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Bear in mind that in the US, our lovely republican party literally made it illegal to research where the superbugs are being bred. In the US, the problem is mo

Bear in mind that in the US, our lovely republican party literally made it illegal to research where the superbugs are being bred. In the US, the problem is mostly pig and cattle feedlots that rely on antibiotics to keep the animals from being sickened but he crowding. Naturally, there is no proof that superbugs are coming out of the feedlots, because the feedlot owners do not allow any sort of sample collection by scientists. Now comes the GOP with the "ag-gag" laws, which don't just ban sneaking into these feedlots with cameras. They also ban the smuggling of manure samples from the feedlots. This is the GOP's war on science: they literally criminalize it.

marcoperaza 10y ago
Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'. If someone wants to walk into your private property and research your operations, you should have the right to tell them to beat feet. If there is a legitimate public interest then the government should create an inspection scheme; there probably should be one but that's a separate debate. But allowing guerilla espionage by activist groups is not an acceptable alternative.
- swasheck 10y ago
  There is legitimate public interest as these sites are key components of the food production system. The point that the OP was intentionally making is that the government (via GOP leadership, apparently) has specifically excused itself from creating such an inspection scheme and done so in a way that seems comprehensive enough to understand the alternative paths "guerilla ... activist" scientists could even potentially report on such a matter.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    That the government is failing to investigate something cannot be a license to trespassing or lying your way to a private investigation. If you want government action on something, then you have to win in the political process. Taking matters into your own hands and assuming the powers reserved for the government is not acceptable. =================== Replying to swashek below since I'm rate-limited: what are you talking about "thought crime"? None of the laws here concern thought or the freedom to publish your thoughts. They ban conducting suriptitious investigations on farms, which necessarily involves either trespassing or deceit in gaining access (e.g. an activist getting himself hired as an employee)
    - swasheck 10y ago
      Where do you see ANYthing about trespassing, and how do you interpret ANYthing that either I or the OP stated as condoning it? It was simply stated that trespassing is clearly defined as illegal. Lobbyists have cornered winning in the political process so all we have is our voice, which it sounds like you're trying to take away. Even as a country of laws (which I support), you still have to be able to admit that said laws are absurd when they are, in fact, absurd. This goes beyond absurd and endangers the populace. You seem more interested in ensuring that we definitively prosecute thought crimes rather than work to change the system which, at face value, appears to place the government as accessories to the wrongful deaths of many of its citizens (keeping focus on this particular topic). As such, doesn't OP have the right to criticize and suspect the government, especially when the government is ostensibly blockading one of those "inalienable rights" of "life ..." Keep shilling, though!
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        This comment was fine-ish up until that last line. Please edit it away. I don't think that the person you're replying to is suggesting that the law should remain as-is. Rather, he's suggesting that the law should be modified via the established political processes for doing so. I'm not sure where you're getting the "thought crime" thing -- even if he supported the ag-gag laws, it wouldn't be thought crime to say so, and he wouldn't be accusing others of thought crime by saying so. This is simply called a "disagreement". It doesn't need to be dramatized. Of course OP has a right to criticize and suspect the government. Who said he didn't? That doesn't mean OP has the right to disregard property boundaries or to enter a private premises under false pretenses, even if the stated intent is to "prove antibiotics in farm animals are causing human superbugs". If one believes that the local trespassing laws should be modified to accommodate persons acting in this particular public interest, he should contact his local representatives, or, alternately, run against them and lead the charge himself. It is probably much easier to convince someone in one of the several government bureaucracies to open an investigation than to get a special exception to trespassing laws codified.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- unfortunate4u33 10y ago
  OP: Government is actively participant in creating this issue. You: Well we should just wait for them to fix this very serious problem they're causing. I'm sure the party that's held social progress at bay for 40 years now is going to suddenly realize they're w... oh wait you're a fool and a coward.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    >oh wait you're a fool and a coward. I shouldn't feed the trolls, but the irony of calling someone a coward while posting from a throwaway account is too funny.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      And yet ... such labels are often accurate. I'm aware the HN guidelines are geared at productive discussion, though there are times I strongly suspect that's not possible.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rbobby 10y ago
    From the guidelines: > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names Though this might also equally apply: > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  >Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'. It was legal for the entire history of the Republic, albeit it was also grounds for civil litigation. The GOP decided to criminalize it.
- jmde 10y ago
  I sort of agree with you, but the laws overstep what I consider acceptable. I'm fine with an operation banning employees from filming, for example, and employees getting fired for doing so, or for arresting people for trespassing. The laws referenced by the OP go further, though, to criminalize recordings that were taken by individuals who were allowed on the property by the owner, and who were documenting what happened. In my opinion, owners have the right to fire employees who violate their policies, and to sue former and current employees for libel, but not to sue former and current employees for distributing recordings of things that actually occurred, when there's no reasonable expectation of privacy (which almost by definition is impossible in a workplace, except for maybe things like medical settings). I agree with you, though, that if there's a public health interest, the government should create laws regarding that, or at least give authority to DPHs to do that.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    This is my thinking as well. It means your hothead animal rights person can't assault your staff, tresspass, visit with fake credentials, etc for a political agenda. Property rights do matter, regardless of the exceptions the left keeps trying to give itself against the non-left. If this is really a public rights issue and lets assume the entirely of the GOP has been paid off, from POTUS to dog catcher, then where is the Democratic response? Oh right, it doesn't exist, because this is a non-issue outside of extremist views. Its trivial for any political group to start a case and get it to SCOTUS if they believe any of this is unconstitutional. Its trivial for law enforcement to get warrants against these farms if they're violating the law. I do understand the controversy here, but I think in the end, whistleblowing will always come with some risk. Its a little naive to think it doesn't. I think most people are okay with that because casual whistlblowing becomes office politics, meaningless outrage politics, and endless bikeshedding. There should be a high threshold for exemption to the laws that guarantee our freedom and rights.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  > Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'. So Upton Sinclair was wrong to go undercover to gather material for his book The Jungle? In case you're not aware, until the 80's, American law practically encouraged a level of industrial espionage, because it discouraged reliance on trade secrecy and therefore encouraged the dissemination of knowledge. And yes, because it enabled undercover investigations of wrong doing, both the illegal and what ought-to-be illegal.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > If someone wants to walk into your private property and research your operations, you should have the right to tell them to beat feet. To the extent that there is a valid right here, how is regular, generally-applicable civil and criminal trespassing law an insufficient vindication of the valid rights at issue so as to require special additional "ag-gag" laws providing additional privileges to a particular industry?
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  > If there is a legitimate public interest then the government should create an inspection scheme The problem is that the public doesn't always know any better or know what is going on without the undercover folks investigating and making a big deal about it. It would be different if we could trust policy makers to investigate some of the stuff or listen to the science, but at this point (at least in the US), that's not happening. >That's the government's job, not private activists Sure, maybe it is the government's job technically. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work. In addition to the above, many governement oversight programs are underfunded or have had their power legistlated away. On top of all that, companies aren't always upfront with letting an inspector see the normal daily operations. Ancedotes I worked as a CNA in a nursing home. They were commonly understaffed. This is fairly common with nursing homes in the state I was in. There was a state agency that checked such things, but it seemed the nursing homes always had a notice when they were going to visit. Suddenly, they had a lot of manditory and voluntary overtime available and stuck to the rules. If the visits were sporadic, more often, and they checked things like logs and historic staffing levels, I'm guessing this would change. I think the only way to get this improved would be for enough private activists to gather evidence from many different places and get state laws changed after making a public outcry. Ancedote 2 I worked in a food factory for a day or two. Now, they were horrible employers for various reasons, but the facility was clean and there was a lot of focus on meeting food prep safety guidelines. In fact, there were USDA employees assigned to that factory, and they could not run without it. Actual oversight. But food factories might not have been like this had it not been for private activists, and it still isn't perfect. One still hears horror stories in small towns with a meat processing plant, for example, but I have no clue if they are true or not.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  "That's the government's job, not private activists'." Taking a broad view, I disagree. Everything the government is permitted to do is (or at least should be) ultimately by consent of the governed. Anything that is the government's job is only their job because the governed delegated it to them; it is the job of the governed first, delegated to the government. It is private activists' job; the government has simply been tasked with it. I believe the governed have a moral duty to take back any such job when the government proves unable to properly execute their duties. The line of "unable to properly execute" is, unfortunately, enormously open to interpretation. Morality isn't easy.
partycoder 10y ago
Farmers massively administer antibiotics so they can keep animals in crowded/unsanitary conditions. If antibiotics were administered properly that would severely affect their revenue.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  So just vote to outlaw antibiotics use in healthy livestock and make sure there is a rigorous inspection apparatus? Farmers are few, people who get diseases are many. Shouldn't be too hard.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    "The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of a man who succumbs to infection with a penicillin-resistant organism." - Sir Alexander Fleming
    - ihsw 10y ago
      It should be noted that Fleming discovered Pencillin and the statement is especially prescient coming from him. He spoke countless times around the world trying to raise awareness that antibiotic resistance would be inevitable when used improperly. The nightmare scenario is medical science gets rolled back by a century as non-trivial infections return to being a death sentence.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      OK and how do you locate and invoice all of these morally responsible individuals who have led to this resistance? It's hundreds of thousands of doctors. I doubt their malpractice insurance will cover this. And then aside from the unnecessary prescriptions, because the ignorant patient-consumer demanded it, is the ignorant patient-consumer who doesn't take the entire prescribed dosage which is itself the far bigger problem that lead to resistance. How are they punished and insured for their immorality?
      - 10y ago
karmachameleon2 10y ago
And Democrats are powerless to prevent the GOP from "criminalizing science"? How about having the mainstream media news talk about it, and then some kind of general vote on whether "ag-gag" laws should be repealed immediately? You think the public might support the idea? Of course. It would be simple to get it repealed with massive public support and outrage. So why don't they do it? Might it be that shafting the general population is a bi-partisan effort after all, just like with SOPA / PIPA / CISPA / NDAA / TPP / TTIP and so on ad infinitum?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > And Democrats are powerless to prevent the GOP from "criminalizing science"? Basically, yes. > How about having the mainstream media news talk about it The "mainstream media news" doesn't work for the Democratic Party (in fact, it mostly is owned by corporations that preferentially support the Republican Party, though people tend to get confused by studies showing that workers in much of the media lean Democratic, as if firms were directed by workers rather than owners.)
at-fates-hands 10y ago
>> Now comes the GOP with the "ag-gag" laws What states are you referring to? Most of these laws that were introduced in the 1990's have all been deemed unconstitutional in the states where they were passed. Not to mention, any other states that have attempted to pass these laws have failed. I'm sure you enjoy demonizing the GOP, but I don't see much merit in your argument if there are no states where these laws are currently in effect and nobody has been successfully convicted of violating these laws. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
- _delirium 10y ago
  According to that link, the laws are mostly recent, passed in the 2010s rather than 1990s, e.g. 2014 for Idaho's and 2012 for Missouri's. And I don't see anywhere there that they've all been struck down. Only one is mentioned as having been struck down, Idaho's, and from what I can find that's still being litigated, currently being heard by an appeals court [1]. [1] http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/idaho-appeals-federal-court-decision-overturning-statess-ag-gag-law/ http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/idaho-appeals-federal-...
- ocschwar 10y ago
  Wyoming's one example: https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2016/wyomings-ag-gag-law-dealt-serious-blow/ https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2016/wyomings-ag-gag-law-d...
- bashinator 10y ago
  Farming Industry Uses Ag-Gag Laws to Silence Whistleblowers - http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bbc1af3e-520e-4031-9a23-2cd5ad44d247 http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bbc1af3e-520e-... New Study Finds “Ag-Gag” Laws Erode Trust in Farmers - http://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/ag-gag-laws-erode-trust-farmers/ http://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/ag-gag-laws-erode-trust-farm...
legulere 10y ago
Feeding antibiotics to livestock for faster growth is illegal in Germany, yet we feed around the same amount as the US: http://i.imgur.com/9ybmhwE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9ybmhwE.jpg
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  A great example of the stupidity of laws stating "it's fine to do X with benign intent, but it is forbidden to do X with malign intent".
clumsysmurf 10y ago
> Naturally, there is no proof that superbugs are coming out of the feedlots, because the feedlot owners do not allow any sort of sample collection by scientists. "In the bed of a truck that they parked on county roads adjacent to ten Lubbock-area feed yards, they set up small, generator-powered vacuums. On a number of windy days, they collected upwind and downwind air samples. The results confirmed their suspicions: downwind, they found antibiotics—specifically tetracycline—present at significantly higher levels than in the upwind samples. Yet as they dug deeper, they discovered something even more worrisome. Along with the antibiotics, they found another hitchhiker: remnants of bacteria that had acquired a gene that made them resistant to tetracycline." (1) The article also describes the pushback from the CFA (Cattle Feeders Association) (1) http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/when-the-dust-settles/ http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/when-the-dust-settles/
gozur88 10y ago
Do you have any support at all for these assertions?

marcoperaza 10y ago

Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'. If someone wants to walk into your private property and research your operations, you should have the right to tell them to beat feet. If there is a legitimate public interest then the government should create an inspection scheme; there probably should be one but that's a separate debate. But allowing guerilla espionage by activist groups is not an acceptable alternative.

swasheck 10y ago
There is legitimate public interest as these sites are key components of the food production system. The point that the OP was intentionally making is that the government (via GOP leadership, apparently) has specifically excused itself from creating such an inspection scheme and done so in a way that seems comprehensive enough to understand the alternative paths "guerilla ... activist" scientists could even potentially report on such a matter.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  That the government is failing to investigate something cannot be a license to trespassing or lying your way to a private investigation. If you want government action on something, then you have to win in the political process. Taking matters into your own hands and assuming the powers reserved for the government is not acceptable. =================== Replying to swashek below since I'm rate-limited: what are you talking about "thought crime"? None of the laws here concern thought or the freedom to publish your thoughts. They ban conducting suriptitious investigations on farms, which necessarily involves either trespassing or deceit in gaining access (e.g. an activist getting himself hired as an employee)
  - swasheck 10y ago
    Where do you see ANYthing about trespassing, and how do you interpret ANYthing that either I or the OP stated as condoning it? It was simply stated that trespassing is clearly defined as illegal. Lobbyists have cornered winning in the political process so all we have is our voice, which it sounds like you're trying to take away. Even as a country of laws (which I support), you still have to be able to admit that said laws are absurd when they are, in fact, absurd. This goes beyond absurd and endangers the populace. You seem more interested in ensuring that we definitively prosecute thought crimes rather than work to change the system which, at face value, appears to place the government as accessories to the wrongful deaths of many of its citizens (keeping focus on this particular topic). As such, doesn't OP have the right to criticize and suspect the government, especially when the government is ostensibly blockading one of those "inalienable rights" of "life ..." Keep shilling, though!
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      This comment was fine-ish up until that last line. Please edit it away. I don't think that the person you're replying to is suggesting that the law should remain as-is. Rather, he's suggesting that the law should be modified via the established political processes for doing so. I'm not sure where you're getting the "thought crime" thing -- even if he supported the ag-gag laws, it wouldn't be thought crime to say so, and he wouldn't be accusing others of thought crime by saying so. This is simply called a "disagreement". It doesn't need to be dramatized. Of course OP has a right to criticize and suspect the government. Who said he didn't? That doesn't mean OP has the right to disregard property boundaries or to enter a private premises under false pretenses, even if the stated intent is to "prove antibiotics in farm animals are causing human superbugs". If one believes that the local trespassing laws should be modified to accommodate persons acting in this particular public interest, he should contact his local representatives, or, alternately, run against them and lead the charge himself. It is probably much easier to convince someone in one of the several government bureaucracies to open an investigation than to get a special exception to trespassing laws codified.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
unfortunate4u33 10y ago
OP: Government is actively participant in creating this issue. You: Well we should just wait for them to fix this very serious problem they're causing. I'm sure the party that's held social progress at bay for 40 years now is going to suddenly realize they're w... oh wait you're a fool and a coward.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >oh wait you're a fool and a coward. I shouldn't feed the trolls, but the irony of calling someone a coward while posting from a throwaway account is too funny.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    And yet ... such labels are often accurate. I'm aware the HN guidelines are geared at productive discussion, though there are times I strongly suspect that's not possible.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rbobby 10y ago
  From the guidelines: > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names Though this might also equally apply: > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
ocschwar 10y ago
>Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'. It was legal for the entire history of the Republic, albeit it was also grounds for civil litigation. The GOP decided to criminalize it.
jmde 10y ago
I sort of agree with you, but the laws overstep what I consider acceptable. I'm fine with an operation banning employees from filming, for example, and employees getting fired for doing so, or for arresting people for trespassing. The laws referenced by the OP go further, though, to criminalize recordings that were taken by individuals who were allowed on the property by the owner, and who were documenting what happened. In my opinion, owners have the right to fire employees who violate their policies, and to sue former and current employees for libel, but not to sue former and current employees for distributing recordings of things that actually occurred, when there's no reasonable expectation of privacy (which almost by definition is impossible in a workplace, except for maybe things like medical settings). I agree with you, though, that if there's a public health interest, the government should create laws regarding that, or at least give authority to DPHs to do that.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  This is my thinking as well. It means your hothead animal rights person can't assault your staff, tresspass, visit with fake credentials, etc for a political agenda. Property rights do matter, regardless of the exceptions the left keeps trying to give itself against the non-left. If this is really a public rights issue and lets assume the entirely of the GOP has been paid off, from POTUS to dog catcher, then where is the Democratic response? Oh right, it doesn't exist, because this is a non-issue outside of extremist views. Its trivial for any political group to start a case and get it to SCOTUS if they believe any of this is unconstitutional. Its trivial for law enforcement to get warrants against these farms if they're violating the law. I do understand the controversy here, but I think in the end, whistleblowing will always come with some risk. Its a little naive to think it doesn't. I think most people are okay with that because casual whistlblowing becomes office politics, meaningless outrage politics, and endless bikeshedding. There should be a high threshold for exemption to the laws that guarantee our freedom and rights.
ocschwar 10y ago
> Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'. So Upton Sinclair was wrong to go undercover to gather material for his book The Jungle? In case you're not aware, until the 80's, American law practically encouraged a level of industrial espionage, because it discouraged reliance on trade secrecy and therefore encouraged the dissemination of knowledge. And yes, because it enabled undercover investigations of wrong doing, both the illegal and what ought-to-be illegal.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> If someone wants to walk into your private property and research your operations, you should have the right to tell them to beat feet. To the extent that there is a valid right here, how is regular, generally-applicable civil and criminal trespassing law an insufficient vindication of the valid rights at issue so as to require special additional "ag-gag" laws providing additional privileges to a particular industry?
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
> If there is a legitimate public interest then the government should create an inspection scheme The problem is that the public doesn't always know any better or know what is going on without the undercover folks investigating and making a big deal about it. It would be different if we could trust policy makers to investigate some of the stuff or listen to the science, but at this point (at least in the US), that's not happening. >That's the government's job, not private activists Sure, maybe it is the government's job technically. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work. In addition to the above, many governement oversight programs are underfunded or have had their power legistlated away. On top of all that, companies aren't always upfront with letting an inspector see the normal daily operations. Ancedotes I worked as a CNA in a nursing home. They were commonly understaffed. This is fairly common with nursing homes in the state I was in. There was a state agency that checked such things, but it seemed the nursing homes always had a notice when they were going to visit. Suddenly, they had a lot of manditory and voluntary overtime available and stuck to the rules. If the visits were sporadic, more often, and they checked things like logs and historic staffing levels, I'm guessing this would change. I think the only way to get this improved would be for enough private activists to gather evidence from many different places and get state laws changed after making a public outcry. Ancedote 2 I worked in a food factory for a day or two. Now, they were horrible employers for various reasons, but the facility was clean and there was a lot of focus on meeting food prep safety guidelines. In fact, there were USDA employees assigned to that factory, and they could not run without it. Actual oversight. But food factories might not have been like this had it not been for private activists, and it still isn't perfect. One still hears horror stories in small towns with a meat processing plant, for example, but I have no clue if they are true or not.
EliRivers 10y ago
"That's the government's job, not private activists'." Taking a broad view, I disagree. Everything the government is permitted to do is (or at least should be) ultimately by consent of the governed. Anything that is the government's job is only their job because the governed delegated it to them; it is the job of the governed first, delegated to the government. It is private activists' job; the government has simply been tasked with it. I believe the governed have a moral duty to take back any such job when the government proves unable to properly execute their duties. The line of "unable to properly execute" is, unfortunately, enormously open to interpretation. Morality isn't easy.

partycoder 10y ago

Farmers massively administer antibiotics so they can keep animals in crowded/unsanitary conditions. If antibiotics were administered properly that would severely affect their revenue.

alkonaut 10y ago
So just vote to outlaw antibiotics use in healthy livestock and make sure there is a rigorous inspection apparatus? Farmers are few, people who get diseases are many. Shouldn't be too hard.
- partycoder 10y ago
  "The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of a man who succumbs to infection with a penicillin-resistant organism." - Sir Alexander Fleming
  - ihsw 10y ago
    It should be noted that Fleming discovered Pencillin and the statement is especially prescient coming from him. He spoke countless times around the world trying to raise awareness that antibiotic resistance would be inevitable when used improperly. The nightmare scenario is medical science gets rolled back by a century as non-trivial infections return to being a death sentence.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    OK and how do you locate and invoice all of these morally responsible individuals who have led to this resistance? It's hundreds of thousands of doctors. I doubt their malpractice insurance will cover this. And then aside from the unnecessary prescriptions, because the ignorant patient-consumer demanded it, is the ignorant patient-consumer who doesn't take the entire prescribed dosage which is itself the far bigger problem that lead to resistance. How are they punished and insured for their immorality?
    - 10y ago

karmachameleon2 10y ago

And Democrats are powerless to prevent the GOP from "criminalizing science"? How about having the mainstream media news talk about it, and then some kind of general vote on whether "ag-gag" laws should be repealed immediately? You think the public might support the idea? Of course. It would be simple to get it repealed with massive public support and outrage. So why don't they do it? Might it be that shafting the general population is a bi-partisan effort after all, just like with SOPA / PIPA / CISPA / NDAA / TPP / TTIP and so on ad infinitum?

dragonwriter 10y ago
> And Democrats are powerless to prevent the GOP from "criminalizing science"? Basically, yes. > How about having the mainstream media news talk about it The "mainstream media news" doesn't work for the Democratic Party (in fact, it mostly is owned by corporations that preferentially support the Republican Party, though people tend to get confused by studies showing that workers in much of the media lean Democratic, as if firms were directed by workers rather than owners.)

at-fates-hands 10y ago

>> Now comes the GOP with the "ag-gag" laws What states are you referring to? Most of these laws that were introduced in the 1990's have all been deemed unconstitutional in the states where they were passed. Not to mention, any other states that have attempted to pass these laws have failed. I'm sure you enjoy demonizing the GOP, but I don't see much merit in your argument if there are no states where these laws are currently in effect and nobody has been successfully convicted of violating these laws. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag

_delirium 10y ago
According to that link, the laws are mostly recent, passed in the 2010s rather than 1990s, e.g. 2014 for Idaho's and 2012 for Missouri's. And I don't see anywhere there that they've all been struck down. Only one is mentioned as having been struck down, Idaho's, and from what I can find that's still being litigated, currently being heard by an appeals court [1]. [1] http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/idaho-appeals-federal-court-decision-overturning-statess-ag-gag-law/ http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/idaho-appeals-federal-...
ocschwar 10y ago
Wyoming's one example: https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2016/wyomings-ag-gag-law-dealt-serious-blow/ https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2016/wyomings-ag-gag-law-d...
bashinator 10y ago
Farming Industry Uses Ag-Gag Laws to Silence Whistleblowers - http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bbc1af3e-520e-4031-9a23-2cd5ad44d247 http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bbc1af3e-520e-... New Study Finds “Ag-Gag” Laws Erode Trust in Farmers - http://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/ag-gag-laws-erode-trust-farmers/ http://modernfarmer.com/2016/03/ag-gag-laws-erode-trust-farm...

legulere 10y ago

Feeding antibiotics to livestock for faster growth is illegal in Germany, yet we feed around the same amount as the US: http://i.imgur.com/9ybmhwE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9ybmhwE.jpg

thaumasiotes 10y ago
A great example of the stupidity of laws stating "it's fine to do X with benign intent, but it is forbidden to do X with malign intent".

clumsysmurf 10y ago

> Naturally, there is no proof that superbugs are coming out of the feedlots, because the feedlot owners do not allow any sort of sample collection by scientists. "In the bed of a truck that they parked on county roads adjacent to ten Lubbock-area feed yards, they set up small, generator-powered vacuums. On a number of windy days, they collected upwind and downwind air samples. The results confirmed their suspicions: downwind, they found antibiotics—specifically tetracycline—present at significantly higher levels than in the upwind samples. Yet as they dug deeper, they discovered something even more worrisome. Along with the antibiotics, they found another hitchhiker: remnants of bacteria that had acquired a gene that made them resistant to tetracycline." (1) The article also describes the pushback from the CFA (Cattle Feeders Association) (1) http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/when-the-dust-settles/ http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/when-the-dust-settles/

gozur88 10y ago

Do you have any support at all for these assertions?