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This is remotely tangentially related but when I learned that the milk in one milk carton was composed of many hundreds of cows and not just one cow it blew my
by kanobo 6y ago
This is remotely tangentially related but when I learned that the milk in one milk carton was composed of many hundreds of cows and not just one cow it blew my mind as a child.
- maerF0x0 6y agoThis is common for many industrial ag products and part of why it's safety is harder. The safety of multiple containers of milk are the worst of the set of individual cows. So you have the incidence of one sick cow leveraged out to many more consumers than if it were 1:1 Another similar case is ground beef[1] where a hamburger patty can contain material from >100 cows [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/05/there-are-a-lot-more-cows-in-a-single-hamburger-than-you-realize/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/05/there...
- eitland 6y agoRegarding milk: at least around here, the milk get tested rather thoroughly, both on composition, bacteria content and taste. Also all modern dairies pasteurize all milk meant for consumption, which means the bacteria in it are dead anyway. Source: grew up on a farm, studied agriculture.
- maerF0x0 6y agoOf course, totally agree there are processes in place to mitigate the leverage points. It just points out the necessity for such mitigations to be in place due to the multiplicative nature.