11 ms·

Pesticide safety limit for salmon farms watered down after industry lobbying

301 points by myshpa 3y ago

blindriver 3y ago
Climate change is a problem that needs to be solved, but things like this to me are a much more pressing issue. We are poisoning ourselves because of industry and no one seems to think about it. We can't eat fish more than once a week because fish are so poisoned. I have a close friend who had to go through chelation therapy because her blood had so many heavy metals from eating sushi 2-3 a week for a year. Industries that create pollution need MORE regulation, not less and things like this is depressing, where industry is able to corruptly change laws to benefit themselves and poison the people around them.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  There problem is if there’s any more politically powerful force than “the children” it’s “the farmers,” despite the fact almost all farming is done by large corporations exploiting migrant labor and blasting the earth with chemicals to induce low quality substances that resemble vegetables and grains but lack almost all the nutrition. If we stopped today it would take a generation to make the soil independently viable again.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    > it’s “the farmers,” No, it's "the shareholders". Large corporations don't care about farming, only making money. They just happen to also farm.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      Yes. But the political force is “the farmers.” Guess who is behind “the children?” Yes, the shareholders as well.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    Most agri land is also used to grow crops for animals for a tiny return on the calories fed to them (tropic levels). We could get serious about that if we decide to get serious about agri land use, deforestation, soil depletion, etc.
    - pard68 3y ago
      Totally possible to raise animals without this though. There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume, leaving more biologically diverse land available for other species. The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes). We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.
      - hgomersall 3y ago
        Without meaning to suggest that there's no much better ways to raise animals for meat, it's still a fundamental truth that the land area needed to support animals is much higher than crops. If we were to only eat meat from animals that were raised in a biodiversity sustainable fashion, we'd all have to eat far less meat (which I totally support as a flexitarian).
        pard68 3y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree. There is no possible way to raise animals the way we do at a scale that can sustain the current demand for meat. But at my small scale, I can make a profit while matching the sales price of mass-produced animal products, and I do that with no government subsidies. My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.
      - 3y ago
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Large scale mass farming as a consequence of consolidation is also responsible for the massive reduction in insects and birdlife biodiversity. Basically, miles upon miles of monoculture, that's a food desert for the insects, and the birds don't have any habitat as there are no bushes, no shade, nothing. And on top of that come the issues with deadly pesticides that kill off bees and other pollinators and leach into groundwater. People keep asking me why I'm so strongly opposed to GMO in food, outside of stuff like Golden Rice. The reason is that we can't trust Big Ag to not do the wrong thing: for one, there are serious questions on monopolies and dependence of farmers, even entire nations in the end upon suppliers, and it's almost exclusively about introducing resistence against pesticides, with the aforementioned effects on biodiversity.
    - jinkiesScoob 3y ago
      There are 8B of us homie. Big Ag, mono culture, pesticides all come with the territory. Have you ever kept a garden? Did you do it on natural soil, with no pesticides? The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. (Consider crickets if you think otherwise) GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        First of all, your account seems to be shadowbanned, you might want to email the mods. > The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. Indeed it is, and modern agriculture has drastically improved human life from the situation of just a century ago. The thing is, we've gone too far - in our quest for more and more and more food production, we have endangered nature itself. Soils are degrading because the crops use too much nutrients and because the wildlife - particularly small burrowing animals - get killed off by pesticides directly or because their food got killed off by pesticides. On top of that, heavy farm machines compress the soil... and so it can't soak up water any more, leading to flood and drought issues (it can't retain water because the soil is too compacted for the water to seep through, so no buffer for drought times, and when rain falls it just washes the topsoil with it and is gone). And that doesn't even mention insects and their role in food chains. > GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide. You didn't get my point: pesticides kill everything but the GMO plants that are designed to be resistant, thus impacting the food chain of nature as an ecosystem. We've engineered places that are literally inhospitable to wildlife, with serious and far-reaching consequences. We barely understand food chains and anchor species as a concept, we only discovered just how huge a role wolves and beavers play in nature a few decades ago [1]. And yet, despite the warning signs (such as insect free car windshields despite driving through the countryside for hours), we keep on and on doing what we know is likely harmful! [1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...
- heavenlyblue 3y ago
  I am sorry but I thought that heavy metal poisoning is due to eating fish that eats other fish, thus distilling the heavy metals in their own body. i.e. eating shark is worse that eating salmon. Is that not correct? I feel like the post above is completely misunderstanding the issue
  - LeeroyWasHere 3y ago
    Yeah, they're different issues, but similar causes. I can't remember the exact cycle, but essentially fish kibble in farms is made of small fish with heavy metals and farm fish that are fatty retain those metals in their fats to a much higher rate then other fishes. And it also ends up in dog food? It gets a little wild when your food chain is contaminated.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      Pesticides are cool. You're talking about bioaccumulation. Carnivorous species have a disadvantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation https://www.poisoningchildren.com/blog/2014/02/05/bioaccumulation-and-dead-baby-dolphins https://www.poisoningchildren.com/blog/2014/02/05/bioaccumul... "... because of the toxins dolphins accumulate in the oceans we have polluted, their uterine environment and breast milk are so toxic that it kills their first-borns. Later-born offspring have a better chance ..." "Children who breastfed were much more likely to get leukemia before the age of two when their mothers had been exposed to pesticides. And in turn, breastfeeding is one of the few measures that may provide women protection from breast cancer, possibly because the toxicants pass out of the breast fat with the milk"
      - cma 3y ago
        A simple solution to keep using pesticides and polluting the ocean may be switch human babies to formula, switch dolphin babies to human pumped milk, solving the cancer issues and the dolphin first-born problem except for the dolphin uterine environment which could possibly be fixed with cane toads.
- rajnathani 3y ago
  I think that a good dietary solution would be for us to get more culinarily creative with algae in food dishes. Most of the important nutrients such as omega-3s (DHA), micronutrients, and and apparently one of the most effective antioxidants that is Astaxanthin, are all picked by fish directly or indirectly (via other fish) from eating algae. While algae may not have the same taste-profile or texture as fish, at least we would be able to make a difference (particularly with climate change and better preserving our environment from toxins as described by the article) by making socially-normal algae-based options for people who currently choose to eat fish on a more regular basis for nutritional reasons.
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    I look forward to the headline "Pesticide safety limit for algae farms watered down after industry lobbying"
    - rajnathani 3y ago
      Chemicals used for animals/fish farming seems to be an underestimated issue, for example see the recent HN post about the vulture populations dwindling in India due to anti-inflammatory medicine given to cows. In the above article, the pesticide use is to prevent lice from killing the salmons.
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    > People should breed X lower in trophic chain. And nintendo should make only boring and educative games in ascii that nobody wants like Donkey Kant or Super Marx kart. I suspect that a sector that has been running before Christ dumped his pacifier, had thoroughly explored yet the idea of breeding strictly vegetarian fishes (get-rich-simpler-faster)... and discarded it. Some decades ago. There is a problem with vegetarian fishes. They taste awful. Algae dislike being eaten and love to design new chemical deterrents. Salmon on the other hand is delicious. Marine farms are simply giving people more of the product what they want to buy at a premium price. Strict market logic. The sad truth is that most of the absolute solutions that are preached in this thread are either untested, unproved or proven as non-viable in the real life since 90's. Those are "cargo-cult solutions" that people still keep parroting again and again; replacing critical thinking with faith. Fueled by a lack of real knowledge on the area.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Problems without solutions are predicaments to be suffered.
- melling 3y ago
  “but things like this to me are a much more pressing issue” That’s what we’ve been saying for almost half a century. Guess what, we can do both.
- Ar-Curunir 3y ago
  The root cause of both climate change and stuff like this is the same: corporate incentives, greed, and deregulation.
- amluto 3y ago
  > chelation therapy because her blood had so many heavy metals from eating sushi 2-3 a week for a year. Was this because of a blood test showing levels indicating chelation therapy or was this for some other reason? What heavy metals? What is the evidence that it came from sushi? What kind of fish? Mercury in fish is partially, but not fully, humanity’s fault, and the evidence that it’s problematic (at least if you’re not eating whales) is mixed. For a surprising and fascinating rabbit hole, there are papers like this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-12361-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-12361-7 As far as I can tell, the jury is very much out as to the significance of dietary mercury.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    That paper only says that the danger of mercury must always be estimated by also taking into account the content of selenium. Some fish contain enough selenium that it will combine with a part or even with all mercury, making that part of the mercury non-dangerous, so reducing the effective content of mercury. A few fish may contain so much selenium that it may make the mercury non-dangerous, but the selenium will be toxic itself, making the fish unfit for consumption. The main problem with polluted food like fish is that normal people cannot afford to have a chemical analysis laboratory, to check whether the food they want to eat is healthy or harmful. So they can only hope that there are adequate laws about the content of pollutants in food and that they are really enforced. Enforcing such regulations for fish is particularly difficult due to the great differences in effective mercury content that may happen between individuals of the same kind of fish, so even when a few fish from a vendor are sampled for chemical analysis, that does not reduce much the risk of eating fish with too much mercury. The same happens with seeds and nuts that may contain too much lead and cadmium, and so on. So even when you are aware of the dangers of eating toxic food, it is difficult to make choices that would significantly reduce the risks, because any choice that decreases some risks increases others.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Some marine fishes are "so poisoned with heavy metals". Farmed salmon is a different category of food, and can help with that problem. > poison the people around them Honest question. It is really poisoning people or are we just assuming it? Just because some stuff can kill a shrimp does not mean that is also able to harm human metabolism. not to mention the fact that there are safety intervals on industry, because this is aquaculture, not fishing. Treating a cage on spring does not mean than you will be able to buy that fish before Christmas.
myth_drannon 3y ago
After 90% of my apple harvest gone to garbage due to Apple Maggot/Railroad Worm, I'm not surprised by the extensive use of pesticide in the agriculture industry. Probably like half of human population would die from starvation due to failed crops if we didn't use pesticides. Could we use less toxic ways to keep our food safe? I don't know.
- esel2k 3y ago
  Like genetic modifications, or as they did hundreds of years ago with hybridisation. I am all for it (even though it needs to be watched and not used for any sort of chemical increase only decrease) why not?
- samtho 3y ago
  I am probably in the minority here, but I think GMOs are an amazing advancement. We’ve been “genetically modifying” crops for years with selective breeding, we have now just been able to speed up the process. Genetic engineering has enabled us to grow potatoes, corn, and cotton that contain some DNA from bacteria that encodes (I.e contains the recipe for) a protein, referred to as Bt Crystal Toxin, that disrupts the metabolism of some major pests. They are regarded as safe for humans because it requires both a higher pH (alkaline) and specific receptors that humans lack in order to do damage to an organism.
  - pard68 3y ago
    The real issue that I see with GMO is the reason for it, namely creating crops immune to poison. I am all for GMOs that produce a better plant but the practical result of GMO is a plant that can tolerate poison.
  - SenAnder 3y ago
    GMOs as technology, and the effects of GMOs on food sovereignty, are two very different things. I don't want multinational biotech companies to be the only ones able to compete. Though the technology isn't harmless either. Let's assume sufficient care is and perpetually will be taken to avoid major disasters. What remains is amoral for-profit companies that now have far more ability to engineer food for market fit. Why is this bad? Because carrots and apples will slowly turn into the equivalents of Snickers and Cheetos - those are the products we get when not constrained by nature.
bobsaget81 3y ago
[flagged]
gigatexal 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  "Please don't fulminate." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - gigatexal 3y ago
    Okay. If there ever was a group worthy of sneering it is lobbyists. But rules are rules. My bad.
    - dang 3y ago
      Well, the idea is not that lobbyists deserve better, but that we (i.e. the community, including you), deserve better.
      - gigatexal 3y ago
        I get it. I'll be more professional. Again, my apologies.
ACV001 3y ago
why did they invent this word "lobbying" when it has to be called to what it is - corruption.
- gruez 3y ago
  Lobbying: >In politics, lobbying or advocacy, is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials Corruption: >Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with companies trying to influence government policies. It's only a problem when government officials abuse their office for personal gain (eg. taking bribes). In this case it's not really obvious that such improper behavior has occurred, other than a vague kneejerk reaction of "pesticides bad, therefore the only possible reason why the regulators approved it was that they were corrupt".
  - siftrics 3y ago
    Pesticides are bad. Government officials are trading increased cancer rates for higher profit margins. How that can ever be acceptable is beyond me.
    - bigyikes 3y ago
      Pesticides allow millions of people to not starve to death. A generalized statement like "Pesticides are bad" is simply ridiculous.
      - jagtstronaut 3y ago
        On top of that, pesticide application and environmental effects are the dangers of pesticide application, not human consumption. Most pesticides are just CO2 by the time they get to the shelf and ALL pesticide residues that don’t become co2 must be verifiably 100% safe for people to eat.
dingdingdang 3y ago
What could be a exercise in improving and vetting an international brand of "healthy" Scottish farmed salmon instead becomes a class in "how to make people stop eating farmed salmon at all". Pathetic levels of short sightedness.
fishguy23 3y ago
There are two things to note here. 1. I believe the initial change from 12 to 131 ng/kg was science-based. Based on the literature and science process 12 ng/kg was the wrong number. 2. This change won't matter. The amount of chemical required per use leads to concentrations that are 10-100 times the new limit. SEPA rules require a prediction showing that the average concentration within the predicted deposition area is less then the limit. Regardless of the increased limit it will not be possible.
- theptip 3y ago
  What literature? The article just says this is based on a private report that the regulator didn’t even see. Is there published science that backs up your assertions? Would love more information either way.
  - fishguy23 3y ago
    This reviews the details of the changes over time and has further links. https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/consultation-paper/2023/04/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales/documents/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales/govscot%3Adocument/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales.pdf https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publ... At either limit, the levels added to the environment from a single treatment of a farm will cause deposition higher than the limits. I have linked the SEPA regulations for aquaculture and a report for the modelling program (NewDEPOmod) used. On page 32 on the second link there are plots showing the observed and modelled concentrations, both of which are above the allowed limits. https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/water/aquaculture/ https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/water/aquaculture/ https://www.sams.ac.uk/t4-media/sams/pdf/publications/REFINING-SEA-BED-PROCESS-MODELS-FOR-AQUACULTURE-Final-Report-for-web.pdf https://www.sams.ac.uk/t4-media/sams/pdf/publications/REFINI...
edgarvaldes 3y ago
The other day, when the news about the Fukushima water was on tje HN frontpage, some folks talked about "time to buy farmed fish only". Oh boy.
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  Fukushima isn't going to affect radioactivity in the ocean in any measurable way. Whoever said that hasn't done any research on the matter other than watching protestors in the news.
pvaldes 3y ago
Animals developing resistance to medication. Evolution in action. We should note to start that this seems exclusive for UK. The targeted animals are blood sucker crustaceans that multiply exponentially in cages and also affect wild fishes, therefore even if we don't like to eat animals, we should want to do something about it. Is a well known old problem, causes huge economic loses in the sector (436 million dollars lost only in a year) and is not fully solved still. There is a promising way to attack it with zero chemicals, but is not easy.
parentheses 3y ago
I feel that this type of story is never punctuated by the fact that this is the mechanism by which we feed all of humanity - industrialization. All industrialization being painted as largely evil is counterproductive to finding the optimum point of trading off unnatural interventions and sustainable preservation. The goal is to feed the planet efficiently rather than preserve practices that work only on small farms.
- bandushrew 3y ago
  The counterpoint is that this isn't a step that is being taken because we are desperately trying to feed all of humanity. Its a step thats being taken because these providers want to increase their profit margins. The question is whether thats a good enough reason to take whatever risks are being taken here.
  - gloryjulio 3y ago
    The underlying point was never discussed enough. We just had too many people on earth and our technology is not good enough to feed all while being sustainable
    - pas 3y ago
      that's simply not true. there is both enough food and space and technology (and energy). the problem is allocation and distribution of that. eating industrial salmon is not a necessity for anyone.
  - space_fountain 3y ago
    And the counterpoint to that is that it’s searching for profits that push for greater efficiency in the presence of competition. They aren’t searching necessarily for larger profit margins, just more profit. Sure if they have a monopoly either in practice or classically they’ll just pocket more of the money, but ideally someone will realize they could make even more money by lowering prices. Ryanair is successful not because they have a huge profit margin, but because they move a lot of people.
1letterunixname 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
petre 3y ago
One can also use Ballan wrasse and lumpfish to control salmon lice. Don't know if that is possible in freshwater Scottish lochs, but both species feed on salmon lice. It's not easy, but it's possible. https://hakaimagazine.com/news/parasite-eating-lumpfish-are-being-put-to-work-but-first-they-need-to-be-kept-alive/ https://hakaimagazine.com/news/parasite-eating-lumpfish-are-...
jules-jules 3y ago
telling that noone broached the topic of why we are farming salmon in the first place. There is no biological need for humans to eat fish in the first place.
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  There is no biological need for computers, cars, lawn mowers, or any number of other things in modern life?
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Probably because is a exceptionally, top healthy food for humans, plus the procedure has a sense economically also for the maker. We could be breeding hemlock instead but it could be sold only once to each customer, and it does not have omega 3

301 points by myshpa 3y ago

Climate change is a problem that needs to be solved, but things like this to me are a much more pressing issue. We are poisoning ourselves because of industry and no one seems to think about it. We can't eat fish more than once a week because fish are so poisoned. I have a close friend who had to go through chelation therapy because her blood had so many heavy metals from eating sushi 2-3 a week for a year. Industries that create pollution need MORE regulation, not less and things like this is depressing, where industry is able to corruptly change laws to benefit themselves and poison the people around them.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
There problem is if there’s any more politically powerful force than “the children” it’s “the farmers,” despite the fact almost all farming is done by large corporations exploiting migrant labor and blasting the earth with chemicals to induce low quality substances that resemble vegetables and grains but lack almost all the nutrition. If we stopped today it would take a generation to make the soil independently viable again.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  > it’s “the farmers,” No, it's "the shareholders". Large corporations don't care about farming, only making money. They just happen to also farm.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Yes. But the political force is “the farmers.” Guess who is behind “the children?” Yes, the shareholders as well.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  Most agri land is also used to grow crops for animals for a tiny return on the calories fed to them (tropic levels). We could get serious about that if we decide to get serious about agri land use, deforestation, soil depletion, etc.
  - pard68 3y ago
    Totally possible to raise animals without this though. There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume, leaving more biologically diverse land available for other species. The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes). We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.
    - hgomersall 3y ago
      Without meaning to suggest that there's no much better ways to raise animals for meat, it's still a fundamental truth that the land area needed to support animals is much higher than crops. If we were to only eat meat from animals that were raised in a biodiversity sustainable fashion, we'd all have to eat far less meat (which I totally support as a flexitarian).
      - pard68 3y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree. There is no possible way to raise animals the way we do at a scale that can sustain the current demand for meat. But at my small scale, I can make a profit while matching the sales price of mass-produced animal products, and I do that with no government subsidies. My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.
    - 3y ago
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Large scale mass farming as a consequence of consolidation is also responsible for the massive reduction in insects and birdlife biodiversity. Basically, miles upon miles of monoculture, that's a food desert for the insects, and the birds don't have any habitat as there are no bushes, no shade, nothing. And on top of that come the issues with deadly pesticides that kill off bees and other pollinators and leach into groundwater. People keep asking me why I'm so strongly opposed to GMO in food, outside of stuff like Golden Rice. The reason is that we can't trust Big Ag to not do the wrong thing: for one, there are serious questions on monopolies and dependence of farmers, even entire nations in the end upon suppliers, and it's almost exclusively about introducing resistence against pesticides, with the aforementioned effects on biodiversity.
  - jinkiesScoob 3y ago
    There are 8B of us homie. Big Ag, mono culture, pesticides all come with the territory. Have you ever kept a garden? Did you do it on natural soil, with no pesticides? The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. (Consider crickets if you think otherwise) GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      First of all, your account seems to be shadowbanned, you might want to email the mods. > The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. Indeed it is, and modern agriculture has drastically improved human life from the situation of just a century ago. The thing is, we've gone too far - in our quest for more and more and more food production, we have endangered nature itself. Soils are degrading because the crops use too much nutrients and because the wildlife - particularly small burrowing animals - get killed off by pesticides directly or because their food got killed off by pesticides. On top of that, heavy farm machines compress the soil... and so it can't soak up water any more, leading to flood and drought issues (it can't retain water because the soil is too compacted for the water to seep through, so no buffer for drought times, and when rain falls it just washes the topsoil with it and is gone). And that doesn't even mention insects and their role in food chains. > GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide. You didn't get my point: pesticides kill everything but the GMO plants that are designed to be resistant, thus impacting the food chain of nature as an ecosystem. We've engineered places that are literally inhospitable to wildlife, with serious and far-reaching consequences. We barely understand food chains and anchor species as a concept, we only discovered just how huge a role wolves and beavers play in nature a few decades ago [1]. And yet, despite the warning signs (such as insect free car windshields despite driving through the countryside for hours), we keep on and on doing what we know is likely harmful! [1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...
heavenlyblue 3y ago
I am sorry but I thought that heavy metal poisoning is due to eating fish that eats other fish, thus distilling the heavy metals in their own body. i.e. eating shark is worse that eating salmon. Is that not correct? I feel like the post above is completely misunderstanding the issue
- LeeroyWasHere 3y ago
  Yeah, they're different issues, but similar causes. I can't remember the exact cycle, but essentially fish kibble in farms is made of small fish with heavy metals and farm fish that are fatty retain those metals in their fats to a much higher rate then other fishes. And it also ends up in dog food? It gets a little wild when your food chain is contaminated.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    Pesticides are cool. You're talking about bioaccumulation. Carnivorous species have a disadvantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation https://www.poisoningchildren.com/blog/2014/02/05/bioaccumulation-and-dead-baby-dolphins https://www.poisoningchildren.com/blog/2014/02/05/bioaccumul... "... because of the toxins dolphins accumulate in the oceans we have polluted, their uterine environment and breast milk are so toxic that it kills their first-borns. Later-born offspring have a better chance ..." "Children who breastfed were much more likely to get leukemia before the age of two when their mothers had been exposed to pesticides. And in turn, breastfeeding is one of the few measures that may provide women protection from breast cancer, possibly because the toxicants pass out of the breast fat with the milk"
    - cma 3y ago
      A simple solution to keep using pesticides and polluting the ocean may be switch human babies to formula, switch dolphin babies to human pumped milk, solving the cancer issues and the dolphin first-born problem except for the dolphin uterine environment which could possibly be fixed with cane toads.
rajnathani 3y ago
I think that a good dietary solution would be for us to get more culinarily creative with algae in food dishes. Most of the important nutrients such as omega-3s (DHA), micronutrients, and and apparently one of the most effective antioxidants that is Astaxanthin, are all picked by fish directly or indirectly (via other fish) from eating algae. While algae may not have the same taste-profile or texture as fish, at least we would be able to make a difference (particularly with climate change and better preserving our environment from toxins as described by the article) by making socially-normal algae-based options for people who currently choose to eat fish on a more regular basis for nutritional reasons.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  I look forward to the headline "Pesticide safety limit for algae farms watered down after industry lobbying"
  - rajnathani 3y ago
    Chemicals used for animals/fish farming seems to be an underestimated issue, for example see the recent HN post about the vulture populations dwindling in India due to anti-inflammatory medicine given to cows. In the above article, the pesticide use is to prevent lice from killing the salmons.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  > People should breed X lower in trophic chain. And nintendo should make only boring and educative games in ascii that nobody wants like Donkey Kant or Super Marx kart. I suspect that a sector that has been running before Christ dumped his pacifier, had thoroughly explored yet the idea of breeding strictly vegetarian fishes (get-rich-simpler-faster)... and discarded it. Some decades ago. There is a problem with vegetarian fishes. They taste awful. Algae dislike being eaten and love to design new chemical deterrents. Salmon on the other hand is delicious. Marine farms are simply giving people more of the product what they want to buy at a premium price. Strict market logic. The sad truth is that most of the absolute solutions that are preached in this thread are either untested, unproved or proven as non-viable in the real life since 90's. Those are "cargo-cult solutions" that people still keep parroting again and again; replacing critical thinking with faith. Fueled by a lack of real knowledge on the area.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Problems without solutions are predicaments to be suffered.
melling 3y ago
“but things like this to me are a much more pressing issue” That’s what we’ve been saying for almost half a century. Guess what, we can do both.
Ar-Curunir 3y ago
The root cause of both climate change and stuff like this is the same: corporate incentives, greed, and deregulation.
amluto 3y ago
> chelation therapy because her blood had so many heavy metals from eating sushi 2-3 a week for a year. Was this because of a blood test showing levels indicating chelation therapy or was this for some other reason? What heavy metals? What is the evidence that it came from sushi? What kind of fish? Mercury in fish is partially, but not fully, humanity’s fault, and the evidence that it’s problematic (at least if you’re not eating whales) is mixed. For a surprising and fascinating rabbit hole, there are papers like this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-12361-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-12361-7 As far as I can tell, the jury is very much out as to the significance of dietary mercury.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  That paper only says that the danger of mercury must always be estimated by also taking into account the content of selenium. Some fish contain enough selenium that it will combine with a part or even with all mercury, making that part of the mercury non-dangerous, so reducing the effective content of mercury. A few fish may contain so much selenium that it may make the mercury non-dangerous, but the selenium will be toxic itself, making the fish unfit for consumption. The main problem with polluted food like fish is that normal people cannot afford to have a chemical analysis laboratory, to check whether the food they want to eat is healthy or harmful. So they can only hope that there are adequate laws about the content of pollutants in food and that they are really enforced. Enforcing such regulations for fish is particularly difficult due to the great differences in effective mercury content that may happen between individuals of the same kind of fish, so even when a few fish from a vendor are sampled for chemical analysis, that does not reduce much the risk of eating fish with too much mercury. The same happens with seeds and nuts that may contain too much lead and cadmium, and so on. So even when you are aware of the dangers of eating toxic food, it is difficult to make choices that would significantly reduce the risks, because any choice that decreases some risks increases others.
pvaldes 3y ago
Some marine fishes are "so poisoned with heavy metals". Farmed salmon is a different category of food, and can help with that problem. > poison the people around them Honest question. It is really poisoning people or are we just assuming it? Just because some stuff can kill a shrimp does not mean that is also able to harm human metabolism. not to mention the fact that there are safety intervals on industry, because this is aquaculture, not fishing. Treating a cage on spring does not mean than you will be able to buy that fish before Christmas.

myth_drannon 3y ago

After 90% of my apple harvest gone to garbage due to Apple Maggot/Railroad Worm, I'm not surprised by the extensive use of pesticide in the agriculture industry. Probably like half of human population would die from starvation due to failed crops if we didn't use pesticides. Could we use less toxic ways to keep our food safe? I don't know.

esel2k 3y ago
Like genetic modifications, or as they did hundreds of years ago with hybridisation. I am all for it (even though it needs to be watched and not used for any sort of chemical increase only decrease) why not?
samtho 3y ago
I am probably in the minority here, but I think GMOs are an amazing advancement. We’ve been “genetically modifying” crops for years with selective breeding, we have now just been able to speed up the process. Genetic engineering has enabled us to grow potatoes, corn, and cotton that contain some DNA from bacteria that encodes (I.e contains the recipe for) a protein, referred to as Bt Crystal Toxin, that disrupts the metabolism of some major pests. They are regarded as safe for humans because it requires both a higher pH (alkaline) and specific receptors that humans lack in order to do damage to an organism.
- pard68 3y ago
  The real issue that I see with GMO is the reason for it, namely creating crops immune to poison. I am all for GMOs that produce a better plant but the practical result of GMO is a plant that can tolerate poison.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  GMOs as technology, and the effects of GMOs on food sovereignty, are two very different things. I don't want multinational biotech companies to be the only ones able to compete. Though the technology isn't harmless either. Let's assume sufficient care is and perpetually will be taken to avoid major disasters. What remains is amoral for-profit companies that now have far more ability to engineer food for market fit. Why is this bad? Because carrots and apples will slowly turn into the equivalents of Snickers and Cheetos - those are the products we get when not constrained by nature.

bobsaget81 3y ago

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gigatexal 3y ago

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dang 3y ago
"Please don't fulminate." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gigatexal 3y ago
  Okay. If there ever was a group worthy of sneering it is lobbyists. But rules are rules. My bad.
  - dang 3y ago
    Well, the idea is not that lobbyists deserve better, but that we (i.e. the community, including you), deserve better.
    - gigatexal 3y ago
      I get it. I'll be more professional. Again, my apologies.

ACV001 3y ago

why did they invent this word "lobbying" when it has to be called to what it is - corruption.

gruez 3y ago
Lobbying: >In politics, lobbying or advocacy, is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials Corruption: >Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with companies trying to influence government policies. It's only a problem when government officials abuse their office for personal gain (eg. taking bribes). In this case it's not really obvious that such improper behavior has occurred, other than a vague kneejerk reaction of "pesticides bad, therefore the only possible reason why the regulators approved it was that they were corrupt".
- siftrics 3y ago
  Pesticides are bad. Government officials are trading increased cancer rates for higher profit margins. How that can ever be acceptable is beyond me.
  - bigyikes 3y ago
    Pesticides allow millions of people to not starve to death. A generalized statement like "Pesticides are bad" is simply ridiculous.
    - jagtstronaut 3y ago
      On top of that, pesticide application and environmental effects are the dangers of pesticide application, not human consumption. Most pesticides are just CO2 by the time they get to the shelf and ALL pesticide residues that don’t become co2 must be verifiably 100% safe for people to eat.

dingdingdang 3y ago

What could be a exercise in improving and vetting an international brand of "healthy" Scottish farmed salmon instead becomes a class in "how to make people stop eating farmed salmon at all". Pathetic levels of short sightedness.

fishguy23 3y ago

There are two things to note here. 1. I believe the initial change from 12 to 131 ng/kg was science-based. Based on the literature and science process 12 ng/kg was the wrong number. 2. This change won't matter. The amount of chemical required per use leads to concentrations that are 10-100 times the new limit. SEPA rules require a prediction showing that the average concentration within the predicted deposition area is less then the limit. Regardless of the increased limit it will not be possible.

theptip 3y ago
What literature? The article just says this is based on a private report that the regulator didn’t even see. Is there published science that backs up your assertions? Would love more information either way.
- fishguy23 3y ago
  This reviews the details of the changes over time and has further links. https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/consultation-paper/2023/04/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales/documents/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales/govscot%3Adocument/new-environmental-quality-standard-eqs-emamectin-benzoate-embz-consultation-implementation-timescales.pdf https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publ... At either limit, the levels added to the environment from a single treatment of a farm will cause deposition higher than the limits. I have linked the SEPA regulations for aquaculture and a report for the modelling program (NewDEPOmod) used. On page 32 on the second link there are plots showing the observed and modelled concentrations, both of which are above the allowed limits. https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/water/aquaculture/ https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/water/aquaculture/ https://www.sams.ac.uk/t4-media/sams/pdf/publications/REFINING-SEA-BED-PROCESS-MODELS-FOR-AQUACULTURE-Final-Report-for-web.pdf https://www.sams.ac.uk/t4-media/sams/pdf/publications/REFINI...

edgarvaldes 3y ago

The other day, when the news about the Fukushima water was on tje HN frontpage, some folks talked about "time to buy farmed fish only". Oh boy.

lost_tourist 3y ago
Fukushima isn't going to affect radioactivity in the ocean in any measurable way. Whoever said that hasn't done any research on the matter other than watching protestors in the news.

pvaldes 3y ago

Animals developing resistance to medication. Evolution in action. We should note to start that this seems exclusive for UK. The targeted animals are blood sucker crustaceans that multiply exponentially in cages and also affect wild fishes, therefore even if we don't like to eat animals, we should want to do something about it. Is a well known old problem, causes huge economic loses in the sector (436 million dollars lost only in a year) and is not fully solved still. There is a promising way to attack it with zero chemicals, but is not easy.

parentheses 3y ago

I feel that this type of story is never punctuated by the fact that this is the mechanism by which we feed all of humanity - industrialization. All industrialization being painted as largely evil is counterproductive to finding the optimum point of trading off unnatural interventions and sustainable preservation. The goal is to feed the planet efficiently rather than preserve practices that work only on small farms.

bandushrew 3y ago
The counterpoint is that this isn't a step that is being taken because we are desperately trying to feed all of humanity. Its a step thats being taken because these providers want to increase their profit margins. The question is whether thats a good enough reason to take whatever risks are being taken here.
- gloryjulio 3y ago
  The underlying point was never discussed enough. We just had too many people on earth and our technology is not good enough to feed all while being sustainable
  - pas 3y ago
    that's simply not true. there is both enough food and space and technology (and energy). the problem is allocation and distribution of that. eating industrial salmon is not a necessity for anyone.
- space_fountain 3y ago
  And the counterpoint to that is that it’s searching for profits that push for greater efficiency in the presence of competition. They aren’t searching necessarily for larger profit margins, just more profit. Sure if they have a monopoly either in practice or classically they’ll just pocket more of the money, but ideally someone will realize they could make even more money by lowering prices. Ryanair is successful not because they have a huge profit margin, but because they move a lot of people.

1letterunixname 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago
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petre 3y ago

One can also use Ballan wrasse and lumpfish to control salmon lice. Don't know if that is possible in freshwater Scottish lochs, but both species feed on salmon lice. It's not easy, but it's possible. https://hakaimagazine.com/news/parasite-eating-lumpfish-are-being-put-to-work-but-first-they-need-to-be-kept-alive/ https://hakaimagazine.com/news/parasite-eating-lumpfish-are-...

jules-jules 3y ago

telling that noone broached the topic of why we are farming salmon in the first place. There is no biological need for humans to eat fish in the first place.

lost_tourist 3y ago
There is no biological need for computers, cars, lawn mowers, or any number of other things in modern life?
pvaldes 3y ago
Probably because is a exceptionally, top healthy food for humans, plus the procedure has a sense economically also for the maker. We could be breeding hemlock instead but it could be sold only once to each customer, and it does not have omega 3