In his book "Eating Animals" Jonathan Safran Foer dedicates a lot of time to this. Remember, he is not a vegan. This shouldn't be important but there are few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans. He cites multiple studies and if you are really concerned it's a quick read. One study showed how effectiveness of a specific antibiotic was at ~99% and then only 10 years after it being introduced into livestock feed the effectiveness shot down to 80%. So we went from about a 1 in 100 chance of it not working to around 1 in 5. That is a massive and terrifying difference. I urge you to read more. Clearly this is an issue I care about. I firmly believe this is the most likely cause of my unnecessary death. Far more than war or terrorism. Protect yourself, your loved ones, your children, your grand children. Stop eating meat that is fed antibiotics.
"few groups that get more irrational hate than vegans"
This, like most stereotypes, is built around a core of experience, and then expounded. With a lot of vegans, its often not that they're wrong about what they say, its how they convey it. This came up today in another HN discussion on smoking as well. Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it.
On topic, while I agree that we may very well all die, this can also be looked at in a different perspective. When the antibiotic in question was first introduced, it had effectively a 5/5 chance of working. After ten years, it then had a 4/5 chance of working. Like most power laws, in maybe 10-20 years, it will have a 3/5 chance of working, ect... with a decay rate that slows with time.
Like all evolution, antibiotic resistance is driven primarily by the rate of survival and reproduction in the population. If resistance against AntibioticA is a strong predictor of survival (like when its newly introduced, and highly effective), then lots of bacteria will develop the immunity. As it gets used less, due to limited effectiveness, then it will become less of a predictor, and less bacteria will multiply with that as a trait.
Its not like evolution is "free" either. Often times, if an organism becomes heavily specialized in fending off one threat, then they leave themselves open to invasive species or perpendicular threats. I firmly believe that we have intelligence (I really do) and that while natural evolution is powerful, we already have many of the tools necessary to understand, and adapt along with it. We just need to be able to understand why they're changing, how they're changing, and how we can exploit that process for our gain.
I went vegan for a few months and abandoned it because everyone else was unable to have a conversation with me about anything other than meat. Everyone felt an unprovoked need to justify their eating habits to me. Social groups were uncomfortable picking a restaurant without asking if I was okay with it even though I would much prefer to just not eat and hang out with people. Without any comment from me, my eating habits became a constant source of discussion and concern.
There just isn't any way to be politely vegan. Everyone else automatically assumes that you care why they aren't.
You stopped being vegan because you wanted to. Not exactly crushing social pressures. Been vegetarian or vegan for 17 years, it is pretty easy to go have a meal with friends and be polite.
I have a feeling that the social context for veganism is extremely different, in a way that can be difficult to imagine, across different social groups (different cities, age cohorts, ethnic groups, social classes, religious backgrounds, etc.).
Most of my friends are well-educated secular urban middle-class 30-year-olds who are somewhat left-wing by U.S. standards. Most of them know dozens of vegetarians and at least several vegans. On average, they seem to view my veganism somewhere on a spectrum from "mildly eccentric" to "extremely admirable".
When I go to other countries, I'm more likely to meet people who are surprised that I'm vegan. Some of them say that they didn't know that that was possible (!) or that they have never met a vegan in person before.
I have also met some vegetarians and vegans, mostly from immigrant families, who said that they had to hide their dietary practices from their families because their families would be so upset about it. (When I went vegetarian 26 years ago, my grandmother expressed a fair amount of concern for my health, although she'd at least met other vegetarians before.)
I think it's easy to generalize from our experience about how other people "normally" react to particular dietary practices, but our experiences with people's reactions (positive, negative, confused, hostile, indifferent, curious) may be a narrow local view.
One time I had a discussion in Latin with a Catholic priest who worked at the Vatican. (I don't speak Italian and he doesn't speak English, so Latin was our best common language.) When he learned that I didn't eat animals, he cited Genesis 9:3 as a reason that vegetarianism was faintly ridiculous. It took me a minute or two to understand that he was absolutely, completely serious.
Well, I dunno, maybe you run in different circles than I do-- I have some good vegan friends, and have been vegan for periods in my past. I've had a lot of good times and meals with vegans.
But I also live in a rural Texas town, and when I was in college, yes, there were very real social pressures not to be vegan, from family to social groups.
It is easy enough to just discount these pressures, but like most choices that marginally impact the folks around you (what are you really going to order at the steakhouse where you've gone for your brother graduation? Oh you're just gonna not eat? "How fucking rude", says your uncle.) these force are real and impact folks choices.
Not eating meat is easy to understand. What throws a lot of people off is vegans, unlike vegeterians, not eating eggs and cheese. That's really a doozy. It just doesn't make sense (and not that it implies that vegans care and non-vegans don't).
Cheese is made from milk. Milk is produced by mammals that have recently given birth. Cows are not an exception. Every dairy product you have consumed is built from milk stolen from a calf.
That calf is immediately separated from its mother, and usually shipped straight into a veal crate. If you consume dairy you support this.
The mother is milked for as long as she can be, but eventually she'll need to be impregnated again. This is a traumatic experience, but it's not like animal agriculture industry tries to make it better. The devices they use are called "rape racks" in the industry.
If your vision of dairy production is a straw-hatted farmer sitting on a three-legged stool milking Ol Betsy you're delusional. But you're also pretty common. Most people have the same sort of view of animal agriculture that non-technical people have about the Cloud.
Some people are vegans for health reasons, based on books like The China Study. Others just think we don't treat our egg layers and dairy cows very well. (I'm not a vegan, and don't want to get into a debate over whether they're correct. I'm just saying they have their reasons.)
Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it.
When I was a vegan, I would typically mention that fact, and then also add, "but I don't mind if you eat meat and I won't criticize you for it". Lots of people didn't believe me at first, having been on the business end of a lot of criticism from "well meaning" vegans and vegetarians.
>This, like most stereotypes, is built around a core of experience, and then expounded.
No, like other stereotypes, it is wrong, and mostly perpetuated by the same myth-engines that power urban legends.
>With a lot of vegans, its often not that they're wrong about what they say, its how they convey it. This came up today in another HN discussion on smoking as well. Its ok for them to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it.
I've had people go off on me just for saying that I was vegan. It has nothing to do with what, how, when, or why you say it; it has to do with what people hear.
you've really never heard these claims before? they are widely accepted as fact by now. There are many sources, just take 10 seconds to google it. "its better for the environment to eat a salad in a hummer than a cheeseburger in a prius"
Edit: here's one article about the use of fluoroquinolones on poultry contributing to the increase of fluoroquinolones-resistant Campylobacter http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.ht...