Let me get this straight. I pointed out that THC can be had via a pill. Somebody then says that taking a pill is more dangerous to your health than regularly smoking something?
What kind of bizzaro world is this? Do you work for Phillip Morris? Is it 1950?
Doesn't make what I said any less true. Herbal supplements are manufactured under similar conditions by similarly unscrupulous companies.
I was actually arguing that if a herb is the cure to what ails you, getting a pill of the active chemical is not without its dangers. Herbal supplements/chemical derivatives are not the same as herbs themselves.
And taking the herb itself is not without ITS dangers. Do you know how or where your herb was grown? If you grow it yourself, you have a lot more control, but even then, it still carries dangers.
The danger in manufactured products is, by and large, minimal. Manufacturing is subject to strict regulations and scrutiny. Yeah, stuff gets by, but stuff gets by in any sort of regulatory system. Want a more robust system? Call your government representatives and tell them it's a critical issue and you want regulatory agencies to get more money.
Doesn't make what I said any less true. Herbal supplements are manufactured under similar conditions by similarly unscrupulous companies.
I was actually arguing that if a herb is the cure to what ails you, getting a pill of the active chemical is not without its dangers. Herbal supplements/chemical derivatives are not the same as herbs themselves.
Um, an herb is just a combination of chemicals. Whether you ingest, smoke, inject, suppository, or otherwise dose yourself with that combination of chemicals, some of those chemicals will alter the biological system that is your body, and some will not. Through simple scientific experiments we can determine which chemicals, and which combinations of chemicals, in which quantities result in which effects.
For example, we know that Methylbenzoylecgonine (cocaine) is the active ingredient from the coca plant. Eating the leaf of a coca plant will definitely work. However, there are lots of other chemicals in the leaf of that plant. If all you are looking to do is get high, and fuck yourself up, why bother with those other chemicals? Most of those substances will simply be digested by your body, assuming you eat it. Some of the other substances may have effects, but do they have effects you want? Through science we have figured out that the cocaine is really the only part that offers the euphoria.
If it's penicillin you are looking for, why eat the rest of the mold? If it's pain killers you are looking for, why eat the entire poppy plant? The safest way to go about things is to figure out which substances have exactly which effects. Then you figure out exactly which amounts of which combination of substances taken in which fashion will have the desired effect. Taking herbs straight up is not good. You can not precisely measure how much of which substances are present, exactly how much the effect will be, and you can not account for the interactions of all those other, mostly useless, substances that are thrown in there will be. If you want to take a drug, why toss a bunch of other random chemicals on top? That's just asking for trouble.
That's why I'm a big proponent of irradiated food.
Yes! Irradiated beef was amazing when I could get it at Wegmans in Rochester: it kept for weeks. No one seems to sell it around here, so I'm stuck with the "two or three day" ground beef from the ShopRite.
I love these people almost as much as people that think that anything that comes in a pill is safe.
Something that undergoes rigorous testing is much safer than something that undergoes zero testing. It's not a tough concept to wrap your head around. FWIW, I never said that pills are 100% safe.
I love these people almost as much as people that think that anything that comes in a pill is safe.
Pills produced by legitimate, FDA regulated, pharmaceutical companies are subject to incredible amounts of scrutiny. Nothing is 100% safe, nothing. However, legitimate medicine is as safe as something can possibly be. Unregulated herbal remedies produced with little to no regulation or oversight are less safe. End of story.
The oven kills these.
The oven only kills some of those. You can't be sure you killed 100% of them unless you eat everything well done, which is disgusting. Also, even while the oven will kill them, that's only if you cook the meat before it spoils. Irradiating meat drastically increases shelf-life, so you can leave meat in the fridge longer before it spoils. It also makes it so you can cook the meat less, which tastes better, while having it be more safe. There are no downsides. All meat should be irradiated.
I disagree. It's always possible to be safer if more is invested in oversight.
Agreed. However, legitimate medicine is as safe as it can be given its current level of funding. Irrespective, it's still way safer than unregulated or less regulated medicines.
The FDA, by the way, has been trying to get permission to use the phrase "electronic pasteurization" rather than "irradiation," so that consumers don't flip their shit when they see the word "radiation" attached to their food. I'm totally in support of this nomenclature. Thoughts?
Agreed. However, legitimate medicine is as safe as it can be given its current level of funding. Irrespective, it's still way safer than unregulated or less regulated medicines.
Yes, this is exactly what I said. I didn't think this added clarification was needed considering the other sentences in my post.
The FDA, by the way, has been trying to get permission to use the phrase "electronic pasteurization" rather than "irradiation," so that consumers don't flip their shit when they see the word "radiation" attached to their food. I'm totally in support of this nomenclature. Thoughts?
Call it whatever the fuck they want, and long as I get my meat. Personally, I wouldn't be opposed to irradiating all meat and not putting any label on it whatsoever.
I wouldn't be opposed to taking the pasteurization labels off the milk too. The label itself doesn't make the milk safer, or less safe. The law should be all milk is pasteurized, period. Labeling milk saying it is pasteurized is redundant. You should only need a label when something isn't pasteurized, like sometimes when they sell unpasteurized apple cider.
In fact, that gives me an idea. The irradiated meat should have no label whatsoever. The other meat should carry a label that says "not decontaminated" if it should be allowed to be sold at all.
Actually, you said "Legitimate medicine is as safe as something can possibly be," which is a pretty loaded statement. Legitimate medicine can be made safer with more robust regulations, but that requires more funding. Your statement just says that it's "as safe as possible," which seems to say that it can't be made safer. Gotta be specific with these things.
As for the labeling thing, I'm not in favor of less labeling. Less labeling means less informed consumers. Forcing manufacturers to tell consumers that their product is pasteurized is just another layer of safety. Besides, forcing the manufacturer to declare it means that if they don't follow the law, but declare they do, you can nail their ass. Labeling laws are there, in part, to ensure compliance.
EDIT: spiritfiend: Yes, baked goods are some of the cleanest foods from a microbiological standpoint. However, your home process still does not guarantee the final cleanliness of the product. Don't forget that there might be chemical or microbiological contamination post-processing. The notion that you can make your home process somehow safer than a professionally developed and government-regulated manufacturing process is laughable. If you're doing a robust series of analyses to determine the viability of your product, then I'd say you're fine. If you're not doing at least as much as those pill manufacturer's, you have no foundation to say that what you're doing is safer.
As for the labeling thing, I'm not in favor of less labeling. Less labeling means less informed consumers. Forcing manufacturers to tell consumers that their product is pasteurized is just another layer of safety. Besides, forcing the manufacturer to declare it means that if they don't follow the law, but declare they do, you can nail their ass. Labeling laws are there, in part, to ensure compliance.
There's some truth to this. If you do catch someone not pasteurizing, but their cartons say "pasteurized" on them, it's an extra nail. However, it doesn't make it any easier to catch or not catch them. Someone who doesn't pasteurize, but says they do, is no easier or harder to catch than someone not pasteurizing, and not saying anything. If pasteurization is mandatory, you can still nail people who don't comply just as easily as you can now. The only difference will be that you can only nail them for not pasteurizing, and you won't be able to also hit them with false advertising. If the enforcement of the mandatory pasteurization is strong enough, then that extra nail isn't really necessary.
Not true. With the pasteurization labeling law, it's easy to catch someone out of violation, because you can easily check a container for proper labeling. I've actually been involved with several investigations into a firm's pasteurization practices, and it all started because I happened to be at an apple orchard and saw a bottle of milk for sale that did not have any pasteurization indication on it. Turns out the milk was pasteurized, but it was violative on other standards.
It's sort of the same idea as the famous Van Halen brown M&M stipulation; if the company can't be bothered to label the product as being pasteurized or not, then maybe they cut OTHER corners as well. We have a lot of standards that exist for that very purpose.
Pasteurization enforcement IS quite strong right now, at least in New York. People try to circumvent it with frequency, and we bring the almighty hammer of regulations down on their head. There's really no reason to take away the labeling requirement; at worst, it doesn't really affect anything, and at best, it's a method to inform consumers and reinforce a manufacturer's compliance.
Not true. With the pasteurization labeling law, it's easy to catch someone out of violation, because you can easily check a container for proper labeling. I've actually been involved with several investigations into a firm's pasteurization practices, and it all started because I happened to be at an apple orchard and saw a bottle of milk for sale that did not have any pasteurization indication on it. Turns out the milk was pasteurized, but it was violative on other standards.
Wow. Just wow. I mean, if you were going to violate regulations, you think you would at least go through the trouble to lie on your label to avoid suspicion.
Well, violating a microbiological regulation isn't necessarily intentional; it's usually due to carelessness, an unsanitary processing environment, poor sanitation practices, or some such thing. It's not like they're intentionally contaminating the product. A lot of the pasteurization violations that we catch are things like "Oh, we put it in the wrong tank."
Of course, there is an on-going investigation of another establishment that is willfully attempting to circumvent our regulations, but I don't think I can go into a lot of detail about that.
Comments
What kind of bizzaro world is this? Do you work for Phillip Morris? Is it 1950?
The danger in manufactured products is, by and large, minimal. Manufacturing is subject to strict regulations and scrutiny. Yeah, stuff gets by, but stuff gets by in any sort of regulatory system. Want a more robust system? Call your government representatives and tell them it's a critical issue and you want regulatory agencies to get more money.
For example, we know that Methylbenzoylecgonine (cocaine) is the active ingredient from the coca plant. Eating the leaf of a coca plant will definitely work. However, there are lots of other chemicals in the leaf of that plant. If all you are looking to do is get high, and fuck yourself up, why bother with those other chemicals? Most of those substances will simply be digested by your body, assuming you eat it. Some of the other substances may have effects, but do they have effects you want? Through science we have figured out that the cocaine is really the only part that offers the euphoria.
If it's penicillin you are looking for, why eat the rest of the mold? If it's pain killers you are looking for, why eat the entire poppy plant? The safest way to go about things is to figure out which substances have exactly which effects. Then you figure out exactly which amounts of which combination of substances taken in which fashion will have the desired effect. Taking herbs straight up is not good. You can not precisely measure how much of which substances are present, exactly how much the effect will be, and you can not account for the interactions of all those other, mostly useless, substances that are thrown in there will be. If you want to take a drug, why toss a bunch of other random chemicals on top? That's just asking for trouble.
For the people that think that, may I introduce you to my arsenic and anthrax buffet?
The FDA, by the way, has been trying to get permission to use the phrase "electronic pasteurization" rather than "irradiation," so that consumers don't flip their shit when they see the word "radiation" attached to their food. I'm totally in support of this nomenclature. Thoughts?
I wouldn't be opposed to taking the pasteurization labels off the milk too. The label itself doesn't make the milk safer, or less safe. The law should be all milk is pasteurized, period. Labeling milk saying it is pasteurized is redundant. You should only need a label when something isn't pasteurized, like sometimes when they sell unpasteurized apple cider.
In fact, that gives me an idea. The irradiated meat should have no label whatsoever. The other meat should carry a label that says "not decontaminated" if it should be allowed to be sold at all.
As for the labeling thing, I'm not in favor of less labeling. Less labeling means less informed consumers. Forcing manufacturers to tell consumers that their product is pasteurized is just another layer of safety. Besides, forcing the manufacturer to declare it means that if they don't follow the law, but declare they do, you can nail their ass. Labeling laws are there, in part, to ensure compliance.
EDIT: spiritfiend: Yes, baked goods are some of the cleanest foods from a microbiological standpoint. However, your home process still does not guarantee the final cleanliness of the product. Don't forget that there might be chemical or microbiological contamination post-processing. The notion that you can make your home process somehow safer than a professionally developed and government-regulated manufacturing process is laughable. If you're doing a robust series of analyses to determine the viability of your product, then I'd say you're fine. If you're not doing at least as much as those pill manufacturer's, you have no foundation to say that what you're doing is safer.
It's sort of the same idea as the famous Van Halen brown M&M stipulation; if the company can't be bothered to label the product as being pasteurized or not, then maybe they cut OTHER corners as well. We have a lot of standards that exist for that very purpose.
Pasteurization enforcement IS quite strong right now, at least in New York. People try to circumvent it with frequency, and we bring the almighty hammer of regulations down on their head. There's really no reason to take away the labeling requirement; at worst, it doesn't really affect anything, and at best, it's a method to inform consumers and reinforce a manufacturer's compliance.
Of course, there is an on-going investigation of another establishment that is willfully attempting to circumvent our regulations, but I don't think I can go into a lot of detail about that.