11 ms·
Illness Impacting Dairy Cattle Is Confirmed as Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu
- Conasg 3y agoI'm sure I've seen a similar news bulletin in the Ndemic Creations game 'Plague Inc.'.
- evanjrowley 3y agoLife imitates art.
- instagib 3y agoAt least the effects are small compared to poultry farming. Slightly less milk production and reduced feed intake for cattle; they survive. “Unlike affected poultry, I foresee there will be no need to depopulate dairy herds […]USDA confirmed that there is no threat to human health and milk and dairy products remain safe to consume. Pasteurization (high heat treatment) kills harmful microbes and pathogens in milk, including the influenza virus,"
- gboss 3y agoThere are people who drink unpasteurized milk. Wondering if that could be a vector for it to jump to humans?
- jerlam 3y agoRaw Milk Is Being Legalized in More States. Is It Safe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36868779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36868779
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gandalfthepink 3y agoThere is a reason why pasteurization as a process was developed.
- radicaldreamer 3y agoLouis Pasteur is rolling in his grave (he’s buried at the Pasteur Institute)
- alphazard 3y agoThe recent raw milk trend is made possible by advances in science. Pasteurization was developed because we had almost no understanding of bacteria. Heating up the milk seemed to make it last longer, and safer to drink, and that was that. Now, a more modern understanding of microorganisms has lead to an interest in preserving commensal bacteria already present in food. Milk in the cow is generally safe to drink, but cows aren't clean on the outside, and milk is often contaminated during the industrial process. So this leads to a situation where bad bacteria are occasionally mixed in with the good. Fortunately, testing for specific species of bacteria is cheap and reliable. Milk can be tested for the kinds of bacteria we don't want. Contaminated milk can be pasteurized, and sold as regular milk. Safe milk is chilled and sold as raw milk, preserving its microbiota.
- maxerickson 3y agoIf they are commensal, what's it matter? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensalism biological interaction (symbiosis) in which members of one species gain benefits while those of the other species neither benefit nor are harmed.
- NoPicklez 3y agoBecause the good bacteria present in the milk is commensal, but the bad bacteria introduced outside aren't.
- maxerickson 3y ago
- 082349872349872 3y agoI come from a meat/dairy background, so swine biosecurity shower was an eye-opening set of search terms.
- analog31 3y ago>>> USDA reports that affected dairy cows do not appear to be transmitting the virus to other cattle within the same herd. Familiar words to announce the start of a pandemic.
- smt88 3y agoWhat's an example of a pandemic that started with those words?
- renewiltord 3y agohttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cause-of-wuhans-mysterious-pneumonia-cases-still-unknown-chinese-officials-say/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cause-of-wuhans-m... > JANUARY 6, 2020 > Cause of Wuhan’s Mysterious Pneumonia Cases Still Unknown, Chinese Officials Say > The virus has sickened 59 people so far but does not appear to be transmitting among humans
- smt88 3y agoNot the same. The article is about a non-human disease that hasn't mutated significantly and isn't transmitting between cows. No humans are sick with this, and it will need to evolve substantially before any could be.
- LarsDu88 3y agoThere's just one more evolution jump to get rampant mammal to mammal transmission
- colechristensen 3y agoShould scientists lie to meet your gut instincts? Viruses that transmit between different species and not individuals in the same species are a thing. Sometimes they evolve to spread in the new host species, sometimes not.
- ramijames 3y agoHere we go :(
- dennis_jeeves2 3y ago[flagged]
- huytersd 3y agoWe need better ways to deal with viruses. There really should be a CRISPR/mRNA way by now to immediately cure this stuff like antibiotics for bacteria by now.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoCan you imagine the conspiracy theories though? Putting that kind of stuff into cattle feed, etc.?
- slater 3y ago5G Nanomachines, in MY steak?!
- Arrath 3y ago"I cook it well done to make sure those nanomachines are well carbonized and no longer a threat"
- doktrin 3y agoThis is a fantastic dystopian comedy world building detail.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoCooking activates them. You have to eat your steak raw to avoid mind control.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWe should consider ourselves lucky to even have the medicines we do now, considering the complexity of biology. Even immediately curing bacterial infections is not a given.
- Metacelsus 3y agoInterestingly, CRISPR started out as a way for bacteria to fight viruses. So if we just put CRIPSR in animals, it will protect them. The problem is that influenza can probably mutate faster than we can update the CRISPR-engineered animals.
- xyst 3y agoLoading up on N95 masks now.
- supportengineer 3y agoWe've never stopped buying them and keeping them around.
- juliangoldsmith 3y agoUnless you're wearing it tight enough to leave a mark around your mouth and nose, it's not doing anything for you. My wife, an ICU nurse, spent a year reusing N95s because people who didn't need them bought them all up, only to wear them in a way that didn't seal properly and provided no protection.
- padjo 3y agoCramming billions of animals together in confined spaces is really going to come back to bite us some day.
- xyst 3y ago“Some day?” It’s biting back at us today in the form of climate change. Beef production and agriculture accounts for a significant amount of GHGs. Yet governments, people, the world continue to do nothing.
- colechristensen 3y agoConfinement vs. other methods really don't have much of anything to do with methane production of cattle.
- xeromal 3y agoI think cows produce less methane if they have a grass diet but it's been a while since I've read about it.
- coryrc 3y ago2% seaweed in diet eliminates methane. Stupid it's not mandatory already.
- entangledqubit 3y agoIs there already a suitable supply chain for that to happen?
- mikeyouse 3y agoAlgae grows ridiculously easily - If there was a market for this (likely one driven by mandates to eliminate methane), you could have thousands of tons of algae within months and millions of tons within years.
- dennis_jeeves2 3y ago[flagged]
- mikeInAlaska 3y agoReferences please. I did not see anything in the article about it affecting BS
- barbarr 3y agoThese success of these avian flus are a direct result of mega factory farms ("concentrated animal feeding operations", or CAFOs) [0]. These massive operations are actually a relatively new thing since the 1990's [1]. We need to stop concentrating large numbers of animals at single sites. [0] https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/vbz.2006.6.338 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/vbz.2006.6.338 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/us-dairy-policies-hurt-small-farms-monopolies-get-rich https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/us-dairy...
- pstuart 3y agoThe only way to change these practices is to make it more profitable by doing as you suggest (which I agree needs to be done). What are the carrots and sticks that could be used in such a situation?
- throwaway5752 3y agoYou don't "carrot and stick" the construction industry to make buildings that are safe and accessible, the airplane industry to build and maintain safe planes, the auto industry to have have safe cars, and so on. Laws and regulations dictate certain levels of quality, and people follow them or go to prison. This has been incredibly effective and is the simple solution to this problem. It would be preferable for everyone to win, but it doesn't have to be more profitable - the dangerous behavior simply has to cease. Bluntly, you don't carrot and stick criminals not to commit crimes. You make the behavior illegal and you punish criminals.
- pstuart 3y agoYou just talked about sticks. Carrots (in this case) would be subsidies and possible regulatory easements that might lesson relevant burdens if they are overly broad or excessively painful to follow (i.e., paperwork).
- flufag 3y ago[dead]