No worries. For future fun at Scrabble, “pullet” is the word for a female chicken who has not stared laying eggs yet. Like “hen” is the word for one that has.
And since you’re not drinking milk, you don’t get a vote 
Fair enough.
Shut the fuck up and go read all of my posts befoer you start spouting bullshit to me ya goof.
Thank you.
Pullet, this is a really stupid line of reasoning and I really can’t even bring myself to bother arguing it with you, it’s just way too lame. If that’s the best you can come up with, I will concede this argument to you just to let it die a slow painful death OK?
I can assure you that it is not. But then again, if you already read all I’ve written and choose to not believe me, I guess I can’t. :rolleyes:
Oh well…
I'm aware you dislike anecdote,but in talking to a friend about use of hormones in feedlot beef he digressed into a former business of chickens, and hormones WERE used.
Anyone who had a chicken house with 300,000 birds might know the industry, or maybe he's pullen my unbalanced leg.It was nothing; I was just remarking on all the people putting on dairy airs.
This is unreasonable. Have you any experience with goats? Beyond their tendency to break free and eat all your flowers, beyond their odor, beyond the fact that you have to stud them yearly and then figure out what to do with the kid (and beyond the fact that this necessarily entails a milk-free period), you’ve got ordinances that forbid keeping livestock.
This is a line of reasoning similar to the rabid milk line of reasoning. You’d be better off abandoning it.
Daniel
He was either fibbing to you, or confused himself. There are no hormones that exist for us to supplement commercial chickens with. Even if there were, there is no need for them. The phenomenal growth and egg production rates that we get out of modern birds was achieved entirely through selective breeding. If there were hormone supplements for chickens, it would be a waste of money to use them.
Now, maybe I’ve been missing a key element in poultry production in the last 6 years of working with multiple poultry vets, visiting large scale production farms, and attending poultry conferences, but I don’t think I’m that obtuse. Sush, LHoD 
Speaking of, “dairy airs”! Classic! 
But keeping a goat is not as horrid as you are making it out to be. I know lots of folks who do without damage to their yards and sanity. The smaller goats have minimal smell, and there are already networks of folks who trade stud services so that not everyone has to own an intact buck. Or, if you have enough yard for a bull mastiff, get one of the miniature cattle.
Every lactating animal has to have a milk-free period between births. Simply stockpile the milk and you’ll get through the dry couple of months. Or network with other folks whose animals are on a different lactation schedule. A surprising number of urban places are actually zoned agricultural (large parts of central Los Angeles, for example). Even so, any of the milk-producing miniature breeds can be reasonably claimed to be a pet and not livestock.
And those miniature babies are very popular with folks who participate in animal fairs. They’ll easily fetch a couple hundred bucks apiece.
You and Farmerchick have decried this idea as unreasonable. But I still don’t understand why obtaining raw milk must be convenient in order to satisfy you philosophically. Can you please explain?
It was you who said your suggestion was “reasonably easy.” I do not think that meets any definition of “reasonably easy,” especially since the baseline for “reasonably easy” in this area is going to the grocery store to buy the product. What about someone who lives in an apartment building who wants raw milk–must they move in order to keep a goat?
The reason it must be “reasonably easy” in order to satisfy me philosophically is that the onus is on the person restricting liberty to explain why that restriction reasonably balances the infringement on liberty against the desired benefit. I believe that the desired benefit is actually very small, given the very small number of people directly affected by raw milk and the miniscule number of secondary victims of raw milk (i.e., people who catch contagious diseases from consumers of raw milk). Therefore, the restriction on liberty must be similarly very small. Requiring someone to own a goat if they want raw milk is an unreasonably large restriction, compared to the very small benefit of the restriction.
Daniel
Also, added estrogen has been used in the past in chicken production, and in the 1980s, a sample of chicken from Puerto Rico found higher-than-normal levels of estrogen (although subsequent tests failed to find these levels. Chickens may be fed beef that had hormones added to it, although I have no idea what the effects of that would be. And chickens in China have tested positive for steroids.
Daniel
Ow.
Well, I think it is. Another point where we agree to disagree.
Again, we agree to disagree. I can’t convince you that the benefit from pasteurization is significant to the community at large. I don’t know why, but it’s clear I can’t. Therefore, I can’t convince you that any restriction against the sale of raw milk does not infringe on basic personal liberty.
Need a shrug smiley. This one :rolleyes: is close but not quite.
People have the basic personal liberty drink ditch water, too. And odds are they won’t get sick from it. Should ditch water be sold in the store? What if they live somewhere where they can’t collect their own ditch water?
As for hormones use in chickens, from your first link
So apparently hormones have been tried in the past, but have been illegal for as longer than I have been alive. Explains why I haven’t heard of their use in modern agriculture. And, like I said before, they don’t help much in poultry anyway.
That chicken from Puerto Rico with the higher levels of estrogen was just that, one chicken at one market out of all the ones they tested. Even chickens have mutants.
Your second link is to a person, who admits they are no expert in the area, speculating that the beef byproduct used to supplement protein in chicken feed could potentially be contaminated by the hormones given to cattle, and this might lead to chicken meat contaminated with cattle hormone
Hardly a ringing indictment. The levels of hormone in cattle meat are already ridiculously low. The risk that beef hormone reaches the chickens significant enough levels to actually encyst in the chicken tissue is way, way smaller than the threat posed by unpasteurized milk. And, even with what little she knows, she knows chickens don’t receive hormone supplementation directly.
The article from the New York times simply says that the piece of chicken from China tested positive for steroids, not hormones. The two are not always the same. It’s a pity they didn’t include a picture.
You know, LHoD, I can somewhat accept the philosophical construct that people should be free to make dumb decisions that can harm them (providing they don’t expect society to pick up the tab for their stupidity). What I have trouble with is giving free rein to all the sleazy operators who sell gullible people useless and/or hazardous products based on false advertising. Commercial raw milk sellers generally fall into that category. I’m fine with regulating them right out of business.
Not only that - as a result several roosters have been banned from cockfights for six months and had to pay stiff fines, plus having their future status in the Chinese Chicken Hall Of Fame* placed in jeopardy.
Yes, it’s in Canton.
I think the real issue here is people being ticked off at Miss Purl for calling the risk takers stupid. I happen to agree with her assessment. I also don’t think much of the judgement of people who eat fugu (those blowfish/pufferfish that can kill you if improperly prepared).
So what are we arguing about here, that people can’t have an opinion on someone elses decisions? I defy any of you to say you never have openly or silently judged someone’s decision making. You know you have. And you’ve also been judged. So what? It’s no skin off your nose.
Are some of you that thin-skinned that it bothers you that someone may think you’re a fool if you do certain things that they perceive as risky?
Excellent point, BwanaBob
People who judge other people’s opinions suck.
Just because of that I think you suck.
[bongslurp]
Whoa, a paradox!
I know I said I won’t vote on the raw vs. pasturized issue, and I stand by that.
But I do think someone should speak to the point you have raised, BwanaBob, and it may as well be me, since this happens to be a peeve of mine.
The OP set out to state that she thinks raw milk drinkers are idiots. She told why she feels that way.
The thing is, with message boards, there is a discussion that is meant to follow the OP. It being in the Pit, the following discussion will most likely be a tad heated, as folks that disagree with the OP weighs in.
That is the point. That is why all of us posters post on boards right? To discuss? So why is it that every once in a while, I will see someone saying “You guys shouldn’t care what her opinion is, it is just her opinion”? That can be a bit annoying.
You have a very different idea of “reasonably easy,” then. Anything “reasonably easy” that would require someone to move doesn’t qualify for me.
Show me a significant number of cases (proportionate to the problem, natch) in which someone has caught and transmitted a communicable disease by ingesting raw milk from a reasonably clean dairy, and you’ll convince me. I believe that you cannot do so.
Per Knittington’s example, I won’t engage on this (I’m no expert on ditchwater and am likely to embarrass myself); instead, I’ll say it’s a terrible analogy, for a variety of reasons. Better to compare it to something people actually like to do and are willing to pay for–say, going camping. Sure, sleeping outdoors is less sanitary, less safe, and less regulated than staying in a hotel. Sure, there are diseases you can catch outdoors that you won’t catch in a hotel; you can even catch rabies from camping, just like you can catch it from drinking raw milk! Sure, the main reason people go camping is for aesthetic reasons (we’ll talk now about recreational camping, ignoring those who do it to save money on road trips). Does all of that mean that we shouldn’t allow people to run campgrounds or charge money for them? Of course not.
Everything else you say here essentially reiterates what I said with the words I used as the link, so I won’t address it: I agree with it.
Daniel
Being disinclined to think he was either confused or lying,and reiterating that it was a side remark in our conversation,I called him to clarify.
At one time he raised capons,the hormone served as castrator.He did remember the use of hormones generally,but said their use went out of favor in the '50s.
I did some reading and it backs up what you both say,so ignorance fought.