You forget, to someone like Biff and his cronies, zombies are the ideal: dumb workers who don’t complain and are easy to cheat out of pay. They want zombies.
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According to one source I read, clorpyrifos was designed to substitute DDT.
Hysteria? The thinking that “well, this chemical was once thought to be dangerous, but now we know it’s safe, so, all chemicals that we once thought were dangerous aren’t really probably that dangerous, especially if they’re profitable” is essentially a crime of scientific illiteracy that’s staggeringly dangerous.
ETA:
Hysteria to not admit dangerous compounds into the food chain should be the fucking default.
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You have clearly failed to understand how the precautionary principle works in this day and age.
One should be cautious about taking ANY decision that may affect ANY corporation’s revenue or profit, until overwhelming evidence demonstrates that it may be necessary and until the lawmakers have found a way to recompense or subsidise said corporations for any loss, using taxpayers’ money.
The ‘Environment’ the EPA must protect is the corporate environment.
Do you get it now?
/s (as if that’s needed!)
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From a cursory Google search, it looks like that clorpyrifos is banned in most (but not all) of the EU, and that its approval will expire next January. Hopefully, it will be be not renewed.
Traces of it has been found in fruits produced in countries where it is still used.
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Who we vote for has consequences. We need to get all these idiots of the government stat.
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Isn’t it interesting that Dow donated $1M to dRumph’s inauguration and suddenly the EPA reverses its decision to ban it.?
Also - some history.
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Oh, I just can’t wait for the wonderful trade deal the UK is going to do with the USA once Boris Trump Johnson takes us out of the EU with no deal and is forced to accept chlorinated chicken, hormone-fed beef and insecticide-soaked fruit from the US. Of course none of those things will be in contravention of EU/UK food standards because by then Boris will have liberated UK businesses from all that nasty EU red tape preventing them from succeeding and, magically, all the US produce will suddenly fully meet UK standards without the US having to compromise on a single thing.
Oh, I really cannot wait.
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Time to start growing our own food. In a bubble. And everyone needs to get solar panels and ev’s. And we need to revolt against this government. How are we not rioting in the streets (future rivers) everyday now?
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Oh, I expect another trade war when the EU bans all fruits and vegetables from the USA that are not certified free of certain pesticides. President Biff still thinks trade wars are easy things to win.
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That would be a feature, not a bug.
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Same reason that frog stays in the ever hotter pot.
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So, one chemical has plenty of evidence that it does harm to the nervous system, especially in children, and the other has…a couple of people who say they got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, plus lots of evidence that it’s not any more harmful than any other pesticide. And yet, it’s the latter that gets all the attention. Because…people like to curse Monsanto, I guess? Sigh.
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What you’re saying, then, is that the EPA should be looking into Fox News?
Start the countdown.
I just submitted passport paperwork for myself and family members
passport paperwork…to where, though?
i’d really like to know.
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This is part of our “more research is needed” in between various emergencies we have around here.
Having reliable healthcare would be good, so some of the countries with working healthcare systems scores high in our decision-matrix.
It would be good if the country in question had a reasonable corruption index score:
https://www.transparency.org/country
For example:
https://www.transparency.org/country/CAN
Maybe we should start a new discussion topic called “friendly nations that might possibly still accept people from the USA for USAians who are ready to run away”?
This would be hilarious if it were so dang real.
ETA: ok ok I started a new topic in “general” and I don’t know how to do it gracefully so I am just pasting the link here:
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The EU already restricts a lot of produce from the US because of pesticide and other issue.
The freak-out about pesticides has real consequences.
You can thank former Governor (now Secretary of Ag) Sonny Perdue of GA for this atrocity.
Without those scientists in the Ag Research Service in DC, we would not have developed penicillin - literally. Alexander Fleming discovered it in 1928 in London, and then brought it over to the Agricultural Research Service to figure out how to manufacture it.
Surprised this link is still up, frankly:
Most of that capability will be gone now. The ones that decide to move to Kansas City don’t even have a building to set up shop in yet.
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Rather than treat the native sand shrimp with pesticides in order to support a non-native species, why not look for the root cause? If there is an overpopulation of sand shrimp, there has to have been a change in the environment in the bay. Control by pesticide is a temporary band-aid, and they will be guaranteed to come back if the conditions that cause the population boom aren’t reversed. The proposed pesticide could also devastate the crab population if it’s applied at the wrong place and time. Crabs are susceptible to the neurotoxin and the larval crabs hang out in rafts that can number in the millions.
ETA: Having dug deeper into this murky topic (puns intended), it looks like this is the outcome of the ecology that was disrupted in the first place by the oyster aquaculture. Aquaforming the bay to be good habitat for the oysters made it less hospitable to the sand shrimp’s primary predator, sturgeon. With the sturgeon gone, the sand shrimp population went wild, requiring pesticides to control them. When the pesticide that the oyster farms were using for decades turned out to be bad, it sent them searching for alternatives.
The good news is that the oyster farmers have adapted to adverse conditions before (acidification, roller-coaster markets for shellfish) and survived.
There are mechanical means to remove the shrimp, which are prized as bait.
I say that as a huge fan of Willapa Bay shellfish and the community there. The PNW has lived and re-lived these kinds of band-aid solutions, and they never really work. When we figure out the root cause, we have been able to create long-term solutions.
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