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from the give-a-crap...one-way-or-another dept.
The US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) are warning of a serious multi-state E. Coli O157:H7 outbreak that has sickened 32 people, caused 11 hospitalizations, and caused a case of hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure.
CDC is advising consumers, restaurants, and retailers not to eat, serve, or sell any romaine lettuce as it investigates an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections linked to romaine. Read the investigation announcement: https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2018/o157h7-11-18/index.html.
[...] Advice to Consumers, Retailers, and Restaurants:
- CDC is advising that U.S. consumers not eat any romaine lettuce, and retailers and restaurants not serve or sell any, until we learn more about the outbreak. This investigation is ongoing and the advice will be updated as more information is available.
- Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick.
- This advice includes all types or uses of romaine lettuce, such as whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine, including baby romaine, spring mix, and Caesar salad.
- If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine or whether a salad mix contains romaine, do not eat it and throw it away.
- Restaurants and retailers should not serve or sell any romaine lettuce, including salads and salad mixes containing romaine.
- People with symptoms of an E. coli infection, such as severe stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody), and vomiting, and think you might have gotten sick from eating romaine lettuce, should talk to their doctor and report their illness to the health department.
- This investigation is ongoing and CDC will provide more information as it becomes available.
As a precautionary measure, they also advise that if you had any Romaine lettuce, to clean your refrigerator and any surfaces with soapy water and then disinfect with a bleach solution.
They emphasize that it is not possible to sufficiently clean any Romaine lettuce you may have as the bacteria can lodge in micro crevices in the lettuce.
Yes, there are more risky things in one's life to worry about. On the other hand, giving up some salad and avoiding a few days of bleeding diarrhea seems a fair trade-off to me.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 23 2018, @04:54PM (27 children)
This whole thing seems more like a strong-arm tactic to get fine grained tracking adopted, not only by lettuce producers but every other industry that doesn't want their product demonized nationwide when a couple of dozen people get the runs.
Not that fine grained tracking is a bad thing... just that the methods being employed to encourage adoption are somewhat heavy/under handed. CDC can't mandate any particular type of tracking, but they can make produce producers lives a living hell, so...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 23 2018, @05:06PM (26 children)
One thought:
When produce in the USA was mostly locally consumed (how long ago??), things like this outbreak were also local, or the source could be localized.
Now that big business and national distribution is involved, things are impersonal. Producers are further from consumers, in distance and in "degrees of separation". The fairly natural result is that some (most) of the people in the supply chain are only looking out for the buck. Thus, additional quality control is needed. If not voluntary (with CDC arm twisting as you suggest), the next step will be regulation.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 23 2018, @10:43PM (25 children)
While your perspective has some truth in it, I believe the statistics are on the side of modern methods with respect to number of deaths or serious illnesses per capita from food poisoning - modern vs. days of the local producer-consumer model.
Still, I think we'd be better off in uncountable ways if we could return to _some aspects_ of the old local producer-consumer model: reducing energy expenditure in shipping, reducing time from farm to table, de-commoditization of supplied produce.
The trick is: expose the benefits of local producer-consumer to the market in a competitive way. Make Florida oranges significantly less expensive to buy in Florida vs California grown oranges, and vice versa. Same for all produce and meat. First step is to track where the food is being sourced from, next step is to tax the fuel used in delivery to account for the CO2 emissions. Seems like the first step is making progress.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 26 2018, @06:07PM (5 children)
It's already done in the usual market way. Let's not put perverse incentives in to grow oranges in Montana.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:10AM (4 children)
If people in Montana want oranges in their local stores, I damn well want them to pay more for them there than I have to in a Central Florida grocery surrounded by massive commercial orange groves. That is not what happens today, and it is a perversity and failure of the market that we have, which is far from free.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:23AM (3 children)
Why in the world should your desires matter? This is the nice thing about markets. They work without introducing third parties to tell us what the cost and value of things should be.
And this result is perverse/failure because?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @03:35AM (2 children)
Because it results in the mass long distance shipment of foods all over the globe, consumption of energy labor and all manner of unnecessary resources to feed an economy instead of feeding people, koyaanisqatsi.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:16AM (1 child)
And that is bad why? Energy is cheap while growing oranges in Montana is not. And since has food been an "unnecessary resource"?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:26PM
Fossil fuel based energy is borrowing from the future, a potentially unpayable debt.
If growing oranges in Montana isn't economically viable, that's fine - let them cost what they cost to ship there, not some homogenized nationwide rate that balances profit and loss across the continental market.
Since the 1970s when global production of fruits and vegetables filled US and European markets with year-round availability of seasonal foods.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 26 2018, @06:25PM (18 children)
To elaborate on my previous remarks, markets do the first part already. You don't even need to think about it. And the US already throws a tax on vehicle fuel. The argument for the cost of CO2 emissions is real shaky right now. They haven't even shown that it is a net cost for humanity much less that we need to tax it at a high rate.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:12AM (17 children)
A pitiful sham of a tax that doesn't come close to recouping the cost of infrastructure and services provided to users of the fuel for free.
Also, far lower than taxes in many other countries which, themselves, still need to provide tax supplement from other sources to maintain the infrastructure used by fuel consumers.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:24AM (16 children)
And those costs are?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @03:39AM (15 children)
We can start with the cost of constructing and maintaining the road network. The taxes on users of that road network are held artificially low to encourage use/abuse of the roads in the name of feeding the economy. This artificial "propping up" of roadway use tremendously fuels economic growth, but not in efficient nor environmentally sustainable directions.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:21AM (14 children)
Fuel taxes already cover most of that. And one uses the roads even when they don't, such as emergency services like ambulances.
So you just mentioned a very good reason not to tax in that way - large positive externalities of a road network.
You just mentioned, contrary to the above assertion an efficiency of road networks for which the cost of use is deliberately subsidized. And what's environmentally unsustainable about the roads?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:21PM (13 children)
Take a closer look at the actual numbers, fuel taxes do NOT cover the cost of road construction in any measure that would keep your average mortgagee from being evicted by their mortgagor in as short a time as allowable by law.
Roads are good, roads are great, I'd like to have more and better roads. Those emergency services, particularly trauma centers, are in no small part necessary because of road use. What I'm saying is: let the roads cost what the roads actually cost, instead of distorting their costs lower, encouraging transfer of cargo away from more energy efficient rail and sea onto the roads.
Let's not assume that we have measured and balanced all the positive and negative externalities of the present road network. Starting with all the implications of suburban development...
To cherry pick: road, and fossil fuel, use is driving the necessary movement of the coastal cities inland. Nowhere in $50/bbl is there user based provision for covering that tab.
Let's have roads, let's have cars and trucks, planes and trains, ships and blimps, let's also have them cost what they cost - free market fashion, not ignoring future cost of today's actions. To circle that back to the original point: if your South American banana paid its fair share of coastal urban relocation, it would cost more than $0.19. Similarly: California oranges would cost less in California than Florida oranges do, and vice versa.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 27 2018, @06:59PM
Then where does that leave you? You were only speaking of costs not benefits.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 28 2018, @05:50PM (11 children)
You didn't include taxes in that amount.
Over and over I seem the same errors repeated, even when I just corrected them in my previous post. This cognitive dissonance is amazing here. You admit that roads have considerable positive externality. You admit that you have no clue whether taxes cover the true cost/benefit of roads. You just have this uninformed feeling that transportation is somehow bad and taxes should be higher. That is absolutely useless.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 28 2018, @08:26PM (10 children)
I'm glad you're impressed. You might try out the value of varying perspectives sometime, all I ever read from you is the same party line over and over.
What's to admit? I stipulate that as fact, and also point out that they have considerable negative effects as well. Just because something has a big positive value does not mean that it is a big positive value overall. Depending on your perspective that thing with big positive value may be net-negative for you individually, society as a whole, or any subsets inbetween.
No, you attribute that statement to me - born of your own imagination and suppositions. The true cost/benefit balance of roads is different for every being on the planet. Owner of an interstate trucking company? Roads clearly tilt toward the net positive for him. Native animal species losing 20% of their population to road-kill annually, gotta go with negative for them. American salary-man drone commuting 10 hours a week on top of his 40 hour job just so the kids can be in a marginally better school district? That's a tough call, but I'd be willing to bet that without the advanced road system in his urban metropolis he would likely be in a net-better life than he is spending so much of his income and time just getting to and from work.
Not at all, I have decades of personal experience plus professional exposure to multi-modal (roads, rails, airports and seaports) transportation planning and administration at the state government level, and if your only takeaway is that I am calling for higher taxes, you might try a re-read. To make it clear: my primary bitch is that roads are subsidized, lowering not only their total (present and future) cost for users, but even dipping into the general fund to prop up road building and maintenance. Fuel powered rubber on asphalt/concrete transport is inefficient as compared to rail and water transport, but this persistent subsidy for roads has incentivized transport away from rail and water where it could be accomplished with less expenditure of energy.
No, 100% predictable argument from extreme polar ideals is absolutely useless.
Score 1 for khallow, $0.184 cents per gallon federal plus an average around $0.30 per gallon state fuel taxes out of ~$2.30 per gallon retail. Federal fuel taxes raised $35.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2014, In 2017, spending by federal, state, and local governments for transportation and water infrastructure totaled $441 billion (yes, the $35B neglects the state fuel tax) - rough numbers, because I don't care for penny-accurate accounting, 25% of the infrastructure spend budget is covered from the gas and diesel fuel taxes.
That leaves more than $300B per year (roughly $1000 per capita) to make up from other sources.
And - to the actual point, does nothing to pay for the future costs of relocating Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, etc. to higher ground.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 28 2018, @09:15PM (9 children)
Ok, so you admit the first point again in the first sentence, and the second point in the rest - "Depending on your perspective" (here's a clue, if you don't know what the positive and negative costs are, then you don't have a perspective, you have an uninformed opinion). It's amazing that you do the cognitive dissonance again in the second paragraph of this reply.
You just reinforced that impression. For example, why are we considering the interests of the "Owner of an interstate trucking company", but not the many hundreds of millions of people who benefit from cheap, semi-truck delivered goods? Native animal species? 20% death rate per year, even when true (deer and moose right?) is just not that bad (death rate is much higher than that in most species due to the non-human causes. The salaryman would not have an easier time with a less efficient transportation system that doesn't take him where he needs to go and doesn't allow his family to live where they want. I've wasted 10 hours a week on public transportation when private would be at no more than half the time (due to expensive parking costs at the university I attended).
I should also note that much of this blame actual lies elsewhere. It's extensive obstructions to new construction (via zoning, home owners associations, and like) that create expensive real estate and difficulties for people trying to live in the better regions. Similarly, that great school system would have some competition, if there was some private schools to compete on even grounds (say via school vouchers). Deer have such a high death rate from automobile because little else is killing them. And there's nothing to fix for owners of trucking companies.
Yes. I'll add that you seem pretty ignorant for all this alleged experience you supposedly have. And I have a comment on a particular phrase in there:
Transportation is all about getting where you want to go. Rail and water transport routinely don't go where you want to go and thus, are not more efficient when compared to a point to point system like road transport. It's remarkable how people ignore the key positives of a point to point system, talking about efficient while ignoring the need to transfer goods between transportation modes.
Back at you on that one. Your extreme polar idea doesn't (more accurately, continues to refuse to) consider in the least the huge positive externality from a cheap transportation system - which is what makes it extreme polar. This is the whole basis of having a transportation system in the first place.
Why should they pay for those future costs? We have a century or more before those future costs become real costs. That's plenty of time to relocate when one would relocate anyway due to old buildings. The cost is thus reduced from land that is submerged to the land that is repurposed from rural to urban, a much lower cost. And anyone still determined to stay put in the face of rising sea levels at that future time is pursuing the nuisance, and thus, not deserving of our taxes today.
A final bit of cognitive dissonance is that every transportation system is subsidized in the US. Why aren't you applying the same "pay the real cost" games to trains, planes, water, etc? Or perhaps you are, and the resulting huge increase in poverty just doesn't interest you?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 28 2018, @10:41PM (8 children)
An ignorant statement, which I knew from life experience, and backed up with 30 seconds of Google showing rather clearly that your concept of "most" is about 25%, but let's not respond to that, let's continue with personal attacks like:
If you're old, like dying in the next 30 years, and don't care in the least about what comes after you're gone, your perspective is completely self consistent and understandable.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 29 2018, @01:56AM (7 children)
Ok, let's see again what's actually going on [artba.org]. Note that these numbers are higher than current spending:
Gasoline and diesel taxes are already close to what is needed to maintain current highways and bridges (which is used here as a generic term for the entire road system). So the $400+ billion you mentioned earlier? That's for all transportation and water infrastructure (including dams, airports, mass transit systems, etc) not just for roads.
Back at you on that. Is your virtue signaling more important than the future of the US and the world? We need transportation systems. We don't need artificial scarcity imposed by someone's feelgoods.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 02 2018, @12:45AM (6 children)
Virtue signaling is buying a Prius, not shaping the markets (which never have been, and never will be free) to reflect quality of life values of present and future generations.
Here's a label for you: willful cognitive absence - may you continue to wear it with pride.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 02 2018, @01:58AM (5 children)
"Reflect"? I stick with the virtue signaling accusation. Everyone has a flawed understanding of the world and our place in it. But not everyone assumes that someone who disagrees does so because they "don't care in the least about what comes after you're gone". That's the proof of virtue signaling here - weaving a narrative which degenerates into morality play where you play the good guy and critics play the bad guys.
Transportation and energy are unusually important to us because they affect everything, most particularly cost of living and generation of wealth. You proposed to raise transportation costs, making more people poor, with flimsy excuses. It's not going to improve quality of life values for us or for future generations because it makes everything cost more.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 02 2018, @01:52PM (4 children)
You posit that raising net-post tax subsidy transportation costs will make people poor.
I posit that reduction of transportation cost subsidies will reduce tax burdens, preferably on the poor, while simultaneously encouraging choices that result in lower expenditure of energy.
Nobody is listening to either of us, so I'll stop wasting energy on the discussion now.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @02:59AM (3 children)
I see nothing that contradicts my side.
As to your new argument that somehow this will reduce tax burdens, let us keep in mind when you say "reduction of transportation cost subsidies", you mean increase regressive taxes (fuel taxes, road tolls, that sort of thing). Even if somehow we could "let the roads cost what the roads actually cost" without an increase in taxes, that cost is still borne more by the poor since transportation is a higher percentage of their budget. Cognitive dissonance again.
At present. Arguments, good and bad have a way of spreading.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 03 2018, @01:29PM (2 children)
As always.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @02:22PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @03:41PM