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September 22, 2010

Comments

Shut up, hippie!

In the past couple of months I've been paying up to $5/dozen for eggs, because they're from a farm I see with my actual eyes.

I decided not to crowd my post further with it, but I expect everyone is familiar, one way or another, with the CDC recommendations on egg-handling.

Austin J. DeCoster, though: he pisses me off. Wanna talk about class warfare? How about when you make I don't know how many tens of millions of dollars a year with practices that kill and sicken people, and you use your profits to pay relatively minor fines and do your best to dodge the law?

This is class warfare that actually injures people.

That Austin Decoster might be a nice guy doesn't make anyone less ill or dead.

I knew there was a reason I was correct to basically never eat eggs.

The Washington Post also had a good story last week.

Sumbitch belongs in jail, next cell to the coal-mine operator from W. Va.

Perhaps the Eggman (yet another chicken farmer) and the Koch Brothers mentioned in Dr. Science's latest post require more effective and combative regulation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Zzp30ctiU

koo koo kah choo

efgoldman:

I disagree. This deserves the death penalty. He is a *serial killer* who profits off people's deaths: Jeffrey Dahmer at least was honest enough to literally eat his victims.

In the past couple of months, I'm paying $0/dozen for eggs, cause I decided to try out veganism.

Should have saved my "shut up, hippie" for the inevitable "well I don't have that problem, I'm a Vegan" post.

He is a *serial killer* who profits off people's deaths:

Dare I raise the spectre of IGMFU once again?

Hey Pooh, you know what else?

Typed that comment on a PC running linux.

Oh, so you're a dirty hippie.

I oppose the death penalty, but I don't have a problem with Austin J. DeCoster, and whichever of his subordinates are also responsible, being served their own eggs, laid in classic conditions DeCoster tolerated, for breakfast every day they're in prison.

I had a PC running Linux once, about a decade and a half ago. Now I have a PC running WinXP that I screw around with Cygwin on.

Now that the wife and kids have all the home machines staked out, I no longer have a machine to play with.

That's probably a good thing, in the long run.

"I oppose the death penalty, but I don't have a problem with Austin J. DeCoster, and whichever of his subordinates are also responsible, being served their own eggs, laid in classic conditions DeCoster tolerated, for breakfast every day they're in prison."

Didn't we decide that prison torture was immoral?

@ Doc Science
@ Gary Farber

I oppose the death penalty, but I don't have a problem with Austin J. DeCoster, and whichever of his subordinates are also responsible, being served their own eggs, laid in classic conditions DeCoster tolerated, for breakfast every day they're in prison.

I was gonna reply to Doc in much the same way, but Gary beat me to it.

And the Massey Mines guy ought to be sentenced to a year or fifteen down in his mines.

Wasn't there a judge in the 80s who sentenced a slumlord to live in one of his own properties? Or was that just a TV show (Hill Street Blues) episode? I like punishments of that sort.

"Wasn't there a judge in the 80s who sentenced a slumlord to live in one of his own properties?"

Many.

Slum Owner Sentenced to 100 Days in His Hotel.

Va. slumlord forced to live in own slum.

Etc.

In the past couple of months I've been paying up to $5/dozen for eggs, because they're from a farm I see with my actual eyes.

That seems kinda high, the eggs we get at the farmers' market are about $2.00 or $3.00 a dozen.

We don't see the farm necessarily, but we do see the farmer. And their kids.

All of this raises an issue for me.

The virtue of industrial agriculture -- the thing that makes it good -- is supposed to be that it lowers the cost of food. The percentage of household income devoted to food has dropped, frex, from 22 percent in 1949 to 11 percent today (here).

All other things being equal, less expensive is obviously better.

All other things, however, are not equal. The costs of industrial agriculture include things like people getting sick from the food they eat, but also include dependence on petroleum based fertilizers as inputs, with all of the semi-imperial trappings and costs (financial and other) that come along with a dependence on a resource of which we are a net importer.

It includes an astounding level of damage to the natural environment.

It includes eating food that includes a bewildering variety of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals that we would likely be better off not eating.

For folks whose ire is raised by government interference in the market, it includes a hell of a lot of government subsidy, with all of the corrupting lobbyist cottage industry that comes along with that.

It includes the crowding out of small-scale agriculture, with all of the very real cultural, community, and land-use costs that come along with that.

I'm not sure it's actually cheaper. And it sure as hell isn't better food.

@ Gary Farber
Many.

teh intarwebs am a wonderful things.
I can't do any research at work. Hell i probably shouldn't even be reading ObWi and postong.

I've updated this post to account for today's hearing.

So, the company hired 'illegal aliens' AND customers get sick from the company's products? The natural GOP reaction would be to make campaign ads claiming that Americans are killed in large numbers by disease carrying illegals (salmonella the new leprosy). But I guess this will have to wait until one of the border states gets hit.
[/snark]

the company failed to test its eggs for the presence of salmonella bacteria despite environmental tests that showed that his barns were contaminated because “our perception was that egg test results always would be negative,”

My, what a great idea! Why didn't anyone else think of that? Do you have any idea how much money our company could save if we didn't have to test any of our defense products? And we could pass those savings right to the taxpayer!

I'm typing up something for the suggestion box straightaway.

Slarti, one could argue that occasionally this actually happens, turning the soldiers into guinea pigs (and the classical tests are of course done with the civilians of the country currently invaded or harassed).
It's my snarking day today.

@Russell "I'm not sure it's actually cheaper. And it sure as hell isn't better food."

I'm shocked, positively shocked, that capitalism isn't properly pricing externalities into the final cost of a product! If only there was some way of enforcing a strong central regulator to ensure that these costs were factored in!

(Sarcasm liberally applied, but not directed at anyone in particular.)

"I'm typing up something for the suggestion box straightaway."

You simply have to believe strongly enough in your product, and ignore little things that might be the equivalent in your line of work of employees handling dead chickens and manure with their bare hands, hens thrown in trash cans, rotting corpses in the same cages with live hens, supervisors harrasing and raping female employees, and people working in ammonia filled barns [who] had to be treated by doctors for burned lungs, missing work.

The Maine Egg Farmers Association, or whatever it's called, is advertising the safety of its brown eggs, making lots of claims about safety procedures and so on.

Does anyone know whether all this is accurate?

I have removed the link to a site selling Air Jordan footwear from air jordan's response, but otherwise left it untouched, on the (extremely) small chance that it's also a real comment.

My policy is that nobody posts to my threads with spam, even if it's vague enough to seem on topic. I would argue for my fellow bloggers to watch out for this current tactic.

You'll note that this comment, while it make sense in the context of this thread, makes equal sense in the context of almost any argument about government or commercial interests.

But the spam part is the link; the technique is merely interesting, and probably not obvious to all.

That love, not time, heals all wounds?

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