract are also found thorough out their digestive tract...This is why factory farms using chicken litter (scrap bird feed + bird feathers + bird shit) to feed cattle has led to the first ever cases of avian flu in cows. If cows have it, won't be long before pigs get it, and they're the perfect mixing vessels as they have both α2:3 and α2:6 in their respiratory tract. This is the ideal setup for influenza's classic reassortment mutation, which could easily lead to another pandemic. But, maybe this was your point lol
With the low transmission to humans thus far, the virus might not have enough time to evolve to attack humans before it wipes out enough food supply to take us out.
Meat is nonessential for feeding humanity. The sheer amount of soy grown for feedstock could probably make up for the lost animal protein several times over.
I'm seriously starting to hope that all corpse eaters, myself included, die slowly and horribly from diseases caught from our savage, uncivilized diets.
I mean I want as little to die as possible. The fewer people that eat copses the more normal it becomes. I hope you don't get a disease and if I'm being honest with myself I don't want the corpse eaters to either. I just want them to stop eating corpses but sadly it appears that well continue until humans face their reckoning.