He’s just going to get people killed. But that’s ok he doesn’t give a shit anyways, so it’s moot. What are a few thousand dead peasants when we could make big stock number go up?
He’s just going to get people killed. But that’s ok he doesn’t give a shit anyways, so it’s moot. What are a few thousand dead peasants when we could make big stock number go up?
So I visited Bangladesh one time, and learned they have insanely high rates of cancer there. Why? Well it turns out that (among other reasons) the farmers had been injecting formaldehyde into their vegetables because it made them last longer on the shelves, and therefore sold better.
This is what you get with no regulations. A sick and dying population.
“regulations are written in blood” is a quote for a reason
I spent a decade living around Africa, and this kind of thinking is common. DDT was what everyone put on the tomatoes because pests mean loss of food. Who wants that?
Lack of relations is only about living in short-term survival thinking 24/7. Long term effects mean nothing.
DDT isn’t going to cause health problems for the people in Africa. It will cause problems for some birds near the top of the food chain however.
It’s just the easiest example to use. I have maybe dozens more examples that require more storytelling and setup.
Ever had someone try to sell you a car with visible drywall screws holding the bumper on, like you were the dick for pointing them out?
DDT won’t fuck you up if you die in your 20s from unrelated causes
Go read about how horribly adulterated food was in Europe and the US in the 1800s and before. They’d add sawdust to flour, chalk, toxic metals, rotten meat was sold regularly, etc. Patent medicines were essentially drug trafficking or just scams. Soldiers in the Spanish-American war were supplied with canned meat from the US Civil War. I saw an old film from the time the Pure Food and Drug act was passed showing a can of meat being opened and it literally shot out from the gasses inside.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
Exactly
Funny thing with that book it was intended to reveal the horrible working conditions in the industry but instead the public latched onto it as revealing how foul and adulterated food had become.
Well, the Libertarians and Republicans had their heads poisoned with total rot like Ayn Rand’s horrible sci-fi, and then spent the past several decades screaming about how derrp, we don’t need no regulations!
Now I guess we all get to find out along with these dolts.
Not to mention the US falling 110% into the cult of individualism. Individualism is fine if it is balanced with the needs of society as a whole. You can’t even get people to chip into schools and roads, shared resources, anymore.
Do you have examples of this stuff happening in continental European countries? I’d love to jump down that rabbit hole.
In the past I’ve read descriptions of systematic bad practices in the industrialized Uk, but I can’t recall reading about similar things happening in other western European countries. Nothing systematic anyhow. I’d image that the french would have had a(nother) revolution if anyone had tried that stuff with their food.
Enjoy!
I think the English were just better at recording it.
https://victorianweb.org/science/health/health1.html
https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-fight-against-food-adulteration/2020253.article
Here is one in Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esing_Bakery_incident
France passed a food adulteration law in 1905. Many countries were cracking down on it around this time along with the US with the Pure Food and Drug Act under Teddy Roosevelt.
Examples of food adulteration in France in the 1800s:
https://review.gale.com/2020/01/08/wine-adulteration-in-the-nineteenth-century/
Copper-colored vegetables: French beans, cucumbers, and samphires were often colored green with copper. This could have fatal consequences.
Beer: Brewers added substances like copperas, quassia, liquorice juice, and Nux vomica to make beer bitter.
Wine: The wine industry was affected by the Phylloxera epidemic, which destroyed a large proportion of vines. In response, wine adulteration increased.
Confectionery: Arsenic and mercury compounds were used as colorants.
Mustard: Lead chromate was added to mustard.
Meat: Animal health became a concern as meat consumption increased.
Many thanks for the links, was interesting.
Just by the existence of food standards laws, we know that there must have been food standards problems. Stuff like mayonnaise composition being put into law, must mean that there had been a mayonnaise quality problem or worries at a certain point in time, I just can’t find any specific info on when or what. Those scandals were probably recorded just as well in the news papers of my small country, but if no one writes a new article or paper about the scandal 50+ years after it happened, then that info won’t turn up in an internet search query.