It is going to be a long fucking decade.
Something that really bothers me about any discussion relating to agriculture is how the word farmer is thrown around as if it's clear who they're referring to. Like, the farmers, I believe are actually the owners, right? And the workers are the people who actually do the farming work?
Of course the owners are resisting extra safety measures. It costs money.
Since capitalist modernization of agriculture, the word "farmer" has lost all meaning. Some are genuinely trying to grow the best vegetables ever while others never touched dirt in their life and spend all day doing finance bro stuff
Just based on my own experience the workers are probably refusing it too. My wife works retail and practically begs her coworkers daily to wear something, anything. We give them our own supply and they say no. Americans of all stripes are genuinely unwell.
I can't get my co-worker to use the fucking hand guard when operating a meat slicer. There's also the constant using of milk crates instead of ladders. There is absolutely no reason to neglect safety to get the job done faster. You're hourly
Beyond propaganda, this is also the sad reality that a lot of PPE is uncomfortable as hell. I've never worn a comfortable pair of steel toes, face shields get fogged up in un-airconditioned warehouses, and let me tell you how nasty your hands will smell after a day of sweating into protective gloves. It fucking sucks, it's necessary but it fucking sucks.
Yeah, that's true. I had really comfortable steel toed Doc Martens though, for what it's worth. But they were for concerts, not labor. People kept stepping on my toes so I upgraded.
I have a feeling it's more ideology than discomfort though.
It’s also motivated by dogshit working conditions. The discomfort of wearing PPE can be managed by offering more breaks and planning for time lost to ensure proper safety. Now, how many places allow for any of that?
I am not very sympathetic to this perspective at least as it pertains specifically to respiratory PPE for two reasons:
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I have an autoimmune disorder that means I don't really have a choice in the matter if I do it or not, regardless if it is the most uncomfortable thing in the world. If I can do it, any one else can, too.
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My wife works on her feet for eight hours a day with a total commute of about three hours on public transportation round trip, never taking the N95 off at any time in this window aside from a half-hour isolated outdoor lunch break, and by her own admission it is not bad & she seems to manage just fine with all the discomfort people seem to hoot and hollar about. I just don't buy it.
Oh I wasn't referring to masks specifically. Those generally aren't that uncomfortable. Only time I've had an issue with a mask at work is when I got so sweaty the thing literally melted off my face. That was an edge case though.
I just re-read your response and I feel I ought to at least apologize for not realizing it sounds like you're in real rough manufacturing or engineering of some kind which I understand the discomfort more. I just have such a hair trigger anger response to hearing this same shit from teenage cashiers and middle-aged managers who sit in their back offices all day, saying shit like "it's so uncomfortable" for a couple of rubber straps on their heads. It's ridiculous.
I used to work in industrial brewing, which yeah is pretty hot and sweaty. And yeah masks can caffe a bit in this conditions. But even there I managed to deal.
Now I'm trying to get my masters degree. So don't worry about it.
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I wear a pair of steel toed Puma trainers at work. They’re very comfortable. Comfort costs money.
Probably, but growing up I knew people in my family only one generation prior to me who never wore seatbelts as long as they could get away with it.
The media will say “farmer” and Americans conjure up an image of the yeoman farmer - the rugged, self-sufficient hard-workin’ (white) man. But this isn’t 1824. At best, the typical farmer (really, “farm owner” is more appropriate) is pretty involved in the business aspect and may even be out there regularly in the crops and checking out things. But still, most of the work is done by poorly paid workers - the overwhelming majority are undocumented. And at worst, the farm owner just lives in a sprawling farmhouse and does nothing other than cut a check to a management company (who still just hires mainly undocumented workers).
I don’t actually want this happen because it hurts workers, but I almost would like to see racist chuds get their wish and have every undocumented worker deported. That would create an economic collapse that would make the 2009 financial crisis look like a balloon party. This country would starve as the ag industry would collapse overnight.
don’t actually want this happen because it hurts workers, but I almost would like to see racist chuds get their wish and have every undocumented worker deported. That would create an economic collapse that would make the 2009 financial crisis look like a balloon party. This country would starve as the ag industry would collapse overnight.
there have been state-level crackdowns that caused problems like this but the hogs can't look at that and stop being racist for ten minutes
american 'farmers' are latifundistas, not cultivators. they're slavedrivers of unfree precarious labor at the most 'personal' level or regular bourgeois rentiers that don't even see the harvest
Something that really bothers me about any discussion relating to agriculture is how the word farmer is thrown around as if it's clear who they're referring to. Like, the farmers, I believe are actually the owners, right? And the workers are the people who actually do the farming work?
I've said it before, the idea of them being kindly old white men that just want to tend to their fields is pure propaganda.
What's funny is that they don't even need that. Most people in this country would rush to defend them since "gubmint can't tell US what to do!"
Farmers resist...
Public health is now is the government politely asking businesses to the right thing, the businesses saying no, and then government pretending everything is fine.
it's cool the government is standing by happily with billions in bail out money for them after h2h transmissible H1N1 wipes out 20% of the population
2K and get your asses back to work even though this time it's a coin flip with the grim reaper every time some asshole coughs on you
Worse, the businesses will whine about how oppressed they are BECAUSE the government politely asked them to do the right thing.
And most people will believe them.
I hate they you can own a thousand acres of land and employ other people to work it and call yourself a "farmer"
That’s intentional. They’re trying to obscure the line between seasonal farmhand slaves and millionaire capitalists who own hundreds of acres of land so that readers have more sympathy for the latter.
This too recieved significant resistance back in the day. Ultimately, as it always happened, med chuds were bullied into doing that.
The west declines not in a grand epic battle against the rising socialism but because it can no longer get its population to vaccinate and perform basic protective measures against an increasing number of serious diseases. Its population becomes weak, disabled, burdened, and productive output can not be maintained. It simply fizzles out underneath its own inability to exert authority for any purpose other than to put boots on necks.
productive output can not be maintained.
Output of Marvel movies has fallen. Billions must die.
Americans heaping rubbish on Stalin's grave:
Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! 
Americans when the wind of history sweeps it away without mercy:
Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck. 
Masks castrate men sweetie, the great covid lie taught us this.
While SARS-CoV-2 has mutation baked into it's replication cycle, the mechanism of mutation is rudimentary in comparison to influenza. This makes not wearing protection exponentially dumber in this scenario. Virologist estimate it'll only take ~10 direct human infections from chickens or cows until the virus is ready for human to human transmission. We already got one on the books from a dairy farm at the end of March. The infections which occur prior to the virus adapting to humans are brutal too, as it attaches to the α2:3 receptor, which are only found deep in the human lung. Thus the wild mortality rate with these infections until the tropism shifts to α2:6, which are found thorough out our respiratory tract...
Tailoring the PPE to the job is going to be difficult.
Let's stop drinking milk tbh, oat milk and soy milk are delicious. This shit (factory animal farms) keeps killing us.
Dairy farms are part of the reason why E.coli and listeria outbreaks on produce keep happening too.
~73% of all antibiotics annually are used for animal agriculture. Meaning both dairy and meat production are massive drivers of antibiotic resistance.
Yuppp
I can't have my lettuce bc someone needs beef and milk.
Good God I hope the unsubsidize them soon.
Ironically, 3/4 of all produce grown in the US is used to feed cattle. Pretty wild the amount of resources required for beef production, yet burgers are still on dollar menus!
We can either eat what they're eating (soy) or use the land that grows the shit that they eat
"In bad country, they treat their animals badly, but in our country we treat them right"
And yet something tells me that if we really wanted to we could find a way. We’ll move heaven and earth to get Israel tens of billions in munitions but don’t ask us how to keep equipment from getting wet
In the specific situation of Dairies, you can't keep things from getting wet. Everything is constantly getting sprayed down will water/cleaning solutions.
While I'm not a very good comrade when it comes to Animal Rights and Veganism, I tend towards agreeing with the idea that large animal operations probably should be scaled way back if not stopped completely.
Yea this right here. Regular masks are completely ineffective when wet, and loads of agricultural work/animal work/food processing work happens in wet environnents.
Could do full-mask respirators? Incorporates the goggles into the mask, and the filters should be okay unless you're like spraying water directly into the intakes.
Fancier ones can have flutter valves that do that, like the dust masks with disposable filter cartridges.
The Catch-22 might be that this moves the PPE from disposable one use items and things simple enough to easily sanitize into items that need to torn down to sanitize all the nooks and crannies.
“These workers have these fogged goggles all the time, which actually predisposes them to injuries,”
I used to work at a brewery and this is indeed kinda a thing, unfortunately.
At least in Colorado, whenever an infected wild bird landed in a poultry farm they had to cull the entire flock. That must be weeks if not a couple months of lost production, unfulfilled contracts, and wasted inputs. All while their labour force either moves on or gets a disease with a 50% fatality rate. Maybe insurance will cover it the first few times it happens, but with the premiums going up to account for that risk. This is so stupid.
"If you knew how to Follow The Science you would see this is actually very smart. As everyone knows, a pandemic's vision is based on movement. So as long as we do absolutely nothing about it, it won't be able to find us to make us sick! I mean, why else would I stop the CDC from wastewater testing?"at this rate various diseases will finish off the american empire before china fires the first missile
To an american, the most important freedom is the freedom to kill the poor.
Welp, the α2:3 receptors found thorough out the avian respiratory tract are also found thorough out their digestive tract...This is why factory farms using chicken litter (scrap bird feed + bird feathers + bird shit) to feed cattle has led to the first ever cases of avian flu in cows. If cows have it, won't be long before pigs get it, and they're the perfect mixing vessels as they have both α2:3 and α2:6 in their respiratory tract. This is the ideal setup for influenza's classic reassortment mutation, which could easily lead to another pandemic. But, maybe this was your point lol
With the low transmission to humans thus far, the virus might not have enough time to evolve to attack humans before it wipes out enough food supply to take us out.
Meat is nonessential for feeding humanity. The sheer amount of soy grown for feedstock could probably make up for the lost animal protein several times over.
Of course chuds would rather starve than eat
