We used to add formaldehyde to milk too. Seems worse than chalk to me.
Safety regulations are written in the blood of those who died from unsafe practices.
Look up Harvey Washington Wileyand and his poison squad for the fun story.
From the wiki: “By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, the mascara Lash lure, which caused blindness, and worthless “cures” for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through Congress for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.”
I believe I’ve heard that the FDA was actually beneficial for capitalism as consumers would entirely avoid certain products out of fear, making it difficult to sell even legitimate goods.
Welcome to The Jungle, we play dirty games.
Food safety costs a lot, so fuck the FDA
-Food companies, basically.
Fun fact:
The precursor to the FDA was created during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. After the book was published, Roosevelt sent federal investigators to the Chicago slaughterhouses to validate the conditions detailed in the story.
The investigators reported that the conditions were worse than described in the book. And that was after the slaughterhouse owners got wind that the feds were coming and had everything cleaned from top to bottom.
Hard to imagine what “worse” looks like because the conditions detailed in the book are truly appalling.
Additional fun fact, The Jungle was meant to highlight the poor working conditions in slaughter houses, but the outrage was related entirely to the poor consideration for the meat that the public was eating.
Love the cover:
[Incidentally and entirely off-topic, it reminds me of the book(s) I’m reading right now: Josiah Bancroft’s Tower of Babel tetralogy - urban steampunk jungle, vertically]
I loved that series, enjoy!
The book cover has the same vibe as the album cover for Pink Floyd’s “Animals”, which also happens to be a scathing critique of capitalism.
such a good read. should be required by all.
if Upton Sinclair was alive today he would flip his lid
Good ole Bubbly creek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbly_Creek
Not sure if you intended this, but you can absolutely get what you wrote to work with the timing (and same rhyme sounds/pattern, basically) of the first few lyrics of Guns N Roses ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, with minor modifications.
Welcome to the Jungle,
where we play dirty games.
Food safety sure costs a lot,
so fuck the FDA.
We are the people who hate fines,
Whatever they may be.
If you got no money, honey,
We got your disease.
etc.
(Wonderful that some of the lyrics don’t have to change at all, nor really the chorus, yay internal bleeding.)
That was my intention. Good on ya!
Sha na na na na na Shingles, eeeeek!
It gives “Watch it bring it to your n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees” an entirety different context! 🤮
I mean… the original song’s use of that phrase arguably references a woman basically being forced to give bjs to her dealer in order to get drugs she’s now addicted to…
All of this is terrible!
Sad thing, that original song would still apply - but now for safe baby food, carrots, or maybe a sack of flour. A lot of people are going to do things that they never expected to do.
We are going to live an cursed existence. 💩
I read the original to the tune without thinking about it!
Damn, just five minutes ago I saw this link shared in another thread:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
🤢🤮
It took us well over a century to establish some sort of framework that makes such horrors almost impossible, but no, regulations are bad 🙄
Same for workers btw, it’s not just about food security. That’s just easier to sell to a thoroughly egoistic constituency.
There were no regulations that couldn’t ever n made unrefrigerated raw milk safe in cities at the time. You either sold milk from cows raised in the city itself(which means cramped quarters and disease) or carted it in on a wagon (which means unrefrigerated milk sitting for hours). Adding formalin likely made it safer, it was so dangerous. The scandal thing played like it was what they were feeding cows (we feed cows high protein spent grains today and it’s considered high quality feed), but the reality was milk in cities was always insane.
Gone in <100 days
Welcome to Uptown Sinclair’s Jungle. You’re going to die.
That’s gonna make the cows mad. And mad cows will make US mad.
Sure unbridled capitalism is the way to go as there has never been starvation under capitalism.
So what’s killing us now? Because last I heard life expectancy is dropping.
Deregulation has been going on for a while. It’s been a major policy of the last several Rep. Presidents.
heart disease, cancer, COVID-19 and drug-overdose.
Infant mortality is steady,
under 25 mortality increased very slightly.
over 65 went up by 20%, that’s where you find most of the heart disease and covid deaths, and it doesn’t decrease the life expectancy that much, since they’re already old.The big problem is in the 25-55 bracket, because they’re dying from overdoses a LOT, and that’s hugely decreasing life expectancy. There’s alcohol consumption too, which increases cancer risks and deaths. Cancer screenings have dropped off in this bracket too, thanks to cost, so “preventable” cancers like breast-, lung- and colon cancers are killing more people.
It seems to be less of a direct regulation issue, and more of a “life sucks, so people do drugs”. Which one can (and SHOULD) argue is also a regulation issue, just less directly.
But RandLover1988 on YouTube told me businesses have to sell good things otherwise competitors will come in and they’ll go bankrupt, unless there are too many regulations and too much socialism, which is why he got banned for saying the N-word on YouTube. /s
What Conservatives would like us to forget is that many regulations are written in blood.
My favorite “we had to regulate this” is coal mining. You see, the larger a coal mine tunnel, the more work and time it takes. So smaller tunnels will be more profitable. So in some places they preferred smaller women and children, so they could make make smaller, easier tunnels. This one I only ever found one source on, but supposedly one mine owner noticed that snags on clothing were slowing things down in the narrow tunnels so he insisted on sending them in nude. Nothing more capitalist than naked coal mining children.
I realy would like to fact check you on this, but i will definitely not search for “naked coal mining children”. “Trust me bro” will have to do it for this one.
That miners often worked naked or partially naked is definitely true. That children, men and women worked together in mines is also true. If it’s legally allowed, then it’s going to happen basically.
That there were owners who preferred children/women over men, is probably false. They will have tended to do different jobs in the mines, but I can’t recall having ever read anything about a mine that preferred to not employ any male miners.
That the workers worked naked because of owner mandates is also going to be false, because those miners used to be paid according to how much they extracted, so there was no reason for the owner to have such a mandate. Instead it was the workers their own choice: some clothes hinder them in their work (heat, snagging, dust) + the job eats up clothes + they have to pay for their own clothes = they’re not going to be wearing many clothes at work.
The fact that these fucks were not regularly dragged from their mansions and beaten to death blows my mind
That’s because you view things like this as isolated acts done by a few people. But don’t forget, only 1/3 of US voters tried to stop a man who openly declared himself a fascist, had already had a direct hand in the spread of a world wide plague that killed millions.
The “they didn’t know what they were getting into” excuse is no longer valid. And yet 2/3 of voters were fine with him being reelected . The reason those people weren’t dragged from their mansions and beaten to death was because of all the other monsters who were protecting them. The people who weren’t committing atrocities themselves, but benefited from it enough to help it keep happening.as humans, our arguably greatest trait is the ability to adapt to almost any circumstance. unfortunately that also often makes us accept unacceptable living conditions because changing them involves too high of a personal cost.
You’re not dragging Trump out and beating him to death. So why expect of your ancestors what you can’t do today?
I’m not shaming nor advocating btw, just explaining.
Whenever a corporation does something good (for example, make a charitable donation) rest assured it’s been calculated that the positive PR will make it financially worthwhile.
And it reduces its tax burden.
That’s a wild misrepresentation of how write-offs work.
If your tax rate is 30% and you make write off a charitable donation of $100, your tax bill goes down $30. Spending 100 dollars to save 30 isn’t the key to riches.
There’s no way to save money through charitable donations.
How is that a misrepresentation? You justified what I said.
The implication was that they make donations for the write-offs. That’s not accurate, because it’s never cheaper to make a donation and write it off than it is to just pay the taxes.
It decreases your tax burden in the same way that giving away all of your money to charity decreases your tax burden.
And in case people need it cleared up: Donating at a register during checkout also does not help the company on their taxes. Its the same as you donating individually except they get the PR for it.
I hate it when a store asks me to donate at the register. I’m probably spending more than I want to anyway, and I’m sure the store has a bigger budget than I do. I’m like “fuck off, stop guilt tripping me, and donate yourself.”
Them getting the PR for it is a financial inventive (future sales) even if it doesn’t save them money on their annual balance sheets. It is comparable to advertising.
Yep but honestly I still don’t think the benefit matches what they spend. Especially true since they often match donations or make their own large donations.
And after all, if they’re helping money go to charity by advertising it to their customers, I’m fine with them getting a little benefit in return.
One thing people forget is that it was Big Food that wanted regulations.
After the book came out, it was almost impossible for American companies to sell their products overseas. Teddy knew that slapping a government label attesting to quality would mean that American companies would be able to make big profits.
The U.S. won’t need regulations once the last of its trade partners gives up on it. We’ll be free to eat all the domestic lead and asbestos our dear masters deem necessary to feed us.
So wait, are you telling me regulations actually help companies, too?
Well, it could in the long ago past, but we’ve outgrown the need for things like regulations, Unions, privacy…
No /s, because that’s what MAGats are already saying.
This is why I am hoping Canadian and Mexican food standards may save us yet
This is why I’ve been trying to point out that the ground swell around raw milk seems to have less to do with any critiques of pasteurization (there are no good critiques) and more to do with the fact that if pasteurization isn’t mandated as the only way to make milk safe to drink, corporations will seek cheaper options, like mixing raw milk with formaldehyde…
But if no one FDA checking anything don’t we have to worry about getting milk that says its pasteurized, but actually has an emulsifier and some poison in it?
